Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

A hierarchical distributed control model for coordinating intelligent systems

A hierarchical distributed control (HDC) model for coordinating cooperative problem-solving among intelligent systems is described. The model was implemented using SOCIAL, an innovative object-oriented tool for integrating heterogeneous, distributed software systems. SOCIAL embeds applications in 'wrapper' objects called Agents, which supply predefined capabilities for distributed communication, control, data specification, and translation. The HDC model is realized in SOCIAL as a 'Manager'Agent that coordinates interactions among application Agents. The HDC Manager: indexes the capabilities of application Agents; routes request messages to suitable server Agents; and stores results in a commonly accessible 'Bulletin-Board'. This centralized control model is illustrated in a fault diagnosis application for launch operations support of the Space Shuttle fleet at NASA, Kennedy Space Center

Thread Quality Control in High-Speed Tapping Cycles

Thread quality control is becoming a widespread necessity in manufacturing to guarantee the geometry of the resulting screws on the workpiece due to the high industrial costs. Besides, the industrial inspection is manual provoking high rates of manufacturing delays. Therefore, the aim of this paper consists of developing a statistical quality control approach acquiring the data (torque signal) coming from the spindle drive for assessing thread quality using different coatings. The system shows a red light when the tap wear is critical before machining in unacceptable screw threads. Therefore, the application could reduce these high industrial costs because it can work self-governance.This research was funded by the vice‐counseling of technology, innovation and competitiveness of the Basque Government grant agreements IT‐2005/00201, ZL‐2019/00720 (HARDCRAFT project) and KK‐2019/00004 (PROCODA project)