Human Figure Recognition and the Estimation of its Direction

This work describes a method used to recognize a person situated in indoor environments. It estimates the direction in which the person is turned. The position coordinates are known to the system thanks to localization techniques that use Bluetooth technology. The utilization of such information in intelligent environments allows the execution of actions that interact with the customer. The paper focuses on our human figure recognition technique, which uses image analysis to calculate the direction angle a person is turned towards. Figure recognition is accomplished by comparing the colours of the body parts that mark it out, such as: hair colour, face colour, and clothes colour. The calcul…

Pervasive access to MRI bias artifact suppression service on a grid.

Bias artifact corrupts magnetic resonance images in such a way that the image is afflicted by illumination variations. Some of the authors proposed the Exponential Entropy Driven - Homomorphic Unsharp Masking (E2D-HUM) algorithm that corrects this artifact without any a priori hypothesis about the tissues or the Magnetic Resonance image modality. Moreover, E2D-HUM does not care about the body part under examination and does not require any particular training task. People who want to use this algorithm, which is Matlab-based, have to set their own computers in order to execute it. Furthermore, they have to be Matlab-skilled to exploit all the features of the algorithm. In our work we propos…

Exploiting multimodality for intelligent mobile access to pervasive services in cultural heritage sites

In this chapter the role of multimodality in intelligent, mobile guides for cultural heritage environments is discussed. Multimodal access to information contents enables the creation of systems with a higher degree of accessibility and usability. A multimodal interaction may involve several human interaction modes, such as sight, touch and voice to navigate contents, or gestures to activate controls. We first start our discussion by presenting a timeline of cultural heritage system evolution, spanning from 2001 to 2008, which highlights design issues such as intelligence and context-awareness in providing information. Then, multimodal access to contents is discussed, along with problems an…

Position-aware service provision with RFID

A Multimodal Guide for the Augmented Campus

The use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) with ad-hoc built-in information retrieval and auto-localization functionalities can help people navigating an environment in a more natural manner compared to traditional audio/visual pre-recorded guides. In this work we propose and discuss a user-friendly, multi-modal guide system for pervasive context-aware service provision within augmented environments. The proposed system is adaptable to the user needs of mobility within a given environment; it is usable on different mobile devices and in particular on PDAs, which are used as advanced adaptive HEI (human-environment interaction) interfaces. An information retrieval service is provided that…

A recognize-and-accuse policy to speed up distributed processes

PDA -- Remote Display Interaction Framework

This paper discusses the design of a PDA-driven remote display control system which was designed for a pervasive computing scenario. Our solution enables a PDA to perform as an interaction device (such as keyboard or mouse) to operate applications which are using remote displays. Our system consists of two components: one devoted to pair users and remote display according to their relative position, and one to provide the PDA with appropriate graphical interfaces and ad-hoc communication protocols. Besides a case study on the use of remote displays during a course with in our department, this paper discusses system highlights, components, and experiments as for standard multimedia and offic…

A Multimodal Interaction Guide for Pervasive Services Access

A pervasive, multimodal virtual guide for a cultural heritage site tour is illustrated. The guide is based on the integration of different technologies such as conversational agents, commonsense reasoning knowledge bases, multimodal interfaces and self-location detection systems. The aim of the work is to offer a more natural, context sensitive access to information with respect to traditional audio/visual pre-recorded guides. A prototype has been developed and implemented on a Qtek 9090 with Windows Mobile 2003 in order to deal with the "Museo Archeologico Regionale di Agrigento" domain.

An Agent-based Service Network for Personal Mobile Devices

We propose the Agent Network for Bluetooth Devices, a system that uses personal mobile devices as adaptive human-environment interfaces to supply people with ad hoc information and high-level services. The ANBD system operates with a hierarchical framework of service-providing nodes, dynamically composed and managed by mobile agents.

Mixed Parallelism for Single Alternating Group Explicit Method

The paper deals with parallel implementation policies for D.J. Evans S_AGE (Single Alternating Group Explicit) unconditionally stable methods concerning the solution of parabolic problems in two space dimensions.

Mobile agents principles of operation

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the mobile agent technology and summarizes their features, principles of operation and implementation elements. Some development tools are also discussed. The chapter provides general description of mobile agents as an advanced software paradigm, which extends object oriented programming. Then it discusses principles of operation starting from agent intelligent behavior and continuing with mobility, communication, coordination, and fault tolerance. Finally, as for related topics, monitoring, performances, and security issues are discussed in the chapter. Agent monitoring techniques are very useful because they allow users to know which agents are run…

Embedding the Remote Application Control: Visual API for PDA Programming

PDAs are more and more used as advanced adaptive HEI (human-environment interaction) interfaces, thus enabling their users to easily operate applications remotely running in pervasive computing scenarios. Based on a previous implementation, in this paper we discuss the development of a new set of .NET-compliant Application Programming Interfaces to be used within the Visual Studio IDE. Our main goal is to provide programmers with a set of components to be used with the common drag-and-drop operation, in order to embed a remote application control within an application running on the PDA and vice-versa. The interaction relies on ad-hoc communication protocols over a framework devoted to pair…

Data mining and information retrieval

Parallel Simulated Annealing: Getting Super Linear Speedups

The study described in this paper tries to improve and combine different approaches that are able to speed up applications of the Simulated Annealing model. It investigates separately two main aspects concerning the degree of parallelism an implementation can egectively exploit at the initial andfinal periods of an execution. As for case studies, it deals with two implementations: the Job shop Scheduling problem and the poryblio selection problem. The paper reports the results of a large number of experiments, carried out by means of a transputer network and a hypercube system. They give useful suggestions about selecting the most suitable values of the intervention parameters to achieve su…

