Christophe Gravier

Towards the loose coupling between LMS and Remote Laboratories in online engineering education

In this paper, we are providing a study on the issue of interoperating Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Remote Laboratories, in a seamless integration. This study emphasizes the need to make Remote Laboratories seen as a pedagogical material within the LMS. We are presenting a novel and original approach to make these two types of platforms communicate (LMS and Remote Laboratory) under a loose coupling relationship. The main purpose of this work is to bring a better follow-up of students to the tutor and the students themselves, and therefore to lead to an enhanced learning experience.

Interactive mixed reality for collaborative remote laboratories

In distance learning, remote laboratories (henceforth RLabs), allow students to perform real-time tasks on laboratories over the Internet. However, existing tele-operations systems suffer from both the low fidelity of the representation of the remote site that hosts the instrument, and the lack of group awareness for collaborative learning during online hands-on sessions. In this paper, we discuss how Mixed Reality systems can improve the fidelity of such remote devices and how group awareness can be achieved. A software architecture for collaborative mixed reality for RLabs based on the MPEG-4 BInary Format for Scenes (MPEG-4 BIFS) is also presented.

Putting Reusability first: a paradigm switch in Remote Laboratories Engineering

In this paper, we present a new devices brought online thanks to our Collaborative Remote Laboratories framework. Whereas previous devices integrated in our remote laboratory belongs to the domain of electronics, such as Vector Network Analyzers, the devices at the concern in this paper are, on one hand, an antenna workbench, and on the other, an homemade switching device, which embeds several electronic components. Because the middleware and framework for our environment were designed to be reusable, we wanted to put it to the test by integrating new and different devices in our Online Engineering catalog. After presenting the devices to be put online, we will expose the software development efforts required in regards to the reusability of the solution. As a consequence, the expose work and results tend to make the Online Engineering software architects to think reusability first, breaking with the current trends to implement Remote Labs one after the other, without much reusability, apart the capitalized experience. In this, we defend a paradigm switch in our current engineering approaches for Remote Laboratories implementations: Reusability should be thought first.

C3PO: a Spontaneous and Ephemeral Social Networking Framework for a collaborative Creation and Publishing of Multimedia Contents

Online social networks have been adopted by a large part of the population, and have become in few years essential communication means and a source of information for journalists. Nevertheless, these networks have some drawbacks that make people reluctant to use them, such as the impossibility to claim for ownership of data and to avoid commercial analysis of them, or the absence of collaborative tools to produce multimedia contents with a real editorial value. In this paper, we present a new kind of social networks, namely spontaneous and ephemeral social networks (SESNs). SESNs allow people to collaborate spontaneously in the production of multimedia documents so as to cover cultural and sport events.

Remote lab in virtual world for remote control of industrial processes

This paper addresses ways users can remotely control industrial hardware devices over the Internet. We employ a J2EE-based Remote Lab platform to describe the interface of the remote devices and to relay commands and results between users and devices. Collaboration is accomplished by embedding the remote lab platform in an Open Wonderland virtual world.

Remote laboratories framework : focus on reusability and security in m-Learning situations

Remote laboratories is a spreading concept which allows the remote use of devices through Internet connexion. The paper deals with the providing of a framework which is reusable for many devices, from different end-user media such as phone, computer or TV and acceptable in industry, therefore taking into account multi information systems securities. The problem is addressed through the point of view of m-learning situations which involves the lack of rich user interactions and the fact that the user belongs to external information systems when he interacts with the remote device. The modelisation of the remote device with ontologies, the use of a central application server, message oriented middleware and standard web services (database, authentication) are the keys allowing the independence of the framework to the device. The adaptation of the GUI to the end-user device is made through a proxy which refactor the requests and responses according to the capabilities of the end-user device (size of screen, interactions tools). The use of a user-centric model of identities federation allows us to provide an efficient way to reach the goal of transparency to security constraints

SWRL-based context awareness for application servers hosting digital services

As the number of context-aware applications increases in the real world, it can be quite difficult to deploy such applications in traditional application servers, which are context-agnostics systems. To address this challenge, we propose a novel approach for easing the deployment of context-aware applications into application serversContext is encoded within an OWL-driven knowledge base. We couple this knowledge base with SWRL rules to encode context-awareness thresholds. SWRL rules are not predefined in the application server. They are instead embedded inside the application bundle built by the developer, next to the business logic of the application. At the application deployment time, SWRL rules are extracted to the knowledge base in order to monitor the relevant context for the application to be deployed. At runtime, the context of each session of the application is monitored in the knowledge base. When a rule is triggered (a context-awareness threshold is reached), a broker inside the application server notifies the application so that it adapts its behavior by switching to a more relevant modality. We show how our approach eases the work of developers for building context-aware application by using our context-aware framework.

Evaluation of CPU and GPU architectures for spectral image analysis algorithms

Graphical Processing Units (GPU) architectures are massively used for resource-intensive computation. Initially dedicated to imaging, vision and graphics, these architectures serve nowadays a wide range of multi-purpose applications. The GPU structure, however, does not suit to all applications. This can lead to performance shortage. Among several applications, the aim of this work is to analyze GPU structures for image analysis applications in multispectral to ultraspectral imaging. Algorithms used for the experiments are multispectral and hyperspectral imaging dedicated to art authentication. Such algorithms use a high number of spatial and spectral data, along with both a high number of memory accesses and a need for high storage capacity. Timing performances are compared with CPU architecture and a global analysis is made according to the algorithms and GPU architecture. This paper shows that GPU architectures are suitable to complex image analysis algorithm in multispectral.

Reusable Framework for Remote Monitoring and Maintenance of Manufacturing Systems

The aim of this paper is to address the problem of remote control of manufacturing systems for maintenance, object conception and production purposes. nWe present a global approach of this problem according to two research axis: the genericity of the platform according to the underlying device, and the security of the data and information systems. The primary goal of this paper is to describe the framework that allows the remote control, and especially its independence to the devices. We propose a special study on the security issues in such architecture by explaining why we have made the choice of adopting identity federation technologies as a mean to reach remote devices hosted in different Information Systems. We also describe how this kind of systems can be used in a collaborative way in order to build a real extended entreprise for e-manufacturing systems.

FoP: never-ending face recognition and data lifting

In this demonstration, we present Faces of Politics (FoP), a face detection system from pictures illustrating news articles. The first iteration of the face recognition model propelling FoP was trained using Freebase data about politicians and their pictures. FoP is a never-ending system: when a new face is recognized, the learned model is updated accordingly. At this step, FoP is also giving data in return to the LoD cloud that fed him in the first place: it leverages visual knowledge as Linked Data.