On the definition of quantum programming modules

There are no doubts that quantum programming and, in general, quantum computing, is one of the most promising areas within computer science and one of the areas where most expectations are being placed in recent years. Although the days when reliable and affordable quantum computers will be available is still a long way off, the explosion of programming languages for quantum programming has grown exponentially in recent years. The software engineering community has been quick to react to the need to adopt and adapt well-known tools and methods for software development, and for the design of new ones tailored to this new programming paradigm. However, many key aspects for its success depend on the establishment of an appropriate conceptual framework for the conception and design of quantum programs. This article discusses the concept of module, key in the software engineering discipline, and establishes initial criteria for determining the cohesion and coupling levels of a module in the field of quantum programming as a first step towards a sound quantum software engineering. As detailed in the article, the conceptual differences between classical and quantum computing are so pronounced that the translation of classical concepts to the new programming approach is not straightforward.This research was funded by Fundación Séneca, Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia under the ‘Excelence Group Program 19895/GERM/15’

Desarrollo de software para robots de servicio : un enfoque dirigido por modelos y orientado a componentes

[SPA] Esta Tesis Doctoral continúa la línea de investigación en el desarrollo de sistemas robóticos teleoperados iniciada por el grupo de investigación DSIE de la Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena hace diez años, y parte de los resultados de otra Tesis anterior, en la que se desarrolló una arquitectura de referencia para el control de robots de servicio teleoperados denominada ACRoSeT. ACRoSeT propone una serie de componentes independientes de la plataforma de ejecución para diseñar la aplicación de control de un robot. Esta independencia permite reutilizar componentes en distintas aplicaciones y traducir un mismo diseño a distintos lenguajes de programación o utilizar diferentes frameworks robóticos. ACRoSeT, sin embargo, no proporciona ninguna guía para realizar la traducción de los componentes abstractos que forman la aplicación de control a código ejecutable. Esta Tesis Doctoral completa el enfoque propuesto por ACRoSeT utilizando el novedoso desarrollo dirigido por modelos (Model-Driven Engineering, MDE) para (1) proponer una solución a la ambigüedad semántica y de implementación de algunos de los conceptos propuestos por ACRoSeT; (2) proporcionar una serie de herramientas para aumentar el nivel de abstracción del desarrollador; (3) cambiar el proceso de traducción manual de los componentes abstractos a código ejecutable por un proceso (semi-) automático que elimine errores en la implementación final y (4) permitir que el proceso de traducción pueda ser extendido a diversos lenguajes de programación e incluso frameworks robóticos. Para lograr estos objetivos se ha desarrollado (1) un meta-modelo de componentes,denominado V3Studio, que contiene los conceptos del dominio de la robótica definidos por ACRoSeT; (2) una transformación entre V3Studio y UML que permite reducir la distancia semántica entre el diseño realizado y la implementación final,facilitando de este modo el desarrollo posterior de distintas implementaciones en otros lenguajes de programación y (3) una traducción entre el modelo UML y código, en este caso, Ada 2005. Como demostración de la viabilidad del enfoque,esta Tesis Doctoral incluye el desarrollo del sistema de control de una mesa cartesiana, realizado en el proyecto del VI Programa Marco Europeo EFTCoR.[ENG] This Thesis continues the research line in the development of teleoperated robotic systems initiated by the DSIE research group of the Technical University of Cartagena ten years ago and starts from the results of a previous Thesis, in which a reference architecture for teleoperated robotic systems, called ACRoSeT, was designed. ACRoSeT proposes a series of platform independent components for designing the software control architecture of a robot. This independence allows not only the reuse of these components among different applications but also the translation to different programming languages or using different robotic frameworks. But ACRoSeT does not offer any guide regarding the software implementation of the concepts it defines. The present Thesis completes the design of ACRoSeT using the newly Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) paradigm to (1) propose a solution to the semantic and implementation ambiguity of some of the concepts defined by ACRoSeT; (2) raise the level of abstraction used by the developer to design the software architecture of a robot using the concepts defined by ACRoSeT; (3) change the error-prone process of manual translation from the abstract ACRoSeT components to executable code by a (semi-) automatic process that erases this source of errors from the final implementation; and (4) allow different implementations in different programming languages and even robotic frameworks. To achieve these objectives, this Thesis proposes (1) a component meta-model, called V3Studio, that contains all the concepts of the robotics domain defined by ACRoSeT; (2) a model to model transformation between V3Studio and UML that reduces the semantic distance between the component model and the final code implementation, and that also eases the development of different transformations to different implementation languages; and (3) a model to text Transformation to translate the UML model to the Ada 2005 programming language. To demonstrate the viability of the proposed approach, this Thesis includes the development of the control system of a XYZ cartesian robot, designed in the context of the VI European Growth Programm EFTCoR.Universidad Politécnica de CartagenaPrograma de doctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicacione

