Technical approaches for measurement of human errors

Human error is a significant contributing factor in a very high proportion of civil transport, general aviation, and rotorcraft accidents. The technical details of a variety of proven approaches for the measurement of human errors in the context of the national airspace system are presented. Unobtrusive measurements suitable for cockpit operations and procedures in part of full mission simulation are emphasized. Procedure, system performance, and human operator centered measurements are discussed as they apply to the manual control, communication, supervisory, and monitoring tasks which are relevant to aviation operations

Wireless for Machine Learning

As data generation increasingly takes place on devices without a wired connection, Machine Learning over wireless networks becomes critical. Many studies have shown that traditional wireless protocols are highly inefficient or unsustainable to support Distributed Machine Learning. This is creating the need for new wireless communication methods. In this survey, we give an exhaustive review of the state of the art wireless methods that are specifically designed to support Machine Learning services. Namely, over-the-air computation and radio resource allocation optimized for Machine Learning. In the over-the-air approach, multiple devices communicate simultaneously over the same time slot and frequency band to exploit the superposition property of wireless channels for gradient averaging over-the-air. In radio resource allocation optimized for Machine Learning, Active Learning metrics allow for data evaluation to greatly optimize the assignment of radio resources. This paper gives a comprehensive introduction to these methods, reviews the most important works, and highlights crucial open problems.Comment: Corrected typo in author name. From the incorrect Maitron to the correct Mairto

Performance Analysis in IP-Based Industrial Communication Networks

S rostoucím počtem řídicích systémů a jejich distribuovanosti získávájí komunikační sítě na důležitosti a objevují se nové výzkumné trendy. Hlavní problematikou v této oblasti, narozdíl od dřívějších řídicích systémů využívajících dedikovaných komunikačních obvodů, je časově proměnné zpoždění měřicích a řídicích signálů způsobené paketově orientovanými komunikačními prostředky, jako např. Ethernet. Aspekty komunikace v reálném čase byly v těchto sítích již úspěšně vyřešeny. Nicméně, analýzy trendů trhu předpovídají budoucí využití také IP sítí v průmyslové komunikaci pro časově kritickou procesní vyměnu dat. IP komunikace má ovšem pouze omezenou podporu v instrumentaci pro průmyslovou automatizace. Tato výzva byla nedávno technicky vyřešena v rámci projektu Virtual Automation Networks (virtuální automatizační sítě - VAN) zapojením mechanismů kvality služeb (QoS), které jsou schopny zajistit měkkou úroveň komunikace v reálném čase. Předložená dizertační práce se zaměřuje na aspekty výkonnosti reálného času z analytického hlediska a nabízí prostředek pro hodnocení využitelnosti IP komunikace pro budoucí průmyslové aplikace. Hlavním cílem této dizertační práce je vytvoření vhodného modelovacího rámce založeného na network calculus, který pomůže provést worst-case výkonnostní analýzu časového chování IP komunikačních sítí a jejich prvků určených pro budoucí použití v průmyslové automatizaci. V práci byla použita empirická analýza pro určení dominantních faktorů ovlivňujících časového chování síťových zařízení a identifikaci parametrů modelů těchto zařízení. Empirická analýza využívá nástroj TestQoS vyvinutý pro tyto účely. Byla navržena drobná rozšíření rámce network calculus, která byla nutná pro modelování časového chování používaných zařízení. Bylo vytvořeno několik typových modelů zařízení jako výsledek klasifikace různých architektur síťových zařízení a empiricky zjištěných dominantních faktorů. U modelovaných zařízení byla využita nová metoda identifikace parametrů. Práce je zakončena validací časových modelů dvou síťových zařízení (přepínače a směrovače) oproti empirickým pozorováním.With the growing scale of control systems and their distributed nature, communication networks have been gaining importance and new research challenges have been appearing. The major problem, contrary to previously used control systems with dedicated communication circuits, is time-varying delay of control and measurement signals introduced by packet-switched networks, such as Ethernet. The real-time issues in these networks have been tackled by proper adaptations. Nevertheless, market trend analyses foresee also future adoptions of IP-based communication networks in industrial automation for time-critical run-time data exchange. IP-based communication has only a limited support from the existing instrumentation in industrial automation. This challenge has recently been technically tackled within the Virtual Automation Networks (VAN) project by adopting the quality of service (QoS) architecture delivering soft-real-time communication behaviour. This dissertation focuses on the real-time performance aspects from the analytical point of view and provides means for applicability assessment of IP-based communication for future industrial applications. The main objective of this dissertation is establishment of a relevant modelling framework based on network calculus which will assist worst-case performance analysis of temporal behaviour of IP-based communication networks and networking devices intended for future use in industrial automation. Empirical analysis was used to identify dominant factors influencing the temporal performance of networking devices and for model parameter identification. The empirical analysis makes use of the TestQoS tool developed for this purpose. Minor extensions to the network calculus framework were proposed enabling to model the required temporal behaviour of networking devices. Several exemplary models were inferred as a result of classification of different networking device architectures and empirically identified dominant factors. A novel method for parameter identification was used with the modelled devices. Finally, two temporal models of networking devices (a switch and a router) were validated against empirical observations.

Secure covert communications over streaming media using dynamic steganography

Streaming technologies such as VoIP are widely embedded into commercial and industrial applications, so it is imperative to address data security issues before the problems get really serious. This thesis describes a theoretical and experimental investigation of secure covert communications over streaming media using dynamic steganography. A covert VoIP communications system was developed in C++ to enable the implementation of the work being carried out. A new information theoretical model of secure covert communications over streaming media was constructed to depict the security scenarios in streaming media-based steganographic systems with passive attacks. The model involves a stochastic process that models an information source for covert VoIP communications and the theory of hypothesis testing that analyses the adversary‘s detection performance. The potential of hardware-based true random key generation and chaotic interval selection for innovative applications in covert VoIP communications was explored. Using the read time stamp counter of CPU as an entropy source was designed to generate true random numbers as secret keys for streaming media steganography. A novel interval selection algorithm was devised to choose randomly data embedding locations in VoIP streams using random sequences generated from achaotic process. A dynamic key updating and transmission based steganographic algorithm that includes a one-way cryptographical accumulator integrated into dynamic key exchange for covert VoIP communications, was devised to provide secure key exchange for covert communications over streaming media. The discrete logarithm problem in mathematics and steganalysis using t-test revealed the algorithm has the advantage of being the most solid method of key distribution over a public channel. The effectiveness of the new steganographic algorithm for covert communications over streaming media was examined by means of security analysis, steganalysis using non parameter Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon statistical testing, and performance and robustness measurements. The algorithm achieved the average data embedding rate of 800 bps, comparable to other related algorithms. The results indicated that the algorithm has no or little impact on real-time VoIP communications in terms of speech quality (< 5% change in PESQ with hidden data), signal distortion (6% change in SNR after steganography) and imperceptibility, and it is more secure and effective in addressing the security problems than other related algorithms

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion