216 research outputs found
Multi-Robot Systems: Challenges, Trends and Applications
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue entitled “Multi-Robot Systems: Challenges, Trends, and Applications” that was published in Applied Sciences. This Special Issue collected seventeen high-quality papers that discuss the main challenges of multi-robot systems, present the trends to address these issues, and report various relevant applications. Some of the topics addressed by these papers are robot swarms, mission planning, robot teaming, machine learning, immersive technologies, search and rescue, and social robotics
Desafios éticos da Internet das Coisas: em torno da personalização na educação
Em desafios éticos da Internet das Coisas (IoT) em torno da personalização na educação, a
identificação de quatro categorias chave (Segurança, Privacidade, Automatização e
Interação) foi o primeiro passo para uma análise que procurou, dentro dos meandros
tecnológico, pedagógico e ético-filosófico, refletir, em conjunto com vinte e um
entrevistados, vantagens, riscos e desafios na criação de soluções inerentes ao tema. A
vulnerabilidade das infraestruturas ligada a uma impossibilidade de se desligar da internet
e associada ao desafio da interoperabilidade nas autoestradas da IoT traz, para a educação,
inconvenientes associados ao acesso, uso, monitorização e propriedade dos dados, bem
como a padronização que cai no âmbito da “perfilagem” e, portanto, da estigmatização do
estudante criando, não só problemas de privacidade associadas à exclusão, como ainda a
redundância do ser humano na educação através da homogeneização desta, um
determinismo no processo educativo, uma perda do sentido de liberdade, do controlo e da
escolha e, consequentemente, um capitalismo de vigilância associado ao corporativismo e
à perda da noção de Bem Comum. É, por isso, necessário pensar numa simbiose entre o ser
humano e a máquina sem a ameaça de controlo desta. A Internet de Todas as Coisas (IoE),
com todas as vantagens que tem desde o reposicionamento do ser humano no ecossistema,
à abertura e acesso na educação, à ampliação da interação e da comunicação potenciada
por processos automatizados na prossecução da personalização, permitirá distinguir o custo
do valor dos dados, o valor de dados coletivos do valor de dados pessoais, potenciar uma
coresponsabilização ao nível da educação entre as instituições educativas e seus diferentes
intervenientes, aliviando, ao mesmo tempo, o ser humano de tarefas incómodas. Uma
inteligência alargada e coletiva criada de forma partilhada, tem por base um novo contrato
social, cuja dimensão ética assenta, necessariamente, no valor do Bem Comum associado à
justiça, equidade, igualdade e inclusão vendo no valor da diferença de cada um o primado
de uma ciência da complexidade que necessariamente tem de ser equacionada no desenho
da tecnologia para que esta seja ética e assim possibilite a personalização da aprendizagem
ao invés da perfilagem no ensino. Poderá ser a Pandemia COVID-19, uma oportunidade na
construção de novos caminhos no sistema educativo?The identification of four key categories (Security, Privacy, Automation and Interaction)
was the first step in the ethical challenges of the Internet of Things (IoT) around
personalization in education, which sought, in the within of technological, pedagogical and
ethical-philosophical, to reflect, with the twenty one interviewees, advantages, risks and
challenges in the creation of solutions inherent to the proposed theme. The vulnerability of
infrastructures linked to an inability to disconnect from the Internet and associated with the
challenge of interoperability on IoT highways brings, for education, inconveniences
associated with access, use, monitoring and ownership of data, as well as the
standardization that falls within the scope of "profiling" and therefore of the stigmatization
of the student, creating not only privacy problems associated with exclusion, but also the
redundancy of the human being in education through homogenization of the latter, a
determinism in the educational process, a loss of the sense of freedom, control and choice
and, consequently, vigilant capitalism associated with corporatism and the loss of the
notion of common good in general and in particular in education. It’s necessary a
symbiosis between the human being and the machine without being under the threat of its
control. The Internet of Everything (IoE), with all the advantages that it has from the
repositioning of the human being in the ecosystem, to the opening and access in education,
to the amplification of the interaction and the communication enhanced by automated
processes in the continuation of the personalization, will allow to distinguish the cost from
the data value, the value of collective data from the value of personal data, fostering a level
of responsibility in education between educational institutions and all their stakeholders, at
the same time relieving the human being from uncomfortable tasks. An extended and
collective intelligence created on a shared basis is based on a new social contract, whose
ethical dimension necessarily rests on the value of the common good associated with
justice, equity, equality and inclusion seeing in the value of difference of each one the
primacy of a science of complexity that necessarily has to be equated in the design of the
technology so that it is ethical and thus allows the personalization of learning instead of
profiling the teaching. Could be Pandemia COVID-19 an opportunity to build new paths in
the education system?A investigação realizada no âmbito desta Dissertação está integrada nas linhas de investigação da Unidade de
Investigação e Desenvolvimento - Laboratório de Educação a Distância e eLearning (UID 4372/FCT), da
Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia do Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior
Advances in Grid Computing
This book approaches the grid computing with a perspective on the latest achievements in the field, providing an insight into the current research trends and advances, and presenting a large range of innovative research papers. The topics covered in this book include resource and data management, grid architectures and development, and grid-enabled applications. New ideas employing heuristic methods from swarm intelligence or genetic algorithm and quantum encryption are considered in order to explain two main aspects of grid computing: resource management and data management. The book addresses also some aspects of grid computing that regard architecture and development, and includes a diverse range of applications for grid computing, including possible human grid computing system, simulation of the fusion reaction, ubiquitous healthcare service provisioning and complex water systems
A holistic architecture using peer to peer (P2P) protocols for the internet of things and wireless sensor networks
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) interact with the physical world using sensing and/or actuation. The wireless capability of WSN nodes allows them to be deployed close to the sensed phenomenon. Cheaper processing power and the use of micro IP stacks allow nodes to form an “Internet of Things” (IoT) integrating the physical world with the Internet in a distributed system of devices and applications. Applications using the sensor data may be located across the Internet from the sensor network, allowing Cloud services and Big Data approaches to store and analyse this data in a scalable manner, supported by new approaches in the area of fog and edge computing. Furthermore, the use of protocols such as the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) and data models such as IPSO Smart Objects have supported the adoption of IoT in a range of scenarios.
