The Information Furnace: Consolidated Home Control

The Information Furnace is a basement-installed PC-type device that integrates existing consumer home-control, infotainment, security, and communication technologies to transparently provide accessible and value-added services. A modern home contains a large number of sophisticated devices and technologies. Access to these devices is currently provided through a wide variety of disparate interfaces

Outwit: Unix Tool-based Programming Meets the Windows World

The ubiquity of Windows-based desktop environments has not been matched by a corresponding emergence of tools supporting the Unix tool composition paradigm. Outwit is a suite of tools based on the Unix tool design principles allowing the processing of Windows application data with sophisticated data manipulation pipelines. The outwi

Stochastic algorithms for buffer allocation in reliable production lines

<p>The allocation of buffers between workstations is a major optimization problem faced by manufacturing systems designers. It entails the determination of optimal buffer allocation plans in production lines with the objective of maximizing their throughput. We present and compare two stochastic approaches for solving the buffer allocation problem in large reliable production lines. The allocation plan is calculated subject to a given amount of total buffer slots using simulated annealing and genetic algorithms. The throughput is calculated utilizing a decomposition method.</p