Plataforma para desenvolvimento rápido de aplicações sensíveis ao contexto baseadas em dispositivos móveis

Este trabalho apresenta uma plataforma, denominada Integrated Virtual Operator (IVO), que suporta o desenvolvimento rápido de aplicações móveis sensíveis ao contexto por utilizadores sem nenhum conhecimento de programação. Esta plataforma é composta por um conjunto de ferramentas de composição que fornecem um ambiente de programação visual, onde os utilizadores podem facilmente definir condições de contexto e associá-las a workflows com actividades disponíveis na plataforma. É fornecido um runtime para os dispositivos móveis, que disponibiliza o suporte necessário para a execução destas aplicações. Desta forma, sempre que o contexto definido ocorrer, o dispositivo móvel do utilizador reproduzirá imediatamente o comportamento desejado, sem necessidade da sua intervenção. As aplicações desenvolvidas usando o IVO podem facilmente ser disponibilizadas a outros utilizadores através de uma plataforma web distribuída. É ainda apresentada neste trabalho, a avaliação da plataforma feita ao nível das ferramentas de composição e ao nível do runtime que corre nos dispositivos móveis; ABSTRACT:This work presents a platform called Integrated Virtual Operator (IVO) that supports the rapid development of context-aware applications by users with no programming skills. This platform is composed by a toolset of composite tools that provide a visual programming environment, where users can easily define a number of context conditions and associate them with a workflow of activities available within the platform. A mobile runtime layer is provided by another component of the system, which offers the necessary support for the execution of such applications. This way, whenever the defined context occurs, the user’s mobile device will immediately produce the intended behaviour, with no need for user intervention. The applications developed using the IVO can easily be made available to other users through a distributed web platform. This work also presents, the evaluation of the platform made at the composition tools and at the runtime that runs on mobile devices

Supporting the Mobile In-situ Authoring of Locative Media in Rural Places: Design and Expert Evaluation of the SMAT app

Providing users with carefully authored Locative media experiences (which can be consumed via their GPS equipped smartphones or tablets) has significant potential for fostering a strong engagement with their current surroundings. However, the availability of mobile tools to support the authoring of locative media experiences in-situ, and by non-technical users, remains scarce. In this article we present the design and field-trial expert evaluation of a mobile app developed under the SHARC project (Investigating Technology Support for the Shared Curation of Local History in a Rural Community). The app is named SMAT (SHARC Mobile Authoring Tool) and supports the authoring of Locative Media experiences with a focus on the creation of POIs (Points of Interest) and associated geo-fences which trigger the pushed delivery of media items such as photos, audio clips, etc. One important requirement of SMAT is the ability to support authoring in places where connectivity is intermittent or unavailable, e.g. many rural areas

Technologie en innovatie in Vlaanderen: Prioriteiten.

Vlaanderen;

Ami-deu : un cadre sémantique pour des applications adaptables dans des environnements intelligents

