607 research outputs found
A survey of virtual prototyping techniques for mechanical product development
Repeated, efficient, and extensive use of prototypes is a vital activity that can make the difference between successful and unsuccessful entry of new products into the competitive world market. In this respect, physical prototyping can prove to be very lengthy and expensive, especially if modifications resulting from design reviews involve tool redesign. The availability and affordability of advanced computer technology has paved the way for increasing utilization of prototypes that are digital and created in computer-based environments, i.e. they are virtual as opposed to being physical. The technology for using virtual prototypes was pioneered and adopted initially by large automotive and aerospace industries. Small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing industry also need to take virtual prototyping (VP) technology more seriously in order to exploit the benefits. VP is becoming very advanced and may eventually dominate the product development process. However, physical prototypes will still be required for the near future, albeit less frequently. This paper presents a general survey of the available VP techniques and highlights some of the most important developments and research issues while providing sources for further reference. The purpose of the paper is to provide potential SME users with a broad picture of the field of VP and to identify issues and information relevant to the deployment and implementation of VP technology
Incremental Product Release of Java Applications using Dynamic Updates
With the evolution of the software development process, claimed by the new demands of the market, software development has changed considerably since its early days. In order to support the increase in complexity and dimensions of new software product, software engineers have developed new tools and methodologies in order to cope with the market requests. Despite all these advances, a software product can still be in need of changes after the delivery. These modifications are traditionally divided as changes to the functionality of the software that address new unanticipated requirements, changes that allow the software to run on a different environment, changes that fix errors and improvements that can avoid future problems. The maintenance and update process of an application have traditionally involved the classic halt, redeploy and restart scheme. However, this approach cannot be used in every scenario; consider as an example a high availability e-commerce system. For some companies the cost of a system shutdown can be prohibitive in terms of economic outlay, safety and the availability of service.
A Dynamic Software Updating system (DSU) allows overcoming the update problem enabling applications to be updated without recurring to the halt-update-redeploy scheme.. Many DSU systems have been developed since the â70s, each of them comes with some peculiar properties defining on-the-run application updateability with a certain level of granularity by allowing only certain subset of modifications to the code.
In this work we examine a software-based DSU system called Javeleon, developed at the University of Southern Denmark â MĂŠrsk Mc-Kinney MĂžller Institute in collaboration with Sun Microsystems. A novel feature of Javeleon is the support of full redefinition of classes and changes to the type hierarchy. Following the evolution of a case study application we will show how the capability of dynamically updating software with Javeleon impacts on software development process. By working with Javeleon we will also test the transparency of this system towards the programmer
Task-based Adaptation of Graphical Content in Smart Visual Interfaces
To be effective visual representations must be adapted to their respective context of use, especially in so-called Smart Visual Interfaces striving to present specifically those information required for the task at hand. This thesis proposes a generic approach that facilitate the automatic generation of task-specific visual representations from suitable task descriptions. It is discussed how the approach is applied to four principal content types raster images, 2D vector and 3D graphics as well as data visualizations, and how existing display techniques can be integrated into the approach.Effektive visuelle ReprĂ€sentationen mĂŒssen an den jeweiligen Nutzungskontext angepasst sein, insbesondere in sog. Smart Visual Interfaces, welche anstreben, möglichst genau fĂŒr die aktuelle Aufgabe benötigte Informationen anzubieten. Diese Arbeit entwirft einen generischen Ansatz zur automatischen Erzeugung aufgabenspezifischer Darstellungen anhand geeigneter Aufgabenbeschreibungen. Es wird gezeigt, wie dieser Ansatz auf vier grundlegende Inhaltstypen Rasterbilder, 2D-Vektor- und 3D-Grafik sowie Datenvisualisierungen anwendbar ist, und wie existierende Darstellungstechniken integrierbar sind
LabKey Server: An open source platform for scientific data integration, analysis and collaboration
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Broad-based collaborations are becoming increasingly common among disease researchers. For example, the Global HIV Enterprise has united cross-disciplinary consortia to speed progress towards HIV vaccines through coordinated research across the boundaries of institutions, continents and specialties. New, end-to-end software tools for data and specimen management are necessary to achieve the ambitious goals of such alliances. These tools must enable researchers to organize and integrate heterogeneous data early in the discovery process, standardize processes, gain new insights into pooled data and collaborate securely.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To meet these needs, we enhanced the LabKey Server platform, formerly known as CPAS. This freely available, open source software is maintained by professional engineers who use commercially proven practices for software development and maintenance. Recent enhancements support: (i) Submitting specimens requests across collaborating organizations (ii) Graphically defining new experimental data types, metadata and wizards for data collection (iii) Transitioning experimental results from a multiplicity of spreadsheets to custom tables in a shared database (iv) Securely organizing, integrating, analyzing, visualizing and sharing diverse data types, from clinical records to specimens to complex assays (v) Interacting dynamically with external data sources (vi) Tracking study participants and cohorts over time (vii) Developing custom interfaces using client libraries (viii) Authoring custom visualizations in a built-in R scripting environment.