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Visions of a Semantic Molecular Future
Booklet handout distributed at the VSMF Symposium held at the Unilever Centre on 2011-01-17The event looks forward. Scholarship (universities, research, teaching, publishing) has been slow to take up the opportunities of this digital century. This is an opportunity to identify and build the future.EPSRC (Pathways to Impact Award). Unilever plc (Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics
Software for Wearable Devices: Challenges and Opportunities
Wearable devices are a new form of mobile computer system that provides
exclusive and user-personalized services. Wearable devices bring new issues and
challenges to computer science and technology. This paper summarizes the
development process and the categories of wearable devices. In addition, we
present new key issues arising in aspects of wearable devices, including
operating systems, database management system, network communication protocol,
application development platform, privacy and security, energy consumption,
human-computer interaction, software engineering, and big data.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, for Compsac 201
Reducing the Barrier to Entry of Complex Robotic Software: a MoveIt! Case Study
Developing robot agnostic software frameworks involves synthesizing the
disparate fields of robotic theory and software engineering while
simultaneously accounting for a large variability in hardware designs and
control paradigms. As the capabilities of robotic software frameworks increase,
the setup difficulty and learning curve for new users also increase. If the
entry barriers for configuring and using the software on robots is too high,
even the most powerful of frameworks are useless. A growing need exists in
robotic software engineering to aid users in getting started with, and
customizing, the software framework as necessary for particular robotic
applications. In this paper a case study is presented for the best practices
found for lowering the barrier of entry in the MoveIt! framework, an
open-source tool for mobile manipulation in ROS, that allows users to 1)
quickly get basic motion planning functionality with minimal initial setup, 2)
automate its configuration and optimization, and 3) easily customize its
components. A graphical interface that assists the user in configuring MoveIt!
is the cornerstone of our approach, coupled with the use of an existing
standardized robot model for input, automatically generated robot-specific
configuration files, and a plugin-based architecture for extensibility. These
best practices are summarized into a set of barrier to entry design principles
applicable to other robotic software. The approaches for lowering the entry
barrier are evaluated by usage statistics, a user survey, and compared against
our design objectives for their effectiveness to users
The specification and design of an interactive virtual environment for use in teacher training
In this paper, we examine the rationale behind the specification and design of an interactive, virtual environment, optimized for particular task-based learning activities and the dissemination of information. The software we describe represents a typical British primary school, for use in training Information and Communications Technology (ICT)co-ordinators at primary level. By documenting our ongoing evaluation of both this resource and the technologies used in its implementation, we provide a detailed description of the production process of a prototype piece of software. This highlights the importance of pedagogy, new technologies and project management, and should be of particular interest to multimedia designers and academics preparing to develop innovative learning applications
An overview of virtual city modelling : emerging organisational issues
This paper presents a recent overview of the increasing use of Virtual Reality (VR) technologies for the simulation of urban environments. It builds on previous research conducted on the identification of three-dimensional (3D) city models and offers an analysis of the development, utilization and construction of VR city models. Issues pertaining to advantages, barriers and ownership are identified. The paper describes a case study of the development of a VR model for the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK and outlines the role that academic institutions can play in both the creation and utilization of urban models. The study offers a new approach for the creation, management and update of urban models and reflects on issues which are emerging. Areas for future research are discussed
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