Cette thèse vise à étendre l’utilisation de l'Internet des objets (IdO) en facilitant le développement d’applications par des personnes non experts en développement logiciel. La thèse propose une nouvelle approche pour augmenter la sémantique des applications d’IdO et l’implication des experts du domaine dans le développement d’applications sensibles au contexte. Notre approche permet de gérer le contexte changeant de l’environnement et de générer des applications qui s’exécutent dans plusieurs environnements intelligents pour fournir des actions requises dans divers contextes. Notre approche est mise en œuvre dans un cadriciel (AmI-DEU) qui inclut les composants pour le développement d’applications IdO. AmI-DEU intègre les services d’environnement, favorise l’interaction de l’utilisateur et fournit les moyens de représenter le domaine d’application, le profil de l’utilisateur et les intentions de l’utilisateur. Le cadriciel permet la définition d’applications IoT avec une intention d’activité autodécrite qui contient les connaissances requises pour réaliser l’activité. Ensuite, le cadriciel génère Intention as a Context (IaaC), qui comprend une intention d’activité autodécrite avec des connaissances colligées à évaluer pour une meilleure adaptation dans des environnements intelligents. La sémantique de l’AmI-DEU est basée sur celle du ContextAA (Context-Aware Agents) – une plateforme pour fournir une connaissance du contexte dans plusieurs environnements. Le cadriciel effectue une compilation des connaissances par des règles et l'appariement sémantique pour produire des applications IdO autonomes capables de s’exécuter en ContextAA. AmI- DEU inclut également un outil de développement visuel pour le développement et le déploiement rapide d'applications sur ContextAA. L'interface graphique d’AmI-DEU adopte la métaphore du flux avec des aides visuelles pour simplifier le développement d'applications en permettant des définitions de règles étape par étape. Dans le cadre de l’expérimentation, AmI-DEU comprend un banc d’essai pour le développement d’applications IdO. Les résultats expérimentaux montrent une optimisation sémantique potentielle des ressources pour les applications IoT dynamiques dans les maisons intelligentes et les villes intelligentes. Notre approche favorise l'adoption de la technologie pour améliorer le bienêtre et la qualité de vie des personnes. Cette thèse se termine par des orientations de recherche que le cadriciel AmI-DEU dévoile pour réaliser des environnements intelligents omniprésents fournissant des adaptations appropriées pour soutenir les intentions des personnes.Abstract: This thesis aims at expanding the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) by facilitating the development of applications by people who are not experts in software development. The thesis proposes a new approach to augment IoT applications’ semantics and domain expert involvement in context-aware application development. Our approach enables us to manage the changing environment context and generate applications that run in multiple smart environments to provide required actions in diverse settings. Our approach is implemented in a framework (AmI-DEU) that includes the components for IoT application development. AmI- DEU integrates environment services, promotes end-user interaction, and provides the means to represent the application domain, end-user profile, and end-user intentions. The framework enables the definition of IoT applications with a self-described activity intention that contains the required knowledge to achieve the activity. Then, the framework generates Intention as a Context (IaaC), which includes a self-described activity intention with compiled knowledge to be assessed for augmented adaptations in smart environments. AmI-DEU framework semantics adopts ContextAA (Context-Aware Agents) – a platform to provide context-awareness in multiple environments. The framework performs a knowledge compilation by rules and semantic matching to produce autonomic IoT applications to run in ContextAA. AmI-DEU also includes a visual tool for quick application development and deployment to ContextAA. The AmI-DEU GUI adopts the flow metaphor with visual aids to simplify developing applications by allowing step-by-step rule definitions. As part of the experimentation, AmI-DEU includes a testbed for IoT application development. Experimental results show a potential semantic optimization for dynamic IoT applications in smart homes and smart cities. Our approach promotes technology adoption to improve people’s well-being and quality of life. This thesis concludes with research directions that the AmI-DEU framework uncovers to achieve pervasive smart environments providing suitable adaptations to support people’s intentions

Performance evaluation of cooperation strategies for m-health services and applications

Health telematics are becoming a major improvement for patients’ lives, especially for disabled, elderly, and chronically ill people. Information and communication technologies have rapidly grown along with the mobile Internet concept of anywhere and anytime connection. In this context, Mobile Health (m-Health) proposes healthcare services delivering, overcoming geographical, temporal and even organizational barriers. Pervasive and m-Health services aim to respond several emerging problems in health services, including the increasing number of chronic diseases related to lifestyle, high costs in existing national health services, the need to empower patients and families to self-care and manage their own healthcare, and the need to provide direct access to health services, regardless the time and place. Mobile Health (m- Health) systems include the use of mobile devices and applications that interact with patients and caretakers. However, mobile devices have several constraints (such as, processor, energy, and storage resource limitations), affecting the quality of service and user experience. Architectures based on mobile devices and wireless communications presents several challenged issues and constraints, such as, battery and storage capacity, broadcast constraints, interferences, disconnections, noises, limited bandwidths, and network delays. In this sense, cooperation-based approaches are presented as a solution to solve such limitations, focusing on increasing network connectivity, communication rates, and reliability. Cooperation is an important research topic that has been growing in recent years. With the advent of wireless networks, several recent studies present cooperation mechanisms and algorithms as a solution to improve wireless networks performance. In the absence of a stable network infrastructure, mobile nodes cooperate with each other performing all networking functionalities. For example, it can support intermediate nodes forwarding packets between two distant nodes. This Thesis proposes a novel cooperation strategy for m-Health services and applications. This reputation-based scheme uses a Web-service to handle all the nodes reputation and networking permissions. Its main goal is to provide Internet services to mobile devices without network connectivity through cooperation with neighbor devices. Therefore resolving the above mentioned network problems and resulting in a major improvement for m-Health network architectures performances. A performance evaluation of this proposal through a real network scenario demonstrating and validating this cooperative scheme using a real m-Health application is presented. A cryptography solution for m-Health applications under cooperative environments, called DE4MHA, is also proposed and evaluated using the same real network scenario and the same m-Health application. Finally, this work proposes, a generalized cooperative application framework, called MobiCoop, that extends the incentive-based cooperative scheme for m-Health applications for all mobile applications. Its performance evaluation is also presented through a real network scenario demonstrating and validating MobiCoop using different mobile applications

