Evaluation of the Wi-Fi technique for use in a navigated orthopedic surgery

Following text focuses on use of wireless technologies in OrthoPilot navigation system developed by B.Braun company. Description of OrthoPilot software is followed by overview of available wireless technologies highlighting their both advantages and disadvantages. Practical part consists of two main parts, mostly dealing with electronic circuits. First part describes development process of camera-wireless printed circuit board which substitutes currently used RS-422 cable connection between PC and stereo camera. Part of this chapter covers programming in C++ in order to make interface compatible with the rest of current OrthoPilot software. Second bigger part deals with remote controller development using prototyping board mikroMedia for XMEGA. Besides electrical circuits design, chapter describes also software part - microcontroller programming in C language. Thesis is concluded by discussing system limitations and ideas for future development.Following text focuses on use of wireless technologies in OrthoPilot navigation system developed by B.Braun company. Description of OrthoPilot software is followed by overview of available wireless technologies highlighting their both advantages and disadvantages. Practical part consists of two main parts, mostly dealing with electronic circuits. First part describes development process of camera-wireless printed circuit board which substitutes currently used RS-422 cable connection between PC and stereo camera. Part of this chapter covers programming in C++ in order to make interface compatible with the rest of current OrthoPilot software. Second bigger part deals with remote controller development using prototyping board mikroMedia for XMEGA. Besides electrical circuits design, chapter describes also software part - microcontroller programming in C language. Thesis is concluded by discussing system limitations and ideas for future development.

A design-aware test code approach for code writing problem in Java programming learning assistant system

To advance Java programming educations, we have developed the web-based Java programming learning assistant system (JPLAS) that provides the code writing problem. This problem asks a student to write a source code for a given assignment, where the correctness is verified by running the test code on JUnit. In this paper, we propose a design-aware test code approach for the code writing problem. The design-aware test code tests any important method in the model source code that has the advisable design for the assignment. Thus, by writing a code that can pass it, a student is expected to implement the code with the proper classes/methods in the model code. In evaluations of the proposal, all the students could complete highly qualitative codes for five graph algorithms using the design-aware test codes, where the code quality metrics were measured by metrics plugin for Eclipse

Epilepsy Forewarning Using A Hand-Held Device

Over the last decade, ORNL has developed and patented a novel approach for forewarning of a large variety of machine and biomedical events. The present implementation uses desktop computers to analyze archival data. This report describes the next logical step in this effort, namely use of a hand-held device for the analysis

Towards intelligent distributed computing : cell-oriented computing

Distributed computing systems are of huge importance in a number of recently established and future functions in computer science. For example, they are vital to banking applications, communication of electronic systems, air traffic control, manufacturing automation, biomedical operation works, space monitoring systems and robotics information systems. As the nature of computing comes to be increasingly directed towards intelligence and autonomy, intelligent computations will be the key for all future applications. Intelligent distributed computing will become the base for the growth of an innovative generation of intelligent distributed systems. Nowadays, research centres require the development of architectures of intelligent and collaborated systems; these systems must be capable of solving problems by themselves to save processing time and reduce costs. Building an intelligent style of distributed computing that controls the whole distributed system requires communications that must be based on a completely consistent system. The model of the ideal system to be adopted in building an intelligent distributed computing structure is the human body system, specifically the body’s cells. As an artificial and virtual simulation of the high degree of intelligence that controls the body’s cells, this chapter proposes a Cell-Oriented Computing model as a solution to accomplish the desired Intelligent Distributed Computing system

System support for proactive adaptation

Applications in our modern, pervasive computing environments have to adapt themselves or their context in order to cope with changes. In the process, these pervasive applications should be as unobtrusive as possible, i.e., their adaptation should be automatic. In dynamic multi-user systems with shared resources and interactive applications, such adaptations cannot be scripted in advance. Instead, they have to be calculated at runtime. However, the necessary calculations quickly exceed the complexity that can be handled in real-time, i.e., without causing significant delays. The concept of proactive adaptation allows to change applications and/or context based on prediction of context and user behavior. Hence, proactive adaptation can reduce adaptation delays and avoid context interferences by determining coordinated adaptation plans ahead of time, instead of reactively when adaptation becomes necessary. Further, it helps to provide a seamless service to the user, while optimizing the overall system utility. This thesis presents a general framework and middleware-based system support for coordinated proactive adaptation in dynamic multi-user pervasive systems. The framework consists of five major components. The context interaction model and corresponding context broker offers context information, prediction, as well as actuation in a uniform fashion. The application configuration model allows applications to specify their requirements towards their context, as well as detail user preferences and duration-dependent utility and cost functions for adaptation optimization. Configuration algorithms calculate and rate all adaptation alternatives of an application given a current or predicted context and the specified rating functions, before coordination algorithms find interference-free adaptation plans for situations in which multiple applications share a context space. Finally, the adaptation control component combines the individual components of the framework in a two-dimensional control loop for proactive and fallback reactive adaptation. The prototype framework is evaluated in real-time simulations of an interactive pervasive system using recorded user traces

Energy efficient wireless sensor network protocols for monitoring and prognostics of large scale systems

In this work, energy-efficient protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSN) with applications to prognostics are investigated. Both analytical methods and verification are shown for the proposed methods via either hardware experiments or simulation. This work is presented in five papers. Energy-efficiency methods for WSN include distributed algorithms for i) optimal routing, ii) adaptive scheduling, iii) adaptive transmission power and data-rate control --Abstract, page iv