Service-Oriented Architecture for Space Exploration Robotic Rover Systems

Currently, industrial sectors are transforming their business processes into e-services and component-based architectures to build flexible, robust, and scalable systems, and reduce integration-related maintenance and development costs. Robotics is yet another promising and fast-growing industry that deals with the creation of machines that operate in an autonomous fashion and serve for various applications including space exploration, weaponry, laboratory research, and manufacturing. It is in space exploration that the most common type of robots is the planetary rover which moves across the surface of a planet and conducts a thorough geological study of the celestial surface. This type of rover system is still ad-hoc in that it incorporates its software into its core hardware making the whole system cohesive, tightly-coupled, more susceptible to shortcomings, less flexible, hard to be scaled and maintained, and impossible to be adapted to other purposes. This paper proposes a service-oriented architecture for space exploration robotic rover systems made out of loosely-coupled and distributed web services. The proposed architecture consists of three elementary tiers: the client tier that corresponds to the actual rover; the server tier that corresponds to the web services; and the middleware tier that corresponds to an Enterprise Service Bus which promotes interoperability between the interconnected entities. The niche of this architecture is that rover's software components are decoupled and isolated from the rover's body and possibly deployed at a distant location. A service-oriented architecture promotes integrate-ability, scalability, reusability, maintainability, and interoperability for client-to-server communication.Comment: LACSC - Lebanese Association for Computational Sciences, http://www.lacsc.org/; International Journal of Science & Emerging Technologies (IJSET), Vol. 3, No. 2, February 201

The Evolution of an Architectural Paradigm - Using Blockchain to Build a Cross-Organizational Enterprise Service Bus

Cross-organizational collaboration and the exchange of process data are indispensable for many processes in federally organized governments. Conventional IT solutions, such as cross-organizational workflow management systems, address these requirements through centralized process management and architectures. However, such centralization is difficult and often undesirable in federal contexts. One alternative solution that emphasizes decentralized process management and a decentralized architecture is the blockchain solution of Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Here, we investigate the architecture of this solution and examine how it addresses the requirements of federal contexts. We find that the solution’s architecture resembles an improvement and cross-organizational adaption of an old architectural paradigm, the enterprise service bus

Plant-wide interoperability and decoupled, data-driven process control with message bus communication

Conventional industrial communication systems suffer from rigidness, inflexibility and lack of scalability. The environment is heterogeneous as the systems exchange data with a variety communication protocols, some of which are proprietary. This makes it laborious and expensive to reconfigure or upgrade the systems. As the solution, this article proposes a message-bus-based communication architecture to enable information exchange between systems regardless of their geographical location and position within the functional hierarchy of the plant. The architecture not only enables communication to cross the conventional physical borders but also provides scalability to growing data volumes and network sizes. As proofs of concept, the article presents a prototype in three environments: a copper smelter, a steel plant and a distillation column. The results suggest that the message-bus-based approach has potential to renew industrial communications, a core part of the fourth industrial revolution.H2020, 723661, COCO

Atmosphere: Context and situational-aware collaborative IoT architecture for edge-fog-cloud computing

The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown significantly in popularity, accompanied by increased capacity and lower cost of communications, and overwhelming development of technologies. At the same time, big data and realtime data analysis have taken on great importance and have been accompanied by unprecedented interest in sharing data among citizens, public administrations and other organisms, giving rise to what is known as the Collaborative Internet of Things. This growth in data and infrastructure must be accompanied by a software architecture that allows its exploitation. Although there are various proposals focused on the exploitation of the IoT at edge, fog and/or cloud levels, it is not easy to find a software solution that exploits the three tiers together, taking maximum advantage not only of the analysis of contextual and situational data at each tier, but also of two-way communications between adjacent ones. In this paper, we propose an architecture that solves these deficiencies by proposing novel technologies which are appropriate for managing the resources of each tier: edge, fog and cloud. In addition, the fact that two-way communications along the three tiers of the architecture is allowed considerably enriches the contextual and situational information in each layer, and substantially assists decision making in real time. The paper illustrates the proposed software architecture through a case study of respiratory disease surveillance in hospitals. As a result, the proposed architecture permits efficient communications between the different tiers responding to the needs of these types of IoT scenarios.This work was partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under project FAME [RTI2018-093608-B-C33] and excellence network RCIS [RED2018-102654-T]. We also thank Carlos Llamas Jaén for his support with the setting up of the performance evaluation tests

