José Carlos Metrôlho

PDA as surveillance device in monitoring system

This paper describes the fist stage of a prototype that is being developed using a personal digital assistant (PDA) device in surveillance tasks as part of a monitoring system. The work is being developed and tested using the features of these more and more diffused devices. In the system design, an interface board was used with an embedded controller area network (CAN) to act as a link between the PDA device and the neighbour environment. This application intends to be used in the monitoring and control of environmental factors. The systems architecture and some already developed software blocks are presented in the following paper sections.

Retargetable frameworks for embedded systems exploration

This paper evaluates some trends regarding embedded systems design. These trends focus on the development of new methodologies to cope with short design cycles of software tools. The most promising approach explores the use of architecture description languages (ADL) to retarget software tools for different processors in order to reduce the development time. In this paper, we propose a solution which is based on a new ADL to retarget the development environment (framework + tools) for embedded systems. The environment is composed of a set of plug-ins that explore and connect to the infrastructure provided by Eclipse. The environment generates development tools such as special editors, simulators, debuggers, assemblers and linkers, and also allows the orchestration of these tools in development of embedded systems. These tools are generated based on a new ADL - MiADL, which is employed in the specification of a processors instruction-set architecture (ISA), using an expressive and natural description. MiADL explores the common features of instructions to obtain compact descriptions. The language promotes clear specification of complex instruction formats as is exemplified in the paper.

Handheld devices as actors in domotic monitoring system

This paper describes the first stage of a prototype that is being developed using a personal digital assistant (PDA) and Bluetooth communication to build an information system to supervise automated robotic maintenance systems. This work is being done under collaboration between different university departments with different specialties. The work focuses on the programming of PDA devices and its usage in monitoring systems with domotic applicability. One of the desired goals is to apply new technologies for deploying an information system on mobile and wireless devices. The first results, system architecture and main blocks are presented in this paper

A language for automatic generation of fast instruction-set compiled simulators

This paper presents a novel architecture description language, MiADL. This language is capable of specifying a wide class of ISAs by exploring the common features found in instructions, obtaining compact descriptions. Descriptionpsilas efficiency and expressiveness is demonstrated with examples that compare MiADL with other related works, using complex ISAs of contemporary processors. The semantics of new constructs of the language is also presented. These permit smaller descriptions over other ADLs. Results achieved with simulators generated from this language revealed a speed-up over other contributions. A comparison in terms of description effectiveness and simulator performance is presented.

Flour quality control using image processing

This document presents the description of an application for the automatic visual inspection of flour quality. The flour quality depends on the number of impurities detected in the flour after a predefined settling time. The software was developed with IMAQ Vision for LabVTEW software-developing tool and it uses a commercial camera as image acquisition device. The paper along its sections describes the main system blocks. An illustrative example is used for better description of the several steps during the digital processing of the acquired images.

Development of a library for clients of ONVIF video cameras: Challenges and solutions

The interoperability of IP video equipment is a critical problem for surveillance systems and other video application developers. ONVIF is one of the two specifications addressing the standardization of networked devices interface, and it is based on SOAP. This paper addresses the development of an ONVIF library to develop clients of video cameras. We address the choice of a web services toolkit, and how to use the selected toolkit to develop a basic library. From that, we discuss the implementation of features that are important challenges for developers and, therefore, opportunities for providing higher-level functionalities. The proposed solutions result from the implementation of library that has been validated in industry.

Development of Mobile Platforms Using PDA Bluetooth Control

This paper describes a prototype that uses Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and Bluetooth communication in an information system designed to supervise Automated Robotic Maintenance systems. This work is a collaboration between different University departments with different specialties. The work focuses on the programming of PDA devices and its usage in monitoring systems with domotic applicability. One of the desired goals is to apply new technologies for deploying an information system on mobile and wireless devices. The system’s architecture and results are presented in this paper

A Mobile Application to Provide Personalized Information for Mobility Impaired Tourists

Mobile applications that are developed to assist disabled people in their tourist activities should go much further than simply providing information about points of interest or recommending places or routes based on the user location. Due the specific needs of each person in this group, they should be able to provide them with information about the most suitable points of interest and recommend them with the most suitable places to visit which should be contextualized according to their specific needs and interests. This work describes a proposal for a personalized system to assist mobility disabled people in their tourist activities. The system considers the accessibility features of each tourism service, or product, and the users’ preferences and disabilities and explores information about their interactions and opinions about each place, to recommend points of interest, routes and services that best suit their specific needs and interests.

Using Individual Interactions to Infer Group Interests and to Recommend Content for Groups in Public Spaces

This work explores user’s individual interactions combined with contextual information rules to support socially-aware content selection to best fit users’ interests in public spaces. The system uses information from individual users to infer about the general interests of the place visitors and thus allowing the system to present the content that is representative of the interests of people who attend the same space. Two experiments were performed to evaluate the socially-aware proposed system and to analyze the users’ opinions in different scenarios. Results from both experiments indicate that the proposed approach can be used to deliver content for individuals and for groups in public spaces and the users recognize its advantages over traditional information systems usually used in public spaces.

Integrating Medical Patient Data with Family Trees to Improve the Quality of Information

The way patient information is presented has been proven to have an important impact on patient care. This paper presents a software component to be integrated in a virtual patient record used in a Portuguese hospital. This component supports genetic oncology consultations and aims to help the physician needs to visualize the patient’s family tree in order to diagnose hereditary cancers in both patient and patient descendants. This system allows the physician to view relevant medical information of the elements of the family of a given patient, add new tests, as well as record new cancer situations that occur in any member of the patient’s family. Besides the graphical display of the patients’ family tree, the system also allows to differentiate between different groups of cancer by using symbols and colours, register new cancer occurrences within that family network, as well as information related to tests performed by them.