User interface design of meta model repository for IoT devices

Internet of Things (IoT) has become prevalent in recent years. IoT works as a gigantic network in which the vast set of devices are integrated and interconnected. These devices include sensors, gateways and other smart objects. Accordingly, plenty of data models are produced to define and describe IoT devices by various organizations and manufacturers. Those data models significantly help in device management. However, it seems that the sharing and presenting of data models is not so effective. For a variety of organizations have different standardized ways exist to manage and present data models. Particularly, one device may have multiple data models. They are generated as diverse data formats of defining a device and distributed in different platforms. Consequently, to facilitate developers and enterprises’ work with data models, existing practices of data model management still need to be upgraded. This master’s thesis proposes a user interface design solution for a meta model repository for IoT devices. Based on the exploration of various collaboration platforms, it analyses the selected platform with its aspects that make it easy to share the models while allow collaboration. Additionally, the study includes the research work on exploring current state of data models. The analysis of different collaboration platforms is also reported. Throughout the design process, user-centered design (UCD) methodology was applied to help create a usable repository in terms of both its user interface and its functionality. In this regard, two rounds of usability testing (6 and 7 participants, respectively) were conducted, which aimed to collect insights and requirements from users. The relevant results are presented and discussed. The outcome of this thesis is a functional meta model repository which has been designed iteratively during user tests. It starts with support of Lightweight machine to machine (LWM2M) data models. With more data models appear, the repository will be more valuable and significant. More importantly, the repository can be extended to machine to machine communication in future. Therefore, the result of this thesis also demonstrates perceptions about the possibilities of the repository in future use

User-Centered Design to Enhance IoT Cybersecurity Awareness of Non-Experts in Smart Buildings

Smart buildings, building automation and operational management have increasingly begun to incorporate Internet of Things (IoT) technology. Therefore, they have become susceptible to common cyber attacks targetting IoT devices. However, there is still a lack of an effective way of monitoring the cybersecurity situation of smart devices, IoT sensors and networks. During the operational lifecycle it may also not be easy for non-experts to discern cybersecurity issues from malfunctioning or physical safety. Therefore, we propose visualization prototypes that provide both safety and cybersecurity status of IoT devices for non-expert users in smart buildings. By utilising a user-centered design method, the visualization dashboards are developed based on requirements of two user roles - House managers and Residents. The user test results have shown the capabilities and effectiveness of leveraging dashboards to increase cybersecurity awareness in smart buildings.Peer reviewe

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

User interface design of meta model repository for IoT devices

Internet of Things (IoT) has become prevalent in recent years. IoT works as a gigantic network in which the vast set of devices are integrated and interconnected. These devices include sensors, gateways and other smart objects. Accordingly, plenty of data models are produced to define and describe IoT devices by various organizations and manufacturers. Those data models significantly help in device management. However, it seems that the sharing and presenting of data models is not so effective. For a variety of organizations have different standardized ways exist to manage and present data models. Particularly, one device may have multiple data models. They are generated as diverse data formats of defining a device and distributed in different platforms. Consequently, to facilitate developers and enterprises’ work with data models, existing practices of data model management still need to be upgraded. This master’s thesis proposes a user interface design solution for a meta model repository for IoT devices. Based on the exploration of various collaboration platforms, it analyses the selected platform with its aspects that make it easy to share the models while allow collaboration. Additionally, the study includes the research work on exploring current state of data models. The analysis of different collaboration platforms is also reported. Throughout the design process, user-centered design (UCD) methodology was applied to help create a usable repository in terms of both its user interface and its functionality. In this regard, two rounds of usability testing (6 and 7 participants, respectively) were conducted, which aimed to collect insights and requirements from users. The relevant results are presented and discussed. The outcome of this thesis is a functional meta model repository which has been designed iteratively during user tests. It starts with support of Lightweight machine to machine (LWM2M) data models. With more data models appear, the repository will be more valuable and significant. More importantly, the repository can be extended to machine to machine communication in future. Therefore, the result of this thesis also demonstrates perceptions about the possibilities of the repository in future use

Learning‐based containment control in the absence of leaders' information

Abstract This article considers the containment control problem of continuous‐time dynamic agents without leaders' state information. The leaders have first‐ and second‐order dynamics, respectively, while first‐order dynamics always govern the followers. Each agent has inherent nonlinear dynamics and can only measure the output information of its neighbors. The output of each leader is expressed as the product of an unknown coefficient and a position‐like state, while the output of each follower is equal to its position‐like state. To stabilize the position‐like states of the followers to the convex hull spanned by leaders, the unknown coefficients are asymptotically tracked by leveraging reinforcement learning based on the inherent dynamics and the output information. Two distributed learning‐based containment protocols are proposed, respectively. It is proved that if the directed communication topology has a spanning forest and certain conditions in terms of the inherent nonlinear dynamics are satisfied, then the proposed controllers with proper control gains solve the containment control problem asymptotically under arbitrary initial states. An exciting conclusion is that the learning algorithms' convergence rate plays an important role in achieving containment control. Numerical simulations are performed to validate the effectiveness of the obtained theoretical results