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Publications

2017

Co-simulation of Semi-autonomous Systems: The Line Follower Robot Case Study

Authors
Palmieri, M; Bernardeschi, C; Masci, P;

Publication
Software Engineering and Formal Methods - SEFM 2017 Collocated Workshops: DataMod, FAACS, MSE, CoSim-CPS, and FOCLASA, Trento, Italy, September 4-5, 2017, Revised Selected Papers

Abstract
Semi-autonomous systems are capable of sensing their environment and perform their tasks autonomously, but they may also be supervised by humans. The shared manual/automatic control makes the dynamics of such systems more complex, and undesirable and hardly predictable behaviours can arise from human-machine interaction. When these systems are used in critical applications, such as autonomous driving or robotic surgery, the identification of conditions that may lead the system to violate safety requirements is of main concern, since people actually entrust their life on them. In this paper, we extend an FMI-based co-simulation framework for cyber-physical systems with the possibility of modelling semi-autonomous robots. Co-simulation can be used to gain more insights on the system under analysis at early stages of system development, and to highlight the impact of human interaction on safety. This approach is applied to the Line Follower Robot case study, available in the INTO-CPS project. © Springer International Publishing AG 2018.

2017

Predictive management of low-voltage grids

Authors
Reis, M; Garcia, A; Bessa, R; Seca, L; Gouveia, C; Moreira, J; Nunes, P; Matos, PG; Carvalho, F; Carvalho, P;

Publication
CIRED - Open Access Proceedings Journal

Abstract

2017

Enriching Mental Health Mobile Assessment and Intervention with Situation Awareness

Authors
Teles, AS; Rocha, A; da Silva e Silva, FJDE; Lopes, JC; O'Sullivan, D; Van de Ven, P; Endler, M;

Publication
SENSORS

Abstract
Current mobile devices allow the execution of sophisticated applications with the capacity for identifying the user situation, which can be helpful in treatments of mental disorders. In this paper, we present SituMan, a solution that provides situation awareness to MoodBuster, an ecological momentary assessment and intervention mobile application used to request self-assessments from patients in depression treatments. SituMan has a fuzzy inference engine to identify patient situations using context data gathered from the sensors embedded in mobile devices. Situations are specified jointly by the patient and mental health professional, and they can represent the patient's daily routine (e.g., "studying", "at work", "working out"). MoodBuster requests mental status self-assessments from patients at adequate moments using situation awareness. In addition, SituMan saves and displays patient situations in a summary, delivering them for consultation by mental health professionals. A first experimental evaluation was performed to assess the user satisfaction with the approaches to define and identify situations. This experiment showed that SituMan was well evaluated in both criteria. A second experiment was performed to assess the accuracy of the fuzzy engine to infer situations. Results from the second experiment showed that the fuzzy inference engine has a good accuracy to identify situations.

2017

The implementation of digital technologies for operations management: a case study for manufacturing apps

Authors
Zangiacomi, A; Oesterle, J; Fornasiero, R; Sacco, M; Azevedo, A;

Publication
PRODUCTION PLANNING & CONTROL

Abstract
Manufacturing applications address business to business (B2B) with highly customised applications developed for specific requirements, offering highly specialised solution-oriented and service-based software components, systems, and digital tools that aim at a fast and accurate decision-making support system. The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of digital technologies for operations management using manufacturing or engineering apps (eApps), for product design and manufacturing processes. In particular, starting from the specific needs of two companies from mature European industries as automotive and food, this work depicts how this kind of solutions can support companies and improve their operations. In particular, related benefits and challenges faced for the full implementation of the developed tools are highlighted. Moreover a business model to exploit the manufacturing apps is also proposed. The business model proposed for the exploitation of the eApps supports the commercialisation of all the revenue streams offered by this rapidly growing sector taking into account the specific needs of the concerned stakeholders through a diversified value proposition.

2017

Quality-Aware Reactive Programming for the Internet of Things

Authors
Proenca, J; Baquero, C;

Publication
FUNDAMENTALS OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING, FSEN 2017

Abstract
The reactive paradigm recently became very popular in user-interface development: updates - such as the ones from the mouse, keyboard, or from the network - can trigger a chain of computations organised in a dependency graph, letting the underlying engine control the scheduling of these computations. In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT), typical applications deploy components in distributed nodes and link their interfaces, employing a publish-subscribe architecture. The paradigm for Distributed Reactive Programming marries these two concepts, treating each distributed component as a reactive computation. However, existing approaches either require expensive synchronisation mechanisms or they do not support pipelining, i.e., allowingmultiple "waves" of updates to be executed in parallel. We propose Quarp (Quality-Aware Reactive Programming), a scalable and light-weight mechanism aimed at the IoT to orchestrate components triggered by updates of data-producing components or of aggregating components. This mechanism appends meta-information tomessages between components capturing the context of the data, used to dynamically monitor and guarantee useful properties of the dynamic applications. These include the so-called glitch freedom, time synchronisation, and geographical proximity. We formalise Quarp using a simple operational semantics, provide concrete examples of useful instances of contexts, and situate our approach in the realm of distributed reactive programming.

2017

AnyPLACE - An Energy Management System to Enhance Demand Response Participation

Authors
Abreu, C; Rua, D; Costa, T; Machado, P; Pecas Lopes, JAP; Heleno, M;

Publication
2017 IEEE MANCHESTER POWERTECH

Abstract
This paper describes an energy management system that is being developed in the AnyPLACE project to support new energy services, like demand response, in residential buildings. In the project end-user interfaces are designed and implemented to allow the input of preferences regarding the flexible use of shiftable and thermal appliances. Monitoring and self-learning algorithm are used to allow additional information to be collected and an automation platform is available for the management and control of appliances. An energy management algorithm is presented that processes end-user preferences and devices characteristics to produce an optimal dispatch considering demand response incentives. Results show the successful implementation of an optimized energy scheduling.

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