Mixed reality application to support building maintenance

This dissertation presents two mixed reality (MR) applications developed for the head-mounted display Microsoft HoloLens (MH) – InOffice and InSitu, which support building maintenance tasks in constructions with complex infrastructure. These solutions are intended to help maintenance workers when they need to track and fix part of the infrastructure by revealing hidden components, displaying additional information and guiding them in complex tasks. The applications have the potential to improve maintenance worker’s performance as they assist in performing faster and with higher accuracy. The work presented explores the creation of the applications and discusses the methodologies used to build user-friendly tools. Both MR applications were tested with active maintenance professionals, and results revealed each solution is useful to support building maintenance in different types of situation. InOffice, which displays an interactive and reduced version of the building being maintained, is suited to work off-site, for planning and remote assistance. In InSitu the user visualizes a 1:1 scaled hologram of the building aligned with the real world, and it is better suited for maintenance that requires manual tasks on site. The methodology was based on design science research: an improvement need, and not necessarily a problem, was identified, and from there a solution was conceived. MR is being applied as a successful tool for helping in several areas, and this work can give insights for many future solutions with mixed reality or MH to build novel and better applications that improve tasks at work or domestic environments.Esta dissertação apresenta duas aplicações de realidade mista (RM) desenvolvidas para o head-mounted display Microsoft HoloLens (MH) - InOffice e InSitu, as quais auxiliam no desempenho de tarefas de manutenção de edifícios em construções com infraestrutura complexa. Estas soluções destinam-se a ajudar os técnicos de manutenção quando estes precisam de rastrear e consertar parte da infraestrutura, revelando componentes ocultos, exibindo informações adicionais sobre os materiais e orientando-os em tarefas complexas. As aplicações têm potencial para melhorar o desempenho de trabalhadores de manutenção, pois auxiliam na execução mais rápida e com maior precisão do seu trabalho. O trabalho apresentado explora a criação das aplicações e discute as metodologias usadas para criar ferramentas fáceis de usar. Ambas as aplicações de RM foram testadas com profissionais de manutenção no ativo, e os resultados revelaram que cada solução é útil para ajudar na manutenção de edifícios em diferentes tipos de situação. A InOffice, que exibe um modelo interativo e reduzido do edifício a ser mantido, é adequada para trabalhar fora do edifício, para planeamento e assistência remota. Na InSitu, o utilizador visualiza um holograma em escala 1:1 do edifício alinhado com o mundo real e é mais adequada para manutenção que requeira tarefas manuais no próprio local. A metodologia seguida baseou-se em design science research: uma necessidade de melhoria, e não necessariamente um problema, foi identificada, e a partir daí uma solução foi concebida. A RM tem sido aplicada como uma ferramenta de sucesso para ajudar em várias indústrias, e este trabalho fornece visão e conhecimento para muitas soluções futuras com realidade mista ou com MH que melhorem as tarefas em ambientes profissionais ou até em ambientes domésticos

Creative Goal Modeling for Innovative Requirements

Context: When determining the functions and qualities (a.k.a. requirements) for a system, creativity is key to drive innovation and foster business success. However, creative requirements must be practically operationalized, grounded in concrete functions and system interactions. Requirements Engineering (RE) has produced a wealth of methods centered around goal modeling, in order to graphically explore the space of alternative requirements, linking functions to goals and dependencies. In parallel work, creativity theories from the social sciences have been applied to the design of creative requirements workshops, pushing stakeholders to develop innovative systems. Goal models tend to focus on what is known, while creativity workshops are expensive, require a specific skill set to facilitate, and produce mainly paper-based, unstructured outputs. Objective: Our aim in this work is to explore beneficial combinations of the two areas of work in order to overcome these and other limitations, facilitating creative requirements elicitation, supported by a simple extension of a well-known and structured requirements modeling technique. Method: We take a Design Science approach, iterating over exploratory studies, design, and summative validation studies. Results: The result is the Creative Leaf tool and method supporting creative goal modeling for RE. Conclusion: We support creative RE by making creativity techniques more accessible, producing structured digital outputs which better match to existing RE methods with associated analysis procedures and transformations

Single object detection to support requirements modeling using faster R-CNN

Requirements engineering (RE) is one of the most important phases of a software engineering project in which the foundation of a software product is laid, objectives and assumptions, functional and non-functional needs are analyzed and consolidated. Many modeling notations and tools are developed to model the information gathered in the RE process, one popular framework is the iStar 2.0. Despite the frameworks and notations that are introduced, many engineers still find that drawing the diagrams is easier done manually by hand. Problem arises when the corresponding diagram needs to be updated as requirements evolve. This research aims to kickstart the development of a modeling tool using Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network for single object detection and recognition of hand-drawn iStar 2.0 objects, Gleam grayscale, and Salt and Pepper noise to digitalize hand-drawn diagrams. The single object detection and recognition tool is evaluated and displays promising results of an overall accuracy and precision of 95%, 100% for recall, and 97.2% for the F-1 score

