A survey on data storage and information discovery in the WSANs-based edge computing systems

© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. In the post-Cloud era, the proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) has pushed the horizon of Edge computing, which is a new computing paradigm with data are processed at the edge of the network. As the important systems of Edge computing, wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) play an important role in collecting and processing the sensing data from the surrounding environment as well as taking actions on the events happening in the environment. In WSANs, in-network data storage and information discovery schemes with high energy efficiency, high load balance and low latency are needed because of the limited resources of the sensor nodes and the real-time requirement of some specific applications, such as putting out a big fire in a forest. In this article, the existing schemes of WSANs on data storage and information discovery are surveyed with detailed analysis on their advancements and shortcomings, and possible solutions are proposed on how to achieve high efficiency, good load balance, and perfect real-time performances at the same time, hoping that it can provide a good reference for the future research of the WSANs-based Edge computing systems

HBMFTEFR: Design of a Hybrid Bioinspired Model for Fault-Tolerant Energy Harvesting Networks via Fuzzy Rule Checks

Designing energy harvesting networks requires modelling of energy distribution under different real-time network conditions. These networks showcase better energy efficiency, but are affected by internal & external faults, which increase energy consumption of affected nodes. Due to this probability of node failure, and network failure increases, which reduces QoS (Quality of Service) for the network deployment. To overcome this issue, various fault tolerance & mitigation models are proposed by researchers, but these models require large training datasets & real-time samples for efficient operation. This increases computational complexity, storage cost & end-to-end processing delay of the network, which reduces its QoS performance under real-time use cases. To mitigate these issues, this text proposes design of a hybrid bioinspired model for fault-tolerant energy harvesting networks via fuzzy rule checks. The proposed model initially uses a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to cluster nodes depending upon their residual energy & distance metrics. Clustered nodes are processed via Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) that assists in deploying a fault-tolerant & energy-harvesting process. The PSO model is further augmented via use of a hybrid Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) Model with Teacher Learner Based Optimization (TLBO), which assists in value-based fault prediction & mitigation operations. All bioinspired models are trained-once during initial network deployment, and then evaluated subsequently for each communication request. After a pre-set number of communications are done, the model re-evaluates average QoS performance, and incrementally reconfigures selected solutions. Due to this incremental tuning, the model is observed to consume lower energy, and showcases lower complexity when compared with other state-of-the-art models. Upon evaluation it was observed that the proposed model showcases 15.4% lower energy consumption, 8.5% faster communication response, 9.2% better throughput, and 1.5% better packet delivery ratio (PDR), when compared with recently proposed energy harvesting models. The proposed model also showcased better fault prediction & mitigation performance when compared with its counterparts, thereby making it useful for a wide variety of real-time network deployments

Context-awareness for mobile sensing: a survey and future directions

The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power have empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user related social and cognitive activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provides the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects, and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen due to the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved, and at the same time better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991-2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlighten them by proposing possible solutions

Examining sensor-based physical activity recognition and monitoring for healthcare using Internet of Things: A systematic review.

Due to importantly beneficial effects on physical and mental health and strong association with many rehabilitation programs, Physical Activity Recognition and Monitoring (PARM) have been considered as a key paradigm for smart healthcare. Traditional methods for PARM focus on controlled environments with the aim of increasing the types of identifiable activity subjects complete and improving recognition accuracy and system robustness by means of novel body-worn sensors or advanced learning algorithms. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) enabling technology is transferring PARM studies to open and connected uncontrolled environments by connecting heterogeneous cost-effective wearable devices and mobile apps. Little is currently known about whether traditional PARM technologies can tackle the new challenges of IoT environments and how to effectively harness and improve these technologies. In an effort to understand the use of IoT technologies in PARM studies, this paper will give a systematic review, critically examining PARM studies from a typical IoT layer-based perspective. It will firstly summarize the state-of-the-art in traditional PARM methodologies as used in the healthcare domain, including sensory, feature extraction and recognition techniques. The paper goes on to identify some new research trends and challenges of PARM studies in the IoT environments, and discusses some key enabling techniques for tackling them. Finally, this paper consider some of the successful case studies in the area and look at the possible future industrial applications of PARM in smart healthcare

