Improving digital image correlation in the TopoSEM Software Package

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Informatics EngineeringTopoSEM is a software package with the aim of reconstructing a 3D surface topography of a microscopic sample from a set of 2D Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images. TopoSEM is also able to produce a stability report on the calibration of the SEM hardware based solely on output images. One of the key steps in both of these workflows is the use of a Digital Image Correlation (DIC) algorithm, a no-contact imaging technique, to measure full-field displacements of an input image. A novel DIC implementation fine-tuned for 3D reconstructions was originally developed in MATLAB to satisfy the feature requirement of this project. However, near real-time usability of the TopoSEM is paramount for its users, and the main barrier towards this goal is the under-performing DIC implementation. This dissertation work ported the original MATLAB implementation of TopoSEM to sequential C++ and its performance was further optimised: (i) to improve memory accesses, (ii) to explore the available vector exten sions in each core of current multiprocessor chips processors to perform computationally intensive operations on vectors and matrices of single and double-precision floating point values, and (iii) to additionally improve the execution performance through parallelization on multi-core devices, by using multiple threads with a front wave propagation scheduler. The initial MATLAB implementation took 3279.4 seconds to compute the full-field displacement of a 2576 pixels by 2086 pixels image on a quad-core laptop. With all added improvements, the new parallel C++ version on the same laptop lowered the execution time to 1.52 seconds, achieving an overall speedup of 2158.TopoSEM é um programa cujo objetivo é reconstruir em 3D a topografia de uma amostra capturada por um mi croscópio electrónico de varrimento. Esta ferramenta é também capaz de gerar um relatório sobre a estabilidade da calibração do microscópio com base apenas em imagens capturadas. Um dos passos chave para ambas as funcionalidades trata-se da utilização de um algoritmo de Correlação Digital de Imagens (DIC), uma técnica de visão por computador que não envolve contacto direto com a amostra e que permite medir deslocamentos e deformações entre imagens. Criou-se uma nova implementação de DIC em MATLAB especialmente formulada para reconstrução 3D. No entanto, a capacidade de utilizar o TopoSEM em quase tempo real é fundamental para os seus utilizadores e a principal barreira para tal são os elevados tempos de execução da implementação em MATLAB. Esta dissertação portou o código de MATLAB para código sequencial em C++ e a sua performance foi melho rada: (i) para otimizar acessos a memória, (ii) para explorar extensões de vetorização disponíveis em hardware moderno para otimizar operações sobre vetores e matrizes, e (iii) para através de paralelização em dispositivos multi-core melhorar ainda mais a performance utilizando para isso vários fios de execução com um escalonador de propagação em onda. A implementação inicial em MATLAB demorava 3279.4 segundos para computar uma imagem com resolução de 2576 pixels por 2086 pixels num portátil quad-core. Com todas as melhorias de performance, a nova imple mentação paralela em C++ reduziu o tempo de execução para 1.52 segundos para as mesmas imagens no mesmo computador, atingindo um speedup de 2158

Re-engineering strategies for legacy software systems

Re-engineering can be described as a process for updating an existing system in order to meet new requirements. Restructuring and refactoring are activities that can be performed as a part of the re-engineering process. Supporting new requirements like migrating to new frameworks, new environments and architectural styles is essential for preservation of quality attributes like maintainability and evolvability. Many larger legacy systems slowly deteriorate over time in quality and adding new functionality becomes increasingly difficult and costly as technical debt accumulates. To modernize a legacy system and improve the cost effectiveness of implementing new features a re-engineering process is often needed. The alternative is to develop a completely new system but this can often lead to loss of years of accumulated functionality and be too expensive. Re-engineering strategies can be specialized and solve specific needs like cloud migration or be more generic in nature supporting several kinds of needs. Different approaches are suitable for different kinds of source and target systems. The choice of a re-engineering strategy is also influenced by organisational and business factors. The re-engineering of a highly tailored legacy system in a small organisation is different from re-engineering a scalable system in a large organisation. Generic and flexible solutions are well suited for especially smaller organisations with complex systems. The re-engineering strategy Renaissance was applied in a case study at Roima Intelligence Oy in order to find out if such a strategy is realistically usable, useful and valuable for a smaller organization. The results show that a re-engineering strategy is possible to be used with low overhead in order to prioritize different parts of the system and determining a suitable modernization plan. Renaissance was also shown to add value especially in the form of deeper understanding of the system and a structured way to evaluate different options for modernization. This is achieved through assessing the system from different views taking into account especially business and technical aspects. A lesson learned about Renaissance is that determining an optimal scope for the system assessment is challenging. The results are applicable for other organisations dealing with complex legacy systems with constrained resources. Limitations of the study are that the number of different kinds of re-engineering strategies discussed is small and more suitable strategies than Renaissance could be discovered with a systematic mapping study. The amount of experts participating in the process itself as well as the evaluation was also low, introducing some uncertainty to the validity of the results. Further research is needed in order to determine how specialized and generic re-engineering strategies compare in terms of needed resources and added value

