A review of augmented reality applications for ship bridges

We present a state-of-the art analysis of Augmented Reality (AR) applications for ship bridge operation. We compiled and reviewed what type of use cases were published, what type of maritime applications have been adapted to AR, how they were prototyped and evaluated and what type of technology was used. We also reviewed the user interaction mechanisms, information display and adaptation to maritime environmental conditions. Our analysis shows that although there are many examples of AR applications in ship bridges, there is still much work that needs to be done before these solutions can be suitably adapted to commercial settings. In addition, we argue there is a need to develop design requirements and regulations that can guide the safe development of AR

The DS-Pnet modeling formalism for cyber-physical system development

This work presents the DS-Pnet modeling formalism (Dataflow, Signals and Petri nets), designed for the development of cyber-physical systems, combining the characteristics of Petri nets and dataflows to support the modeling of mixed systems containing both reactive parts and data processing operations. Inheriting the features of the parent IOPT Petri net class, including an external interface composed of input and output signals and events, the addition of dataflow operations brings enhanced modeling capabilities to specify mathematical data transformations and graphically express the dependencies between signals. Data-centric systems, that do not require reactive controllers, are designed using pure dataflow models. Component based model composition enables reusing existing components, create libraries of previously tested components and hierarchically decompose complex systems into smaller sub-systems. A precise execution semantics was defined, considering the relationship between dataflow and Petri net nodes, providing an abstraction to define the interface between reactive controllers and input and output signals, including analog sensors and actuators. The new formalism is supported by the IOPT-Flow Web based tool framework, offering tools to design and edit models, simulate model execution on the Web browser, plus model-checking and software/hardware automatic code generation tools to implement controllers running on embedded devices (C,VHDL and JavaScript). A new communication protocol was created to permit the automatic implementation of distributed cyber-physical systems composed of networks of remote components communicating over the Internet. The editor tool connects directly to remote embedded devices running DS-Pnet models and may import remote components into new models, contributing to simplify the creation of distributed cyber-physical applications, where the communication between distributed components is specified just by drawing arcs. Several application examples were designed to validate the proposed formalism and the associated framework, ranging from hardware solutions, industrial applications to distributed software applications

A spatio-temporal modelling and analysis of digital sensor data for underground mine health and safety

A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science 2017Health and safety of employees within their work environment is critical. In the mining industry and especially in underground mines, monitoring and management of health and safety of employees is particularly important Most underground mines today are not fully mechanized, except for coal mines. The industry thus still relies on and employs human personnel. Monitoring and managing these mines and hence personnel health and safety as they undertake their trade is therefore a necessity. Implementation of technology, especially in digital sensor systems and real-time spatial analysis systems, provides a means by which health and safety risk factors can be monitored and information gathered to facilitate determination of prevailing risks or prediction of such risks. Technology therefore can be used to make better decisions and implement specialized emergency response to avert or reduce the extent of injuries, casualties and damages in an underground mine. This research project looks into determination of prominent risk factors in an underground mine, determination of parameters for modeling of such risk factors and the implementation of ESRI’s ArcGIS platform for the retrieval and analysis of streaming sensor data about this parameter from an underground mine. A proof of concept (POC) system is developed that analyses streaming digital sensor data and determines the status of the underground mine environment. The results from this analysis are displayed in a dashboard application for a control room environment. The results and achievements of this research project, especially from a dashboard system perspective, show the possibilities of an integrated GIS-based solution for real-time data processing and determination of the prevailing conditions in an underground mine. This solution also opens up a wide pool of possibilities through which systems integration and its benefits can be achieved, especially in underground mines and focusing on health and safety, as previously silo systems can be integrated at data levels, enabling data sharing, analysis, predictions and making of informed decisions.MT201