La influencia de un modelo de gestión estándar en la optimización de recursos en el desarrollo de proyectos de construcción residencial en la empresa Mistika Inversiones E.I.R.L. 2015 – 2016

La presente investigación tiene como finalidad demostrar la influencia de un modelo de gestión estándar en el desarrollo de proyectos de construcción residencial en la empresa Mistika Inversiones E.I.R.L., primero desarrollando una base teórica sólida, para luego analizar la situación actual del último proyecto de construcción de la empresa en cuanto al uso de sus recursos; además se utilizaron características comparables para poder proseguir con la evaluación de diferentes modelos de gestión y grupos de herramientas que podrían ser utilizados para proyectos de construcción. Posteriormente se identificaron todas las actividades necesarias para poder llevar a cabo un proyecto de construcción, información que sirvió para elaborar un “Modelo Propuesto” el cual contemple todas las restricciones de un proyecto, para luego desarrollar el mismo sobre el último proyecto de Mistika Inversiones E.I.R.L. Finalmente se justificó la influencia del “Modelo Propuesto” mediante un análisis comparativo en base a KPI’s y análisis horizontal tanto de los costos como del tiempo utilizado en el proyecto llegando así a la conclusión que valida la influencia del “Modelo Propuesto” sobre un proyect

Determination of the number of shots for Grover’s search algorithm

This paper focuses on Grover’s quantum search algorithm, which is of paramount importance as a masterpiece of Quantum Computing software. Given the inherent probabilistic nature of quantum computers, quantum programs based on Grover’s algorithm need to be run a number of times in order to generate a histogram of candidate values for solutions, which are then checked to identify the valid ones. In this paper, the distribution of the required number of shots to find all or a fraction of all the solutions to the Grover’s search problem is studied. Firstly, considering the similarity of the probability problem with the well-known coupon collector’s problem, two formulae are obtained from asymptotic results on the distribution of the required number of shots, as the number of problem solutions grows. These expressions allow to compute the number of shots required to ensure that, with probability p, all or a fraction of all the solutions are found. Secondly, the probability mass function of the required number of shots is derived, which serves as a benchmark to assess the validity of the asymptotic approximations derived previously. A comparison between the two approaches is presented and, as a result, a rule of thumb to decide under which circumstances employ one or the other is proposed.Mathieu Kessler acknowlegdes the support of Fundación Séneca-Agencia de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia (Grant 20911/PI/18)

A machine learning approach to pedestrian detection for autonomous vehicles using High-Definition 3D Range Data

This article describes an automated sensor-based system to detect pedestrians in an autonomous vehicle application. Although the vehicle is equipped with a broad set of sensors, the article focuses on the processing of the information generated by a Velodyne HDL-64E LIDAR sensor. The cloud of points generated by the sensor (more than 1 million points per revolution) is processed to detect pedestrians, by selecting cubic shapes and applying machine vision and machine learning algorithms to the XY, XZ, and YZ projections of the points contained in the cube. The work relates an exhaustive analysis of the performance of three different machine learning algorithms: k-Nearest Neighbours (kNN), Naïve Bayes classifier (NBC), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). These algorithms have been trained with 1931 samples. The final performance of the method, measured a real traffic scenery, which contained 16 pedestrians and 469 samples of non-pedestrians, shows sensitivity (81.2%), accuracy (96.2%) and specificity (96.8%).This work was partially supported by ViSelTR (ref. TIN2012-39279) and cDrone (ref. TIN2013-45920-R) projects of the Spanish Government, and the “Research Programme for Groups of Scientific Excellence at Region of Murcia” of the Seneca Foundation (Agency for Science and Technology of the Region of Murcia—19895/GERM/15). 3D LIDAR has been funded by UPCA13-3E-1929 infrastructure projects of the Spanish Government. Diego Alonso wishes to thank the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Subprograma Estatal de Movilidad, Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013–2016 for grant CAS14/00238

A graph-based approach for modelling quantum circuits

A crucial task for the systematic application of model-driven engineering techniques in the development of quantum software is the definition of metamodels, as a first step towards automatic code generation and integration with other tools. The importance is even greater when considering recent work where the first extensions to UML for modelling quantum circuits are emerging and the characterisation of these extensions in terms of their suitability for a model-driven approach becomes unavoidable. After reviewing the related work, this article proposes a unified metamodel for modelling quantum circuits, together with five strategies for its use and some examples of its application. The article also provides a set of constraints for using the identified strategies, a set of procedures for transforming the models between the strategies, and an analysis of the suitability of each strategy for performing common tasks in a model-driven quantum software development environment. All of these resources will enable the quantum software community to speak the same language and use the same set of abstractions, which are key to furthering the development of tools to be built as part of future model-driven quantum software development frameworks