IoT has the potential to become a realisation of Mark Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous computing where tiny networked computers become woven into everyday life. This presents the challenge of being able to scale the technology down to resource-constrained devices and to scale it up to billions of devices. This will require seamless interoperability and abstractions that can support applications on Cloud services and also on node devices with constrained computing and memory capabilities, limited development environments and requirements on energy consumption.
This thesis proposes a holistic architecture using concepts from tuple-spaces and overlay Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. This architecture is termed as holistic, because it considers the flow of the data from sensors through to services. The key contributions of this work are: development of a set of architectural abstractions to provide application layer interoperability, a novel cache algorithm supporting leases, a tuple-space based data store for local and remote data and a Peer to Peer (P2P) protocol with an innovative use of a DHT in building an overlay network. All these elements are designed for implementation on a resource constrained node and to be extensible to server environments, which is shown in a prototype implementation. This provides the basis for a new P2P holistic approach that will allow Wireless Sensor Networks and IoT to operate in a self-organising ad hoc manner in order to deliver the promise of IoT
Relating Query Popularity and File Replication in the Gnutella Peer-to-Peer Network
In this paper, we characterize the user behavior in a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network. Our characterization is based on the results of an extensive passive measurement study of the messages exchanged in the Gnutella P2P file sharing system. Using the data recorded during this measurement study, we analyze which queries a user issues and which files a user shares. The investigation of users queries leads to the characterization of query popularity. Furthermore, the analysis of the files shared by the users leads to a characterization of file replication. As major contribution, we relate query popularity and file replication by an analytical formula characterizing the matching of files to queries. The analytical formula defines a matching probability for each pair of query and file, which depends on the rank of the query with respect query popularity, but is independent of the rank of the file with respect to file replication. We validate this model by conducting a detailed simulation study of a Gnutella-style overlay network and comparing simulation results to the results obtained from the measurement
Characterizing the query behavior in peer-to-peer file sharing systems
This paper characterizes the query behavior of peers in a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system. In contrast to previous work, which provides various aggregate workload statistics, we characterize peer behavior in a form that can be used for constructing representative synthetic workloads for evaluating new P2P system designs. In particular, the analysis exposes heterogeneous behavior that occurs on different days, in different geographical regions (i. e., Asia, Europe, and North America) or during different periods of the day. The workload measures include the fraction of connected sessions that are passive (i. e., issue no queries), the duration of such sessions, and for each active session, the number of queries issued, time until first query, query interarrival time, time after last query, and distribution of query popularity. Moreover, the key correlations in these workload measures are captured in the form of conditional distributions, such that the correlations can be accurately reproduced in a synthetic workload. The characterization is based on trace data gathered in the Gnutella P2P system over a period of 40 days. To characterize system-independent user behavior, we eliminate queries that are specific to the Gnutella system software, such as re-queries that are automatically issued by some client implementations to improve system responsiveness
Blockchain no BNDES: um estudo de caso sobre inovação em um banco público
Dissertação (Mestrado em Administração Pública) - Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública de Empresas, Rio de Janeiro, 2019Inclui bibliografia: p. 108-116 e notas de rodapéPublic banks are powerful tools for implementing public policies, as long as they have appropriate financial resources and technical expertise, and are able to show to society that they are making good use of their funds. They may be captured by political parties, interest groups, or by its own bureaucracy. Therefore, accountability and transparency must be at the core of a public bank's activities. BNDES (Brazilian National Development Bank) is a public bank that has the mission to foster Brazil's economic and social development. The banking sector is technology-intensive and has been studying the use of the blockchain technology to reduce the cost of monetary transactions and mitigate frauds. BNDES' IT department has been working in two blockchain-related innovation IT projects aiming to enhance the bank's own transparency and accountability. The first IT project is a collaboration between BNDES and KfW (Germany National Development Bank) to publish in a private blockchain all non-reimbursable investments funded from the Amazon Fund (a fund to prevent deforestation and develop in a sustainable way the Brazilian Amazon, managed by BNDES). The second is a IT project that proposes the use of a digital token published in a public blockchain to track the use of BNDES' money in projects funded by the bank. This work presents a study case on how the