5,761 research outputs found
Furthering Service 4.0: Harnessing Intelligent Immersive Environments and Systems
With the increasing complexity of service operations in different industries and more advanced uses of specialized equipment and procedures, the great current challenge for companies is to increase employees' expertise and their ability to maintain and improve service quality. In this regard, Service 4.0 aims to support and promote innovation in service operations using emergent technology. Current technological innovations present a significant opportunity to provide on-site, real-time support for field service professionals in many areas
Quality of experience in affective pervasive environments
The confluence of miniaturised powerful devices, widespread communication networks and mass remote storage has caused a fundamental shift in the user interaction design paradigm. The distinction between system and user in pervasive environments is evolving into an increasingly integrated loop of interaction, raising a number of opportunities to provide enhanced and personalised experiences.
We propose a platform, based on a smart architecture, to address the identified opportunities in pervasive computing. Smart systems aim at acting upon an environment for improving quality of experience: a subjective measure that has been defined as an emotional reaction to products or services. The inclusion of an emotional dimension allows us to measure individual user responses and deliver personalised services with the potential to influence experiences positively.
The platform, Cloud2Bubble, leverages pervasive systems to aggregate user and environment data with the goal of addressing personal preferences and supra-functional requirements. This, combined with its societal implications, results in a set of design principles as a concrete fruition of design contractualism.
In particular, this thesis describes:
- a review of intelligent ubiquitous environments and relevant technologies, including a definition of user experience as a dynamic affective construct;
- a specification of main components for personal data aggregation and service personalisation, without compromising privacy, security or usability;
- the implementation of a software platform and a methodological procedure for its instantiation;
- an evaluation of the developed platform and its benefits for urban mobility and public transport information systems;
- a set of design principles for the design of ubiquitous systems, with an impact on individual experience and collective awareness.
Cloud2Bubble contributes towards the development of affective intelligent ubiquitous systems with the potential to enhance user experience in pervasive environments. In addition, the platform aims at minimising the risk of user digital exposure while supporting collective action.Open Acces
Adaptive learning-based resource management strategy in fog-to-cloud
Technology in the twenty-first century is rapidly developing and driving us into a new smart computing world, and emerging lots
of new computing architectures. Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) is among one of them, which emerges to ensure the commitment for
bringing the higher computing facilities near to the edge of the network and also help the large-scale computing system to be
more intelligent. As the F2C is in its infantile state, therefore one of the biggest challenges for this computing paradigm is to
efficiently manage the computing resources. Mainly, to address this challenge, in this work, we have given our sole interest for
designing the initial architectural framework to build a proper, adaptive and efficient resource management mechanism in F2C.
F2C has been proposed as a combined, coordinated and hierarchical computing platform, where a vast number of
heterogeneous computing devices are participating. Notably, their versatility creates a massive challenge for effectively handling
them. Even following any large-scale smart computing system, it can easily recognize that various kind of services is served for
different purposes. Significantly, every service corresponds with the various tasks, which have different resource requirements.
So, knowing the characteristics of participating devices and system offered services is giving advantages to build effective and
resource management mechanism in F2C-enabled system. Considering these facts, initially, we have given our intense focus for
identifying and defining the taxonomic model for all the participating devices and system involved services-tasks.
In any F2C-enabled system consists of a large number of small Internet-of-Things (IoTs) and generating a continuous and
colossal amount of sensing-data by capturing various environmental events. Notably, this sensing-data is one of the key
ingredients for various smart services which have been offered by the F2C-enabled system. Besides that, resource statistical
information is also playing a crucial role, for efficiently providing the services among the system consumers. Continuous
monitoring of participating devices generates a massive amount of resource statistical information in the F2C-enabled system.
Notably, having this information, it becomes much easier to know the device's availability and suitability for executing some tasks
to offer some services. Therefore, ensuring better service facilities for any latency-sensitive services, it is essential to securely
distribute the sensing-data and resource statistical information over the network. Considering these matters, we also proposed
and designed a secure and distributed database framework for effectively and securely distribute the data over the network.
To build an advanced and smarter system is necessarily required an effective mechanism for the utilization of system resources.