Engineering the development of quantum programs: Application to the Boolean satisfiability problem

The development of quantum programs is becoming a reality due to the rapid advancement of quantum computing. Over the past few years, a multitude of hardware platforms, algorithms, and programming languages have emerged to support this paradigm. By the very nature of Quantum Mechanics principles, there is an enormous change of philosophy when building quantum programs, which operate in a probabilistic space, unlike the deterministic behaviour shown by classical programming languages. These conceptual differences can be overcome by using techniques and tools of Software Engineering. In this paper, we apply Model-Driven Engineering techniques in a systematic way to ease the generation of quantum programs and we apply it to solve the satisfiability problem, very important in many engineering domains like verification of discrete systems and test of integrated circuits. To that aim, we contribute with a metamodel for representing quantum circuits and a model-to-text transformation to generate working IBM Qiskit code. This model-driven infrastructure is employed to automatically generate quantum programs from SAT equations through a model-to-model transformation that embeds Grover’s algorithm. Besides, we provide formulas for calculating the number of required quantum elements from SAT equations, crucial in the current context of limited quantum resources. The interoperability with other tools and the extensibility to target additional quantum platforms is guaranteed thanks to the use of a model-based toolchain. We cover several usage scenarios to validate the approach, providing exemplary SAT equations, the generated Qiskit code and the results of executing this code in IBM Quantum infrastructure.We acknowledge the use of IBM Quantum services for this work. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official policy or position of IBM or the IBM Quantum team

A family of experiments to evaluate the understandability of TRiStar and i* for modeling Teleo-Reactive systems

The Teleo-Reactive approach facilitates reactive system development without losing sight of the system goals. Objective: To introduce TRiStar as an extension of i* notation to specify Teleo-Reactive systems. To evaluate whether the notational extension is an improvement in terms of effectiveness and efficiency over the original language when it is used to specify Teleo-Reactive systems. Method: A family of experiments was carried out with final-year engineering students and experienced software development professionals in which the participants were asked to fill in a form designed to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of each of the languages. Results: Both the statistical results of the experiments, analyzed separately, and the meta-analysis of the experiments as a whole, allow us to conclude that TRiStar notation is more effective and efficient than i* as a requirements specification language for modeling Teleo-Reactive systems. Conclusion: The extensions made on i* have led to TRiStar definition, a more effective and efficient goal-oriented notation than the original i* language.This work was partially supported by the insPIre (ref. TIN2012-34003), cDrone (ref. TIN2013- 45920-R) and ViSelTR (ref. TIN2012-39279) projects of the Spanish Government. Also Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Subprograma Estatal de Movilidad, Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013-2016 for grant CAS14/0023

Real Time Teaching with Java: JPR3

This paper describes a development platform built around a digital railroad scale{model: JPR3 (Java Platform for Realtime Railway Research). The laboratory equipment and software aims to achieve two goals: help and motivate students of real{time systems and as support for postgraduate students. Students nd the scale{model really challenging and are very motivated by it; thus it's easy for them to really learn and practice all the concepts of real{time systems. But it's not only for students use: it also serves as a research platform for postgraduate students, thanks to the possibilities o ered by the scale{model. Java has been chosen as the programming language codify the platform and the implementation of the system is described in this work.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Education (with reference ACF2000{0037{IN) and the Regional Government of Murcia (Séneca Programmes with reference PB/8/FS/02

European Entrepreneurial Learning in Information and Communication Technologies. The EU-xCEL Experience in Spain

This paper describes the experience of the Cartagena node in the 2015 edition of the EU-xCEL project, which was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme. EU-xCEL aims at fostering entrepreneurship awareness and training among young graduates, in Information and Communication Technologies as well as to strengthen the European entrepreneurship ecosystem. This paper outlines the development of the training week and the posterior virtual incubation phase, as well as the experience of running the program in Cartagena. Finally, we outline some conclusions drawn from the experience.This work has been developed in the context of the EUxCEL project, funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 644801. It has been partially supported by the “Research Programme for Groups of Scientific Excellence at Region of Murcia" of the Seneca Foundation (Agency for Science and Technology of the Region of Murcia – 19895/GERM/15). Diego Alonso thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Subprograma Estatal de Movilidad, Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013-2016 for grant CAS14/00238