A framework for flexible integration in robotics and its applications for calibration and error compensation

Robotics has been considered as a viable automation solution for the aerospace industry to address manufacturing cost. Many of the existing robot systems augmented with guidance from a large volume metrology system have proved to meet the high dimensional accuracy requirements in aero-structure assembly. However, they have been mainly deployed as costly and dedicated systems, which might not be ideal for aerospace manufacturing having low production rate and long cycle time. The work described in this thesis is to provide technical solutions to improve the flexibility and cost-efficiency of such metrology-integrated robot systems. To address the flexibility, a software framework that supports reconfigurable system integration is developed. The framework provides a design methodology to compose distributed software components which can be integrated dynamically at runtime. This provides the potential for the automation devices (robots, metrology, actuators etc.) controlled by these software components to be assembled on demand for various assembly applications. To reduce the cost of deployment, this thesis proposes a two-stage error compensation scheme for industrial robots that requires only intermittent metrology input, thus allowing for one expensive metrology system to be used by a number of robots. Robot calibration is employed in the first stage to reduce the majority of robot inaccuracy then the metrology will correct the residual errors. In this work, a new calibration model for serial robots having a parallelogram linkage is developed that takes into account both geometric errors and joint deflections induced by link masses and weight of the end-effectors. Experiments are conducted to evaluate the two pieces of work presented above. The proposed framework is adopted to create a distributed control system that implements calibration and error compensation for a large industrial robot having a parallelogram linkage. The control system is formed by hot-plugging the control applications of the robot and metrology used together. Experimental results show that the developed error model was able to improve the 3 positional accuracy of the loaded robot from several millimetres to less than one millimetre and reduce half of the time previously required to correct the errors by using only the metrology. The experiments also demonstrate the capability of sharing one metrology system to more than one robot

A Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment for Agro-Forestry Trainings

The aim of the AgroFE project is to play an important role in Agro-forestry trainings. Depending on the European countries, states or professional organizations and training actors try to reintroduce Agro forestry in the course of training and qualification in initial training and in adult education. The main objectives are to make a synthesis of needs and expectations, based on present the existing training actions and to set up a common framework; to build an innovative training system (contextualized, modularized trainings, use of ICT, professionals participation); to create a technical collaborative support for the implementation of the project with communication tools (information of partners and promotion) and for providing access to the resources and training services during and after the project (knowledge databank, interactive services). The user profiles (user groups) are Teachers, Professionals, Students, People with disabilities in professional situations, Knowledge feeders, Knowledge builders and aggregators. There are needs for handling many formats in the knowledge databank (Text in different file structures; Pictures or images; Audio and video files; Data and figures; Container format for exchange contents Pdf, html, Epub 3, etc.). More open source and exist tools and services have been evaluated, tested and used in creating the service architectures and finalize the system components. The Learning Management System, Collaborative Space, Videoconference Systems, Video Repository are implemented and used in the project. The architecture concept of the Knowledge Data Base and Services have been developed. The paper describes the results of the developments. The Moodle LMS system and videoconference servers (which can be used by videoconference equipment, user client software on desktop, notebook and smart-phone) is used for Collaborative working and learning environment. The Moodle (powerful, secure open source) learning and collaborative platform is used as project management, project assessments tools and e-learning / on-line learning. The videconference systems integrated with the Moodle system can demonstrate and show the path towards the near future service similar to the MOOC concept.</jats:p

Resource Management for Edge Computing in Internet of Things (IoT)

Die große Anzahl an Geräten im Internet der Dinge (IoT) und deren kontinuierliche Datensammlungen führen zu einem rapiden Wachstum der gesammelten Datenmenge. Die Daten komplett mittels zentraler Cloud Server zu verarbeiten ist ineffizient und zum Teil sogar unmöglich oder unnötig. Darum wird die Datenverarbeitung an den Rand des Netzwerks verschoben, was zu den Konzepten des Edge Computings geführt hat. Informationsverarbeitung nahe an der Datenquelle (z.B. auf Gateways und Edge Geräten) reduziert nicht nur die hohe Arbeitslast zentraler Server und Netzwerke, sondern verringer auch die Latenz für Echtzeitanwendungen, da die potentiell unzuverlässige Kommunikation zu Cloud Servern mit ihrer unvorhersehbaren Netzwerklatenz vermieden wird. Aktuelle IoT Architekturen verwenden Gateways, um anwendungsspezifische Verbindungen zu IoT Geräten herzustellen. In typischen Konfigurationen teilen sich mehrere IoT Edge Geräte ein IoT Gateway. Wegen der begrenzten verfügbaren Bandbreite und Rechenkapazität eines IoT Gateways muss die Servicequalität (SQ) der verbundenen IoT Edge Geräte über die Zeit angepasst werden. Nicht nur um die Anforderungen der einzelnen Nutzer der IoT Geräte zu erfüllen, sondern auch um die SQBedürfnisse der anderen IoT Edge Geräte desselben Gateways zu tolerieren. Diese Arbeit untersucht zuerst essentielle Technologien für IoT und existierende Trends. Dabei werden charakteristische Eigenschaften von IoT für die Embedded Domäne, sowie eine umfassende IoT Perspektive für Eingebettete Systeme vorgestellt. Mehrere Anwendungen aus dem Gesundheitsbereich werden untersucht und implementiert, um ein Model für deren Datenverarbeitungssoftware abzuleiten. Dieses Anwendungsmodell hilft bei der Identifikation verschiedener Betriebsmodi. IoT Systeme erwarten von den Edge Geräten, dass sie mehrere Betriebsmodi unterstützen, um sich während des Betriebs an wechselnde Szenarien anpassen zu können. Z.B. Energiesparmodi bei geringen Batteriereserven trotz gleichzeitiger Aufrechterhaltung der kritischen Funktionalität oder einen Modus, um die Servicequalität auf Wunsch des Nutzers zu erhöhen etc. Diese Modi verwenden entweder verschiedene Auslagerungsschemata (z.B. die übertragung von Rohdaten, von partiell bearbeiteten Daten, oder nur des finalen Ergebnisses) oder verschiedene Servicequalitäten. Betriebsmodi unterscheiden sich in ihren Ressourcenanforderungen sowohl auf dem Gerät (z.B. Energieverbrauch), wie auch auf dem Gateway (z.B. Kommunikationsbandbreite, Rechenleistung, Speicher etc.). Die Auswahl des besten Betriebsmodus für Edge Geräte ist eine Herausforderung in Anbetracht der begrenzten Ressourcen am Rand des Netzwerks (z.B. Bandbreite und Rechenleistung des gemeinsamen Gateways), diverser Randbedingungen der IoT Edge Geräte (z.B. Batterielaufzeit, Servicequalität etc.) und der Laufzeitvariabilität am Rand der IoT Infrastruktur. In dieser Arbeit werden schnelle und effiziente Auswahltechniken für Betriebsmodi entwickelt und präsentiert. Wenn sich IoT Geräte in der Reichweite mehrerer Gateways befinden, ist die Verwaltung der gemeinsamen Ressourcen und die Auswahl der Betriebsmodi für die IoT Geräte sogar noch komplexer. In dieser Arbeit wird ein verteilter handelsorientierter Geräteverwaltungsmechanismus für IoT Systeme mit mehreren Gateways präsentiert. Dieser Mechanismus zielt auf das kombinierte Problem des Bindens (d.h. ein Gateway für jedes IoT Gerät bestimmen) und der Allokation (d.h. die zugewiesenen Ressourcen für jedes Gerät bestimmen) ab. Beginnend mit einer initialen Konfiguration verhandeln und kommunizieren die Gateways miteinander und migrieren IoT Geräte zwischen den Gateways, wenn es den Nutzen für das Gesamtsystem erhöht. In dieser Arbeit werden auch anwendungsspezifische Optimierungen für IoT Geräte vorgestellt. Drei Anwendungen für den Gesundheitsbereich wurden realisiert und für tragbare IoT Geräte untersucht. Es wird auch eine neuartige Kompressionsmethode vorgestellt, die speziell für IoT Anwendungen geeignet ist, die Bio-Signale für Gesundheitsüberwachungen verarbeiten. Diese Technik reduziert die zu übertragende Datenmenge des IoT Gerätes, wodurch die Ressourcenauslastung auf dem Gerät und dem gemeinsamen Gateway reduziert wird. Um die vorgeschlagenen Techniken und Mechanismen zu evaluieren, wurden einige Anwendungen auf IoT Plattformen untersucht, um ihre Parameter, wie die Ausführungszeit und Ressourcennutzung, zu bestimmen. Diese Parameter wurden dann in einem Rahmenwerk verwendet, welches das IoT Netzwerk modelliert, die Interaktion zwischen Geräten und Gateway erfasst und den Kommunikationsoverhead sowie die erreichte Batterielebenszeit und Servicequalität der Geräte misst. Die Algorithmen zur Auswahl der Betriebsmodi wurden zusätzlich auf IoT Plattformen implementiert, um ihre Overheads bzgl. Ausführungszeit und Speicherverbrauch zu messen

Clash of the Titans : impact of convergence and divergence on digital media

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-153).This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.In last decade, the world was bewildered by the dazzling array of choices and offerings of digital technology. While digital convergence has created new possibilities in digital media, it has also created great uncertainty, fragmentation and threats to traditional media. This blossoming of innovations, as I will examine in this thesis, originates not only from the conversion of analog media into the digital domain, but more from a convergence of industries which results in a clash of technologies and cultures. This thesis explores the phenomenon of digital convergence and divergence and examines their impact on digital media. The questions this thesis seeks to answer are: What exactly is digital convergence? Is digital technology a kind of unifying glue as some may claim, or is it turning out to be a catalyst for greater differentiation? What kinds of dynamics will emerge when traditional industries play in each other's familiar turfs? And what kinds of strategies should digital media producers adopt in response? Observations seem to point towards a trend of initial chaos, greater divergence and severe technological fragmentation in the market. However, in that light, the results of this study suggest that collaboration between industry players to establish common standards, as well as the production of content to fit the locality, context and the consumption experience will be the keys to success in the world of digital convergence.by William Chee-Leong Lee.S.M.M.O.T

Enhanced Living Environments

This open access book was prepared as a Final Publication of the COST Action IC1303 “Algorithms, Architectures and Platforms for Enhanced Living Environments (AAPELE)”. The concept of Enhanced Living Environments (ELE) refers to the area of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) that is more related with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Effective ELE solutions require appropriate ICT algorithms, architectures, platforms, and systems, having in view the advance of science and technology in this area and the development of new and innovative solutions that can provide improvements in the quality of life for people in their homes and can reduce the financial burden on the budgets of the healthcare providers. The aim of this book is to become a state-of-the-art reference, discussing progress made, as well as prompting future directions on theories, practices, standards, and strategies related to the ELE area. The book contains 12 chapters and can serve as a valuable reference for undergraduate students, post-graduate students, educators, faculty members, researchers, engineers, medical doctors, healthcare organizations, insurance companies, and research strategists working in this area

LVMM: The Localized Vehicular Multicast Middleware - a Framework for Ad Hoc Inter-Vehicles Multicast Communications

This thesis defines a novel semantic for multicast in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) and it defines a middleware, the Localized Vehicular Multicast Middleware (LVMM) that enables minimum cost, source-based multicast communications in VANETs. The middleware provides support to find vehicles suitable to sustain multicast communications, to maintain multicast groups, and to execute a multicast routing protocol, the Vehicular Multicast Routing Protocol (VMRP), that delivers messages of multicast applications to all the recipients utilizing a loop-free, minimum cost path from each source to all the recipients. LVMM does not require a vehicle to know all other members: only knowledge of directly reachable nodes is required to perform the source-based routing

Collecting sensed data with opportunistic networks: The case of contact information overhead

The rising human population in urban environments drives the mission towards smart cities, which envisions a wide deployment of sensors in order to improve the quality of living. In this regard, opportunistic networks (OppNets) present an economical means of collecting delay tolerant data from sensors to their respective gateways for providing various Smart City services. Due to the distributed nature of the network, encounter-based routing protocols achieve acceptable throughput by requiring nodes to exchange and update contact information on an encounter basis. Unfortunately, sufficient insight into the associated overhead is lacking in the literature. Hence, we contribute by modelling contact information overhead and investigating its impact on OppNet routing, particularly in terms of data exchange success and energy consumption on portable handheld devices. Our findings reveal that the expected contact information overhead in Smart City scenarios significantly reduces data exchange success and increases energy consumption on portable handheld devices, thereby threatening the feasibility of the technology. We address this issue by proposing an algorithm that can be incorporated into encounter-based routing protocols to reduce contact information overhead without compromising throughput. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm reduces the average contact information overhead, increases throughput and reduces average energy consumption

Applying human-like intelligence to future generation network to improve communication efficiency

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-257).In recent decades, communications network has evolved at drastic speed to provide advanced and intelligent services. This strengthening service provision owes to the successful establishment of various intelligent networks and the use of artificial intelligence, pervasive computing, and social networking in communications. It has consequently endowed network users with abundant choices of communication services. While these communications services are bringing convenience to human lives, people in turn are performing more tasks. The current network with its large number of available communications services is then often burdening network users with the complexity and inflexibility in using these services. In particular, the network lacks the initiative and the ability to investigate a user’s most recent communication needs and subsequently adjust the manner of service provision according to these needs and user connecting possibilities. The network needs to be more intelligent to handle these problems. We therefore propose importing human-like intelligence into the network to facilitate communication-session processing according to user needs