Measuring design compliance using neural language models: An automotive case study

As the modern vehicle becomes more software-defined, it is beginning to take significant effort to avoid serious regression in software design. This is because automotive software architects rely largely upon manual review of code to spot deviations from specified design principles. Such an approach is both inefficient and prone to error. In recent days, neural language models pre-trained on source code are beginning to be used for automating a variety of programming tasks. In this work, we extend the application of such a Programming Language Model (PLM) to automate the assessment of design compliance. Using a PLM, we construct a system that assesses whether a set of query programs comply with Controller-Handler, a design pattern specified to ensure hardware abstraction in automotive control software. The assessment is based upon measuring whether the geometrical arrangement of query program embeddings, extracted from the PLM, aligns with that of a set of known implementations of the pattern. The level of alignment is then transformed into an interpretable measure of compliance. Using a controlled experiment, we demonstrate that our technique determines compliance with a precision of 92%. Also, using expert review to calibrate the automated assessment, we introduce a protocol to determine the nature of the violation, helping eventual refactoring. Results from this work indicate that neural language models can provide valuable assistance to human architects in assessing and fixing violations in automotive software design

Autonomous Vehicle and Smart Traffic

Long-term forecasting of technology has become extremely difficult due to the rapid realization of any suggested idea. Communication and software technologies can compensate for the problems that may arise during the transition period between idea generation and realization. However, this rapid process can cause problems for the automotive industry and transportation systems.Autonomous vehicles are currently a hot topic within the transportation sector. This development is related to the compatibility of vehicles of the near future with the development of the infrastructure on which these vehicles will be based. There are certain problems regarding the solutions that are currently being worked on, such as how autonomous should vehicles be, their control mechanisms, driving safety, energy requirements, and environmental use. The problem is not just about the design of autonomous vehicles. The user transportation systems of these vehicles also need problem-free solutions. The problem should not only be seen as financial because sociological effects are an important part of this feature.In this book, valuable research on the modeling, systems, transportation, technological necessity, and logistics of autonomous vehicles is presented. The content of the book will help researchers to create ideas for their future studies and to open up the discussion of autonomous vehicles

AGILE–STAGE GATE MANAGEMENT (ASGM): NPD IMPLEMENTATION PRACTICES FROM GLOBAL FIRMS DEVELOPING COMPLEX, PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

Stage Gate Management (SGM) has been used successfully by global organizations to direct the New Product Development process (NPD) for years, recently a new variant of this venerable approach has emerged. Researchers and firms have begun to intersperse elements of Agile, as popularized for the development of software, to create an Agile – Stage Gate Management (ASGM) hybrid NPD framework. Agile practitioners believe in process waste reduction, an intense focus on customers, and the creation of nimble entrepreneurial project teams, which, for software products, has positively impacted development time to market, resource utilization, and market success, more generally, improved business outcomes. For NPD professionals responsible for physical products, not solely software, do these Agile tenets continue to produce results? With minimal available research, a Grounded Theory study was conducted to inductively create theory from the implementation of ASGM, specifically for firms that design, develop, and manufacture physical products. Twenty-nine experienced industry professionals were interviewed from four global companies which represented five distinct Business Units (BU) which competed in a variety of markets and industries around the world. From these interviews, a Content Analysis approach was employed to organize primary and secondary themes which illustrated NPD team practices. Additionally, a comparative multi-case study method further developed specific Agile/Scrum techniques implemented, the measures of business success realized, as well as, a new ASGM model for like firms. From this research, firms which developed physical products did not implement all Agile practices, only Team Interface, Product Demonstrations, and Specification Flexibility were uncovered. The cases did, however, subjectively realize an improved time to market, as well as, greater product success for projects commercialized using ASGM. Lastly, a new framework emerged which highlighted the unique practice of Agile behaviors earlier in the development process, but rigid, or SGM-like, activities closer towards product launch