</p> <p>Diverse research organizations have adopted and adapted LabKey Server, including consortia within the Global HIV Enterprise. Atlas is an installation of LabKey Server that has been tailored to serve these consortia. It is in production use and demonstrates the core capabilities of LabKey Server. Atlas now has over 2,800 active user accounts originating from approximately 36 countries and 350 organizations. It tracks roughly 27,000 assay runs, 860,000 specimen vials and 1,300,000 vial transfers.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Sharing data, analysis tools and infrastructure can speed the efforts of large research consortia by enhancing efficiency and enabling new insights. The Atlas installation of LabKey Server demonstrates the utility of the LabKey platform for collaborative research. Stable, supported builds of LabKey Server are freely available for download at <url>http://www.labkey.org</url>. Documentation and source code are available under the Apache License 2.0.</p
Layoutautomatisierung im analogen IC-Entwurf mit formalisiertem und nicht-formalisiertem Expertenwissen
After more than three decades of electronic design automation, most layouts for analog integrated circuits are still handcrafted in a laborious manual fashion today. Obverse to the highly automated synthesis tools in the digital domain (coping with the quantitative difficulty of packing more and more components onto a single chip â a desire well known as More Moore), analog layout automation struggles with the many diverse and heavily correlated functional requirements that turn the analog design problem into a More than Moore challenge. Facing this qualitative complexity, seasoned layout engineers rely on their comprehensive expert knowledge to consider all design constraints that uncompromisingly need to be satisfied. This usually involves both formally specified and nonformally communicated pieces of expert knowledge, which entails an explicit and implicit consideration of design constraints, respectively.
Existing automation approaches can be basically divided into optimization algorithms (where constraint consideration occurs explicitly) and procedural generators (where constraints can only be taken into account implicitly). As investigated in this thesis, these two automation strategies follow two fundamentally different paradigms denoted as top-down automation and bottom-up automation. The major trait of top-down automation is that it requires a thorough formalization of the problem to enable a self-intelligent solution finding, whereas a bottom-up automatism âcontrolled by parametersâ merely reproduces solutions that have been preconceived by a layout expert in advance. Since the strengths of one paradigm may compensate the weaknesses of the other, it is assumed that a combination of both paradigms âcalled bottom-up meets top-downâ has much more potential to tackle the analog design problem in its entirety than either optimization-based or generator-based approaches alone.
Against this background, the thesis at hand presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), an interdisciplinary methodology addressing the design problem with a decentralized multi-agent system. Its basic principle, similar to the roundup of a sheep herd, is to let responsive mobile layout modules (implemented as context-aware procedural generators) interact with each other inside a user-defined layout zone. Each module is allowed to autonomously move, rotate and deform itself, while a supervising control organ successively tightens the layout zone to steer the interaction towards increasingly compact (and constraint compliant) layout arrangements. Considering various principles of self-organization and incorporating ideas from existing decentralized systems, SWARM is able to evoke the phenomenon of emergence: although each module only has a limited viewpoint and selfishly pursues its personal objectives, remarkable overall solutions can emerge on the global scale.
Several examples exhibit this emergent behavior in SWARM, and it is particularly interesting that even optimal solutions can arise from the module interaction. Further examples demonstrate SWARMâs suitability for floorplanning purposes and its application to practical place-and-route problems. The latter illustrates how the interacting modules take care of their respective design requirements implicitly (i.e., bottom-up) while simultaneously paying respect to high level constraints (such as the layout outline imposed top-down by the supervising control organ). Experimental results show that SWARM can outperform optimization algorithms and procedural generators both in terms of layout quality and design productivity. From an academic point of view, SWARMâs grand achievement is to tap fertile virgin soil for future works on novel bottom-up meets top-down automatisms. These may one day be the key to close the automation gap in analog layout design.Nach mehr als drei Jahrzehnten Entwurfsautomatisierung werden die meisten Layouts fĂŒr analoge integrierte Schaltkreise heute immer noch in aufwĂ€ndiger Handarbeit entworfen. GegenĂŒber den hochautomatisierten Synthesewerkzeugen im Digitalbereich (die sich mit dem quantitativen Problem auseinandersetzen, mehr und mehr Komponenten auf einem einzelnen Chip unterzubringen â bestens bekannt als More Moore) kĂ€mpft die analoge Layoutautomatisierung mit den vielen verschiedenen und stark korrelierten funktionalen Anforderungen, die das analoge Entwurfsproblem zu einer More than Moore Herausforderung machen. Angesichts dieser qualitativen KomplexitĂ€t bedarf es des umfassenden Expertenwissens erfahrener Layouter um sĂ€mtliche Entwurfsconstraints, die zwingend eingehalten werden mĂŒssen, zu berĂŒcksichtigen. Meist beinhaltet dies formal spezifiziertes als auch nicht-formal ĂŒbermitteltes Expertenwissen, was eine explizite bzw. implizite Constraint BerĂŒcksichtigung nach sich zieht.