Mobile Web applications

This document presents the work that was elaborated at the company Present Technologies as part of the academic discipline Internship/Industrial Project for the Master’s degree in Informatics and Systems, Software Development branch, at Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra. The area of the mobile web applications has grown exponentially over the last few years turning it into a very dynamic field where new development platforms and frameworks are constantly emerging. Thus, the internship consisted in the study of two new mobile operating systems, Tizen and Firefox OS, as well as two frameworks for packaging of mobile web applications – Adobe PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium. These platforms are in the direct interest of Present Technology since it pretends to use them in its future projects in general and in the Phune Gaming project in particular. Since Television is one of the Present Technologies’ business areas, during the course of the internship it was decided to perform additionally a study of two Smart TV platforms, namely Samsung Smart TV and Opera TV, which was considered as a valuable knowledge for the company. For each of the platforms was performed a study about its architecture, supported standards and the development tools that are provided, nevertheless the focus was on the applications and for this reason a practical case study was conducted. The case studies consisted in the creation of a prototype or packaging of an application, for the case of the packaging tools, in order to prove the feasibility of the applications for the Present Technologies’ needs. The outcome of the work performed during the internship is that it raised the awareness of Present Technology of the studied platforms, providing it with prototypes and written documentation for the platforms’ successful usage in future projects

Mobile Web applications

This document presents the work that was elaborated at the company Present Technologies as part of the academic discipline Internship/Industrial Project for the Master’s degree in Informatics and Systems, Software Development branch, at Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra. The area of the mobile web applications has grown exponentially over the last few years turning it into a very dynamic field where new development platforms and frameworks are constantly emerging. Thus, the internship consisted in the study of two new mobile operating systems, Tizen and Firefox OS, as well as two frameworks for packaging of mobile web applications – Adobe PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium. These platforms are in the direct interest of Present Technology since it pretends to use them in its future projects in general and in the Phune Gaming project in particular. Since Television is one of the Present Technologies’ business areas, during the course of the internship it was decided to perform additionally a study of two Smart TV platforms, namely Samsung Smart TV and Opera TV, which was considered as a valuable knowledge for the company. For each of the platforms was performed a study about its architecture, supported standards and the development tools that are provided, nevertheless the focus was on the applications and for this reason a practical case study was conducted. The case studies consisted in the creation of a prototype or packaging of an application, for the case of the packaging tools, in order to prove the feasibility of the applications for the Present Technologies’ needs. The outcome of the work performed during the internship is that it raised the awareness of Present Technology of the studied platforms, providing it with prototypes and written documentation for the platforms’ successful usage in future projects

DIVERSE: a Software Toolkit to Integrate Distributed Simulations with Heterogeneous Virtual Environments

We present DIVERSE (Device Independent Virtual Environments- Reconfigurable, Scalable, Extensible), which is a modular collection of complimentary software packages that we have developed to facilitate the creation of distributed operator-in-the-loop simulations. In DIVERSE we introduce a novel implementation of remote shared memory (distributed shared memory) that uses Internet Protocol (IP) networks. We also introduce a new method that automatically extends hardware drivers (not in the operating system kernel driver sense) into inter-process and Internet hardware services. Using DIVERSE, a program can display in a CAVE™, ImmersaDesk™, head mounted display (HMD), desktop or laptop without modification. We have developed a method of configuring user programs at run-time by loading dynamic shared objects (DSOs), in contrast to the more common practice of creating interpreted configuration languages. We find that by loading DSOs the development time, complexity and size of DIVERSE and DIVERSE user applications is significantly reduced. Configurations to support different I/O devices, device emulators, visual displays, and any component of a user application including interaction techniques, can be changed at run-time by loading different sets of DIVERSE DSOs. In addition, interpreted run-time configuration parsers have been implemented using DIVERSE DSOs; new ones can be created as needed. DIVERSE is free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) licenses. We describe the DIVERSE architecture and demonstrate how DIVERSE was used in the development of a specific application, an operator-in-the-loop Navy ship-board crane simulator, which runs unmodified on a desktop computer and/or in a CAVE with motion base motion queuing