blockchain innovation developed inside the institution, anchored by a theoretical innovation framework from the literature on public sector innovation.Os bancos públicos são ferramentas poderosas para implementar políticas públicas, desde que possuam recursos financeiros e conhecimentos técnicos adequados e possam mostrar à sociedade que estão fazendo bom uso de seus fundos. Eles podem ser capturados por partidos políticos, grupos de interesse ou por sua própria burocracia. Portanto, accountability e transparência devem estar no centro das atividades de um banco público. O BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Nacional) é um banco público que tem a missão de promover o desenvolvimento econômico e social do Brasil. O setor bancário é intensivo em tecnologia e estuda o uso da tecnologia blockchain para reduzir o custo de transações monetárias e mitigar fraudes. A Área de TI do BNDES tem trabalhado em dois projetos de TI relacionados à tecnologia blockchain, com o objetivo de aumentar a própria transparência e prestação de contas do banco. O primeiro projeto de TI é uma colaboração entre o BNDES e o KfW (banco de desenvolvimento alemão) para publicar em uma blockchain privada os investimentos não reembolsáveis financiados pelo Fundo Amazônia (fundo gerenciado pelo BNDES para prevenir o desmatamento e desenvolver de forma sustentável a Amazônia). O segundo é um projeto de TI que propõe o uso de um token digital publicado em uma blockchain pública para rastrear o uso do dinheiro do BNDES em projetos financiados pelo banco. Este trabalho apresenta um caso de estudo sobre como a inovação relacionada à blockchain se desenvolveu dentro da instituição, ancorado por uma estrutura teórica de inovação da literatura sobre inovação do setor público
Softwarization of Large-Scale IoT-based Disasters Management Systems
The Internet of Things (IoT) enables objects to interact and cooperate with each other for reaching common objectives. It is very useful in large-scale disaster management systems where humans are likely to fail when they attempt to perform search and rescue operations in high-risk sites. IoT can indeed play a critical role in all phases of large-scale disasters (i.e. preparedness, relief, and recovery). Network softwarization aims at designing, architecting, deploying, and managing network components primarily based on software programmability properties. It relies on key technologies, such as cloud computing, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), and Software Defined Networking (SDN). The key benefits are agility and cost efficiency. This thesis proposes softwarization approaches to tackle the key challenges related to large-scale IoT based disaster management systems.
A first challenge faced by large-scale IoT disaster management systems is the dynamic formation of an optimal coalition of IoT devices for the tasks at hand. Meeting this challenge is critical for cost efficiency. A second challenge is an interoperability. IoT environments remain highly heterogeneous. However, the IoT devices need to interact. Yet another challenge is Quality of Service (QoS). Disaster management applications are known to be very QoS sensitive, especially when it comes to delay.
To tackle the first challenge, we propose a cloud-based architecture that enables the formation of efficient coalitions of IoT devices for search and rescue tasks. The proposed architecture enables the publication and discovery of IoT devices belonging to different cloud providers. It also comes with a coalition formation algorithm. For the second challenge, we propose an NFV and SDN based - architecture for on-the-fly IoT gateway provisioning. The gateway functions are provisioned as Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) that are chained on-the-fly in the IoT domain using SDN. When it comes to the third challenge, we rely on fog computing to meet the QoS and propose algorithms that provision IoT applications components in hybrid NFV based - cloud/fogs. Both stationary and mobile fog nodes are considered. In the case of mobile fog nodes, a Tabu Search-based heuristic is proposed. It finds a near-optimal solution and we numerically show that it is faster than the Integer Linear Programming (ILP) solution by several orders of magnitude
A Holistic Approach for Collaborative Workload Execution in Volunteer Clouds
The demand for provisioning, using, and maintaining distributed computational resources is growing hand in hand with the quest for ubiquitous services. Centralized infrastructures such as cloud computing systems provide suitable solutions for many applications, but their scalability could be limited in some scenarios, such as in the case of latency-dependent applications. The volunteer cloud paradigm aims at overcoming this limitation by encouraging clients to offer their own spare, perhaps unused, computational resources. Volunteer clouds are thus complex, large-scale, dynamic systems that demand for self-adaptive capabilities to offer effective services, as well as modeling and analysis techniques to predict their behavior. In this article, we propose a novel holistic approach for volunteer clouds supporting collaborative task execution services able to improve the quality of service of compute-intensive workloads. We instantiate our approach by extending a recently proposed ant colony optimization algorithm for distributed task execution with a workload-based partitioning of the overlay network of the volunteer cloud. Finally, we evaluate our approach using simulation-based statistical analysis techniques on a workload benchmark provided by Google. Our results show that the proposed approach outperforms some traditional distributed task scheduling algorithms in the presence of compute-intensive workloads
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