Search results for "programming"

ConformalALU: A Conformal Geometric Algebra Coprocessor for Medical Image Processing

2015

Medical imaging involves important computational geometric problems, such as image segmentation and analysis, shape approximation, three-dimensional (3D) modeling, and registration of volumetric data. In the last few years, Conformal Geometric Algebra (CGA), based on five-dimensional (5D) Clifford Algebra, is emerging as a new paradigm that offers simple and universal operators for the representation and solution of complex geometric problems. However, the widespread use of CGA has been so far hindered by its high dimensionality and computational complexity. This paper proposes a simplified formulation of the conformal geometric operations (reflections, rotations, translations, and uniform …

A Sliced Coprocessor for Native Clifford Algebra Operations

2007

Computer graphics applications require efficient tools to model geometric objects. The traditional approach based on compute-intensive matrix calculations is error-prone due to a lack of integration between geometric reasoning and matrix-based algorithms. Clifford algebra offers a solution to these issues since it permits specification of geometry at a coordinate-free level. The best way to exploit the symbolic computing power of geometric (Clifford) algebra is supporting its data types and operators directly in hardware. This paper outlines the architecture of S-CliffoSor (Sliced Clifford coprocessor), a parallelizable embedded coprocessor that executes native Clifford algebra operations. …

Symbolic Programming of Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) tightly integrate physical world phenomena and cyber aspects of computational units. The composition of physical, computational and communication systems demands different levels and types of abstraction as well as novel programming methodologies allowing for homogeneous programming, knowledge representation and exchange on heterogeneous devices. Current modeling approaches, frameworks and architectures result fairly inadequate to the task, especially when resource-constrained devices are involved. This work proposes symbolic computation as an effective solution to program resource constrained CPS devices with code maintaining strict ties to high-level specific…

DC4CD

2017

In this article, we present Distributed Computing for Constrained Devices (DC4CD), a novel software architecture that supports symbolic distributed computing on wireless sensor networks. DC4CD integrates the functionalities of a high-level symbolic interpreter, a compiler, and an operating system, and includes networking abstractions to exchange high-level symbolic code among peer devices. Contrarily to other architectures proposed in the literature, DC4CD allows for changes at runtime, even on deployed nodes of both application and system code. Experimental results show that DC4CD is more efficient in terms of memory usage than existing architectures, with which it also compares well in te…

Programming distributed applications with symbolic reasoning on WSNs

2015

Programming Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a complex task for which existing approaches adopt rigid architectures that are only suitable for specific application fields. In previous papers we introduced a programming methodology and a lightweight middleware based on high-level programming and executable code exchange for distributed processing on WSNs. In this paper, we show how high-level programming can be effectively used on WSNs to implement symbolic reasoning. In order to prove the feasibility of our approach, we present a Fuzzy Logic system where the value updates and the rule evaluations are performed in a distributed way. Through the proposed methodology, we discuss the developm…

Enabling peer-to-peer User-Preference-Aware Energy Sharing Through Reinforcement Learning

2020

Renewable, heterogeneous and distributed energy resources are the future of power systems, as envisioned by the recent paradigm of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs). Residential electricity generation, e.g., through photovoltaic panels, plays a fundamental role in this paradigm, where users are able to participate in an energy sharing system and exchange energy resources among each other. In this work, we study energy sharing systems and, differently from previous approaches, we consider realistic user behaviors by taking into account the user preferences and level of engagement in the energy trades. We formulate the problem of matching energy resources while contemplating the user behavior as a …

An innovative tailored instructional design for computer programming courses in engineering

2023

Industry 4.0 and 5.0 topics are emerging fields and have seen rising demand recently. There is a critical need, on the other hand, for improved methods of instructing programming languages since a growing lack of student motivation during the pandemic has had a deleterious influence on the education of programmers. In this context, online/hybrid computer programming courses must be addressed with innovative solutions to support the field with well-educated professionals. In this paper, we present a case study to propose an innovative tailored instructional design for the online/hybrid learning environments for programming courses in engineering faculties. To develop the instructional design…

InspirationWall

2015

Collaborative idea generation leverages social interactions and knowledge sharing to spark diverse associations and produce creative ideas. Information exploration systems expand the current context by suggesting novel but related concepts. In this paper we introduce InspirationWall, an unobtrusive display that leverages speech recognition and information exploration to enhance an ongoing idea generation session with automatically retrieved concepts that relate to the conversation. We evaluated the system in six idea generation sessions of 20 minutes with small groups of two people. Preliminary results suggest that InspirationWall contrasts the decay of idea productivity over time and can t…

A Semantic Similarity Measure for the SIMS Framework

2008

The amount of currently available digital information grows rapidly. Relevant information is often spread over different information sources. An efficient and flexible framework to allow users to satisfy ef- fectively their information needs is required. The work presented in this paper describes SIMS (Semantic Information Management System), a ref- erence architecture for a framework performing semantic annotation, search and retrieval of information from multiple sources. The work pre- sented in this paper focuses on a specific SIMS module, the SIMS Semantic Content Navigator, proposing an algorithm and the related implementa- tion to calculate a semantic similarity measure inside an OWL …

Unifying Textual and Visual Cues for Content-Based Image Retrieval on the World Wide Web

1999

A system is proposed that combines textual and visual statistics in a single index vector for content-based search of a WWW image database. Textual statistics are captured in vector form using latent semantic indexing based on text in the containing HTML document. Visual statistics are captured in vector form using color and orientation histograms. By using an integrated approach, it becomes possible to take advantage of possible statistical couplings between the content of the document (latent semantic content) and the contents of images (visual statistics). The combined approach allows improved performance in conducting content-based search. Search performance experiments are reported for…