Formal verification of the extension of iStar to support Big data projects

Identifying all the right requirements is indispensable for the success of anysystem. These requirements need to be engineered with precision in the earlyphases. Principally, late corrections costs are estimated to be more than 200times as much as corrections during requirements engineering (RE). EspeciallyBig data area, it becomes more and more crucial due to its importance andcharacteristics. In fact, and after literature analyzing, we note that currentsRE methods do not support the elicitation of Big data projects requirements. Inthis study, we propose the BiStar novel method as extension of iStar to under-take some Big data characteristics such as (volume, variety ...etc). As a firststep, we identify some missing concepts that currents requirements engineeringmethods do not support. Next, BiStar, an extension of iStar is developed totake into account Big data specifics characteristics while dealing with require-ments. In order to ensure the integrity property of BiStar, formal proofs weremade, we perform a bigraph based description on iStar and BiStar. Finally, anapplication is conducted on iStar and BiStar for the same illustrative scenario.The BiStar shows important results to be more suitable for eliciting Big dataprojects requirements

ISTAR: Intelligent System for Telemetry Analysis in Real-time

The intelligent system for telemetry analysis in real-time (ISTAR) is an advanced vehicle monitoring environment incorporating expert systems, analysis tools, and on-line hypermedia documentation. The system was developed for the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) in Los Angeles, California, in support of the inertial upper stage (IUS) booster vehicle. Over a five year period the system progressed from rapid prototype to operational system. ISTAR has been used to support five IUS missions and countless mission simulations. There were a significant number of lessons learned with respect to integrating an expert system capability into an existing ground system

A social and technical sustainability requirements catalogue

Isabel Sofia Brito is a Coordinator Professor at Polytechnic Institute of Beja, Portugal, and a member of the Centre of Technology and Systems (CTS-UNINOVA). Her main research interests are Requirements Engineering and Sustainability Requirements, Model and Data-Driven Development, Multi-Criteria Decision Making and, Big Data. She has published several papers on these topics. She has been involved in several national and international research projects (e.g., COMPETISOF, Petri-Rig, U-Bike Project). Currently, she is involved in the international applied research project HIBA—Hub Iberia Agrotech, an initiative funded by Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) and “Portugal INCoDe.2030”. She is or was involved as organiser, conference chair and program committee member in several international conferences (e.g., IEEE RE, ACM SAC, CISTI, QUATIC, CIbSE, ICT4S) and in several smaller and regional ones. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)Climate change calls for action from all sectors of our global economy, including ICT. Therefore, it is important to change the way we develop software to address the challenges posed by sustainability. Our goal is to contribute with a reusable sustainability requirements catalogue that helps developers be aware of sustainability-related properties worth considering during software development. The information for this catalogue was gathered via a systematic mapping study, whose results were synthesised in feature models and then modelled using iStar for a more expressive and configurable representation. A qualitative evaluation of the catalogue's readability, interest, utility, and usefulness by 50 participants from the domain, showed that around 79% of the respondents found the catalogue “Good” or “Very Good”. However, more than 5% of the expert participants found weaknesses regarding most of the evaluated questions and around 25% are neutral in their overall evaluation. This led us to evolve the initial version of the catalogue for the social and technical dimensions of sustainability to improve its completeness and usefulness. This is achieved by aligning the information gathered in the systematic mapping study with the well-established quality model of the ISO/IEC 25010:2011, as we expect most of the experts are familiar with those qualities and respective hierarchies. During this process, we found information that led us to propose two additional qualities that were not covered by the ISO standard: fairness and legislation. We applied this evolved version of the catalogue to the U-Bike project comparing the requirements elicited without the catalogue with those identified using the catalogue. The result suggests that new sustainability requirements were worth considering from a sustainability point of view, supporting the usefulness of the catalogue.publishersversionpublishe

NASA's Analog Missions: Driving Exploration Through Innovative Testing

Human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO) will require a unique collection of advanced, innovative technologies and the precise execution of complex and challenging operational concepts. One tool we in the Analog Missions Project at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) utilize to validate exploration system architecture concepts and conduct technology demonstrations, while gaining a deeper understanding of system-wide technical and operational challenges, is our analog missions. Analog missions are multi-disciplinary activities that test multiple features of future spaceflight missions in an integrated fashion to gain a deeper understanding of system-level interactions and integrated operations. These missions frequently occur in remote and extreme environments that are representative in one or more ways to that of future spaceflight destinations. They allow us to test robotics, vehicle prototypes, habitats, communications systems, in-situ resource utilization, and human performance as it relates to these technologies. And they allow us to validate architectural concepts, conduct technology demonstrations, and gain a deeper understanding of system-wide technical and operational challenges needed to support crewed missions beyond LEO. As NASA develops a capability driven architecture for transporting crew to a variety of space environments, including the moon, near-Earth asteroids (NEA), Mars, and other destinations, it will use its analog missions to gather requirements and develop the technologies that are necessary to ensure successful human exploration beyond LEO. Currently, there are four analog mission platforms: Research and Technology Studies (RATS), NASA s Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), and International Space Station (ISS) Test bed for Analog Research (ISTAR)

Using i* to represent OSS ecosystems for risk assessment

Open Source Software (OSS) is a strategic asset for organisations thanks to its short time-to-market, the opportunity for a reduced development effort and total cost of ownership, and its customization capabilities. OSS-based solutions include projects that are developed and co-evolve within the same organisation, OSS communities, companies, and regulatory bodies, forming an articulated strategic business ecosystem. The adoption of OSS in commercial projects leads to numerous challenges in the wide spectrum of available OSS solutions and risks emerging from the intrinsic structure of an OSS project. In this position paper we devise the use of i* models for understanding the strategic perspective of OSS ecosystems, representing actors, intentional dependencies and responsibilities. We argue that these models can play a crucial role in the analysis of organisational risks inherent to OSS component adoption and in the definition of risk mitigation activities.Postprint (published version