Processing Collections of Geo-Referenced Images for Natural Disasters

After disaster strikes, emergency response teams need to work fast. In this context, crowdsourcing has emerged as a powerful mechanism where volunteers can help to process different tasks such as processing complex images using labeling and classification techniques. In this work we propose to address the problem of how to efficiently process large volumes of georeferenced images using crowdsourcing in the context of high risk such as natural disasters. Research on citizen science and crowdsourcing indicates that volunteers should be able to contribute in a useful way with a limited time to a project, supported by the results of usability studies. We present the design of a platform for real-time processing of georeferenced images. In particular, we focus on the interaction between the crowdsourcing and the volunteers connected to a P2P network.Facultad de Informátic

Processing Collections of Geo-Referenced Images for Natural Disasters

After disaster strikes, emergency response teams need to work fast. In this context, crowdsourcing has emerged as a powerful mechanism where volunteers can help to process different tasks such as processing complex images using labeling and classification techniques. In this work we propose to address the problem of how to efficiently process large volumes of georeferenced images using crowdsourcing in the context of high risk such as natural disasters. Research on citizen science and crowdsourcing indicates that volunteers should be able to contribute in a useful way with a limited time to a project, supported by the results of usability studies. We present the design of a platform for real-time processing of georeferenced images. In particular, we focus on the interaction between the crowdsourcing and the volunteers connected to a P2P network.Facultad de Informátic

A Survey of Asynchronous Programming Using Coroutines in the Internet of Things and Embedded Systems

Many Internet of Things and embedded projects are event-driven, and therefore require asynchronous and concurrent programming. Current proposals for C++20 suggest that coroutines will have native language support. It is timely to survey the current use of coroutines in embedded systems development. This paper investigates existing research which uses or describes coroutines on resource-constrained platforms. The existing research is analysed with regard to: software platform, hardware platform and capacity; use cases and intended benefits; and the application programming interface design used for coroutines. A systematic mapping study was performed, to select studies published between 2007 and 2018 which contained original research into the application of coroutines on resource-constrained platforms. An initial set of 566 candidate papers were reduced to only 35 after filters were applied, revealing the following taxonomy. The C & C++ programming languages were used by 22 studies out of 35. As regards hardware, 16 studies used 8- or 16-bit processors while 13 used 32-bit processors. The four most common use cases were concurrency (17 papers), network communication (15), sensor readings (9) and data flow (7). The leading intended benefits were code style and simplicity (12 papers), scheduling (9) and efficiency (8). A wide variety of techniques have been used to implement coroutines, including native macros, additional tool chain steps, new language features and non-portable assembly language. We conclude that there is widespread demand for coroutines on resource-constrained devices. Our findings suggest that there is significant demand for a formalised, stable, well-supported implementation of coroutines in C++, designed with consideration of the special needs of resource-constrained devices, and further that such an implementation would bring benefits specific to such devices.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, to be published in ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS

Game engines and MAS: tuplespace-based interaction in Unity3D

I Game Engines stanno acquisendo sempre più importanza sia in ambito industriale, dove permettono lo sviluppo di applicazioni moderne e videogiochi, sia in ambito di ricerca, in particolare nel contesto dei sistemi multi-agente (MAS). La loro capacità espressiva, unita al supporto di tecnologie e funzionalità innovative, permette la creazione di sistemi moderni e complessi in maniera più efficiente: il loro continuo avanzamento tecnologico li ha portati ad essere una realtà su cui fare affidamento nella produzione di vari applicativi diversi, come applicazioni di realtà aumentata/virtuale/mista, simulazioni immersive, costruzione di mondi virtuali e 3D, ecc. Ciononostante, soffrono la mancanza di proprie astrazioni e meccanismi che possano essere affidabili e utilizzati per aggredire la complessità durante il design di sistemi complessi. Il tentativo di sfruttare le caratteristiche della teoria dei MAS all'interno degli ambienti di sviluppo dei Game Engines procede secondo questa direzione: integrando le astrazioni costituenti i MAS all'interno dei Game Engines, con particolare riferimento ai modelli di coordinazione tra agenti, può portare a nuove soluzioni, riuscendo a risolvere problemi tecnologici grazie all'aiuto degli engine grafici. Questa tesi utilizza il Game Engine Unity3D proponendo due librerie C#, le quali sfruttano una precedente integrazione dello stesso framework con il Prolog per l'abilitazione di un modello di interazione e coordinazione basato su spazi di tuple, utilizzabile tramite l'implementazione di primitive LINDA. Le librerie offrono interfacce di programmazione (API) sfruttabili dai programmatori C# Unity3D per integrare nelle loro creazioni il supporto a tale modello, con una nuova modalità per la gestione della coordinazione tra oggetti in Unity3D e fornisce importanti proprietà, essendo fondamentale nel contesto dei MAS dal punto di vista dell'ingegnerizzazione di sistemi complessi e della gestione delle interazioni tra agenti