Central monitoring system for ambient assisted living

Smart homes for aged care enable the elderly to stay in their own homes longer. By means of various types of ambient and wearable sensors information is gathered on people living in smart homes for aged care. This information is then processed to determine the activities of daily living (ADL) and provide vital information to carers. Many examples of smart homes for aged care can be found in literature, however, little or no evidence can be found with respect to interoperability of various sensors and devices along with associated functions. One key element with respect to interoperability is the central monitoring system in a smart home. This thesis analyses and presents key functions and requirements of a central monitoring system. The outcomes of this thesis may benefit developers of smart homes for aged care

Smart kitchen for Ambient Assisted Living

El envejecimiento de la población es una realidad en todos los países desarrollados. Las predicciones de crecimiento de esta población son alarmantes, planteando un reto para los servicios sociales y sanitarios. Las personas ancianas padecen diversas discapacidades que se van acentuando con la edad, siendo más propensas a sufrir accidentes domésticos, presentando problemas para realizar tareas cotidianas, etc. Esta situación conlleva a una pérdida paulatina de capacidades que en muchas ocasiones acaba con la vida autónoma de la persona. En este contexto, las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC) aplicadas al entorno doméstico pueden jugar un papel importante, permitiendo que las personas ancianas vivan más tiempo, de forma independiente en su propio hogar, presentando, por tanto, una alternativa a la hospitalización o institucionalización de las mismas. Este trabajo da un paso más en este sentido, presentando el diseño y desarrollo de un Ambiente Inteligente en la cocina, que ayuda a las personas ancianas y/o con discapacidad a desempeñar sus actividades de la vida diaria de una forma más fácil y sencilla. Esta tesis realiza sus principales aportaciones en dos campos: El metodológico y el tecnológico. Por un lado se presenta una metodología sistemática para extraer necesidades de colectivos específicos a fin de mejorar la información disponible por el equipo de diseño del producto, servicio o sistema. Esta metodología se basa en el estudio de la interacción Hombre-Máquina en base a los paradigmas y modelos existentes y el modelado y descripción de las capacidades del usuario en la misma utilizado el lenguaje estandarizado propuesto en la Clasificación Internacional del Funcionamiento, de la Discapacidad y de la Salud (CIF). Adicionalmente, se plantea el problema de la evaluación tecnológica, diseñando la metodología de evaluación de la tecnología con la finalidad de conocer su accesibilidad, funcionalidad y usabilidad del sistema desarrollado y aplicándola a 61 usuarios y 31 profesionales de la gerontología. Desde un punto de vista técnico, se afronta el diseño de un ambiente asistido inteligente (Ambient Assisted Living, AAL) en la cocina, planteando y definiendo la arquitectura del sistema. Esta arquitectura, basada en OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative), oferta un sistema modular, con altas capacidades de interoperabilidad y escalabilidad. Además, se diseña e implementa una red de sensores distribuida en el entorno con el fin de obtener la mayor información posible del contexto, presentando distintos algoritmos para obtener información de alto nivel: detección de caídas o localización. Todos los dispositivos presentes en el entorno han sido modelados utilizando la taxonomía propuesta en OSGi4AmI, extendiendo la misma a los electrodomésticos más habituales de la cocina. Finalmente, se presenta el diseño e implementación de la inteligencia del sistema, que en función de la información procedente del contexto y de las capacidades del usuario da soporte a las principales actividades de la vida diaria (AVD) en la cocina

Redesigning the human-robot interface : intuitive teleoperation of anthropomorphic robots

textA novel interface for robotic teleoperation was developed to enable accurate and highly efficient teleoperation of the Industrial Reconfigurable Anthropomorphic Dual-arm (IRAD) system and other robotic systems. In order to achieve a revolutionary increase in operator productivity, the bilateral/master-slave approach must give way to shared autonomy and unilateral control; autonomy must be employed where possible, and appropriate sensory feedback only where autonomy is impossible; and today’s low-information/high feedback model must be replaced by one that emphasizes feedforward precision and minimal corrective feedback. This is emphasized for task spaces outside of the traditional anthropomorphic scale such as mobile manipulation (i.e. large task spaces) and high precision tasks (i.e. very small task spaces). The system is demonstrated using an anthropomorphically dimensioned industrial manipulator working in task spaces from one meter to less than one millimeter, in both simulation and hardware. This thesis discusses the design requirements and philosophy of this interface, provides a summary of prototype teleoperation hardware, simulation environment, test-bed hardware, and experimental results.Mechanical Engineerin

