598 research outputs found
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volume
LIPIcs, Volume 251, ITCS 2023, Complete Volum
Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure
A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium
Algorithmic authority in music creation : the beauty of losing control = De l’autorité algorithmique dans la création musicale : la beauté de la perte de contrôle
Type de dépôt #5 (version complète)De plus en plus de tâches humaines sont prises en charge par les algorithmes dans le domaine des arts. Avec les nouvelles techniques d’intelligence artificielle (IA) disponibles, qui reposent généralement sur le concept d’autoapprentissage, la frontière entre l’assistance informatique et la création algorithmique proprement dite s’estompe.
À titre de mise en contexte, je présente, à l’aide d’exemples récents, un aperçu de la manière dont les artistes utilisent des algorithmes sophistiqués dans leur travail - et comment cette nouvelle forme d’art piloté par l’IA pourrait différer des premières formes d’art générées par ordinateur. Ensuite, sur la base de théories récentes issues d’une société post-humaniste
et la montée de ce que certains auteurs appellent le dataisme, j’aborde des questions liées à l’autonomie, à la collaboration, aux droits d’auteur et au contrôle de la composition sur la création sonore et musicale.
D’un point de vue pratique, je présente les logiciels libres et open source (FLOSS, de l’anglais Free/Libre and Open Source Software) qui ont pris une place constante dans mon processus de composition ; et je discute de la façon dont leur écosystème, principalement dans le domaine de l’IA, a façonné mon travail au fil des ans, tant d’un point de vue esthétique
que pratique.
Une série de trois pièces mixtes produites dans le cadre de ce projet de recherche-création est ensuite analysée. Je présente les différentes dimensions dans lesquelles le concept d’autorité algorithmique a pris part à mon processus de composition, des approches techniques aux choix esthétiques. Enfin, je propose des stratégies de notation musicale, basées sur des standards ouverts, visant à assurer la lisibilité, et donc la pérennité de mon travail.Algorithms have taken over an increasing number of human tasks in the realm of the arts. With newly available AI techniques, typically relying on the concept of self-learning, the line separating computer assistance from actual algorithmic creation is blurring.
To contextualize, through recent illustrative examples I elaborate an overview of ways in which artists are making use of sophisticated algorithms in their work – and how this new form of AI-driven art might differ from early computer-generated art. Then, based on recent theories concerning a post-humanist society and the rise of what some authors call dataism, I
discuss issues related to autonomy, collaboration, authorship and compositional control over the creation of sound and music.
From a practical perspective, I present the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) that have been a consistent presence in my compositional process; and discuss how their ecosystem, mainly in the domain of AI, has shaped my work over the last decade from both aesthetic and practical standpoints.
A series of three mixed pieces produced as part of this research-creation project is then analyzed. I present the different dimensions in which the concept of algorithmic authority took part in my composition process, from technical approaches to aesthetic choices. Finally, I propose some strategies for music notation, based on open standards, aiming to assure the readability, and therefore the perpetuity of my work
Anpassen verteilter eingebetteter Anwendungen im laufenden Betrieb
The availability of third-party apps is among the key success factors for software ecosystems: The users benefit from more features and innovation speed, while third-party solution vendors can leverage the platform to create successful offerings.
However, this requires a certain decoupling of engineering activities of the different parties not achieved for distributed control systems, yet.
While late and dynamic integration of third-party components would be required, resulting control systems must provide high reliability regarding real-time requirements, which leads to integration complexity.
Closing this gap would particularly contribute to the vision of software-defined manufacturing, where an ecosystem of modern IT-based control system components could lead to faster innovations due to their higher abstraction and availability of various frameworks.
Therefore, this thesis addresses the research question:
How we can use modern IT technologies and enable independent evolution and easy third-party integration of software components in distributed control systems, where deterministic end-to-end reactivity is required, and especially, how can we apply distributed changes to such systems consistently and reactively during operation?
This thesis describes the challenges and related approaches in detail and points out that existing approaches do not fully address our research question.
To tackle this gap, a formal specification of a runtime platform concept is presented in conjunction with a model-based engineering approach.
The engineering approach decouples the engineering steps of component definition, integration, and deployment.
The runtime platform supports this approach by isolating the components, while still offering predictable end-to-end real-time behavior.
Independent evolution of software components is supported through a concept for synchronous reconfiguration during full operation, i.e., dynamic orchestration of components.
Time-critical state transfer is supported, too, and can lead to bounded quality degradation, at most.
The reconfiguration planning is supported by analysis concepts, including simulation of a formally specified system and reconfiguration, and analyzing potential quality degradation with the evolving dataflow graph (EDFG) method.
A platform-specific realization of the concepts, the real-time container architecture, is described as a reference implementation.
The model and the prototype are evaluated regarding their feasibility and applicability of the concepts by two case studies.
