Formalizing process algebraic verifications in the calculus of constructions

This paper reports on the first steps towards the formal verification of correctness proofs of real-life protocols in process algebra. We show that such proofs can be verified, and partly constructed, by a general purpose proof checker. The process algebra we use isCRL, ACP augmented with data, which is expressive enough for the specification of real-life protocols. The proof checker we use is Coq, which is based on the Calculus of Constructions, an extension of simply typed lambda calculus. The focus is on the translation of the proof theory ofCRL andCRL-specifications to Coq. As a case study, we verified the Alternating Bit Protocol.     

Optimised scheduling in human–robot collaboration – a use case in the assembly of printed circuit boards

Advances in the technologies of sensors and lightweight robots increasingly enable direct physical interaction between humans and robots. This so-called human–robot collaboration is supposed to offer more flexibility in production processes, as opposed to fully automated processes. The aim of this contribution is to describe an integer linear programming model which optimally coordinates the distribution of tasks between humans and robots in a realistic production process of printed circuit boards (PCBs), where the objective is to minimise the completion time of a board. In addition, we discuss an extended case wherein a whole set of different boards is to be assembled, which is highly relevant for low volume production with a high degree of customisation. After stating an extended integer linear programming (ILP) formulation, we propose two practical approaches for solving the computationally more complex second scenario: an order-based heuristic approach and a matheuristic applying a truncated variant of the ILP model with different sequencing strategies. The computational evaluation based on a real-world use case from the PCB industry underlines the efficacy of the matheuristic approach for obtaining a good overall makespan.     

Co‐Immobilization of Proteins and DNA Origami Nanoplates to Produce High‐Contrast Biomolecular Nanoarrays

The biofunctionalization of nanopatterned surfaces with DNA origami nanostructures is an important topic in nanobiotechnology. An unexplored challenge is, however, to co‐immobilize proteins with DNA origami at pre‐determined substrate sites in high contrast relative to the nontarget areas. The immobilization should, in addition, preferably be achieved on a transparent substrate to allow ultrasensitive optical detection. If successful, specific co‐binding would be a step towards stoichiometrically defined arrays with few to individual protein molecules per site. Here, we successfully immobilize with high specificity positively charged avidin proteins and negatively charged DNA origami nanoplates on 100 nm‐wide carbon nanoislands while suppressing undesired adsorption to surrounding nontarget areas. The arrays on glass slides achieve unprecedented selectivity factors of up to 4000 and allow ultrasensitive fluorescence read‐out. The co‐immobilization onto the nanoislands leads to layered biomolecular architectures, which are functional because bound DNA origami influences the number of capturing sites on the nanopatches for other proteins. The novel hybrid DNA origami‐protein nanoarrays allow the fabrication of versatile research platforms for applications in biosensing, biophysics, and cell biology, and, in addition, represent an important step towards single‐molecule protein arrays.     

The periodic health examination: a useless test?

A critical analysis of the theoretical concepts applying to mass screening (Frames' criteria) in relation with the "Evidence-Based Medicine" methodology leads to rule out the basic blood test from the periodic health examination. A good questioning with a good clinical examination will select high risk populations for specific health problems for which some oriented tests can be performed with an acceptable positive predictive value.     

Design of small hand‐launched solar‐powered UAVs: From concept study to a multi‐day world endurance record flight

We present the development process behind AtlantikSolar, a small 6.9 kg hand‐launchable low‐altitude solar‐powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that recently completed an 81‐hour continuous flight and thereby established a new flight endurance world record for all aircraft below 50 kg mass. The goal of our work is to increase the usability of such solar‐powered robotic aircraft by maximizing their perpetual flight robustness to meteorological deteriorations such as clouds or winds. We present energetic system models and a design methodology, implement them in our publicly available conceptual design framework for perpetual flight‐capable solar‐powered UAVs, and finally apply the framework to the AtlantikSolar UAV. We present the detailed AtlantikSolar characteristics as a practical design example. Airframe, avionics, hardware, state estimation, and control method development for autonomous flight operations are described. Flight data are used to validate the conceptual design framework. Flight results from the continuous 81‐hour and 2,338 km covered ground distance flight show that AtlantikSolar achieves 39% minimum state‐of‐charge, 6.8 h excess time and 6.2 h charge margin. These performance metrics are a significant improvement over previous solar‐powered UAVs. A performance outlook shows that AtlantikSolar allows perpetual flight in a 6‐month window around June 21 at mid‐European latitudes, and that multi‐day flights with small optical‐ or infrared‐camera payloads are possible for the first time. The demonstrated performance represents the current state‐of‐the‐art in solar‐powered low‐altitude perpetual flight performance. We conclude with lessons learned from the three‐year AtlantikSolar UAV development process and with a sensitivity analysis that identifies the most promising technological areas for future solar‐powered UAV performance improvements.     

Topic discovery and evolution in scientific literature based on content and citations

Researchers across the globe have been increasingly interested in the manner in which important research topics evolve over time within the corpus of scientific literature. In a dataset of scientific articles, each document can be considered to comprise both the words of the document itself and its citations of other documents. In this paper, we propose a citation- content-latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic discovery method that accounts for both document citation relations and the con-tent of the document itself via a probabilistic generative model. The citation-content-LDA topic model exploits a two-level topic model that includes the citation information for ‘father’ topics and text information for sub-topics. The model parameters are estimated by a collapsed Gibbs sampling algorithm. We also propose a topic evolution algorithm that runs in two steps: topic segmentation and topic dependency relation calculation. We have tested the proposed citation-content-LDA model and topic evolution algorithm on two online datasets, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI) and IEEE Computer Society (CS), to demonstrate that our algorithm effectively discovers important topics and reflects the topic evolution of important research themes. According to our evaluation metrics, citation-content-LDA outperforms both content-LDA and citation-LDA.     

Time-constrained services: a framework for using real-time web services in industrial automation

The use of web services in industrial automation, e.g. in fully automated production processes like car manufacturing, promises simplified interaction among the manufacturing devices due to standardized protocols and increased flexibility with respect to process implementation and reengineering. Moreover, the adoption of web services as a seamless communication backbone within the overall industrial enterprise has additional benefits, such as simplified interaction with suppliers and customers (i.e. horizontal integration) and avoidance of a break in the communication paradigm within the enterprise (i.e. vertical integration). The Time-Constrained Services (TiCS) framework is a development and execution environment that empowers automation engineers to develop, deploy, publish, compose, and invoke time-constrained web services. TiCS consists of four functional layers—tool support layer, real-time infrastructural layer, real-time service layer, and hardware layer—which contain several components to meet the demands of a web service based automation infrastructure. This article gives an overview of the TiCS framework. More precisely, the general design considerations and an architectural blueprint of the TiCS framework are presented. Subsequently, selected key components of the TiCS framework are discussed in detail: the SOAP4PLC engine for equipping programmable logic controllers with a web service interface, the SOAP4IPC engine for processing web services in real-time on industrial PCs, the WS-TemporalPolicy language for describing time constraints, and the TiCS Modeler for composing time-constrained web services into a time-constrained BPEL4WS workflow.     

Reinforcement learning for robot soccer

Batch reinforcement learning methods provide a powerful framework for learning efficiently and effectively in autonomous robots. The paper reviews some recent work of the authors aiming at the successful application of reinforcement learning in a challenging and complex domain. It discusses several variants of the general batch learning framework, particularly tailored to the use of multilayer perceptrons to approximate value functions over continuous state spaces. The batch learning framework is successfully used to learn crucial skills in our soccer-playing robots participating in the RoboCup competitions. This is demonstrated on three different case studies.