Atmosphere: Context and situational-aware collaborative IoT architecture for edge-fog-cloud computing

The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown significantly in popularity, accompanied by increased capacity and lower cost of communications, and overwhelming development of technologies. At the same time, big data and real-time data analysis have taken on great importance and have been accompanied by unprecedented interest in sharing data among citizens, public administrations and other organisms, giving rise to what is known as the Collaborative Internet of Things. This growth in data and infrastructure must be accompanied by a software architecture that allows its exploitation. Although there are various proposals focused on the exploitation of the IoT at edge, fog and/or cloud levels, it is not easy to find a software solution that exploits the three tiers together, taking maximum advantage not only of the analysis of contextual and situational data at each tier, but also of two-way communications between adjacent ones. In this paper, we propose an architecture that solves these deficiencies by proposing novel technologies which are appropriate for managing the resources of each tier: edge, fog and cloud. In addition, the fact that two-way communications along the three tiers of the architecture is allowed considerably enriches the contextual and situational information in each layer, and substantially assists decision making in real time. The paper illustrates the proposed software architecture through a case study of respiratory disease surveillance in hospitals. As a result, the proposed architecture permits efficient communications between the different tiers responding to the needs of these types of IoT scenarios

Digital Transformation Integration & API Management Framework

Digital transformation is revolutionizing the way organizations reuse legacy systems and connect them with the ever-increasing number of enterprise applications. These applications are usually hosted in the cloud with the legacy and other systems in the companies’ own data centers. This means that hybrid integration architectures are becoming a crucial part of the day-to-day processes inside organizations. The problem with different platforms is that it produces challenges. The same data is spread across different data structures, with different names and formats. This dissertation, devised with Deloitte, aims to design and implement a hybrid integration framework that connects and reuses the legacy systems with the cloud enterprise applications seamlessly to utilize the same data across all systems. Firstly, the existing integration platforms and integration software that could support the development of the API framework will be presented and described. A set of architectural patterns will be presented and described with their respective advantages and disadvantages and the way they fit in the API framework that will be created. The solution will then be evaluated with the Quantitative Evaluation Framework as well as by using system testing to see if the developed solution has quality.A transformação digital está a revolucionar a maneira como as organizações reutilizam sistemas legacy pré-existentes, e os ligam com aplicações enterprise, que sofreram um aumento significativo nos últimos anos. Estas aplicações estão regularmente hospedadas em plataformas cloud com outros sistemas e os sistemas legacy hospedados em datacenters próprios da empresa. Isto significa que, atualmente, as arquiteturas de integração assumem um papel crucial nos processos de dia-a-dia das organizações. O problema com a utilização de várias plataformas diferentes é que criam desafios ao cliente como a diferença de mapeamentos e de formatos de dados que usam, criando dificuldades em perceber como a mesma informação é armazenada e apresentada nas diferentes plataformas. Esta dissertação, elaborada em contexto empresarial com a Deloitte, tem como objetivo o design e implementação de uma camada de integração híbrida que ligue e reutilize os sistemas legacy nos datacenters do cliente com as aplicações enterprise que o cliente usa de maneira ininterrupta. Primeiramente, as plataformas de integração existentes e software de integração que podem suportar o desenvolvimento da framework de APIs, serão apresentados e descritos. Padrões arquiteturais que possam ser utilizados na framework de integração híbrida serão apresentados e descritos bem como as suas respetivas vantagens e desvantagens. A solução será depois avaliada com a Quantitative Evaluation Framework e com a testagem do sistema para avaliar se o sistema satisfaz os requisitos