The first case study is a minimalistic distributed control system used in different setups with different component variants and reconfiguration plans to compare the model and the prototype and to gather runtime statistics.
The second case study is a smart factory showcase system with more challenging application components and interface technologies.
The conclusion is that the concepts are feasible and applicable, even though the concepts and the prototype still need to be worked on in future -- for example, to reach shorter cycle times.Eine große Auswahl von Drittanbieter-Lösungen ist einer der Schlüsselfaktoren für Software Ecosystems:
Nutzer profitieren vom breiten Angebot und schnellen Innovationen, während Drittanbieter über die Plattform erfolgreiche Lösungen anbieten können.
Das jedoch setzt eine gewisse Entkopplung von Entwicklungsschritten der Beteiligten voraus, welche für verteilte Steuerungssysteme noch nicht erreicht wurde.
Während Drittanbieter-Komponenten möglichst spät -- sogar Laufzeit -- integriert werden müssten, müssen Steuerungssysteme jedoch eine hohe Zuverlässigkeit gegenüber Echtzeitanforderungen aufweisen, was zu Integrationskomplexität führt.
Dies zu lösen würde insbesondere zur Vision von Software-definierter Produktion beitragen, da ein Ecosystem für moderne IT-basierte Steuerungskomponenten wegen deren höherem Abstraktionsgrad und der Vielzahl verfügbarer Frameworks zu schnellerer Innovation führen würde.
Daher behandelt diese Dissertation folgende Forschungsfrage:
Wie können wir moderne IT-Technologien verwenden und unabhängige Entwicklung und einfache Integration von Software-Komponenten in verteilten Steuerungssystemen ermöglichen, wo Ende-zu-Ende-Echtzeitverhalten gefordert ist, und wie können wir insbesondere verteilte Änderungen an solchen Systemen konsistent und im Vollbetrieb vornehmen?
Diese Dissertation beschreibt Herausforderungen und verwandte Ansätze im Detail und zeigt auf, dass existierende Ansätze diese Frage nicht vollständig behandeln.
Um diese Lücke zu schließen, beschreiben wir eine formale Spezifikation einer Laufzeit-Plattform und einen zugehörigen Modell-basierten Engineering-Ansatz.
Dieser Ansatz entkoppelt die Design-Schritte der Entwicklung, Integration und des Deployments von Komponenten.
Die Laufzeit-Plattform unterstützt den Ansatz durch Isolation von Komponenten und zugleich Zeit-deterministischem Ende-zu-Ende-Verhalten.
Unabhängige Entwicklung und Integration werden durch Konzepte für synchrone Rekonfiguration im Vollbetrieb unterstützt, also durch dynamische Orchestrierung.
Dies beinhaltet auch Zeit-kritische Zustands-Transfers mit höchstens begrenzter Qualitätsminderung, wenn überhaupt.
Rekonfigurationsplanung wird durch Analysekonzepte unterstützt, einschließlich der Simulation formal spezifizierter Systeme und Rekonfigurationen und der Analyse der etwaigen Qualitätsminderung mit dem Evolving Dataflow Graph (EDFG).
Die Real-Time Container Architecture wird als Referenzimplementierung und Evaluationsplattform beschrieben.
Zwei Fallstudien untersuchen Machbarkeit und Nützlichkeit der Konzepte.
Die erste verwendet verschiedene Varianten und Rekonfigurationen eines minimalistischen verteilten Steuerungssystems, um Modell und Prototyp zu vergleichen sowie Laufzeitstatistiken zu erheben.
Die zweite Fallstudie ist ein Smart-Factory-Demonstrator, welcher herausforderndere Applikationskomponenten und Schnittstellentechnologien verwendet.
Die Konzepte sind den Studien nach machbar und nützlich, auch wenn sowohl die Konzepte als auch der Prototyp noch weitere Arbeit benötigen -- zum Beispiel, um kürzere Zyklen zu erreichen
Dependability for declarative mechanisms: neural networks in autonomous vehicles decision making.
Despite being introduced in 1958, neural networks appeared in numerous applications of different fields in the last decade. This change was possible thanks to the reduced costs of computing power required for deep neural networks, and increasing available data that provide examples for training sets. The 2012 ImageNet image classification competition is often used as a example to describe how neural networks became at this time good candidates for applications: during this competition a neural network based solution won for the first time. In the following editions, all winning solutions were based on neural networks. Since then, neural networks have shown great results in several non critical applications (image recognition, sound recognition, text analysis, etc...). There is a growing interest to use them in critical applications as their ability to generalize makes them good candidates for applications such as autonomous vehicles, but standards do not allow that yet.
Autonomous driving functions are currently researched by the industry with the final objective of producing in the near future fully autonomous vehicles, as defined by the fifth level of the SAE international (Society of Automotive Engineers) classification. Autonomous driving process is usually decomposed into four different parts: the where sensors get information from the environment, the where the data from the different sensors is merged into one representation of the environment, the that uses the representation of the environment to decide what should be the vehicles behavior and the commands to send to the actuators and finally the part that implements these commands. In this thesis, following the interest of the company Stellantis, we will focus on the decision part of this process, considering neural network based solution.