Routing and Mobility on IPv6 over LoWPAN

The IoT means a world-wide network of interconnected objects based on standard communication protocols. An object in this context is a quotidian physical device augmented with sensing/actuating, processing, storing and communication capabilities. These objects must be able to interact with the surrounding environment where they are placed and to cooperate with neighbouring objects in order to accomplish a common objective. The IoT objects have also the capabilities of converting the sensed data into automated instructions and communicating them to other objects through the communication networks, avoiding the human intervention in several tasks. Most of IoT deployments are based on small devices with restricted computational resources and energy constraints. For this reason, initially the scientific community did not consider the use of IP protocol suite in this scenarios because there was the perception that it was too heavy to the available resources on such devices. Meanwhile, the scientific community and the industry started to rethink about the use of IP protocol suite in all IoT devices and now it is considered as the solution to provide connectivity between the IoT devices, independently of the Layer 2 protocol in use, and to connect them to the Internet. Despite the use of IP suite protocol in all devices and the amount of solutions proposed, many open issues remain unsolved in order to reach a seamless integration between the IoT and the Internet and to provide the conditions to IoT service widespread. This thesis addressed the challenges associated with the interconnectivity between the Internet and the IoT devices and with the security aspects of the IoT. In the interconnectivity between the IoT devices and the Internet the problem is how to provide valuable information to the Internet connected devices, independently of the supported IP protocol version, without being necessary accessed directly to the IoT nodes. In order to solve this problem, solutions based on Representational state transfer (REST) web services and IPv4 to IPv6 dual stack transition mechanism were proposed and evaluated. The REST web service and the transition mechanism runs only at the border router without penalizing the IoT constrained devices. The mitigation of the effects of internal and external security attacks minimizing the overhead imposed on the IoT devices is the security challenge addressed in this thesis. Three different solutions were proposed. The first is a mechanism to prevent remotely initiated transport level Denial of Service attacks that avoids the use of inefficient and hard to manage traditional firewalls. It is based on filtering at the border router the traffic received from the Internet and destined to the IoT network according to the conditions announced by each IoT device. The second is a network access security framework that can be used to control the nodes that have access to the network, based on administrative approval, and to enforce security compliance to the authorized nodes. The third is a network admission control framework that prevents IoT unauthorized nodes to communicate with IoT authorized nodes or with the Internet, which drastically reduces the number of possible security attacks. The network admission control was also exploited as a management mechanism as it can be used to manage the network size in terms of number of nodes, making the network more manageable, increasing its reliability and extending its lifetime.A IoT (Internet of Things) tem suscitado o interesse tanto da comunidade académica como da indústria, uma vez que os campos de aplicação são inúmeros assim como os potenciais ganhos que podem ser obtidos através do uso deste tipo de tecnologia. A IoT significa uma rede global de objetos ligados entre si através de uma rede de comunicações baseada em protocolos standard. Neste contexto, um objeto é um objeto físico do dia a dia ao qual foi adicionada a capacidade de medir e de atuar sobre variáveis físicas, de processar e armazenar dados e de comunicar. Estes objetos têm a capacidade de interagir com o meio ambiente envolvente e de cooperar com outros objetos vizinhos de forma a atingirem um objetivo comum. Estes objetos também têm a capacidade de converter os dados lidos em instruções e de as comunicar a outros objetos através da rede de comunicações, evitando desta forma a intervenção humana em diversas tarefas. A maior parte das concretizações de sistemas IoT são baseados em pequenos dispositivos autónomos com restrições ao nível dos recursos computacionais e de retenção de energia. Por esta razão, inicialmente a comunidade científica não considerou adequado o uso da pilha protocolar IP neste tipo de dispositivos, uma vez que havia a perceção de que era muito pesada para os recursos computacionais disponíveis. Entretanto, a comunidade científica e a indústria retomaram a discussão acerca dos benefícios do uso da pilha protocolar em todos os dispositivos da IoT e atualmente é considerada a solução para estabelecer a conetividade entre os dispositivos IoT independentemente do protocolo da camada dois em uso e para os ligar à Internet. Apesar do uso da pilha protocolar IP em todos os dispositivos e da quantidade de soluções propostas, são vários os problemas por resolver no que concerne à integração contínua e sem interrupções da IoT na Internet e de criar as condições para a adoção generalizada deste tipo de tecnologias. Esta tese versa sobre os desafios associados à integração da IoT na Internet e dos aspetos de segurança da IoT. Relativamente à integração da IoT na Internet o problema é como fornecer informação válida aos dispositivos ligados à Internet, independentemente da versão do protocolo IP em uso, evitando o acesso direto aos dispositivos IoT. Para a resolução deste problema foram propostas e avaliadas soluções baseadas em web services REST e em mecanismos de transição IPv4 para IPv6 do tipo pilha dupla (dual stack). O web service e o mecanismo de transição são suportados apenas no router de fronteira, sem penalizar os dispositivos IoT. No que concerne à segurança, o problema é mitigar os efeitos dos ataques de segurança internos e externos iniciados local e remotamente. Foram propostas três soluções diferentes, a primeira é um mecanismo que minimiza os efeitos dos ataques de negação de serviço com origem na Internet e que evita o uso de mecanismos de firewalls ineficientes e de gestão complexa. Este mecanismo filtra no router de fronteira o tráfego com origem na Internet é destinado à IoT de acordo com as condições anunciadas por cada um dos dispositivos IoT da rede. A segunda solução, é uma framework de network admission control que controla quais os dispositivos que podem aceder à rede com base na autorização administrativa e que aplica políticas de conformidade relativas à segurança aos dispositivos autorizados. A terceira é um mecanismo de network admission control para redes 6LoWPAN que evita que dispositivos não autorizados comuniquem com outros dispositivos legítimos e com a Internet o que reduz drasticamente o número de ataques à segurança. Este mecanismo também foi explorado como um mecanismo de gestão uma vez que pode ser utilizado a dimensão da rede quanto ao número de dispositivos, tornando-a mais fácil de gerir e aumentando a sua fiabilidade e o seu tempo de vida

