A Cloud-Based Architecture with embedded Pragmatics Renderer for Ubiquitous and Cloud Manufacturing

The paper presents a Cloud-based architecture for Ubiquitous and Cloud Manufacturing as a multilayer communicational architecture designated as the Communicational Architecture. It is characterised as (a) rich client interfaces (Rich Internet Application) with sufficient interaction to allow user agility and competence, (b) multimodal, for multiple client device classes support and (c) communicational to allow pragmatics, where human-to-human real interaction is completely supported. The main innovative part of this architecture is sustained by a semiotic framework organised on three main logical levels: (a) device level, which allows the user `to use' pragmatics with the system, (b) application level which results for a set of tools which allows users pragmatics-based interaction and (c) application server level that implements the Pragmatics renderer,a pragmatics supporting engine that supports all pragmatics services. The Pragmatics renderer works as a communication enabler, and consists of a set of integrated collaboration technology that makes the bridge between the user/devices and the `system'. A federated or community cloud is developed using a particular cloud REST ful Application Programming Interface that supports (cloud) services registration, composition and governance (pragmatics services behaves as SaaS in the cloud).The work is supported by the Portuguese National Funding Agency for science, research and technology (FCT), (1) Grant No. UID/CEC/00319/2013, and (2) `Ph.D. Scholarship Grant' reference SFRH/BD/85672/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Architectures for integration of information systems under conditions of dynamic reconfiguration of virtual enterprises

Tese Doutoramento Programa Doutoral em Industrial and Systems EngineeringThe aim of this thesis is to explore Architectures of information systems Integration under conditions of dynamic reconfiguration of Virtual Enterprises. The main challenge that we identify and which formed the basis of the research is that information technologies alone cannot support efficiently and effectively the human knowledge and their natural way of interacting. Already from Sausurre (1916) it could be argued that part of knowledge resides in person, and the attempt to try to model it is sufficient for it to be misrepresented. And this is the motto of all this work. Enhance the capabilities of emerging technologies, but in the sense that allow humanto- human interaction, having the information system merely a means to make this possible. Thus we argue that a communicational architecture of information systems integration (where Pragmatics mechanisms are enabled) in virtual enterprises in dynamic reconfiguration scenarios, are better able than the existing transactional architectures. We propose a communicational architecture able to achieve an effective integration of information systems, as well as designing its logical and functional model. We also define the necessary semiotic framework in order to a communicational integration architecture could be efficient and effective. We implemented two prototypes to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed architecture. The demonstration of the research hypothesis was demonstrated with the realization of two experimentations where the ontologies have been unable to resolve disagreements or absences of opinion inherent in people who collaborated. This was overcome with the implementation of mechanisms that allow the co-creation between members of the group that participated in the trial.O objectivo desta tese é explorar Arquitecturas de Integração de Sistemas de Informação em condições de Reconfiguração Dinâmica de Empresas Virtuais. O principal desafio que identificamos e que serviu de base da pesquisa é que as tecnologias de informação por si só não conseguem suportar de forma eficiente e efectiva o conhecimento humano e a sua forma natural de interagir. Já Sausurre (1916) defendia que parte do conhecimento residirá sempre na pessoa, e a tentativa de o tentar modelar é suficiente para que seja deturpado. E esse é o mote de todo este trabalho. Enaltecer as capacidades das tecnologias emergentes mas no sentido de elas permitirem a interacção homem-to-homem, sendo o sistema de informação meramente um meio para que tal seja possível. Argumentamos por isso que uma arquitectura comunicacional de integração de sistemas de informação, onde Pragmatics mechanisms are enabled, em empresas virtuais em cenários de reconfiguração dinâmica, são mais capazes que as actuais arquitecturas transacionais. Propomos para isso uma arquitectura comunicacional capaz de conseguir uma integração efectiva de sistemas de informação, assim como desenhamos o seu modelo lógico e funcional. Definimos ainda o quadro semiótico necessário para que uma arquitectura comunicacional de integração seja eficiente e effectiva. Implementamos dois protótipos capazes de demonstrar a aplicabilidade da arquitectura proposta. A demonstração da hipótese de pesquisa ficou demonstrada com a realização de uma experimentação onde as ontologias se mostraram incapazes de resolver discordâncias ou ausências de opinião inerentes às pessoas que colaboram. Tal foi superado com a aplicação de mecanismos que permitiram a co-criação entre os membros do grupo que realizou a experimentação