Resource-Aware Design Of Wireless Control Systems

This work is motivated by modern monitoring and control infrastructures appearing in smart homes, urban environments, and industrial plants. These systems are characterized by multiple sensor and actuator devices at different physical locations, communicating wirelessly with each other. Desired monitoring and control performance requires efficient wireless communication, as the more information the sensors convey the more precise actuation becomes. However wireless communication is constrained by the inherent uncertainty of the wireless medium as well as resource limitations at the devices, e.g., limited power resources. The increased number of wireless devices in such environments further necessitates the management of the shared wireless spectrum with direct account of control performance. To address these challenges, the goal of this work is to provide control-aware and resource-aware communication policies. This is first examined in the fundamental problem of allocating transmit power resources for wireless closed loop control. Opportunistic online adaptation of power to plant and wireless channel conditions is shown to be essential in achieving the optimal tradeoff between control performance and power utilization. Optimal structural properties of channel access mechanisms are also considered for the problem of guaranteeing multiple control performance requirements over a shared wireless medium. This includes scheduling mechanisms implemented by central authorities, as well as decentralized mechanisms implemented independently by the wireless devices with emerging wireless interferences. Again the mechanisms exhibit an opportunistic adaptation to varying wireless channel conditions, especially designed to explore the tradeoffs between different communication links and meet control performance requirements. The structural characterization is augmented with tractable optimization algorithms to compute these channel access mechanisms. Finally, as control is naturally a dynamic task that requires a long term planning, appropriate dynamic algorithms adapting to the varying control system states are examined. Besides adapting dynamically, the proposed algorithms provide guarantees about long term control performance and resource utilization by construction

Impulse

Features:[Page] 2 \u27Historic Day\u27 at Jerome Lohr Structures Lab: October 25, 2006, is a day Nadim Wehbe will long remember.[Page] 4 Jason Zemlicka: A former city road crew worker helps with bridge girder testing. [Page] 5 Mountain Plains Consortium: SDSU accepted into a regional university transportation center. [Page] 6 Turning grass into gas: Mechanical engineers help in researching new energy source. [Page] 8 Weapons research: SDSU, four partners developing fatigue odometer sensor for military. [Page] 9 A Ph.D. in ME?: The State Legislature is being asked to approved a doctorate in mechanical engineering.[Page] 10Homestake Mine: SDSU has deep hopes for an underground science lab in the Black Hills.College:[Page] 12 Creating engineering interests: Middle and high school girls targeted. [Page] 14 ACE & YEA camps: A week at SDSU gives teens a glimpse of future careers.[Page] 16 Faculty outreach seminars: Seminars fill role in educating professionals. [Page] 18 Making the \u27college try\u27 possible: Citibank helps fund Native American program. [Page] 19 Phonathon record: Slow start doesn\u27t keep students from hitting record total.Students: [Page] 20 Grad student profiles: Amanda Boushek, Alfred Furth, and Cory Mettler. [Page] 22 ASCE honors: Community service helps chapter gain another zone award. [Page] 23 Senior Design Conference: A summary of the thirty-five projects undertaken. [Page] 46 Solar power in the wild: Electrical engineering class sets up solar power system.Faculty:[Page] 27 Faculty News[Page] 28 New facultyAlumni:[Page] 29 Distinguished: Honored alums and engineers profiled.[Page] 38 Justin Petersen: Engineer seeks master\u27s degree while holding Banner job.[Page] 44 Dick Bue: CEalum is a prime example of engineering versatility.https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/coe_impulse/1011/thumbnail.jp

Braking and Body Angles Control of an Insect-Computer Hybrid Robot by Electrical Stimulation of Beetle Flight Muscle in Free Flight

While engineers put lots of effort, resources, and time in building insect scale micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that fly like insects, insects themselves are the real masters of flight. What if we would use living insect as platform for MAV instead? Here, we reported a flight control via electrical stimulation of a flight muscle of an insect-computer hybrid robot, which is the interface of a mountable wireless backpack controller and a living beetle. The beetle uses indirect flight muscles to drive wing flapping and three major direct flight muscles (basalar, subalar and third axilliary (3Ax) muscles) to control the kinematics of the wings for flight maneuver. While turning control was already achieved by stimulating basalar and 3Ax muscles, electrical stimulation of subalar muscles resulted in braking and elevation control in flight. We also demonstrated around 20 degrees of contralateral yaw and roll by stimulating individual subalar muscle. Stimulating both subalar muscles lead to an increase of 20 degrees in pitch and decelerate the flight by 1.5 m/s2 as well as an induce an elevation of 2 m/s2.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, supplemental video: https://youtu.be/P9dxsSf14LY . Cyborg and Bionic Systems 202