Controlling Concurrent Change - A Multiview Approach Toward Updatable Vehicle Automation Systems

The development of SAE Level 3+ vehicles [{SAE}, 2014] poses new challenges not only for the functional development, but also for design and development processes. Such systems consist of a growing number of interconnected functional, as well as hardware and software components, making safety design increasingly difficult. In order to cope with emergent behavior at the vehicle level, thorough systems engineering becomes a key requirement, which enables traceability between different design viewpoints. Ensuring traceability is a key factor towards an efficient validation and verification of such systems. Formal models can in turn assist in keeping track of how the different viewpoints relate to each other and how the interplay of components affects the overall system behavior. Based on experience from the project Controlling Concurrent Change, this paper presents an approach towards model-based integration and verification of a cause effect chain for a component-based vehicle automation system. It reasons on a cross-layer model of the resulting system, which covers necessary aspects of a design in individual architectural views, e.g. safety and timing. In the synthesis stage of integration, our approach is capable of inserting enforcement mechanisms into the design to ensure adherence to the model. We present a use case description for an environment perception system, starting with a functional architecture, which is the basis for componentization of the cause effect chain. By tying the vehicle architecture to the cross-layer integration model, we are able to map the reasoning done during verification to vehicle behavior

PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT UNTUK SISWA BERKEBUTUHAN KHUSUS DI SMK INKLUSIF

Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi guru menemui kendala pada saat melakukan penilaian praktek untuk siswa berkebutuhan khusus di Sekolah Menengah Kejuruan dan belum tersedianya format penilaian performance assessment menjadi dasar dalam melakukan penelitian ini. Metode penelitian yang digunakan penulis berupa penelitian design based research dalam membuat pengembangan instrumen performance assessment untuk siswa berkebutuhan khusus. Sampel dalam penelitian ini terdiri dari 4 siswa berkebutuhan khusus berkategori autis. Hasil penelitian ini menghasilkan performance assessment kompetensi pengolahan makanan Indonesia yang sudah di validasi oleh 7 orang ahli berupa rubrik penilaian holistik. Hasil uji coba deskripsi kerja diperoleh hasil langkah-langkah kerja yang dilakukan oleh siswa sesuai dengan rubrik penilaian yang telah dibuat. Hasil implementasi produk performance assessment dilakukan dengan penelitian subjek tunggal, subjek yang diamati yaitu gerakan siswa berkebutuhan khusus pada saat melaksanakan praktek. Hasil implementasi produk pada ketercapaian waktu kompetensi membuat gado-gado diperoleh waktu 142 menit, kompetensi membuat urap sayur mendapat waktu 134 menit, kompetensi membuat urap sayur diperoleh waktu 145 menit, kompetensi membuat karedok diperoleh waktu 125 menit sehingga siswa berkebutuhan khusus membutuhkan waktu yang lebih lama pada saat melaksanakan praktek dibanding siswa tidak berkebutuhan khusus. Hasil ketercapaian kerja siswa dalam kompetensi gado-gado memperoleh skor 76, kompetensi pecel sayur diperoleh skor 74, kompetensi urap sayur diperoleh skor 78 dan kompetensi membuat karedok mendapat skor 72, hal ini menunjukkan siswa berkebutuhan khusus mendapat skor cukup baik. Kata Kunci : Performance assessment ,siswa berkebutuhan khusus, SMK inklusif, This research is motivated by teachers encountering obstacles when conducting practice assessments for students with special needs in Vocational High School and the unavailability of performance assessment assessment formats to be the basis in conducting this research. The research method used by the author in the form of research design based research in making the development of performance assessment instruments for students with special needs. The sample in this study consists of 4 students with special needs categorized autism. The results of this study resulted in performance assessment of Indonesian food processing competencies that have been validated by 7 experts in the form of a holistic assessment rubric. Result of job description test obtained by result of work steps undertaken by student in accordance with rubric of assessment which have been made. The results of the product performance assessment implementation is done by single subject research, the subject observed is the movement of students with special needs when carrying out the practice. The results of product implementation on the competency time achievement made the gado-gado get time 142 minutes, the competence to make vegetable urap get 134 minutes, the competence to make vegetable urap obtained time 145 minutes, competence to make karedok obtained time 125 minutes so that students with special needs takes a longer time at the time of carrying out the practice than the students with no special needs. The result of the work achievement of students in the competence of gado-gado got score 76, the competence of the vegetable pecel obtained the score of 74, the competence of vegetable urap obtained by score 78 and the competence to make karedok got score 72, this shows the students with special needs got good score. Keywords : Performance assessment, students with special needs, inclusive vocational high schoo