Sustainability Benefits Analysis of CyberManufacturing Systems

Confronted with growing sustainability awareness, mounting environmental pressure, meeting modern customers’ demand and the need to develop stronger market competitiveness, the manufacturing industry is striving to address sustainability-related issues in manufacturing. A new manufacturing system called CyberManufacturing System (CMS) has a great potential in addressing sustainability issues by handling manufacturing tasks differently and better than traditional manufacturing systems. CMS is an advanced manufacturing system where physical components are fully integrated and seamlessly networked with computational processes. The recent developments in Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Fog Computing, Service-Oriented Technologies, etc., all contribute to the development of CMS. Under the context of this new manufacturing paradigm, every manufacturing resource or capability is digitized, registered and shared with all the networked users and stakeholders directly or through the Internet. CMS infrastructure enables intelligent behaviors of manufacturing components and systems such as self-monitoring, self-awareness, self-prediction, self-optimization, self-configuration, self-scalability, self-remediating and self-reusing. Sustainability benefits of CMS are generally mentioned in the existing researches. However, the existing sustainability studies of CMS focus a narrow scope of CMS (e.g., standalone machines and specific industrial domains) or partial aspects of sustainability analysis (e.g., solely from energy consumption or material consumption perspectives), and thus no research has comprehensively addressed the sustainability analysis of CMS. The proposed research intends to address these gaps by developing a comprehensive definition, architecture, functionality study of CMS for sustainability benefits analysis. A sustainability assessment framework based on Distance-to-Target methodology is developed to comprehensively and objectively evaluate manufacturing systems’ sustainability performance. Three practical cases are captured as examples for instantiating all CMS functions and analyzing the advancements of CMS in addressing concrete sustainability issues. As a result, CMS has proven to deliver substantial sustainability benefits in terms of (i) the increment of productivity, production quality, profitability & facility utilization and (ii) the reduction in Working-In-Process (WIP) inventory level & material consumption compared with the alternative traditional manufacturing system paradigms

Sistemas Ciberfísicos orientados para a Produção Aberta

O objetivo principal deste trabalho passa por estabelecer um sistema ciberfísico orientado para a comunidade no âmbito da produção aberta, recorrendo, então, ao Open Design. Nesse contexto, numa primeira fase, é feita uma revisão bibliográfica sobre estes conceitos, da qual não foram identificados quaisquer trabalhos já realizados que abrangessem tal finalidade. Mesmo assim, e com base no material obtido dessa revisão, juntamente com documentação relativa a trabalhos enquadrados no tema, define-se uma arquitetura, por camadas, que satisfaz o pretendido e enquadra-se na premissa open-source e/ou low-cost. Efetivamente, é elaborado um sistema que permite a qualquer utilizador o acesso livre a um repositório onde se encontra disponível uma vasta gama de produtos, personalizados ou não, os quais são facultados pela própria comunidade. Para que o processamento da informação congruente seja realizável sem limitações, a maior parte do mesmo está alocada na cloud, o qual será auxiliado por um Sistema de MultiAgentes. De seguida, estabelece-se uma ponte de ligação com o mundo físico, por meio de interfaces CPS viabilizadas por dispositivos IoT, os quais conectam e controlam recursos físicos simbólicos à Manufatura Aditiva e Subtrativa, com a finalidade de produzir o produto pretendido. Nesta fase, é possibilitado ao operador e à comunidade acompanhar em tempo real todas as ações e operações realizadas pelos recursos físicos referidos. Juntamente com estes últimos intervenientes, existem igualmente máquinas e processos a cooperar e colaborar simbioticamente para o refinamento do processo de produção, através da análise e recálculo dos dados relacionados com o mesmo. De forma a concretizar esta arquitetura, a implementação da mesma é iniciada, primeiramente a nível físico e, posteriormente, a nível computacional/digital.The main objective of this work is to establish a cyberphysical system oriented to the community within the scope of open production, resorting, then, to Open Design. In this context, in a first phase, a bibliographic review of these concepts is carried out, from which no work that had already been carried out covering this purpose was identified. Even so, and based on the material obtained from this review, together with documentation related to works framed in the theme, an architecture is defined, in layers, which satisfies the intended purpose and falls under the open-source and/or low-cost premise. In fact, a system is created that allows any user free access to a repository where a wide range of products, personalized or not, are available, which are provided by the community itself. For the processing of congruent information to be feasible without limitations, most of it is allocated in the cloud, a process better known as Cloud Computing, which will be supported by a Multi-Agent System. Then, a connection bridge with the physical world is established, through CPS interfaces made possible by IoT devices, which connect and control symbolic physical resources to the Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing, to produce the intended product. At this stage, it is possible for the operator and the community to monitor in real time all actions and operations carried out by the aforementioned resources. Along with these last participants, there are also machines and processes to cooperate and collaborate symbiotically for the refinement of the production process, through the analysis and recalculation of the data related to it. To realize this architecture, its implementation is started, firstly at the physical level and, later, at the computational/digital level

