CABE : a cloud-based acoustic beamforming emulator for FPGA-based sound source localization

Microphone arrays are gaining in popularity thanks to the availability of low-cost microphones. Applications including sonar, binaural hearing aid devices, acoustic indoor localization techniques and speech recognition are proposed by several research groups and companies. In most of the available implementations, the microphones utilized are assumed to offer an ideal response in a given frequency domain. Several toolboxes and software can be used to obtain a theoretical response of a microphone array with a given beamforming algorithm. However, a tool facilitating the design of a microphone array taking into account the non-ideal characteristics could not be found. Moreover, generating packages facilitating the implementation on Field Programmable Gate Arrays has, to our knowledge, not been carried out yet. Visualizing the responses in 2D and 3D also poses an engineering challenge. To alleviate these shortcomings, a scalable Cloud-based Acoustic Beamforming Emulator (CABE) is proposed. The non-ideal characteristics of microphones are considered during the computations and results are validated with acoustic data captured from microphones. It is also possible to generate hardware description language packages containing delay tables facilitating the implementation of Delay-and-Sum beamformers in embedded hardware. Truncation error analysis can also be carried out for fixed-point signal processing. The effects of disabling a given group of microphones within the microphone array can also be calculated. Results and packages can be visualized with a dedicated client application. Users can create and configure several parameters of an emulation, including sound source placement, the shape of the microphone array and the required signal processing flow. Depending on the user configuration, 2D and 3D graphs showing the beamforming results, waterfall diagrams and performance metrics can be generated by the client application. The emulations are also validated with captured data from existing microphone arrays.</jats:p

Automated Test Input Generation for Android: Are We There Yet?

Mobile applications, often simply called "apps", are increasingly widespread, and we use them daily to perform a number of activities. Like all software, apps must be adequately tested to gain confidence that they behave correctly. Therefore, in recent years, researchers and practitioners alike have begun to investigate ways to automate apps testing. In particular, because of Android's open source nature and its large share of the market, a great deal of research has been performed on input generation techniques for apps that run on the Android operating systems. At this point in time, there are in fact a number of such techniques in the literature, which differ in the way they generate inputs, the strategy they use to explore the behavior of the app under test, and the specific heuristics they use. To better understand the strengths and weaknesses of these existing approaches, and get general insight on ways they could be made more effective, in this paper we perform a thorough comparison of the main existing test input generation tools for Android. In our comparison, we evaluate the effectiveness of these tools, and their corresponding techniques, according to four metrics: code coverage, ability to detect faults, ability to work on multiple platforms, and ease of use. Our results provide a clear picture of the state of the art in input generation for Android apps and identify future research directions that, if suitably investigated, could lead to more effective and efficient testing tools for Android

DJ TOOL: a mobile phone audio player application

Since listening to music using mobile phones has become a normal situation, companies have started to think about developing new tools within the music field. Thereby, one of the fields in what they are working on is to enable users to put effects on their music while listening to it. One of the most popular techniques for manipulating recorded sounds is scratching. To scratch is just a variation in speed and direction of a sound file. These techniques are the presentation card of DJs, who implement them using a turntable and an audio mixer. The purpose of this project is to design and implement a system which enables users to use their handset for manipulating the sound by using different tools, being one of them adding DJ scratching sounds on top of their music while listening to it from their mobile phones. The application is developed by using Python, and designed to be used on Nokia mobile phones

Pembangunan modul pembelajaran kendiri pendidikan alam sekitar bagi pelajar sekolah menengah

Kajian ini adaiah bertujuan untuk meniiai sejauhmana Modul Pembeiajaran Kendiri Pendidikan Aiam Sekitar dapat membantu guru dan peiajar sekolah menengah daiam proses pengajaran dan pembeiajaran dari aspek kesesuaian isi kandungan, kesesuaian aktiviti, tahap keboiehiaksanaan dan mesra pengguna. Responden kajian ini terdiri daripada 20 orang guru dan 50 orang peiajar di Sekoiah Menengah Teknik Batu Pahat yang dipilih secara rawak. Untuk kajian ini instrumen yang digunakan ialah jenis soal selidik di mana penilaian dilakukan berdasarkan kepada persepsi responden terhadap Modul Pembeiajaran Kendiri Pendidikan Alam Sekitar. Data-data yang dikumpulkan dianalisis 7?ie;!ggHHa/raH &af!'sf;ca/ Packages For socz'a/ & f e / : c e j (SP-S^ i^er^zoH 77.0 yang melibatkan skor min, peratus dan ujian t. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan kesesuaian isi kandungan modul (skor min= 3.19), kesesuaian aktiviti (skor min = 3.18), tahap keboiehiaksanaan (skor min = 3.17) dan ciri-ciri mesra pengguna (skor min = 3.20) adaiah pada tahap yang tinggi. Dapatan kajian juga menunjukkan tidak terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan di antara guru dan peiajar terdapat kesesuaian isi kandungan, kesesuaian aktiviti, keboiehiaksanaan dan ciri-ciri mesra pengguna. Oleh itu, hasil kajian menunjukkan Modul Pembeiajaran Kendiri Pendidikan Alam Sekitar ini dapat membantu pensyarah dan peiajar daiam proses pengajaran dan pembeiajaran