Reasoning About a Service-oriented Programming Paradigm

This paper is about a new way for programming distributed applications: the service-oriented one. It is a concept paper based upon our experience in developing a theory and a language for programming services. Both the theoretical formalization and the language interpreter showed us the evidence that a new programming paradigm exists. In this paper we illustrate the basic features it is characterized by

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

An Open-Source Simulator for Cognitive Robotics Research: The Prototype of the iCub Humanoid Robot Simulator

This paper presents the prototype of a new computer simulator for the humanoid robot iCub. The iCub is a new open-source humanoid robot developed as a result of the “RobotCub” project, a collaborative European project aiming at developing a new open-source cognitive robotics platform. The iCub simulator has been developed as part of a joint effort with the European project “ITALK” on the integration and transfer of action and language knowledge in cognitive robots. This is available open-source to all researchers interested in cognitive robotics experiments with the iCub humanoid platform

Entanglements of creative agency and digital technology : a sociomaterial study of computer game development

Digital technology, with its distinctive characteristics that result from the fundamental process of digitalization that underpins it, is seen as fundamentally altering processes of creativity. However, we currently have limited understanding of creativity in relation to the development of digital technology. Computer game development, with its combination of esthetic, affective and cultural use features and highly sophisticated digital technologies, is a valuable setting for investigating these issues. In this paper, we explore how computer games are shaped through the interplay between the creative intentions of developers and the digital technologies involved in their production and playing. Drawing on in-depth studies conducted at three leading computer game development studios and a leading producer of the software system used in game development, this paper shows how the game developers' creative ideas for imagined novel game-playing experiences relate to a) the development of relevant digital technologies, and b) the emergence of new game development practices. The article goes on to propose a view of creativity as an on-going flow that, following an initial ‘creative impulse’, ripples through the sociomaterial entanglements of a particular setting, reconfiguring them in the process and spreading out in time and space in often unexpected ways

Architecture for Provenance Systems

This document covers the logical and process architectures of provenance systems. The logical architecture identifies key roles and their interactions, whereas the process architecture discusses distribution and security. A fundamental aspect of our presentation is its technology-independent nature, which makes it reusable: the principles that are exposed in this document may be applied to different technologies

Context-awareness in mobile tourist information systems: challenges for user interaction

Context in mobile tourist information systems is typically captured as the current location of the user. Few systems consider the user's interests or wider context of the sights. This paper explores ideas of how to model, observe, evaluate, and exploit a richer notion of context in this application area. We discuss the influence of such a richer context model on the user interaction for both the capturing of context and the context-aware user/device interactions

Highly focused document retrieval in aerospace engineering : user interaction design and evaluation

Purpose – This paper seeks to describe the preliminary studies (on both users and data), the design and evaluation of the K-Search system for searching legacy documents in aerospace engineering. Real-world reports of jet engine maintenance challenge the current indexing practice, while real users’ tasks require retrieving the information in the proper context. K-Search is currently in use in Rolls-Royce plc and has evolved to include other tools for knowledge capture and management. Design/methodology/approach – Semantic Web techniques have been used to automatically extract information from the reports while maintaining the original context, allowing a more focused retrieval than with more traditional techniques. The paper combines semantic search with classical information retrieval to increase search effectiveness. An innovative user interface has been designed to take advantage of this hybrid search technique. The interface is designed to allow a flexible and personal approach to searching legacy data. Findings – The user evaluation showed that the system is effective and well received by users. It also shows that different people look at the same data in different ways and make different use of the same system depending on their individual needs, influenced by their job profile and personal attitude. Research limitations/implications – This study focuses on a specific case of an enterprise working in aerospace engineering. Although the findings are likely to be shared with other engineering domains (e.g. mechanical, electronic), the study does not expand the evaluation to different settings. Originality/value – The study shows how real context of use can provide new and unexpected challenges to researchers and how effective solutions can then be adopted and used in organizations.</p