Coevolution of variability models and related software artifacts

Variant-rich software systems offer a large degree of customization, allowing users to configure the target system according to their preferences and needs. Facing high degrees of variability, these systems often employ variability models to explicitly capture user-configurable features (e.g., systems options) and the constraints they impose. The explicit representation of features allows them to be referenced in different variation points across different artifacts, enabling the latter to vary according to specific feature selections. In such settings, the evolution of variability models interplays with the evolution of related artifacts, requiring the two to evolve together, or coevolve. Interestingly, little is known about how such coevolution occurs in real-world systems, as existing research has focused mostly on variability evolution as it happens in variability models only. Furthermore, existing techniques supporting variability evolution are usually validated with randomly-generated variability models or evolution scenarios that do not stem from practice. As the community lacks a deep understanding of how variability evolution occurs in real-world systems and how it relates to the evolution of different kinds of software artifacts, it is not surprising that industry reports existing tools and solutions ineffective, as they do not handle the complexity found in practice. Attempting to mitigate this overall lack of knowledge and to support tool builders with insights on how variability models coevolve with other artifact types, we study a large and complex real-world variant-rich software system: the Linux kernel. Specifically, we extract variability-coevolution patterns capturing changes in the variability model of the Linux kernel with subsequent changes in Makefiles and C source code. From the analysis of the patterns, we report on findings concerning evolution principles found in the kernel, and we reveal deficiencies in existing tools and theory when handling changes captured by our patterns.     

A CUDA-powered method for the feature extraction and unsupervised analysis of medical images

The Journal of Supercomputing - Image texture extraction and analysis are fundamental steps in computer vision. In particular, considering the biomedical field, quantitative imaging methods are...     

Vision‐based control architecture for human–robot hand‐over applications

Human–robot collaboration will be an essential part of the production processes in the factories of tomorrow. In this paper, a human–robot hand‐over control strategy is presented. Human and robot can be both giver and receiver. A path‐planning algorithm drives the robotic manipulator towards the hand of the human and permits to adapt the pose of the tool center point of the robot to the pose of the hand of the human worker. The movements of the operator are acquired with a multi 3D‐sensors setup so to avoid any possible occlusion related to the presence of the robot or other dynamic obstacles. Estimation of the predicted position of the hand is performed to reduce the waiting time of the operator during the hand‐over task. The hardware setup is described, and the results of experimental tests, conducted to verify the effectiveness of the control strategy, are presented and discussed.     

Supporting NGNs Core Software Services: A Hybrid Architecture and its Performance Analysis

In the last few years telco providers are striving to migrate their services from the traditional Public Switch Telephone Network to so called Next Generation Networks (NGNs) based on standard IP connectivity. This switch is expected to produce a cost degression of 50% for CAPital EXpenditure, while OPerating EXpences remains fairly stable due to network management and energy costs. At the same time, the instantiation of new telco services (Voice over IP, video conferencing, etc.) and the support of third party applications (such as support to smartphone applications, etc.) are expected to produce a big increase of the load of a telco provider at the core level. The goal of this work is to show how management and energy costs can be effectively reduced by leveraging autonomic approaches to move some NGN services toward the telco network edge while still providing Quality of Service (QoS) levels comparable with those provided by a traditional fully-managed infrastructure. This is done by taking into consideration the increase of the load of such services that is expected to raise by one order of magnitude in the near future. Specifically, we propose a hybrid architecture letting telco administrators reduce the number of servers in the provider managed network by exploiting home devices in the computation and by organizing them in a self-configuring Peer to Peer system; in this way it is possible to reduce the overall system and operational costs. Our claims are supported by an experimental study based on both simulations and theoretical models that analyze the trade-off between the number of servers and home devices in order to guarantee a service within QoS constraints. Experiments are carried out on a realistic model that abstracts the lookup procedures within the NGN of a big telco provider (i.e., finding the IP address of a given unique user profile).     

Beyond VNFM: Filling the gaps of the ETSI VNF manager to fully support VNF life cycle operations

One of the main challenges to use network functions virtualization (NFV) is to properly manage the life cycle of the virtualized network functions (VNFs). Current solutions based on the ETSI standard NFV architectural framework are complex and require the knowledge of a myriad of details of the underlying infrastructure. This work proposes a VNF manager (VNFM) specification that supports different platforms and VNF utilization scenarios. The proposed VNFM specification defines a set of APIs, modules, and components, for both the end user and the back-end that provide the fundamental set of operations required to fully manage the VNF life cycle. Our primary goal is to simplify the operations, in particular reducing the need for the network operator to know the details of the virtualized infrastructure. Note that the proposed solution fills a gap and complements the ETSI VNFM module. A prototype was implemented, and experimental results show the effectiveness and low overhead of the proposed solution.     

Site recurrence of open and unitary quantum walks on the line

We study the problem of site recurrence of discrete-time nearest-neighbor open quantum random walks (OQWs) on the integer line, proving basic properties and some of its relations with the corresponding problem for unitary (coined) quantum walks (UQWs). For both kinds of walks, our discussion concerns two notions of recurrence, one given by a monitoring procedure (Grünbaum et al. in Commun Math Phys 320:543–569, 2013; Lardizabal and Souza in J Stat Phys 159:772–796, 2015), and we study their similarities and differences. In particular, by considering UQWs and OQWs induced by the same pair of matrices, we discuss the fact that recurrence of these walks is related by an additive interference term in a simple way. Based on a previous result of positive recurrence, we describe an open quantum version of Kac’s lemma for the expected return time to a site.     

Spectral Processing of Tangential Vector Fields

We propose a framework for the spectral processing of tangential vector fields on surfaces. The basis is a Fourier‐type representation of tangential vector fields that associates frequencies with tangential vector fields. To implement the representation for piecewise constant tangential vector fields on triangle meshes, we introduce a discrete Hodge–Laplace operator that fits conceptually to the prominent cotan discretization of the Laplace–Beltrami operator. Based on the Fourier representation, we introduce schemes for spectral analysis, filtering and compression of tangential vector fields. Moreover, we introduce a spline‐type editor for modelling of tangential vector fields with interpolation constraints for the field itself and its divergence and curl. Using the spectral representation, we propose a numerical scheme that allows for real‐time modelling of tangential vector fields.     

Instability zones for isotropic and anisotropic multibladed rotor configurations

Helicopter ground resonance is an unstable dynamic phenomenon which can lead to the total destruction of the aircraft during take-off or landing phases. The earliest research in this domain was carried out by Coleman and Feingold during the decade of 60s. The instability was predicted by using classical procedures once the rotor was considered as isotropic, consequently, the periodic equations of motion could be simplified to a system with constant coefficients by introducing a change of variables, known as the Coleman Variable Transformation. The goal of the present work is to further comprehend the phenomenon and the influence of the anisotropic properties of rotors by analyzing the periodic set of equations of motion. For this, Floquet's Theory (Floquet's Method — FM) is used. The analysis for predicting the ground resonance phenomenon in isotropic and anisotropic rotor configurations is explored. The conclusions lead to verify the appearance of bifurcation points depending on the anisotropic characteristic present in the rotor. The temporal response analysis in the motion of helicopter with one asymmetric blade at unstable regions highlighted the presence of non symmetric rotor deformation shapes.