An architecture for life-long user modelling

In this paper, we propose a united architecture for the creation of life-long user profiles. Our architecture combines different steps required for a user prole, including feature extraction and representation, reasoning, recommendation and presentation. We discuss various issues that arise in the context of life-long profiling

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Beyond multimedia adaptation: Quality of experience-aware multi-sensorial media delivery

Multiple sensorial media (mulsemedia) combines multiple media elements which engage three or more of human senses, and as most other media content, requires support for delivery over the existing networks. This paper proposes an adaptive mulsemedia framework (ADAMS) for delivering scalable video and sensorial data to users. Unlike existing two-dimensional joint source-channel adaptation solutions for video streaming, the ADAMS framework includes three joint adaptation dimensions: video source, sensorial source, and network optimization. Using an MPEG-7 description scheme, ADAMS recommends the integration of multiple sensorial effects (i.e., haptic, olfaction, air motion, etc.) as metadata into multimedia streams. ADAMS design includes both coarse- and fine-grained adaptation modules on the server side: mulsemedia flow adaptation and packet priority scheduling. Feedback from subjective quality evaluation and network conditions is used to develop the two modules. Subjective evaluation investigated users' enjoyment levels when exposed to mulsemedia and multimedia sequences, respectively and to study users' preference levels of some sensorial effects in the context of mulsemedia sequences with video components at different quality levels. Results of the subjective study inform guidelines for an adaptive strategy that selects the optimal combination for video segments and sensorial data for a given bandwidth constraint and user requirement. User perceptual tests show how ADAMS outperforms existing multimedia delivery solutions in terms of both user perceived quality and user enjoyment during adaptive streaming of various mulsemedia content. In doing so, it highlights the case for tailored, adaptive mulsemedia delivery over traditional multimedia adaptive transport mechanisms

Congestion Control for Network-Aware Telehaptic Communication

Telehaptic applications involve delay-sensitive multimedia communication between remote locations with distinct Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for different media components. These QoS constraints pose a variety of challenges, especially when the communication occurs over a shared network, with unknown and time-varying cross-traffic. In this work, we propose a transport layer congestion control protocol for telehaptic applications operating over shared networks, termed as dynamic packetization module (DPM). DPM is a lossless, network-aware protocol which tunes the telehaptic packetization rate based on the level of congestion in the network. To monitor the network congestion, we devise a novel network feedback module, which communicates the end-to-end delays encountered by the telehaptic packets to the respective transmitters with negligible overhead. Via extensive simulations, we show that DPM meets the QoS requirements of telehaptic applications over a wide range of network cross-traffic conditions. We also report qualitative results of a real-time telepottery experiment with several human subjects, which reveal that DPM preserves the quality of telehaptic activity even under heavily congested network scenarios. Finally, we compare the performance of DPM with several previously proposed telehaptic communication protocols and demonstrate that DPM outperforms these protocols.Comment: 25 pages, 19 figure

Towards a cloud‑based automated surveillance system using wireless technologies

Cloud Computing can bring multiple benefits for Smart Cities. It permits the easy creation of centralized knowledge bases, thus straightforwardly enabling that multiple embedded systems (such as sensor or control devices) can have a collaborative, shared intelligence. In addition to this, thanks to its vast computing power, complex tasks can be done over low-spec devices just by offloading computation to the cloud, with the additional advantage of saving energy. In this work, cloud’s capabilities are exploited to implement and test a cloud-based surveillance system. Using a shared, 3D symbolic world model, different devices have a complete knowledge of all the elements, people and intruders in a certain open area or inside a building. The implementation of a volumetric, 3D, object-oriented, cloud-based world model (including semantic information) is novel as far as we know. Very simple devices (orange Pi) can send RGBD streams (using kinect cameras) to the cloud, where all the processing is distributed and done thanks to its inherent scalability. A proof-of-concept experiment is done in this paper in a testing lab with multiple cameras connected to the cloud with 802.11ac wireless technology. Our results show that this kind of surveillance system is possible currently, and that trends indicate that it can be improved at a short term to produce high performance vigilance system using low-speed devices. In addition, this proof-of-concept claims that many interesting opportunities and challenges arise, for example, when mobile watch robots and fixed cameras would act as a team for carrying out complex collaborative surveillance strategies.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2016-77785-PJunta de Andalucía P12-TIC-130

Collaborative Uploading in Heterogeneous Networks: Optimal and Adaptive Strategies

Collaborative uploading describes a type of crowdsourcing scenario in networked environments where a device utilizes multiple paths over neighboring devices to upload content to a centralized processing entity such as a cloud service. Intermediate devices may aggregate and preprocess this data stream. Such scenarios arise in the composition and aggregation of information, e.g., from smartphones or sensors. We use a queuing theoretic description of the collaborative uploading scenario, capturing the ability to split data into chunks that are then transmitted over multiple paths, and finally merged at the destination. We analyze replication and allocation strategies that control the mapping of data to paths and provide closed-form expressions that pinpoint the optimal strategy given a description of the paths' service distributions. Finally, we provide an online path-aware adaptation of the allocation strategy that uses statistical inference to sequentially minimize the expected waiting time for the uploaded data. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the adaptive approach compared to the proportional allocation and a variant of the join-the-shortest-queue allocation, especially for bursty path conditions.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, extended version of a conference paper accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), 201

Processing and Linking Audio Events in Large Multimedia Archives: The EU inEvent Project

In the inEvent EU project [1], we aim at structuring, retrieving, and sharing large archives of networked, and dynamically changing, multimedia recordings, mainly consisting of meetings, videoconferences, and lectures. More specifically, we are developing an integrated system that performs audiovisual processing of multimedia recordings, and labels them in terms of interconnected “hyper-events ” (a notion inspired from hyper-texts). Each hyper-event is composed of simpler facets, including audio-video recordings and metadata, which are then easier to search, retrieve and share. In the present paper, we mainly cover the audio processing aspects of the system, including speech recognition, speaker diarization and linking (across recordings), the use of these features for hyper-event indexing and recommendation, and the search portal. We present initial results for feature extraction from lecture recordings using the TED talks. Index Terms: Networked multimedia events; audio processing: speech recognition; speaker diarization and linking; multimedia indexing and searching; hyper-events. 1

COSMOS-7: Video-oriented MPEG-7 scheme for modelling and filtering of semantic content

MPEG-7 prescribes a format for semantic content models for multimedia to ensure interoperability across a multitude of platforms and application domains. However, the standard leaves it open as to how the models should be used and how their content should be filtered. Filtering is a technique used to retrieve only content relevant to user requirements, thereby reducing the necessary content-sifting effort of the user. This paper proposes an MPEG-7 scheme that can be deployed for semantic content modelling and filtering of digital video. The proposed scheme, COSMOS-7, produces rich and multi-faceted semantic content models and supports a content-based filtering approach that only analyses content relating directly to the preferred content requirements of the user