The KB paradigm and its application to interactive configuration

The knowledge base paradigm aims to express domain knowledge in a rich formal language, and to use this domain knowledge as a knowledge base to solve various problems and tasks that arise in the domain by applying multiple forms of inference. As such, the paradigm applies a strict separation of concerns between information and problem solving. In this paper, we analyze the principles and feasibility of the knowledge base paradigm in the context of an important class of applications: interactive configuration problems. In interactive configuration problems, a configuration of interrelated objects under constraints is searched, where the system assists the user in reaching an intended configuration. It is widely recognized in industry that good software solutions for these problems are very difficult to develop. We investigate such problems from the perspective of the KB paradigm. We show that multiple functionalities in this domain can be achieved by applying different forms of logical inferences on a formal specification of the configuration domain. We report on a proof of concept of this approach in a real-life application with a banking company. To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).Comment: To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP

Cloud WorkBench - Infrastructure-as-Code Based Cloud Benchmarking

To optimally deploy their applications, users of Infrastructure-as-a-Service clouds are required to evaluate the costs and performance of different combinations of cloud configurations to find out which combination provides the best service level for their specific application. Unfortunately, benchmarking cloud services is cumbersome and error-prone. In this paper, we propose an architecture and concrete implementation of a cloud benchmarking Web service, which fosters the definition of reusable and representative benchmarks. In distinction to existing work, our system is based on the notion of Infrastructure-as-Code, which is a state of the art concept to define IT infrastructure in a reproducible, well-defined, and testable way. We demonstrate our system based on an illustrative case study, in which we measure and compare the disk IO speeds of different instance and storage types in Amazon EC2

Design of a WSN Platform for Long-Term Environmental Monitoring for IoT Applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) provides a virtual view, via the Internet Protocol, to a huge variety of real life objects, ranging from a car, to a teacup, to a building, to trees in a forest. Its appeal is the ubiquitous generalized access to the status and location of any "thing" we may be interested in. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are well suited for long-term environmental data acquisition for IoT representation. This paper presents the functional design and implementation of a complete WSN platform that can be used for a range of long-term environmental monitoring IoT applications. The application requirements for low cost, high number of sensors, fast deployment, long lifetime, low maintenance, and high quality of service are considered in the specification and design of the platform and of all its components. Low-effort platform reuse is also considered starting from the specifications and at all design levels for a wide array of related monitoring application

Single-Board-Computer Clusters for Cloudlet Computing in Internet of Things

The number of connected sensors and devices is expected to increase to billions in the near future. However, centralised cloud-computing data centres present various challenges to meet the requirements inherent to Internet of Things (IoT) workloads, such as low latency, high throughput and bandwidth constraints. Edge computing is becoming the standard computing paradigm for latency-sensitive real-time IoT workloads, since it addresses the aforementioned limitations related to centralised cloud-computing models. Such a paradigm relies on bringing computation close to the source of data, which presents serious operational challenges for large-scale cloud-computing providers. In this work, we present an architecture composed of low-cost Single-Board-Computer clusters near to data sources, and centralised cloud-computing data centres. The proposed cost-efficient model may be employed as an alternative to fog computing to meet real-time IoT workload requirements while keeping scalability. We include an extensive empirical analysis to assess the suitability of single-board-computer clusters as cost-effective edge-computing micro data centres. Additionally, we compare the proposed architecture with traditional cloudlet and cloud architectures, and evaluate them through extensive simulation. We finally show that acquisition costs can be drastically reduced while keeping performance levels in data-intensive IoT use cases.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2017-82113-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad RTI2018-098062-A-I00European Union’s Horizon 2020 No. 754489Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/209

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Using AI/expert system technology to automate planning and replanning for the HST servicing missions

This paper describes a knowledge-based system that has been developed to automate planning and scheduling for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Missions. This new system is the Servicing Mission Planning and Replanning Tool (SM/PART). SM/PART has been delivered to the HST Flight Operations Team (FOT) at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) where it is being used to build integrated time lines and command plans to control the activities of the HST, Shuttle, Crew and ground systems for the next HST Servicing Mission. SM/PART reuses and extends AI/expert system technology from Interactive Experimenter Planning System (IEPS) systems to build or rebuild time lines and command plans more rapidly than was possible for previous missions where they were built manually. This capability provides an important safety factor for the HST, Shuttle and Crew in case unexpected events occur during the mission

The simplicity project: easing the burden of using complex and heterogeneous ICT devices and services

As of today, to exploit the variety of different "services", users need to configure each of their devices by using different procedures and need to explicitly select among heterogeneous access technologies and protocols. In addition to that, users are authenticated and charged by different means. The lack of implicit human computer interaction, context-awareness and standardisation places an enormous burden of complexity on the shoulders of the final users. The IST-Simplicity project aims at leveraging such problems by: i) automatically creating and customizing a user communication space; ii) adapting services to user terminal characteristics and to users preferences; iii) orchestrating network capabilities. The aim of this paper is to present the technical framework of the IST-Simplicity project. This paper is a thorough analysis and qualitative evaluation of the different technologies, standards and works presented in the literature related to the Simplicity system to be developed