4,499 research outputs found
Towards a Tool-based Development Methodology for Pervasive Computing Applications
Despite much progress, developing a pervasive computing application remains a
challenge because of a lack of conceptual frameworks and supporting tools. This
challenge involves coping with heterogeneous devices, overcoming the
intricacies of distributed systems technologies, working out an architecture
for the application, encoding it in a program, writing specific code to test
the application, and finally deploying it. This paper presents a design
language and a tool suite covering the development life-cycle of a pervasive
computing application. The design language allows to define a taxonomy of
area-specific building-blocks, abstracting over their heterogeneity. This
language also includes a layer to define the architecture of an application,
following an architectural pattern commonly used in the pervasive computing
domain. Our underlying methodology assigns roles to the stakeholders, providing
separation of concerns. Our tool suite includes a compiler that takes design
artifacts written in our language as input and generates a programming
framework that supports the subsequent development stages, namely
implementation, testing, and deployment. Our methodology has been applied on a
wide spectrum of areas. Based on these experiments, we assess our approach
through three criteria: expressiveness, usability, and productivity
Using Intelligent Agents to Build E-Business Software
Agent architectures are gaining popularity for building open, distributed, and evolving software required by e-commerce applications. Unfortunately, despite considerable work in software architecture during the last decade, few research efforts have aimed at truly defining patterns and languages for agent architectural design. This paper proposes a modern approach based on organizational structures and architectural description languages to define and specify agent architectures notably in the case of e-commerce system design
ABC2 an agenda based multi-agent model for robots control and cooperation
This paper presents a model for the control of autonomous robots that allows cooperation among them. The control structure is based on a general purpose multi-agent architecture
using a hybrid approach made up by two levels. One level is composed of reactive skills capable
of achieving simple actions by their own. The other one uses an agenda used as an opportunistic
planning mechanism to compound, activate and coordinate the basic skills. This agenda handles
actions both from the internal goals of the robot or from other robots. This two level approach allows
the integration of real-time response of reactive systems needed for robot low-level behavior, with a
classical high level planning component that permits a goal oriented behavior. The paper describes
the architecture itself, and its use in three different domains, including real robots, as well as the
issues arising from its adaptation to the RoboCup simulator domai
Degree of Scaffolding: Learning Objective Metadata: A Prototype Leaning System Design for Integrating GIS into a Civil Engineering Curriculum
Digital media and networking offer great potential as tools for enhancing classroom learning environments, both local and distant. One concept and related technological tool that can facilitate the effective application and distribution of digital educational resources is learning objects in combination with the SCORM (sharable content objects reference model) compliance framework. Progressive scaffolding is a learning design approach for educational systems that provides flexible guidance to students. We are in the process of utilizing this approach within a SCORM framework in the form of a multi-level instructional design. The associated metadata required by SCORM will describe the degree of scaffolding. This paper will discuss progressive scaffolding as it relates to SCORM compliant learning objects, within the context of the design of an application for integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into the civil engineering curriculum at the University of Missouri - Rolla
Progressive sequence matching for ADL plan recommendation
Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) are indicatives of a person's lifestyle. In particular, daily ADL routines closely relate to a person's well-being. With the objective of promoting active lifestyles, this paper presents an agent system that provides recommendations of suitable ADL plans (i.e., selected ADL sequences) to individual users based on the more active lifestyles of the others. Specifically, we develop a set of quantitative measures, named wellness scores, spanning the evaluation across the physical, cognitive, emotion, and social aspects based on his or her ADL routines. Then we propose an ADL sequence learning model, named Recommendation ADL ART, or RADLART, which proactively recommends healthier choices of activities based on the learnt associations among the user profiles, ADL sequence, and wellness scores. For empirical evaluation, extensive simulations have been conducted to assess the improvement in wellness scores for synthetic users with different acceptance rates of the provided recommendations. Experiments on real users further show that recommendations given by RADLART are generally more acceptable by the users because it takes into considerations of both the user profiles and the performed activities.NRF (Natl Research Foundation, S’pore)Accepted versio
Embedding blended learning in a university’s teaching culture: experiences and reflections
Blended learning, the combination of traditional face-to-face teaching methods with authentic on-line learning activities, has the potential to transform student learning experiences and outcomes. In spite of this advantage, university teachers often find it difficult to adopt new on-line techniques, in part because institutional practices are still geared to support more traditional approaches. This paper describes how a project, funded to support international collaboration to enhance learning and teaching in Geography, has allowed a university to explore models for change. It briefly examines the associated issues of sharing and repurposing resources; it reflects on the impact of the project on local strategy, and the importance of sustaining the collaborations and approaches to learning and teaching after the funding is completed
Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design
This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications
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