Integration of Information Technologies in Enterprise Application Development

Healthcare enterprises are disconnected. In the era of integrated information systems and Internet explosion, the necessity of information systems integration reside from business process evolution, on the one hand, and from information technology tendencies, on the other hand. In order to become more efficient and adaptive to change, healthcare organizations are tremendously preoccupied of business process automation, flexibility and complexity. The need of information systems integration arise from these goals, explaining, at the same time, the special interest in EAI. Extensible software integration architectures and business orientation of process modeling and information systems functionalities, the same as open-connectivity, accessibility and virtualization lead to most suitable integration solutions: SOA and BPM architectural styles in a cloud computing environment

A Multi-Layer and Multi-Tenant Cloud Assurance Evaluation Methodology

Data with high security requirements is being processed and stored with increasing frequency in the Cloud. To guarantee that the data is being dealt in a secure manner we investigate the applicability of Assurance methodologies. In a typical Cloud environment the setup of multiple layers and different stakeholders determines security properties of individual components that are used to compose Cloud applications. We present a methodology adapted from Common Criteria for aggregating information reflecting the security properties of individual constituent components of Cloud applications. This aggregated information is used to categorise overall application security in terms of Assurance Levels and to provide a continuous assurance level evaluation. It gives the service owner an overview of the security of his service, without requiring detailed manual analyses of log files

A Component-Based Approach for Securing Indoor Home Care Applications

eHealth systems have adopted recent advances on sensing technologies together with advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to provide people-centered services that improve the quality of life of an increasingly elderly population. As these eHealth services are founded on the acquisition and processing of sensitive data (e.g., personal details, diagnosis, treatments and medical history), any security threat would damage the public's confidence in them. This paper proposes a solution for the design and runtime management of indoor eHealth applications with security requirements. The proposal allows applications definition customized to patient particularities, including the early detection of health deterioration and suitable reaction (events) as well as security needs. At runtime, security support is twofold. A secured component-based platform supervises applications execution and provides events management, whilst the security of the communications among application components is also guaranteed. Additionally, the proposed event management scheme adopts the fog computing paradigm to enable local event related data storage and processing, thus saving communication bandwidth when communicating with the cloud. As a proof of concept, this proposal has been validated through the monitoring of the health status in diabetic patients at a nursing home.This work was financed under project DPI2015-68602-R (MINECO/FEDER, UE), UPV/EHU under project PPG17/56 and GV/EJ under recognized research group IT914-16