19,073 research outputs found
Dawn of autonomous vehicles: review and challenges ahead
This paper reviews the state of the art on autonomous vehicles as of 2017, including their impact at socio-economic, energy, safety, congestion and land-use levels. This impact study focuses on the issues that are common denominators and are bound to arise independently of regional factors, such as (but not restricted to) change to vehicle ownership patterns and driver behaviour, opportunities for energy and emissions savings, potential for accident reduction and lower insurance costs, and requalification of urban areas previously assigned to parking. The challenges that lie ahead for carmakers, law and policy makers are also explored, with an emphasis on how these challenges affect the urban infrastructure and issues they create for municipal planners and decision makers. The paper concludes with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis that integrates and relates all these aspects.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey
The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services
provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human
and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart
environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of
connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have
been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data.
In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as
Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to
enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be
considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most
important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects.
This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware
sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for
communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and
architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware
technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and
characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and
service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT
based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of
CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268,
Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017
Middleware Technologies for Cloud of Things - a survey
The next wave of communication and applications rely on the new services
provided by Internet of Things which is becoming an important aspect in human
and machines future. The IoT services are a key solution for providing smart
environments in homes, buildings and cities. In the era of a massive number of
connected things and objects with a high grow rate, several challenges have
been raised such as management, aggregation and storage for big produced data.
In order to tackle some of these issues, cloud computing emerged to IoT as
Cloud of Things (CoT) which provides virtually unlimited cloud services to
enhance the large scale IoT platforms. There are several factors to be
considered in design and implementation of a CoT platform. One of the most
important and challenging problems is the heterogeneity of different objects.
This problem can be addressed by deploying suitable "Middleware". Middleware
sits between things and applications that make a reliable platform for
communication among things with different interfaces, operating systems, and
architectures. The main aim of this paper is to study the middleware
technologies for CoT. Toward this end, we first present the main features and
characteristics of middlewares. Next we study different architecture styles and
service domains. Then we presents several middlewares that are suitable for CoT
based platforms and lastly a list of current challenges and issues in design of
CoT based middlewares is discussed.Comment: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352864817301268,
Digital Communications and Networks, Elsevier (2017
A connectivist approach to smart city learning : Valletta city case-study
A connectivist approach will be adopted to design and evaluate learning in
technology-enhanced open spaces in Valletta city. Learning is considered as a process of
creating connections between learner’s inner cognitive and affective systems with the
external physical and social worlds. These interactions are organised within a model
comprising dimensions and levels of interactions. The experience for a learner in a
technology-enhanced historical place will be designed considering interactions with the
content domain (history, botany, art), the technological dimension (interaction between
handheld devices and the available signals such as 3/4G, Wifi or GNSS) and the social
dimension comprising interactions with fellow learners /citizens and domain experts. The
levels of interactions are related to learner’s experience within the subject domain, with
technology and one’s status or role in learning community or community of practice. Thus
learning experiences have to be designed considering acquisition level for novice learners,
participatory learning for more experience learners and contributory learning for highly
competent learners. This connectivist model will be applied to identified places of historical
or educational interest in Valletta city to design different modes of learning mediated
through interactive technologies. The concept of Personal Learning Environments in Smart
cities [1] will be used to provide technology-enhanced experiences in Playful learning,
Seamless learning, Geo-learning, Citizen enquiry and Crowd learning.
A number of these technology-enhanced learning experiences, developed in collaboration
with CYBERPARKS ACTION’s WG1, will be contextualized in Valletta city. University of Malta
will provide the domain content and resources, together with the pedagogical strategy for
each learning experience. Researchers from WG1 will design and develop the technological
model and infrastructure, mainly the Android-based Way-Cyberparks App that will integrate
GNSS-based learning, Augmented Reality, Navigation tracing and other functionalities
used for specific tasks and type of data collection. An interactions-based methodology
will be used to evaluate learning along the identified dimensions.Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union.peer-reviewe
Smart Cities and M<sup>3</sup>: Rapid Research, Meaningful Metrics and Co-Design
The research described in this paper is undertaken under the banner of the smart city, a concept that captures the way urban spaces are re-made by the incursion of new technology. Much of smart is centred on converting everyday activities into data, and using this data to generate knowledge mediated by technology. Ordinary citizens, those that may have their lives impacted by the technology, usually are not properly involved in the ‘smartification’ process. Their perceptions, concerns and expectations should inform the conception and development of smart technologies at the same extent. How to engage general public with smart cities research is the central challenge for the Making Metrics Meaningful (MMM) project. Applying a rapid participatory method, ‘Imagine’ over a five-month period (March – July) the research sought to gain insights from the general public into novel forms of information system innovation. This brief paper describes the nature of the accelerated research undertaken and explores some of the themes which emerged in the analysis. Generic themes, beyond the remit of an explicit transport focus, are developed and pointers towards further research directions are discussed. Participatory methods, including engaging with self- selected transport users actively through both picture creation and programmatically specific musical ‘signatures’ as well as group discussion, were found to be effective in eliciting users’ own concerns, needs and ideas for novel information systems
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