Model of Coordination Flow in Remote Collaborative Interaction

© 2015 IEEEWe present an information-theoretic approach for modelling coordination in human-human interaction and measuring coordination flows in a remote collaborative tracking task. Building on Shannon's mutual information, coordination flow measures, for stochastic collaborative systems, how much influence, the environment has on the joint control of collaborating parties. We demonstrate the application of the approach on interactive human data recorded in a user study and reveal the amount of effort required for creating rigorous models. Our initial results suggest the potential coordination flow has - as an objective, task-independent measure - in supporting designers of human collaborative systems and in providing better theoretical foundations for the science of Human-Computer Interaction

Modelling coordination in biological systems

We present an application of the Reo coordination paradigm to provide a compositional formal model for describing and reasoning about the behaviour of biological systems, such as regulatory gene networks. Reo governs the interaction and flow of data between components by allowing the construction of connector circuits which have a precise formal semantics. When applied to systems biology, the result is a graphical model, which is comprehensible, mathematically precise, and flexibl

A Product Oriented Modelling Concept: Holons for systems synchronisation and interoperability

Nowadays, enterprises are confronted to growing needs for traceability, product genealogy and product life cycle management. To meet those needs, the enterprise and applications in the enterprise environment have to manage flows of information that relate to flows of material and that are managed in shop floor level. Nevertheless, throughout product lifecycle coordination needs to be established between reality in the physical world (physical view) and the virtual world handled by manufacturing information systems (informational view). This paper presents the "Holon" modelling concept as a means for the synchronisation of both physical view and informational views. Afterwards, we show how the concept of holon can play a major role in ensuring interoperability in the enterprise context

Detection of bimanual gestures everywhere: why it matters, what we need and what is missing

Bimanual gestures are of the utmost importance for the study of motor coordination in humans and in everyday activities. A reliable detection of bimanual gestures in unconstrained environments is fundamental for their clinical study and to assess common activities of daily living. This paper investigates techniques for a reliable, unconstrained detection and classification of bimanual gestures. It assumes the availability of inertial data originating from the two hands/arms, builds upon a previously developed technique for gesture modelling based on Gaussian Mixture Modelling (GMM) and Gaussian Mixture Regression (GMR), and compares different modelling and classification techniques, which are based on a number of assumptions inspired by literature about how bimanual gestures are represented and modelled in the brain. Experiments show results related to 5 everyday bimanual activities, which have been selected on the basis of three main parameters: (not) constraining the two hands by a physical tool, (not) requiring a specific sequence of single-hand gestures, being recursive (or not). In the best performing combination of modeling approach and classification technique, five out of five activities are recognized up to an accuracy of 97%, a precision of 82% and a level of recall of 100%.Comment: Submitted to Robotics and Autonomous Systems (Elsevier

The consequences of time-phased order releases on two M/M/1 queues in series.

A key characteristic of MRP applications includes the coordination of assembly and purchased component requirements by time-phased order releases. In the literature on order review and release strategies, time- phased order releases are described as a worthy alternative to load limited release mechanisms. This paper initializes the development of a stochastic model that quantifies the consequences of time-phased order releases on the stochastic system behavior. This is done by introducing them in an open queueing network composed of two M/M/1 stations. The core of the analysis is focused on the modified flow variability which is specified by the second-order stationary departure process at the first station in the routing. It is a process characterized by a negligible autocorrelation. Based on the stationary-interval method and the asymptotic method, we propose an approximating renewal process for the modified departure process. The modelling efforts provide interesting conclusions and practical insights on some coordination issues in stochastic multi-echelon systems.

A unified model of the electrical power network

Traditionally, the different infrastructure layers, technologies and management activities associated with the design, control and protection operation of the Electrical Power Systems have been supported by numerous independent models of the real world network. As a result of increasing competition in this sector, however, the integration of technologies in the network and the coordination of complex management processes have become of vital importance for all electrical power companies. The aim of the research outlined in this paper is to develop a single network model which will unify the generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure layers and the various alternative implementation technologies. This 'unified model' approach can support ,for example, network fault, reliability and performance analysis. This paper introduces the basic network structures, describes an object-oriented modelling approach and outlines possible applications of the unified model

Towards a Multi Metamodelling Approach for Developing Distributed Healthcare Applications

Model Driven Engineering (MDE) uses formal methods to build mathematically rigorous models of complex systems. Metamodelling plays an important role in MDE as it is used to specify domain specific modelling languages. However, the potential of metamodelling has not been fully explored. Current approaches of MDE are often at a low level of abstraction and lack domain concepts for specifying behavior. In previous work, we proposed a multi metamodelling approach that captures the complexity of systems by using a metamodelling hierarchy, built from individually defined metamodels, each capturing different aspects of a healthcare domain. In this paper, we focus on modelling distributed healthcare applications and present an example from the healthcare domain. We address certain modelling aspects related to distributed applications such as process modelling, using message passing communication, and coordination of processes and resources

Short and random: Modelling the effects of (proto-)neural elongations

To understand how neurons and nervous systems first evolved, we need an account of the origins of neural elongations: Why did neural elongations (axons and dendrites) first originate, such that they could become the central component of both neurons and nervous systems? Two contrasting conceptual accounts provide different answers to this question. Braitenberg's vehicles provide the iconic illustration of the dominant input-output (IO) view. Here the basic role of neural elongations is to connect sensors to effectors, both situated at different positions within the body. For this function, neural elongations are thought of as comparatively long and specific connections, which require an articulated body involving substantial developmental processes to build. Internal coordination (IC) models stress a different function for early nervous systems. Here the coordination of activity across extended parts of a multicellular body is held central, in particular for the contractions of (muscle) tissue. An IC perspective allows the hypothesis that the earliest proto-neural elongations could have been functional even when they were initially simple short and random connections, as long as they enhanced the patterning of contractile activity across a multicellular surface. The present computational study provides a proof of concept that such short and random neural elongations can play this role. While an excitable epithelium can generate basic forms of patterning for small body-configurations, adding elongations allows such patterning to scale up to larger bodies. This result supports a new, more gradual evolutionary route towards the origins of the very first full neurons and nervous systems.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, Keywords: early nervous systems, neural elongations, nervous system evolution, computational modelling, internal coordinatio

Compositional Construction of Real-Time Dataflow Networks

Increasing sizes of present-day distributed software systems call for coordination models which are both \emph{modular} and \emph{scalable}. Precise modelling of real-life applications further requires the notion of \emph{real-time}. In this paper, we present a modular formal development of a compositional model for real-time coordination in dataflow networks. While real-time dataflow networks are typically asynchronous, our approach includes coordination patterns which combine, but are not limited to, synchrony and asynchrony. We define a constraint- and SAT-based encoding, which allows us to benefit from high-end constraint solving techniques when inspecting valid interactions of the system