Mobile crowd sensing architectural frameworks: A comprehensive survey

Mobile Crowd Sensing has emerged as a new sensing paradigm, efficiently exploiting human intelligence and mobility in conjunction with advanced capabilities and proliferation of mobile devices. In order for MCS applications to reach their full potentials, a number of research challenges should be sufficiently addressed. The aim of this paper is to survey representative mobile crowd sensing applications and frameworks proposed in related research literature, analyze their distinct features and discuss on their relative merits and weaknesses, highlighting also potential solutions, in order to take a step closer to the definition of a unified MCS architectural framework

How May I Help You? – State of the Art and Open Research Questions for Chatbots at the Digital Workplace

Chatbots become quite hyped in recent times as they can provide an intuitive and easy-to-use natural language human-computer interface. Nevertheless, they are not yet widespread in enterprises. Corresponding application areas for collaboration at digital workplaces are lacking and prior research contributions on this topic are limited. In this research paper, we aim at surveying the state of the art as well as showing future research topics. Thus, we conducted a structured literature review and showed that only few first research contributions exist. We also outline current potentials and objectives of chatbot applications. In the discussion of the results of our structured literature review, we show that research gaps are present. To tackle the research gaps, we derive open research questions

Smart energy cities: the evolution of the city-energy-sustainability nexus

This paper reviews the emergence and development of the “smart energy city” as an academic, normative, and applied concept. An examination of the academic literature since the early 2000s reveals the unfolding of spatiotemporal trends relating to this concept. It has been emerging to represent a sector-specified version of its sister concept of smart cities, also popularized in the past decade. However, the idea of the smart energy city has its own historic precursors and nationally specific trajectories. It rose from concerns with energy efficient/green buildings as well as smart grids for low carbon and distributed energy generation and distribution, which were later scaled up to the whole urban scale, and to embrace multiple other urban sectors and urban domains. By so doing, and combining the developments in ICT-led smart cities and sustainable energy, the notion of the smart energy city has come close to represent a digitally-mediated variant of low carbon cities. It can, thus, be conceptualized as a blend of smart cities and low carbon cities. National and urban case studies help to further distinguish “actually existing” projects, patterns, and conceptualization relating to both smart cities and smart energy cities and barriers to their practical integration. A greater focus on intersystem integration and a multistakeholder approach more recently offers a stronger representation of interdisciplinarity and conveys the complexity of the system involved, where humans and social systems become increasingly more central

MySemCloud: Semantic-aware Word Cloud Editing

Word clouds are a popular text visualization technique that summarize an input text by displaying its most important words in a compact image. The traditional layout methods do not take proximity effects between words into account; this has been improved in semantic word clouds, where relative word placement is controlled by edges in a word similarity graph. We introduce MySemCloud, a new human-in-the-loop tool to visualize and edit semantic word clouds. MySemCloud lets users perform computer-assisted local moves of words, which improve or at least retain the semantic quality. To achieve this, we construct a word similarity graph on which a system of forces is applied to generate a compact initial layout with good semantic quality. The force system also allows us to maintain these attributes after each user interaction, as well as preserve the user's mental map. The tool provides algorithmic support for the editing operations to help the user enhance the semantic quality of the visualization, while adjusting it to their personal preference. We show that MySemCloud provides high user satisfaction as well as permits users to create layouts of higher quality than state-of-the-art semantic word cloud generation tools.Comment: Appeared at PacificVis 202

Virtualization of Robotic Hands Using Mobile Devices

This article presents a multiplatform application for the tele-operation of a robot hand using virtualization in Unity 3D. This approach grants usability to users that need to control a robotic hand, allowing supervision in a collaborative way. This paper focuses on a user application designed for the 3D virtualization of a robotic hand and the tele-operation architecture. The designed system allows for the simulation of any robotic hand. It has been tested with the virtualization of the four-fingered Allegro Hand of SimLab with 16 degrees of freedom, and the Shadow hand with 24 degrees of freedom. The system allows for the control of the position of each finger by means of joint and Cartesian co-ordinates. All user control interfaces are designed using Unity 3D, such that a multiplatform philosophy is achieved. The server side allows the user application to connect to a ROS (Robot Operating System) server through a TCP/IP socket, to control a real hand or to share a simulation of it among several users. If a real robot hand is used, real-time control and feedback of all the joints of the hand is communicated to the set of users. Finally, the system has been tested with a set of users with satisfactory results.This research was funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades grant number RTI2018-094279-B-100

β-band analysis from simulated flight experiments

Several safety-related improvements are applied every year to try to minimize the total number of civil aviation accidents. Fortunately, these improvements work well, reducing the number of accident occurrences. However, while the number of accidents due to mechanical failures has decreased, the number of accidents due to human errors seems to grow. On that basis, this work presents a contribution regarding the brain’s β-band activities for different levels of volunteers’ expertise on flight simulator, i.e., experienced, mid-level and beginner, in which they acted as pilots in command during several simulated flights. Spectrogram analysis and statistical measurements of each volunteer’s brain’s β-band were carried out. These were based on seven flight tasks: takeoff, climb, cruise flight, descent, approach, final approach and landing. The results of the proposed experiment showed that the takeoff, approach and landing corresponded to the highest brain activities, i.e., close to 37.06–67.33% more than the brain activity of the other flight tasks: when some accidents were about to occur, the intensities of the brain activity were similar to those of the final approach task. When the volunteers’ expertise and confidence on flight simulation were considered, it was shown that the highest brain magnitudes and oscillations observed of more experienced and confident volunteers were on average close to 68.44% less, compared to less experienced and less confident volunteers. Moreover, more experienced and confident volunteers in general presented different patterns of brain activities compared to volunteers with less expertise or less familiarity with fight simulations and/or electronic games.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Hybrid Methodology to Improve Speaking Skills in English Language Learning Using Mobile Applications

The main objective of this research is a working example of how a hybrid methodology combining traditional methodologies and mobile devices can be used to contribute to the literature on mobile learning in teaching English as a second language. This work was carried out because, in many Latin American countries, students are taught English as a second language throughout their primary and secondary education. However, at the end of their studies, most students are unable to communicate with other people in English, let alone with native speakers. Moreover, it must be taken into account that nowadays English is the most widely used language in international communications, business transactions, finance and science. The professional who knows how to communicate in English has a positive differentiator in his or her professional profile and can easily access more relevant positions in any institution. For this purpose, a review of different methodologies for teaching oral expression in English has been carried out. Metrics have also been used to choose an effective mobile application to reinforce English speaking. These analyzed methodologies have been combined with the use of a mobile application to propose a hybrid methodology that contemplates an eight-week class guide. Due to the characteristics of mobile learning, this work can help to motivate students in their learning and in improving their communicative skills in the English language. High school teachers can use this methodology as an innovation in their educational programs.This work was financed by the Universidad de Las Américas through project code: TIC.LCC22.01

Scheduling and Sizing of Campus Microgrid Considering Demand Response and Economic Analysis

Current energy systems face multiple problems related to inflation in energy prices, reduction of fossil fuels, and greenhouse gas emissions which are disturbing the comfort zone of energy consumers and the affordability of power for large commercial customers. These kinds of problems can be alleviated with the help of optimal planning of demand response policies and with distributed generators in the distribution system. The objective of this article is to give a strategic proposition of an energy management system for a campus microgrid (µG) to minimize the operating costs and to increase the self-consuming energy of the green distributed generators (DGs). To this end, a real-time based campus is considered that currently takes provision of its loads from the utility grid only. According to the proposed given scenario, it will contain solar panels and a wind turbine as non-dispatchable DGs while a diesel generator is considered as a dispatchable DG. It also incorporates an energy storage system with optimal sizing of BESS to tackle the multiple disturbances that arise from solar radiation. The resultant problem of linear mathematics was simulated and plotted in MATLAB with mixed-integer linear programming. Simulation results show that the proposed given model of energy management (EMS) minimizes the grid electricity costs by 668.8 CC/day ($) which is 36.6% of savings for the campus microgrid. The economic prognosis for the campus to give an optimum result for the UET Taxila, Campus was also analyzed. The general effect of a medium-sized solar PV installation on carbon emissions and energy consumption costs was also determined. The substantial environmental and economic benefits compared to the present situation have prompted the campus owners to invest in the DGs and to install large-scale energy storage

Ecological and confined domain ontology construction scheme using concept clustering for knowledge management

Knowledge management in a structured system is a complicated task that requires common, standardized methods that are acceptable to all actors in a system. Ontology, in this regard, is a primary element and plays a central role in knowledge management, interoperability between various departments, and better decision making. The ontology construction for structured systems comprises logical and structural complications. Researchers have already proposed a variety of domain ontology construction schemes. However, these schemes do not involve some important phases of ontology construction that make ontologies more collaborative. Furthermore, these schemes do not provide details of the activities and methods involved in the construction of an ontology, which may cause difficulty in implementing the ontology. The major objectives of this research were to provide a comparison between some existing ontology construction schemes and to propose an enhanced ecological and confined domain ontology construction (EC-DOC) scheme for structured knowledge management. The proposed scheme introduces five important phases to construct an ontology, with a major focus on the conceptualizing and clustering of domain concepts. In the conceptualization phase, a glossary of domain-related concepts and their properties is maintained, and a Fuzzy C-Mean soft clustering mechanism is used to form the clusters of these concepts. In addition, the localization of concepts is instantly performed after the conceptualization phase, and a translation file of localized concepts is created. The EC-DOC scheme can provide accurate concepts regarding the terms for a specific domain, and these concepts can be made available in a preferred local language

Chatbots at Digital Workplaces – A Grounded-Theory Approach for Surveying Application Areas and Objectives

Background: Chatbots are currently on the rise as more and more researchers tackle this topic from different perspectives. Simultaneously, workplaces and ways of working are increasingly changing in the context of digitalization. However, despite the promised benefits, the changes still show problems that should be tackled more purposefully by chatbots. Application areas and underlying objectives of a chatbot application at digital workplaces especially have not been researched yet. Method: To solve the existing problems and close the research gap, we did a qualitative empirical study based on the grounded-theory process. Therefore, we interviewed 29 experts in a cross-section of different industry sectors and sizes. The experts work in the information systems domain or have profound knowledge of (future) workplace design, especially regarding chatbots. Results: We identified three fundamental usage scenarios of chatbots in seven possible application areas. As a result of this, we found both divisional and cross-divisional application areas at workplaces. Furthermore, we detected fifteen underlying objectives of a chatbot operation, which can be categorized from direct over mid-level to indirect ones. We show dependencies between them, as well. Conclusions: Our results prove the applicability of chatbots in workplace settings. The chatbot operation seems especially fruitful in the support or the self-service domain, where it provides information, carries out processes, or captures process-related data. Additionally, automation, workload reduction, and cost reduction are the fundamental objectives of chatbots in workplace scenarios. With this study, we contribute to the scientific knowledge base by providing knowledge from practice for future research approaches and closing the outlined research gap. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol12/iss2/3