Herramienta para la creación de elementos posicionados

Las aplicaciones móviles basadas en posicionamiento brindan a los usuarios, en determinadas posiciones relevantes, información (contenido) acorde al dominio de dicha aplicación. Estas aplicaciones pueden estar destinadas a proveer servicios tanto sea en espacios indoor como outdoor, o en una combinación de ambos. Esto genera la necesidad de que la aplicación cuente con la representación de dicho espacio para poder guiar al usuario mientras se mueve en el mismo. La aplicación puede estar planteada (acorde a su naturaleza) para que el usuario recorra posiciones, por ejemplo, libremente o siguiendo un recorrido secuencial. Por otra parte, algunas de las herramientas existentes están acopladas al mecanismo de sensado, lo que restringe y limita el dominio de la aplicación y en otros casos, dan soporte para la construcción in-situ, es decir, permiten construir elementos en el lugar donde la aplicación correrá permitiendo al usuario considerar características del ambiente. Es por lo mencionado anteriormente que surge la motivación de desarrollar una herramienta para usuarios no expertos que permita construir elementos posicionados tanto para espacios indoor como outdoor.Facultad de Informátic

Herramienta para la creación de elementos posicionados

Las aplicaciones móviles basadas en posicionamiento brindan a los usuarios, en determinadas posiciones relevantes, información (contenido) acorde al dominio de dicha aplicación. Estas aplicaciones pueden estar destinadas a proveer servicios tanto sea en espacios indoor como outdoor, o en una combinación de ambos. Esto genera la necesidad de que la aplicación cuente con la representación de dicho espacio para poder guiar al usuario mientras se mueve en el mismo. La aplicación puede estar planteada (acorde a su naturaleza) para que el usuario recorra posiciones, por ejemplo, libremente o siguiendo un recorrido secuencial. Por otra parte, algunas de las herramientas existentes están acopladas al mecanismo de sensado, lo que restringe y limita el dominio de la aplicación y en otros casos, dan soporte para la construcción in-situ, es decir, permiten construir elementos en el lugar donde la aplicación correrá permitiendo al usuario considerar características del ambiente. Es por lo mencionado anteriormente que surge la motivación de desarrollar una herramienta para usuarios no expertos que permita construir elementos posicionados tanto para espacios indoor como outdoor.Facultad de Informátic

Herramienta para la creación de elementos posicionados

Las aplicaciones móviles basadas en posicionamiento brindan a los usuarios, en determinadas posiciones relevantes, información (contenido) acorde al dominio de dicha aplicación. Estas aplicaciones pueden estar destinadas a proveer servicios tanto sea en espacios indoor como outdoor, o en una combinación de ambos. Esto genera la necesidad de que la aplicación cuente con la representación de dicho espacio para poder guiar al usuario mientras se mueve en el mismo. La aplicación puede estar planteada (acorde a su naturaleza) para que el usuario recorra posiciones, por ejemplo, libremente o siguiendo un recorrido secuencial. Por otra parte, algunas de las herramientas existentes están acopladas al mecanismo de sensado, lo que restringe y limita el dominio de la aplicación y en otros casos, dan soporte para la construcción in-situ, es decir, permiten construir elementos en el lugar donde la aplicación correrá permitiendo al usuario considerar características del ambiente. Es por lo mencionado anteriormente que surge la motivación de desarrollar una herramienta para usuarios no expertos que permita construir elementos posicionados tanto para espacios indoor como outdoor.Facultad de Informátic