Contributions to sustainable urban transport : decision support for alternative mobility and logistics concepts

Increasing transport activities in cities are a substantial driver for congestion and pollution, influencing urban populations’ health and quality of life. These effects are consequences of ongoing urbanization in combination with rising individual demand for mobility, goods, and services. With the goal of increased environmental sustainability in urban areas, city authorities and politics aim for reduced traffic and minimized transport emissions. To support more efficient and sustainable urban transport, this cumulative dissertation focuses on alternative transport concepts. For this purpose, scientific methods and models of the interdisciplinary information systems domain combined with elements of operations research, transportation, and logistics are developed and investigated in multiple research contributions. Different transport concepts are examined in terms of optimization and acceptance to provide decision support for relevant stakeholders. In more detail, the overarching topic of urban transport in this dissertation is divided into the complexes urban mobility (part A) in terms of passenger transport and urban logistics (part B) with a focus on the delivery of goods and services. Within part A, approaches to carsharing optimization are presented at various planning levels. Furthermore, the user acceptance of ridepooling is investigated. Part B outlines several optimization models for alternative urban parcel and e-grocery delivery concepts by proposing different network structures and transport vehicles. Conducted surveys on intentional use of urban logistics concepts give valuable hints to providers and decision makers. The introduced approaches with their corresponding results provide target-oriented support to facilitate decision making based on quantitative data. Due to the continuous growth of urban transport, the relevance of decision support in this regard, but also the understanding of the key drivers for people to use certain services will further increase in the future. By providing decision support for urban mobility as well as urban logistics concepts, this dissertation contributes to enhanced economic, social, and environmental sustainability in urban areas

Emerging Technologies

This monograph investigates a multitude of emerging technologies including 3D printing, 5G, blockchain, and many more to assess their potential for use to further humanity’s shared goal of sustainable development. Through case studies detailing how these technologies are already being used at companies worldwide, author Sinan Küfeoğlu explores how emerging technologies can be used to enhance progress toward each of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to guarantee economic growth even in the face of challenges such as climate change. To assemble this book, the author explored the business models of 650 companies in order to demonstrate how innovations can be converted into value to support sustainable development. To ensure practical application, only technologies currently on the market and in use actual companies were investigated. This volume will be of great use to academics, policymakers, innovators at the forefront of green business, and anyone else who is interested in novel and innovative business models and how they could help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This is an open access book

Advances in Manufacturing Technology XXVII: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Manufacturing Research (ICMR2013)

ICMR2013 was organised by Cranfield University on the 19-20 September 2013. The conference focuses on any aspects of product development, manufacturing technology, manufacturing systems, information systems and digital technologies. It provides an excellent avenue for researchers to present state-of-the-art multidisciplinary manufacturing research and exchange ideas. In addition to the four keynote speeches from Airbus and Rolls-Royce and three invited presentations, there are 108 papers in these proceedings. These papers are split into 24 technical sessions. The International Conference on Manufacturing Research is a major event for academics and industrialists engaged in manufacturing research. Held annually in the UK since the late 1970s, the conference is renowned as a friendly and inclusive environment that brings together a broad community of researchers who share a common goal; developing and managing the technologies and operations that are key to sustaining the success of manufacturing businesses. For over two decades, ICMR has been the main manufacturing research conference organised in the UK, successfully bringing researchers, academics and industrialists together to share their knowledge and experiences. Initiated a National Conference by the Consortium of UK University Manufacturing Engineering Heads (COMEH), it became an International Conference in 2003. COMEH is an independent body established in 1978. Its main aim is to promote manufacturing engineering education, training and research. To achieve this, the Consortium maintains a close liaison with government bodies concerned with the training and continuing development of professional engineers, while responding to the appropriate consultative and discussion documents and other initiatives. COMEH is represented on the Engineering Professor’s council (EPC) and it organises and supports national manufacturing engineering education research conferences and symposia

Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED11):Book of Abstracts

The ICED series of conferences is the Design Society's "flagship" event. ICED11 took place on August 15-18, 2011, at the campus of the Danish Technical University in Lyngby/Copenhagen, Denmark. The Proceedings of the conference are published in 10 individual volumes, arranged according to topics. All volumes of the Proceedings may be purchased individually through Amazon and other on-line booksellers. For members of the Design Society, all papers are available on this website. The Programme and Abstract Book is publically available for download

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission