Embodied conversations: Performance and the design of a robotic dancing partner

This paper reports insights gained from an exploration of performance-based techniques to improve the design of relationships between people and responsive machines. It draws on the Emergent Objects project and specifically addresses notions of embodiment as employed in the field of performance as a means to prototype and develop a robotic agent, SpiderCrab, designed to promote expressive interaction of device and human dancer, in order to achieve ‘performative merging’. The significance of the work is to bring further knowledge of embodiment to bear on the development of human-technological interaction in general. In doing so, it draws on discursive and interpretive methods of research widely used in the field of performance but not yet obviously aligned with some orthodox paradigms and practices within design research. It also posits the design outcome as an ‘objectile’ in the sense that a continuous and potentially divergent iteration of prototypes is envisaged, rather than a singular final product. The focus on performative merging draws in notions of complexity and user experience. Keywords: Embodiment; Performance; Tacit Knowledge; Practice-As-Research; Habitus.</p

Modeling Service Choreographies with Rule-enhanced Business Processes

The participation at EDOC 2010 was overwhelming in every positive sense, and I am very thankful to the committee for this award. Our presentation was received highly positive and triggered several questions. The questions were mainly about the relations of our work with the use of ontology and vocabulary representation languages, and our plans for developing executable models rather than generating code from models. In fact, this was already in line with our previous plans and research directions. Some of these discussions even continued during the following days. In particular, we had plans for two concrete collaborations. One is related to the development of a formal semantics of the rBPMN languages by using process algebra, that is, by using the mCRL2 language in particular. Moreover, we also created a common plan for integration of semi-structured English language for defining business rules and vocabularies. This will also allow us to have a more effective way to capture rules in rBPMN process models. Moreover, our presentation of the rBPMN editor, as an practical implementation tool for the work with the rBPMN language received a special attention, and several researchers have already approached us to establish research collaboration and/or to use our tool, which is now publically available. The overall experience was also extremely valuable. The program of the conference covered nearly all of the diverse topics in enterprise computing. That is, the selected papers cover engineering aspects in many phases of development life cycle of enterprise systems, especially those designed for distributed environments. I have also delivered a keynote at the VORTE 2010 workshop with the audience with was the largest of all workshop keynotes at the conference. The participants very positively received my insights. In a very interactive session, we discussed some of the main research challenges important for better integration of business rules and business process modeling languages.The research community has so far mainly focused on the problem of modeling of service orchestrations in the domain of service composition, while modeling of service choreographies has attracted less attention. The following challenges in choreography modeling are tackled in this paper: i) choreography models are not well-connected with the underlying business vocabulary models. ii) there is limited support for decoupling parts of business logic from complete choreography models. This reduces dynamic changes of choreographies; iii) choreography models contain redundant elements of shared business logic, which might lead to an inconsistent implementation and incompatible behavior. Our proposal – rBPMN – is an extension of a business process modeling language with rule and choreography modeling support. rBPMN is defined by weaving the metamodels of the Business Process Modeling Notation and REWERSE Rule Markup Language. To evaluate our proposal, we use service-interaction patterns and compare our approach with related solutions

Past, present and future of information and knowledge sharing in the construction industry: Towards semantic service-based e-construction

The paper reviews product data technology initiatives in the construction sector and provides a synthesis of related ICT industry needs. A comparison between (a) the data centric characteristics of Product Data Technology (PDT) and (b) ontology with a focus on semantics, is given, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. The paper advocates the migration from data-centric application integration to ontology-based business process support, and proposes inter-enterprise collaboration architectures and frameworks based on semantic services, underpinned by ontology-based knowledge structures. The paper discusses the main reasons behind the low industry take up of product data technology, and proposes a preliminary roadmap for the wide industry diffusion of the proposed approach. In this respect, the paper stresses the value of adopting alliance-based modes of operation

Enhancing service-oriented holonic multi-agent systems with self-organization

Multi-agents systems and holonic manufacturing systems are suitable approaches to design a new and alternative class of production control systems, based on the decentralization of control functions over distributed autonomous and cooperative entities. However, in spite of their enormous potential they lack some aspects related to interoperability, migration, optimisation in decentralised structures and truly self-adaptation. This paper discusses the advantages of combining these paradigms with complementary paradigms, such as service-oriented architectures, and enhancing them with biologically inspired algorithms and techniques, such as emergent behaviour and self-organization, to reach a truly robust, agile and adaptive control system. An example of applying a stigmergy-based algorithm to dynamically route pallets in a production system is also provided

A Study on the Usage of the BPMN Notation for Designing Process Collaboration, Choreography, and Conversation Models

Being widely accepted by industries and academia, Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is the de facto standard for business process modeling. However, the large number of notation elements it introduces makes its use quite complex. This work investigates the usage of the BPMN notation by analyzing 54,500 models harvested from seven online collections. The study considers different model types introduced by the standard, such as process collaboration, choreography, and conversation. The analyses focus on the syntactic dimension of BPMN, investigating the usage of BPMN elements and their combinations. Syntactic violations of the standard, and of good modeling practices, are also investigated as well as possible relations with BPMN elements and modeling tools. The results of the study can guide further activities of educators, practitioners, researchers, and standardization bodies

A Study on the Usage of the BPMN Notation for Designing Process Collaboration, Choreography, and Conversation Models

Being widely accepted by industries and academia, Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is the de facto standard for business process modeling. However, the large number of notation elements it introduces makes its use quite complex. This work investigates the usage of the BPMN notation by analyzing 54,500 models harvested from seven online collections. The study considers different model types introduced by the standard, such as process collaboration, choreography, and conversation. The analyses focus on the syntactic dimension of BPMN, investigating the usage of BPMN elements and their combinations. Syntactic violations of the standard, and of good modeling practices, are also investigated as well as possible relations with BPMN elements and modeling tools. The results of this study can guide further activities of educators, practitioners, researchers, and standardization bodies