A Golden Age of Hardware Description Languages: Applying Programming Language Techniques to Improve Design Productivity

Leading experts have declared that there is an impending golden age of computer architecture. During this age, the rate at which architects will be able to innovate will be directly tied to the design and implementation of the hardware description languages they use. Thus, the programming languages community stands on the critical path to this new golden age. This implies that we are also on the cusp of a golden age of hardware description languages. In this paper, we discuss the intellectual challenges facing researchers interested in hardware description language design, compilers, and formal methods. The major theme will be identifying opportunities to apply programming language techniques to address issues in hardware design productivity. Then, we present a vision for a multi-language system that provides a framework for developing solutions to these intellectual problems. This vision is based on a meta-programmed host language combined with a core embedded hardware description language that is used as the basis for the research and development of a sea of domain-specific languages. Central to the design of this system is the core language which is based on an abstraction that provides a general mechanism for the composition of hardware components described in any language

Programmiersprachen und Rechenkonzepte

Seit 1984 veranstaltet die GI-Fachgruppe "Programmiersprachen und Rechenkonzepte" regelmäßig im Frühjahr einen Workshop im Physikzentrum Bad Honnef. Das Treffen dient in erster Linie dem gegenseitigen Kennenlernen, dem Erfahrungsaustausch, der Diskussion und der Vertiefung gegenseitiger Kontakte. In diesem Forum werden Vorträge und Demonstrationen sowohl bereits abgeschlossener als auch noch laufender Arbeiten vorgestellt, unter anderem (aber nicht ausschließlich) zu Themen wie - Sprachen, Sprachparadigmen, - Korrektheit von Entwurf und Implementierung, -Werkzeuge, -Software-/Hardware-Architekturen, -Spezifikation, Entwurf, - Validierung, Verifikation, - Implementierung, Integration, - Sicherheit (Safety und Security), - eingebettete Systeme, - hardware-nahe Programmierung. In diesem Technischen Bericht sind einige der präsentierten Arbeiten zusammen gestellt

Event-driven industrial robot control architecture for the Adept V+ platform

Modern industrial robotic systems are highly interconnected. They operate in a distributed environment and communicate with sensors, computer vision systems, mechatronic devices, and computational components. On the fundamental level, communication and coordination between all parties in such distributed system are characterized by discrete event behavior. The latter is largely attributed to the specifics of communication over the network, which, in terms, facilitates asynchronous programming and explicit event handling. In addition, on the conceptual level, events are an important building block for realizing reactivity and coordination. Eventdriven architecture has manifested its effectiveness for building loosely-coupled systems based on publish-subscribe middleware, either general-purpose or robotic-oriented. Despite all the advances in middleware, industrial robots remain difficult to program in context of distributed systems, to a large extent due to the limitation of the native robot platforms. This paper proposes an architecture for flexible event-based control of industrial robots based on the Adept V+ platform. The architecture is based on the robot controller providing a TCP/IP server and a collection of robot skills, and a high-level control module deployed to a dedicated computing device. The control module possesses bidirectional communication with the robot controller and publish/subscribe messaging with external systems. It is programmed in asynchronous style using pyadept, a Python library based on Python coroutines, AsyncIO event loop and ZeroMQ middleware. The proposed solution facilitates integration of Adept robots into distributed environments and building more flexible robotic solutions with eventbased logic

Equitable proof-of-work mining rewards

We present Reward-All Nakamoto-Consensus (Reward-All), a Proof-of-Work cryptocurrency that rewards each miner with a number of coins that is directly proportional to its individual mining power, rather than in proportion to its relative share of the entire network’s mining power as done in Bitcoin. Unlike their Bitcoin counterparts, miners in Reward-All do not have to win the leader-election process to earn coins, and only lose earned coins after block reorganizations of a configurable minimum length occur. We present a detailed specification of Reward-All, along with a prototype implementation, and an evaluation of its practicality and efficiency. Additionally, we provide an analysis of the security of Reward-All, where mining is modeled as a Markov Decision Process, and the advantages of optimal mining strategies are quantified. Under reasonable configurations, Reward-All achieves near-perfect incentive compatibility, and near-zero censorship susceptibility, for adversarial mining shares up to 45%, while retaining the same chain quality as Bitcoin’s Nakamoto Consensus (Nakamoto). However, Reward-All pays for these advantages with a regression in subversion gain resilience compared to Nakamoto. Furthermore, under Reward-All’s approach, the growth rate of the total coin supply correlates closely with the growth rate of mining power invested in the network. This enables miners to mint coins at a stable hash-based cost of production, and enables all rewarded coins to correspond to an approximately equal number of hashing attempts on average. Consequently, depending on the network transaction-fees, Reward-All improves miners’ waiting times for rewards, and incentivizes forming mining pools smaller than required in Bitcoin for an equal level of reward stability. Moreover, rewards in Reward-All exhibit significantly lower variance for non-majority miners compared to Nakamoto, enabling unprecedented reward stability.Open Acces