Evaluator services for optimised service placement in distributed heterogeneous cloud infrastructures

Optimal placement of demanding real-time interactive applications in a distributed heterogeneous cloud very quickly results in a complex tradeoff between the application constraints and resource capabilities. This requires very detailed information of the various requirements and capabilities of the applications and available resources. In this paper, we present a mathematical model for the service optimization problem and study the concept of evaluator services as a flexible and efficient solution for this complex problem. An evaluator service is a service probe that is deployed in particular runtime environments to assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of deploying a specific application in such environment. We discuss how this concept can be incorporated in a general framework such as the FUSION architecture and discuss the key benefits and tradeoffs for doing evaluator-based optimal service placement in widely distributed heterogeneous cloud environments

Interactive Camera Network Design using a Virtual Reality Interface

Traditional literature on camera network design focuses on constructing automated algorithms. These require problem specific input from experts in order to produce their output. The nature of the required input is highly unintuitive leading to an unpractical workflow for human operators. In this work we focus on developing a virtual reality user interface allowing human operators to manually design camera networks in an intuitive manner. From real world practical examples we conclude that the camera networks designed using this interface are highly competitive with, or superior to those generated by automated algorithms, but the associated workflow is much more intuitive and simple. The competitiveness of the human-generated camera networks is remarkable because the structure of the optimization problem is a well known combinatorial NP-hard problem. These results indicate that human operators can be used in challenging geometrical combinatorial optimization problems given an intuitive visualization of the problem.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure

Visualisation techniques for users and designers of layout algorithms

Visualisation systems consisting of a set of components through which data and interaction commands flow have been explored by a number of researchers. Such hybrid and multistage algorithms can be used to reduce overall computation time, and to provide views of the data that show intermediate results and the outputs of complementary algorithms. In this paper we present work on expanding the range and variety of such components, with two new techniques for analysing and controlling the performance of visualisation processes. While the techniques presented are quite different, they are unified within HIVE: a visualisation system based upon a data-flow model and visual programming. Embodied within this system is a framework for weaving together our visualisation components to better afford insight into data and also deepen understanding of the process of the data's visualisation. We describe the new components and offer short case studies of their application. We demonstrate that both analysts and visualisation designers can benefit from a rich set of components and integrated tools for profiling performance

Interactive Co-Design of Form and Function for Legged Robots using the Adjoint Method

Our goal is to make robotics more accessible to casual users by reducing the domain knowledge required in designing and building robots. Towards this goal, we present an interactive computational design system that enables users to design legged robots with desired morphologies and behaviors by specifying higher level descriptions. The core of our method is a design optimization technique that reasons about the structure, and motion of a robot in coupled manner in order to achieve user-specified robot behavior, and performance. We are inspired by the recent works that also aim to jointly optimize robot's form and function. However, through efficient computation of necessary design changes, our approach enables us to keep user-in-the-loop for interactive applications. We evaluate our system in simulation by automatically improving robot designs for multiple scenarios. Starting with initial user designs that are physically infeasible or inadequate to perform the user-desired task, we show optimized designs that achieve user-specifications, all while ensuring an interactive design flow.Comment: 8 pages; added link of the accompanying vide

Computer-aided position planning of miniplates to treat facial bone defects

In this contribution, a software system for computer-aided position planning of miniplates to treat facial bone defects is proposed. The intra-operatively used bone plates have to be passively adapted on the underlying bone contours for adequate bone fragment stabilization. However, this procedure can lead to frequent intra-operatively performed material readjustments especially in complex surgical cases. Our approach is able to fit a selection of common implant models on the surgeon's desired position in a 3D computer model. This happens with respect to the surrounding anatomical structures, always including the possibility of adjusting both the direction and the position of the used osteosynthesis material. By using the proposed software, surgeons are able to pre-plan the out coming implant in its form and morphology with the aid of a computer-visualized model within a few minutes. Further, the resulting model can be stored in STL file format, the commonly used format for 3D printing. Using this technology, surgeons are able to print the virtual generated implant, or create an individually designed bending tool. This method leads to adapted osteosynthesis materials according to the surrounding anatomy and requires further a minimum amount of money and time.Comment: 19 pages, 13 Figures, 2 Table

A study of user perceptions of the relationship between bump-mapped and non-bump-mapped materials, and lighting intensity in a real-time virtual environment

The video and computer games industry has taken full advantage of the human sense of vision by producing games that utilize complex high-resolution textures and materials, and lighting technique. This results to the creation of an almost life-like real-time 3D virtual environment that can immerse the end-users. One of the visual techniques used is real-time display of bump-mapped materials. However, this sense of visual phenomenon has yet to be fully utilized for 3D design visualization in the architecture and construction domain. Virtual environments developed in the architecture and construction domain are often basic and use low-resolution images, which under represent the real physical environment. Such virtual environment is seen as being non-realistic to the user resulting in a misconception of the actual potential of it as a tool for 3D design visualization. A study was conducted to evaluate whether subjects can see the difference between bump-mapped and nonbump-mapped materials in different lighting conditions. The study utilized a real-time 3D virtual environment that was created using a custom-developed software application tool called BuildITC4. BuildITC4 was developed based upon the C4Engine which is classified as a next-generation 3D Game Engine. A total of thirty-five subjects were exposed to the virtual environment and were asked to compare the various types of material in different lighting conditions. The number of lights activated, the lighting intensity, and the materials used in the virtual environment were all interactive and changeable in real-time. The goal is to study how subjects perceived bump-mapped and non-bump mapped materials, and how different lighting conditions affect realistic representation. Results from this study indicate that subjects could tell the difference between the bump-mapped and non-bump mapped materials, and how different material reacts to different lighting condition

Learning Manipulation under Physics Constraints with Visual Perception

Understanding physical phenomena is a key competence that enables humans and animals to act and interact under uncertain perception in previously unseen environments containing novel objects and their configurations. In this work, we consider the problem of autonomous block stacking and explore solutions to learning manipulation under physics constraints with visual perception inherent to the task. Inspired by the intuitive physics in humans, we first present an end-to-end learning-based approach to predict stability directly from appearance, contrasting a more traditional model-based approach with explicit 3D representations and physical simulation. We study the model's behavior together with an accompanied human subject test. It is then integrated into a real-world robotic system to guide the placement of a single wood block into the scene without collapsing existing tower structure. To further automate the process of consecutive blocks stacking, we present an alternative approach where the model learns the physics constraint through the interaction with the environment, bypassing the dedicated physics learning as in the former part of this work. In particular, we are interested in the type of tasks that require the agent to reach a given goal state that may be different for every new trial. Thereby we propose a deep reinforcement learning framework that learns policies for stacking tasks which are parametrized by a target structure.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1609.04861, arXiv:1711.00267, arXiv:1604.0006