An Augmented Campus Design for Context-aware Service Provision

This paper deals with the design of a multi-modal system for pervasive context-aware service provision and human-environment interaction in augmented environments by the use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) or SmartPhones. The system enables mobile devices and remote displays to perform as interaction devices with pervasive applications which run on a dynamically composed server network. Visual interaction for service setup and provision are driven by appropriate graphical interfaces and XML-based protocols, which are dynamically composed according to the type of service and to the user current position by means of a mobile agent-based framework. The paper discusses both protocols, hard…

The egoistic approach to parallel process migration into heterogeneous workstation network

Abstract A new approach to the allocation of processes in a distributed system is discussed. The proposed solution deals with process migration into heterogeneous systems by means of a strategy that delegates the individual parallel applications to manage the migration of their processes by themselves, on the basis of their own performance objectives. This approach is discussed in opposition to the global scheduling based one, and the load balancing objective is pursued as an effect of the optimization of individual applications. A new performance evaluation criterion is introduced that consists in monitoring the delays that occur when two parallel processes run towards a common synchroniza…

Three Step Bluetooth Positioning

This paper discusses a three step procedure to perform high definition positioning by the use of low cost Bluetooth devices. The three steps are: Sampling, Deployment, and Real Time Positioning. A genetic algorithm is discussed for deployment optimization and a neural network for real time positioning. A case study, along with experiments and results, are finally discussed dealing with a castle in Sicily where many trials were carried out to the end of arranging a positioning system for context aware service provision to visitors.

Pervasive Items for Factory Security

Interacting with Augmented Environments

Pervasive systems augment environments by integrating information processing into everyday objects and activities. They consist of two parts: a visible part populated by animate (visitors, operators) or inanimate (AI) entities interacting with the environment through digital devices, and an invisible part composed of software objects performing specific tasks in an underlying framework. This paper shows an ongoing work from the University of Palermo''s Department of Computer Science and Engineering that addresses two issues related to simplifying and broadening augmented environment access.

A Collaborative Environment for Service Providing in Cultural Heritage Sites

We present a model which can be used to describe hybrid entities in an augmented reality environment. An architectural description of the model is firstly given. Next, a FIPA-compliant agent description of the model is proposed. Finally the paper discusses an overview and some implementation details of a project dealing with Augmented Reality context aware services in a cultural heritage site. These services are provided based on visitors customized profiles and current position in the site, as revealed by a positioning site implemented with low cost Bluetooth devices (cellular phones, PDAs, USB terminals).

Bluetooth Base Station Minimal Deployment for High Definition Positioning

This paper discusses our approach to the problem of arranging a Bluetooth based positioning system capable of providing people coordinates in a given area with an accuracy as high as possible. Our strategy focuses on optimizing the disposition of a minimal number of available Bluetooth base stations in a subset of locations which are the only ones permitted by site characteristics and constraints. We used a genetic algorithm to this purpose and a layout chromosome whose best evolution suggested us how to deploy a minimal set of Bluetooth base stations. As a case study, we discuss our experiments and results which deal with a late middle age castle in Sicily where we carried out many trials.

An RFID framework for multimodal service provision

In recent years there has been a growing interest toward the development of pervasive and context-aware services, and RFID technology played a relevant role in the context sensing task. We propose the use of RFID technology together with a conversational agent in order to implement a multimodal information retrieval service we call SensorMesh. The information acquired from RFID tags about the nearest point of interest is processed by the conversational agent that carries a more natural interaction with the user, also exploiting a common sense ontology. The service is accessible using a multimodal browser on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs); the browser allows the user to interact with the…

A Virtual Shopper Customer Assistant in Pervasive Environments

In this work we propose a smart, human-like PDA-based personal shopper assistant. The system is able to understand the user needs through a spoken natural language interaction and then stores the preferences of the potential customer. Subsequently the personal shopper suggests the most suitable items and shops that match the user profile. The interaction is given by automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech technologies; localization is allowed by the use of Wireless technologies, while the interaction is performed by an Alice-based chat-bot endowed with reasoning capabilities. Besides, being implemented on a PDA, the personal shopper satisfies the user needs of mobility and it is als…

A Genetic Approach to Bluetooth Positioning Optimization

Combined People Position and Compass Detection for Context-aware Service Provision

A novel technique is discussed for people identification and position sensing in augmented reality by the use of two cooperating technologies. People are provided with RFID tags for localization and context definition, and then visually investigated for identity checking and compass detection. The two technologies are discussed within an implementation of a case study dealing with context aware service provision for students in a campus.

A Java-based Wrapper for Wireless Communications

The increasing number of new applications for mobile devices in pervasive environments, do not cope with changes in the wireless communications. Developers of such applications have to deal with problems arising from the available wireless connections in the given environment. A middleware is a solution that allows to overcome some of these problems. It provides to the applications a set of functions that facilitate their development. In this paper we present a Java-based communication wrapper, called SmartTraffic, which allows programmers to seamlessly use TCP or UDP protocols over Bluetooth or any IP-based wireless network. Developers can use SmartTraffic within their Java applications, t…

Photocatalytic Generation of H2 by Photoreforming of Organics in Aqueous Suspension of Nb2o5/C3n4 Composites

Bare and composite materials based on C3N4 and Nb2O5 have been used as photocatalysts for the photoreforming of aqueous solutions of oxygenated compounds. Both Nb2O5 and Nb2O5/C3N4 composites have been prepared by hydrothermal synthesis and all of them were physical-chemically characterized. In this work two different carbon nitride species i.e. graphitic (g-C3N4) or thermo-etched (TE-C3N4) were used both alone or coupled with Nb2O5. The photo-reforming activity has been measured under UV irradiation by using the semiconductors in the presence of Pt as co-catalysts and, in the case of the best material, it was, for the first time, measured and compared also under natural solar irradiation. …