Automotive being a safety critical application, it is required to implement and ensure the dependability of the systems, and this is why neural networks use is not allowed at the moment: their lack of safety forbid their use in such applications. Dependability methods for classical software systems are well known, but neural networks do not have yet similar dependable mechanisms to guarantee their trust. This problem is due to several reasons, among them the difficulty to test applications with a quasi-infinite operational domain and whose functions are hard to define exhaustively in the specifications. Here we can find the motivation of this thesis: how can we ensure the dependability of neural networks in the context of decision for autonomous vehicles?
Research is now being conducted on the topic of dependability and safety of neural networks with several approaches being considered and our research is motivated by the great potential in safety critical applications mentioned above. In this thesis, we will focus on one category of method that seems to be a good candidate to ensure the dependability of neural networks by solving some of the problems of testing: the formal verification for neural networks. These methods aim to prove that a neural network respects a safety property on an entire range of its input and output domains. Formal verification is already used in other domains and is seen as a trusted method to give confidence in a system, but it remains for the moment a research topic for neural networks with currently no industrial applications.
The main contributions of this thesis are the following: a proposal of a characterization of neural network from a software development perspective, and a corresponding classification of their faults, errors and failures, the identification of a potential threat to the use of formal verification. This threat is the erroneous neural network model problem, that may lead to trust a formally validated safety property that does not hold in real life, the realization of an experiment that implements a formal verification for neural networks in an autonomous driving application that is to the best of our knowledge the closest to industrial use. For this application, we chose to work with an ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) function, which is an autonomous driving function that performs the longitudinal control of a vehicle. The experiment is conducted with the use of a simulator and a neural network formal verification tool. The other contributions of the thesis are the following: theoretical example of the erroneous neural network model problem and a practical example in our autonomous driving experiment, a proposal of detection and recovery mechanisms as a solution to the erroneous model problem mentioned above, an implementation of these detection and recovery mechanisms in our autonomous driving experiment and a discussion about difficulties and possible processes for the implementation of formal verification for neural networks that we developed during our experiments
LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume
LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum
Animate Being: Extending a Practice of the Image to New Mediums via Speculative Game Design
This post-disciplinary practice as research thesis examines the potential of Carl Jung's therapeutic method of active imagination as a strategy for engaging with an increasingly complex and interconnected technological reality. Embracing a non-clinical, practice-driven approach, I harness James Hillman’s notion of the image and the imaginal to investigate the interdisciplinary capacity and ethical dimensions of an expansive mode of image-work. My approach to practice theoretically and practically intertwines analytical psychology, feminist worlding and design speculation. Building upon Susan Rowland’s work, I study image-work as an ecological alchemical craft that seeks to matter the immaterial. Through the cyclic iterative design of a video game, I mobilise and respond to image-work as a mode of myth-making that may facilitate dialogue between human and non-human intelligences. Departing from the essentialism of the hero's journey, I adopt Le Guin's Carrier Bag (1986/2019) as a feminist video game form and by utilising the framework of a video game (Bogost, 2007; Flannigan, 2013), the alchemical processes of image-work are transformed into novel interactive game mechanics. The game I design is both a vessel and a portal to an imaginal ecological realm, an open-world, procedurally generated ‘living world’ sandbox exploration game. This game integrates real-time, real-world data streams to invite the non-human to enter into play as player two, facilitating experimentation with possible new forms of cross-species dialogue, collaboration, and healing
Fast Reconfiguration for Programmable Matter
The concept of programmable matter envisions a very large number of tiny and
simple robot particles forming a smart material. Even though the particles are
restricted to local communication, local movement, and simple computation,
their actions can nevertheless result in the global change of the material's
physical properties and geometry.
A fundamental algorithmic task for programmable matter is to achieve global
shape reconfiguration by specifying local behavior of the particles. In this
paper we describe a new approach for shape reconfiguration in the amoebot
model. The amoebot model is a distributed model which significantly restricts
memory, computing, and communication capacity of the individual particles. Thus
the challenge lies in coordinating the actions of particles to produce the
desired behavior of the global system.
Our reconfiguration algorithm is the first algorithm that does not use a
canonical intermediate configuration when transforming between arbitrary
shapes. We introduce new geometric primitives for amoebots and show how to
reconfigure particle systems, using these primitives, in a linear number of
activation rounds in the worst case. In practice, our method exploits the
geometry of the symmetric difference between input and output shape: it
minimizes unnecessary disassembly and reassembly of the particle system when
the symmetric difference between the initial and the target shapes is small.
Furthermore, our reconfiguration algorithm moves the particles over as many
parallel shortest paths as the problem instance allows
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