Survey of Template-Based Code Generation

L'automatisation de la génération des artefacts textuels à partir des modèles est une étape critique dans l'Ingénierie Dirigée par les Modèles (IDM). C'est une transformation de modèles utile pour générer le code source, sérialiser les modèles dans de stockages persistents, générer les rapports ou encore la documentation. Parmi les différents paradigmes de transformation de modèle-au-texte, la génération de code basée sur les templates (TBCG) est la plus utilisée en IDM. La TBCG est une technique de génération qui produit du code à partir des spécifications de haut niveau appelées templates. Compte tenu de la diversité des outils et des approches, il est nécessaire de classifier et de comparer les techniques de TBCG existantes afin d'apporter un soutien approprié aux développeurs. L'objectif de ce mémoire est de mieux comprendre les caractéristiques des techniques de TBCG, identifier les tendances dans la recherche, et éxaminer l'importance du rôle de l'IDM par rapport à cette approche. J'évalue également l'expressivité, la performance et la mise à l'échelle des outils associés selon une série de modèles. Je propose une étude systématique de cartographie de la littérature qui décrit une intéressante vue d'ensemble de la TBCG et une étude comparitive des outils de la TBCG pour mieux guider les dévloppeurs dans leur choix. Cette étude montre que les outils basés sur les modèles offrent plus d'expressivité tandis que les outils basés sur le code sont les plus performants. Enfin, Xtend2 offre le meilleur compromis entre l'expressivité et la performance.A critical step in model-driven engineering (MDE) is the automatic synthesis of a textual artifact from models. This is a very useful model transformation to generate application code, to serialize the model in persistent storage, generate documentation or reports. Among the various model-to-text transformation paradigms, Template-Based Code Generation (TBCG) is the most popular in MDE. TBCG is a synthesis technique that produces code from high-level specifications, called templates. It is a popular technique in MDE given that they both emphasize abstraction and automation. Given the diversity of tools and approaches, it is necessary to classify and compare existing TBCG techniques to provide appropriate support to developers. The goal of this thesis is to better understand the characteristics of TBCG techniques, identify research trends, and assess the importance of the role of MDE in this code synthesis approach. We also evaluate the expressiveness, performance and scalability of the associated tools based on a range of models that implement critical patterns. To this end, we conduct a systematic mapping study of the literature that paints an interesting overview of TBCG and a comparative study on TBCG tools to better guide developers in their choices. This study shows that model-based tools offer more expressiveness whereas code-based tools performed much faster. Xtend2 offers the best compromise between the expressiveness and the performance

Role-based Adaptation of Business Reference Models to Application Models: An Enterprise Modeling Methodology for Software Construction

Large software systems are in need of a construction plan to determine and define every concept and element used in order to not end up in complex, unusable, and cost-intensive systems. Different modeling languages, like UML, support the development of these construction plans and visualize them for the system’s stakeholders. Reference models are a specific kind of construction plan, used as templates for information systems and already capture business domain knowledge for reuse and tailoring. By adaptation, reference models are tailored to enterprise-specific application models, which can be used for software construction and maintenance. However, current adaptation methods suffer from the limitations of pure object-oriented development (e.g., identity issues, large inheritance trees, and inflexibility). In this thesis, the usage of roles as the sole adaptation mechanism is proposed to solve these challenges. With the help of conceptual roles, it is possible to create rich model variations and adaptations from existing (industry standard) reference models, and it is simpler to react to model evolution and changing business logic. Adaptations can be specified with more precision by maintaining or even increasing the model’s expressiveness. As a consequence, the role-enriched final application model can be used to describe software systems in more detail, with different perspectives, and, if available, can be implemented with a role supporting programming language. However, even without this step, the application model itself will provide valuable insights into the overall construction plan of a software system by the combination of structure and behavior and a clear separation of relatively stable domain knowledge from its use case specific adaptation

SiAM-dp : an open development platform for massively multimodal dialogue systems in cyber-physical environments

