Eun-Sun Cho

ICARS : Integrated Control Architecture for the Robotic Mediator in Smart Environments: A Software Framework for the Robotic Mediator Collaborating with Smart Environments

Collaboration of robots and smart environments is an essential issue when we want to enable a robotic mediator to provide the users with proactive context-aware services in smart environments. However, existing network robot software platforms are not flexible enough to effectively integrate both the respective features specific to robots and to environments. In addition, they do not support high-level collaboration model that is crucial to enable mediating between the user and the smart environment. This paper proposes ICARS, an integrated control architecture for the robotic mediator in smart environments. ICARS consists of three layers each of which provides a flexible communication/device model, an adaptive service model for the integrated robot control architecture and a behavior-based high-level collaboration model as a key feature respectively. We present the detailed design, implementation, and experiments of ICARS. The experimental results show that ICARS enables flexible integration of the diverse devices in the robot and environment, adaptive service provision for collaborative services and easier development of high-level collaborative applications.

Fine-Grained View-Based Access Control for RDF Cloaking

‘Location clocking’ allows services to access larger location description (for instance, ‘Austria’), instead of fine grained location information (for instance, ‘a restaurant in Tyrol’) to preserve privacy, while keeping any useful services (for instance, ‘automatic language-translation’) continuing. This paper proposes an extension of location/spatial cloaking technique for RDF data based on view-based access control. Our system starts from a fine-grained view defining method, making use of structural characteristics of interlinked RDF data. It supports cloaking of non-hierarchical data by allowing abstract hierarchy definitions of resources and views. Weimplement a prototype system named ‘Husk’ on top of an RDFrepository system.

Performance Improvement for Flash Memories Using Loop Optimization

Flash memories have advanced features such as non-volatility, fast access speed, and low power consumption that they are adopted in various ubiquitous portable devices. However, the speed of writing on flash memory is relatively slower than that of reading, and extensive research efforts are devoted to overcome these restrictions, mostly in the field of flash translation layers (FTLs). This paper proposes an orthogonal approach of reducing flash memory writing time, by detecting and eliminating unnecessary write operations before execution of embedded applications. For this purpose, we extend static analysis techniques previously used in the compilers for program optimization. Our research focuses on loop blocks, which are usually used for massive data management and likely to efficiently enhance performance when improved. As a result, we show that the proposed method reduces the amount of data to be written and improves the writing performance for flash memories.

Toward Efficient Detection of Semantic Exceptions in Context-Aware Systems

Semantic exceptions mean undesirable contexts with respect to application semantics in context aware systems. Description of such semantic exceptions is based on regular expressions, which entails high complexity to detect exceptions. In this paper we devise a high level language with light-weight exception description features specific to context-aware systems. For more enhanced implementation, we also provide an intermediate language to bridge the gap between high level programming languages and event stream processing engines. We expect this approach to mitigate the complexity as well as to allow further opportunities to optimize exception detection process.

An Integrated Formal Model for Context-Aware Systems

Context-aware applications should consider the devices and networks engaged in the systems, as well as the complex control and data structures in the applications. This makes it not so straightforward to understand applications and to achieve the quality of applications, without well-defined formal model adequate to the intended goals. In this paper, we propose a formal model for context aware system, which provides device behaviors with temporal features, enriched with commonly used categorization of context. Thus this model enables integrated management of the interconnected devices with context information for a context-aware system, so as to be employed for the critical purposes like safety enhancement.

Future robotic computer: a new type of computing device with robotic functions

With the advance of IT technologies, a new type of computing device will be introduced in our daily life in the near future. In this paper, we outline our on-going development of the robotic computer that naturally interacts with users, understands current situation about users and environments, and proactively provides users with services. We describe the system architecture and the implementation of a proof-of-concept prototype of the robotic computer proposed.

Reorganizing Data Blocks in Flash Memory by Program Translation

Due to the portability, low power consumption and robustness, flash memory is one of the popular storage devices for small electronic equipments like smart phones and PMPs (Portable multimedia players). However, it suffers from performance bottlenecks caused by asymmetric speed between read and write operations. A lot of previous researches focused on improving address mapping schemes in FTL (Flash Translation Layer) to reduce the number of write operations which are more expensive, but they rarely consider semantic factors like data file formats and detailed sequence of write operations. In this paper we suggest a new performance enhancement technique for flash memory, where a file format is reorganized to segregate read-only data and writable data. Since converting every standardized data format to a new one is unrealistic, we use static analysis and program translation--the transformed programs keep the writable data in the same block, rather than allowing it to be scattered over a larger number of blocks mixed with read-only data.

A software framework for robotic mediators in smart environments

The experience of full automation without explicit user direction may induce anxiety among smart space users. The use of explicit mediators between users and fully automated systems may help to mitigate users’ anxiety. While robots mediators are one possible solution, several issues remain, including high complexity and limited collaboration between robots and smart space platforms, reducing overall system reliability. This paper proposes the Integrated Control Architecture for Robotic mediator in Smart environments (ICARS) as a solution to improve the integration and reliability of robot mediators within automated smart spaces. Assuming relatively thin network robots as robotic mediators to enable a wide distribution with less cost, ICARS provides a well-organized software framework consisting of three layers to integrate robots and smart spaces: a flexible communication/device model, an adaptive service model for the integrated robot control architecture, and a behavior-based high-level collaboration model. In this paper, we also present details of the design, implementation, and an application scenario conducted with ICARS. The results show that ICARS enables flexible integration of the diverse devices associated with robots and environments, adaptive service provision for collaborative services, and easier development of high-level collaborative applications with decent performance.

Enhancement of Accuracy of Exploitability Analysis Tools for Crashes

To enhance the reliability of programs, developers use fuzzing tools in test processes to identify vulnerabilities so that they can be fixed ahead of time. In this case, the developers consider the security-related vulnerabilities to be the most critical ones that should be urgently fixed to avoid possible exploitation by attackers. However, developers without much experience of analysis of vulnerabilities usually rely on tools to pick out the security-related crashes from the normal crashes. In this paper, we suggest a static analysis-based tool to help developers to make their programs more reliable by identifying security-related crashes among them. This paper includes experimental results, and compares them to the results from MSEC !exploitable for the same sets of crashes.

Automated Crash Filtering for ARM Binary Programs

This paper aims to help to differentiate security related crashes from benign vulnerabilities, using static taint-analysis. To achieve this goal, we propose a tool named Crash Filter, which determines if a crash can be made to be exploitable or not, by analyzing ARM binary codes. We envision that the proposed analysis would help to timely fix security-critical bugs.