Existierende AutomatisierungsansĂ€tze können grundsĂ€tzlich unterteilt werden in Optimierungsalgorithmen (wo die Constraint BerĂŒcksichtigung explizit erfolgt) und prozedurale Generatoren (die Constraints nur implizit berĂŒcksichtigen können). Wie in dieser Arbeit eruiert wird, folgen diese beiden Automatisierungsstrategien zwei grundlegend unterschiedlichen Paradigmen, bezeichnet als top-down Automatisierung und bottom-up Automatisierung. Wesentliches Merkmal der top-down Automatisierung ist die Notwendigkeit einer umfassenden Problemformalisierung um eine eigenintelligente Lösungsfindung zu ermöglichen, wĂ€hrend ein bottom-up Automatismus âparametergesteuertâ lediglich Lösungen reproduziert, die vorab von einem Layoutexperten vorgedacht wurden. Da die StĂ€rken des einen Paradigmas die SchwĂ€chen des anderen ausgleichen können, ist anzunehmen, dass eine Kombination beider Paradigmen âgenannt bottom-up meets top downâ weitaus mehr Potenzial hat, das analoge Entwurfsproblem in seiner Gesamtheit zu lösen als optimierungsbasierte oder generatorbasierte AnsĂ€tze fĂŒr sich allein. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt die vorliegende Arbeit Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM) vor, eine interdisziplinĂ€re Methodik, die das Entwurfsproblem mit einem dezentralisierten Multi-Agenten-System angeht. Das Grundprinzip besteht darin, Ă€hnlich dem Zusammentreiben einer Schafherde, reaktionsfĂ€hige mobile Layoutmodule (realisiert als kontextbewusste prozedurale Generatoren) in einer benutzerdefinierten Layoutzone interagieren zu lassen. Jedes Modul darf sich selbstĂ€ndig bewegen, drehen und verformen, wobei ein ĂŒbergeordnetes Kontrollorgan die Zone schrittweise verkleinert, um die Interaktion auf zunehmend kompakte (und constraintkonforme) Layoutanordnungen hinzulenken. Durch die BerĂŒcksichtigung diverser SelbstorganisationsgrundsĂ€tze und die Einarbeitung von Ideen bestehender dezentralisierter Systeme ist SWARM in der Lage, das PhĂ€nomen der Emergenz hervorzurufen: obwohl jedes Modul nur eine begrenzte Sichtweise hat und egoistisch seine eigenen Ziele verfolgt, können sich auf globaler Ebene bemerkenswerte Gesamtlösungen herausbilden.
Mehrere Beispiele veranschaulichen dieses emergente Verhalten in SWARM, wobei besonders interessant ist, dass sogar optimale Lösungen aus der Modulinteraktion entstehen können. Weitere Beispiele demonstrieren SWARMs Eignung zwecks Floorplanning sowie die Anwendung auf praktische Place-and-Route Probleme. Letzteres verdeutlicht, wie die interagierenden Module ihre jeweiligen Entwurfsanforderungen implizit (also: bottom-up) beachten, wĂ€hrend sie gleichzeitig High-Level-Constraints berĂŒcksichtigen (z.B. die Layoutkontur, die top-down vom ĂŒbergeordneten Kontrollorgan auferlegt wird). Experimentelle Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Optimierungsalgorithmen und prozedurale Generatoren von SWARM sowohl bezĂŒglich LayoutqualitĂ€t als auch EntwurfsproduktivitĂ€t ĂŒbertroffen werden können. Aus akademischer Sicht besteht SWARMs groĂe Errungenschaft in der ErschlieĂung fruchtbaren Neulands fĂŒr zukĂŒnftige Arbeiten an neuartigen bottom-up meets top-down Automatismen. Diese könnten eines Tages der SchlĂŒssel sein, um die AutomatisierungslĂŒcke im analogen Layoutentwurf zu schlieĂen
Versioning in Interactive Systems
Dealing with past states of an interactive system is often difficult, and users often resort to unwieldy methods such as saving and naming multiple copies. Versioning tools can help users save and manipulate different versions of a document, but traditional tools designed for coding are often unsuitable for interactive systems. Supporting versioning in interactive systems requires investigation of how users think about versions and how they want to access and manipulate past states. We first surveyed users to understand what a âversionâ means to them in the context of digital interactive work, and the circumstances under which they create new versions or go back to previous ones. We then built a versioning tool that can store versions using a variety of explicit and implicit mechanisms and shows a graphical representation of the version tree to allow easy inspection and manipulation. To observe how users used versions in different work contexts, we tested our versioning tool in two interactive systems â a game level editor and a web analysis tool. We report several new findings about how users of interactive systems create versions and use them as undo alternatives, exploring options, and planning future work. Our results show that versioning can be a valuable component that improves the power and usability of interactive systems. The new understanding that we gained about versioning in interactive environments by developing and evaluating our custom version tool can help us design more effective versioning tools for interactive systems
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