Proceedings of International Workshop "Global Computing: Programming Environments, Languages, Security and Analysis of Systems"

According to the IST/ FET proactive initiative on GLOBAL COMPUTING, the goal is to obtain techniques (models, frameworks, methods, algorithms) for constructing systems that are flexible, dependable, secure, robust and efficient. The dominant concerns are not those of representing and manipulating data efficiently but rather those of handling the co-ordination and interaction, security, reliability, robustness, failure modes, and control of risk of the entities in the system and the overall design, description and performance of the system itself. Completely different paradigms of computer science may have to be developed to tackle these issues effectively. The research should concentrate on systems having the following characteristics: • The systems are composed of autonomous computational entities where activity is not centrally controlled, either because global control is impossible or impractical, or because the entities are created or controlled by different owners. • The computational entities are mobile, due to the movement of the physical platforms or by movement of the entity from one platform to another. • The configuration varies over time. For instance, the system is open to the introduction of new computational entities and likewise their deletion. The behaviour of the entities may vary over time. • The systems operate with incomplete information about the environment. For instance, information becomes rapidly out of date and mobility requires information about the environment to be discovered. The ultimate goal of the research action is to provide a solid scientific foundation for the design of such systems, and to lay the groundwork for achieving effective principles for building and analysing such systems. This workshop covers the aspects related to languages and programming environments as well as analysis of systems and resources involving 9 projects (AGILE , DART, DEGAS , MIKADO, MRG, MYTHS, PEPITO, PROFUNDIS, SECURE) out of the 13 founded under the initiative. After an year from the start of the projects, the goal of the workshop is to fix the state of the art on the topics covered by the two clusters related to programming environments and analysis of systems as well as to devise strategies and new ideas to profitably continue the research effort towards the overall objective of the initiative. We acknowledge the Dipartimento di Informatica and Tlc of the University of Trento, the Comune di Rovereto, the project DEGAS for partially funding the event and the Events and Meetings Office of the University of Trento for the valuable collaboration

Process Comprehension for Interoperable CNC Manufacturing

Over the last 40 years manufacturing industry has enjoyed a rapid growth with the support of various computer-aided systems (CAD, CAPP, CAM etc.) known as CAx. Since the first Numerically Controlled (NC) machine appeared in 1952, there have been many advances in CAx resource capabilities. The information integration and interoperability between different manufacturing resources has become an important and popular research area over the last decade. Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machines are an important link in the manufacturing chain and the major contributor to the production capacity of manufacturing industry today. However, most of the research has focused on the information integration of upper systems in the CAD/CAPP /CAM/CNC manufacturing chain, leaving the shop floor as an isolated information island. In particular, there is limited opportunity to capture and feed shopfloor knowledge back to the upper systems. Furthermore, the part programs for the machines are not exchangeable due to the. machine specific postprocessors. Thus there is a further need to consider information interoperability between different CNC machine and other systems. This research investigates the reverse transformation of the CNC part programmes into higher level of process information, entitled process comprehension, to enable the shopfloor interoperability. A novel framework of universal process comprehension is specified and designed. The framework provides a reverse direction of information flow from the CNC machine to upper CAx systems, enabling the interoperability and recycling of the shopfloor knowledge. A prototype implementation of the framework is realised and utilised to demonstrate the functionalities through three industrially inspired test components. The major contribution of this research to knowledge is the new vision of the shopfloor interoperability associated with process knowledge capture and reuse. The research shows that process comprehension of part programmes can provide an effective solution to the issues of the shopfloor interoperability and knowledge reuse in manufacturing industries.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Ubiquitous Computing

The aim of this book is to give a treatment of the actively developed domain of Ubiquitous computing. Originally proposed by Mark D. Weiser, the concept of Ubiquitous computing enables a real-time global sensing, context-aware informational retrieval, multi-modal interaction with the user and enhanced visualization capabilities. In effect, Ubiquitous computing environments give extremely new and futuristic abilities to look at and interact with our habitat at any time and from anywhere. In that domain, researchers are confronted with many foundational, technological and engineering issues which were not known before. Detailed cross-disciplinary coverage of these issues is really needed today for further progress and widening of application range. This book collects twelve original works of researchers from eleven countries, which are clustered into four sections: Foundations, Security and Privacy, Integration and Middleware, Practical Applications

Advances on Mechanics, Design Engineering and Manufacturing III

This open access book gathers contributions presented at the International Joint Conference on Mechanics, Design Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing (JCM 2020), held as a web conference on June 2–4, 2020. It reports on cutting-edge topics in product design and manufacturing, such as industrial methods for integrated product and process design; innovative design; and computer-aided design. Further topics covered include virtual simulation and reverse engineering; additive manufacturing; product manufacturing; engineering methods in medicine and education; representation techniques; and nautical, aeronautics and aerospace design and modeling. The book is organized into four main parts, reflecting the focus and primary themes of the conference. The contributions presented here not only provide researchers, engineers and experts in a range of industrial engineering subfields with extensive information to support their daily work; they are also intended to stimulate new research directions, advanced applications of the methods discussed and future interdisciplinary collaborations

Intuitive Instruction of Industrial Robots : A Knowledge-Based Approach

With more advanced manufacturing technologies, small and medium sized enterprises can compete with low-wage labor by providing customized and high quality products. For small production series, robotic systems can provide a cost-effective solution. However, for robots to be able to perform on par with human workers in manufacturing industries, they must become flexible and autonomous in their task execution and swift and easy to instruct. This will enable small businesses with short production series or highly customized products to use robot coworkers without consulting expert robot programmers. The objective of this thesis is to explore programming solutions that can reduce the programming effort of sensor-controlled robot tasks. The robot motions are expressed using constraints, and multiple of simple constrained motions can be combined into a robot skill. The skill can be stored in a knowledge base together with a semantic description, which enables reuse and reasoning. The main contributions of the thesis are 1) development of ontologies for knowledge about robot devices and skills, 2) a user interface that provides simple programming of dual-arm skills for non-experts and experts, 3) a programming interface for task descriptions in unstructured natural language in a user-specified vocabulary and 4) an implementation where low-level code is generated from the high-level descriptions. The resulting system greatly reduces the number of parameters exposed to the user, is simple to use for non-experts and reduces the programming time for experts by 80%. The representation is described on a semantic level, which means that the same skill can be used on different robot platforms. The research is presented in seven papers, the first describing the knowledge representation and the second the knowledge-based architecture that enables skill sharing between robots. The third paper presents the translation from high-level instructions to low-level code for force-controlled motions. The two following papers evaluate the simplified programming prototype for non-expert and expert users. The last two present how program statements are extracted from unstructured natural language descriptions

Document Automation Architectures: Updated Survey in Light of Large Language Models

This paper surveys the current state of the art in document automation (DA). The objective of DA is to reduce the manual effort during the generation of documents by automatically creating and integrating input from different sources and assembling documents conforming to defined templates. There have been reviews of commercial solutions of DA, particularly in the legal domain, but to date there has been no comprehensive review of the academic research on DA architectures and technologies. The current survey of DA reviews the academic literature and provides a clearer definition and characterization of DA and its features, identifies state-of-the-art DA architectures and technologies in academic research, and provides ideas that can lead to new research opportunities within the DA field in light of recent advances in generative AI and large language models.Comment: The current paper is the updated version of an earlier survey on document automation [Ahmadi Achachlouei et al. 2021]. Updates in the current paper are as follows: We shortened almost all sections to reduce the size of the main paper (without references) from 28 pages to 10 pages, added a review of selected papers on large language models, removed certain sections and most of diagrams. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2109.1160

Learning differences & digital equity in the classroom

This chapter addresses digital equity in the classroom for students with learning differences, as well as the role of technology in the provision of equitable education for the full diversity of students. The chapter discusses the evolving opportunities and challenges that information technology in the classroom presents to students with learning differences and their teachers. To meaningfully understand this topic requires an understanding of the complex context, the forces at play, and their relation to students with learning differences. Among the forces at play are policies, regulations, the accessibility movement, technical trends, instructional design strategies, educational publishing, open educational resources, pedagogical trends, quality control approaches in education, and governance of formal education. The chapter highlights the benefits to all students of designing the classroom experience for students with learning differences