Typically, the utilization and resource handling process mainly depend on the resource selection and allocation mechanism. The
prediction of resources (e.g., RAM, CPU, Disk, etc.) usage and performance (i.e., in terms of task execution time) helps the
selection and allocation process. Thus, adopting the machine learning (ML) techniques is much more useful for designing an
advanced and sophisticated resource allocation mechanism in the F2C-enabled system. Adopting and performing the ML
techniques in F2C-enabled system is a challenging task. Especially, the overall diversification and many other issues pose a
massive challenge for successfully performing the ML techniques in any F2C-enabled system. Therefore, we have proposed and
designed two different possible architectural schemas for performing the ML techniques in the F2C-enabled system to achieve
an adaptive, advance and sophisticated resource management mechanism in the F2C-enabled system. Our proposals are the
initial footmarks for designing the overall architectural framework for resource management mechanism in F2C-enabled system.La tecnologia del segle XXI avança rà pidament i ens condueix cap a un nou món intel·ligent, creant nous models d'arquitectures informà tiques. Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) és un d’ells, i sorgeix per garantir el compromÃs d’acostar les instal·lacions informà tiques a prop de la xarxa i també ajudar el sistema informà tic a gran escala a ser més intel·ligent. Com que el F2C es troba en un estat preliminar, un dels majors reptes d’aquest paradigma tecnològic és gestionar eficientment els recursos informà tics. Per fer front a aquest repte, en aquest treball hem centrat el nostre interès en dissenyar un marc arquitectònic per construir un mecanisme de gestió de recursos adequat, adaptatiu i eficient a F2C.F2C ha estat concebut com una plataforma informà tica combinada, coordinada i jerà rquica, on participen un gran nombre de dispositius heterogenis. La seva versatilitat planteja un gran repte per gestionar-los de manera eficaç. Els serveis que s'hi executen consten de diverses tasques, que tenen requisits de recursos diferents. Per tant, conèixer les caracterÃstiques dels dispositius participants i dels serveis que ofereix el sistema és un requisit per dissenyar mecanismes eficaços i de gestió de recursos en un sistema habilitat per F2C. Tenint en compte aquests fets, inicialment ens hem centrat en identificar i definir el model taxonòmic per a tots els dispositius i sistemes implicats en l'execució de tasques de serveis. Qualsevol sistema habilitat per F2C inclou en un gran nombre de dispositius petits i connectats (conegut com a Internet of Things, o IoT) que generen una quantitat contÃnua i colossal de dades de detecció capturant diversos events ambientals. Aquestes dades són un dels ingredients clau per a diversos serveis intel·ligents que ofereix F2C. A més, el seguiment continu dels dispositius participants genera igualment una gran quantitat d'informació estadÃstica. En particular, en tenir aquesta informació, es fa molt més fà cil conèixer la disponibilitat i la idoneïtat dels dispositius per executar algunes tasques i oferir alguns serveis. Per tant, per garantir millors serveis sensibles a la latència, és essencial distribuir de manera equilibrada i segura la informació estadÃstica per la xarxa. Tenint en compte aquests assumptes, també hem proposat i dissenyat un entorn de base de dades segura i distribuïda per gestionar de manera eficaç i segura les dades a la xarxa. Per construir un sistema avançat i intel·ligent es necessita un mecanisme eficaç per a la gestió de l'ús dels recursos del sistema. Normalment, el procés d’utilització i manipulació de recursos depèn principalment del mecanisme de selecció i assignació de recursos. La predicció de l’ús i el rendiment de recursos (per exemple, RAM, CPU, disc, etc.) en termes de temps d’execució de tasques ajuda al procés de selecció i assignació. Adoptar les tècniques d’aprenentatge automà tic (conegut com a Machine Learning, o ML) és molt útil per dissenyar un mecanisme d’assignació de recursos avançat i sofisticat en el sistema habilitat per F2C. L’adopció i la realització de tècniques de ML en un sistema F2C és una tasca complexa. Especialment, la diversificació general i molts altres problemes plantegen un gran repte per realitzar amb èxit les tècniques de ML. Per tant, en aquesta recerca hem proposat i dissenyat dos possibles esquemes arquitectònics diferents per realitzar tècniques de ML en el sistema habilitat per F2C per aconseguir un mecanisme de gestió de recursos adaptatiu, avançat i sofisticat en un sistema F2C. Les nostres propostes són els primers passos per dissenyar un marc arquitectònic general per al mecanisme de gestió de recursos en un sistema habilitat per F2C.Postprint (published version
Using mobile devices to support online collaborative learning
Mobile collaborative learning is considered the next step of on-line collaborative learning by incorporating mobility as a key and breakthrough requirement. Indeed, the current wide spread of mobile devices and wireless technologies brings an enormous potential to e-learning, in terms of ubiquity, pervasiveness, personalization, flexibility, and so on. For this reason, Mobile Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning has recently grown from a minor research field to significant research projects covering a fairly variety of formal and specially informal learning settings, from schools and universities to workplaces, museums, cities and rural areas. Much of this research has shown how mobile technology can offer new opportunities for groups of learners to collaborate inside and beyond the traditional instructor-oriented educational paradigm. However, mobile technologies, when specifically applied to collaborative learning activities, are still in its infancy and many challenges arise. In addition, current research in this domain points to highly specialized study cases, uses, and experiences in specific educational settings and thus the issues addressed in the literature are found dispersed and disconnected from each other. To this end, this paper attempts to bridge relevant aspects of mobile technologies in support for collaborative learning and provides a tighter view by means of a multidimensional approach.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
- …