Cyber-physical environments enhance natural environments of daily life such as homes, factories, offices, and cars by connecting the cybernetic world of computers and communication with the real physical world. While under the keyword of Industrie 4.0, cyber-physical environments will take a relevant role in the next industrial revolution, and they will also appear in homes, offices, workshops, and numerous other areas. In this new world, classical interaction concepts where users exclusively interact with a single stationary device, PC or smartphone become less dominant and make room for new occurrences of interaction between humans and the environment itself. Furthermore, new technologies and a rising spectrum of applicable modalities broaden the possibilities for interaction designers to include more natural and intuitive non-verbal and verbal communication. The dynamic characteristic of a cyber-physical environment and the mobility of users confronts developers with the challenge of developing systems that are flexible concerning the connected and used devices and modalities. This implies new opportunities for cross-modal interaction that go beyond dual modalities interaction as is well known nowadays. This thesis addresses the support of application developers with a platform for the declarative and model based development of multimodal dialogue applications, with a focus on distributed input and output devices in cyber-physical environments. The main contributions can be divided into three parts: - Design of models and strategies for the specification of dialogue applications in a declarative development approach. This includes models for the definition of project resources, dialogue behaviour, speech recognition grammars, and graphical user interfaces and mapping rules, which convert the device specific representation of input and output description to a common representation language. - The implementation of a runtime platform that provides a flexible and extendable architecture for the easy integration of new devices and components. The platform realises concepts and strategies of multimodal human-computer interaction and is the basis for full-fledged multimodal dialogue applications for arbitrary device setups, domains, and scenarios. - A software development toolkit that is integrated in the Eclipse rich client platform and provides wizards and editors for creating and editing new multimodal dialogue applications.Cyber-physische Umgebungen (CPEs) erweitern natürliche Alltagsumgebungen wie Heim, Fabrik, Büro und Auto durch Verbindung der kybernetischen Welt der Computer und Kommunikation mit der realen, physischen Welt. Die möglichen Anwendungsgebiete hierbei sind weitreichend. Während unter dem Stichwort Industrie 4.0 cyber-physische Umgebungen eine bedeutende Rolle für die nächste industrielle Revolution spielen werden, erhalten sie ebenfalls Einzug in Heim, Büro, Werkstatt und zahlreiche weitere Bereiche. In solch einer neuen Welt geraten klassische Interaktionskonzepte, in denen Benutzer ausschließlich mit einem einzigen Gerät, PC oder Smartphone interagieren, immer weiter in den Hintergrund und machen Platz für eine neue Ausprägung der Interaktion zwischen dem Menschen und der Umgebung selbst. Darüber hinaus sorgen neue Technologien und ein wachsendes Spektrum an einsetzbaren Modalitäten dafür, dass sich im Interaktionsdesign neue Möglichkeiten für eine natürlichere und intuitivere verbale und nonverbale Kommunikation auftun. Die dynamische Natur von cyber-physischen Umgebungen und die Mobilität der Benutzer darin stellt Anwendungsentwickler vor die Herausforderung, Systeme zu entwickeln, die flexibel bezüglich der verbundenen und verwendeten Geräte und Modalitäten sind. Dies impliziert auch neue Möglichkeiten in der modalitätsübergreifenden Kommunikation, die über duale Interaktionskonzepte, wie sie heutzutage bereits üblich sind, hinausgehen. Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit der Unterstützung von Anwendungsentwicklern mit Hilfe einer Plattform zur deklarativen und modellbasierten Entwicklung von multimodalen Dialogapplikationen mit einem Fokus auf verteilte Ein- und Ausgabegeräte in cyber-physischen Umgebungen. Die bearbeiteten Aufgaben können grundlegend in drei Teile gegliedert werden: - Die Konzeption von Modellen und Strategien für die Spezifikation von Dialoganwendungen in einem deklarativen Entwicklungsansatz. Dies beinhaltet Modelle für das Definieren von Projektressourcen, Dialogverhalten, Spracherkennergrammatiken, graphischen Benutzerschnittstellen und Abbildungsregeln, die die gerätespezifische Darstellung von Ein- und Ausgabegeräten in eine gemeinsame Repräsentationssprache transformieren. - Die Implementierung einer Laufzeitumgebung, die eine flexible und erweiterbare Architektur für die einfache Integration neuer Geräte und Komponenten bietet. Die Plattform realisiert Konzepte und Strategien der multimodalen Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion und ist die Basis vollwertiger multimodaler Dialoganwendungen für beliebige Domänen, Szenarien und Gerätekonfigurationen. - Eine Softwareentwicklungsumgebung, die in die Eclipse Rich Client Plattform integriert ist und Entwicklern Assistenten und Editoren an die Hand gibt, die das Erstellen und Editieren von neuen multimodalen Dialoganwendungen unterstützen

ALT-C 2012 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2012 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 7 September 2012

Human Machine Interaction

In this book, the reader will find a set of papers divided into two sections. The first section presents different proposals focused on the human-machine interaction development process. The second section is devoted to different aspects of interaction, with a special emphasis on the physical interaction