Lorenzo Blasi

Towards robust personal assistant robots: Experience gained in the SRS project

SRS is a European research project for building robust personal assistant robots using ROS (Robotic Operating System) and Care-O-bot (COB) 3 as the initial demonstration platform. In this paper, experience gained while building the SRS system is presented. A main contribution of the paper is the SRS autonomous control framework. The framework is divided into two parts. First, it has an automatic task planner, which initialises actions on the symbolic level. The planner produces proactive robotic behaviours based on updated semantic knowledge. Second, it has an action executive for coordination actions at the level of sensing and actuation. The executive produces reactive behaviours in well-defined domains. The two parts are integrated by fuzzy logic based symbolic grounding. As a whole, they represent the framework for autonomous control. Based on the framework, several new components and user interfaces are integrated on top of COBs existing capabilities to enable robust fetch and carry in unstructured environments. The implementation strategy and results are discussed at the end of the paper.

Applicability of security metrics for adaptive security management in a universal banking hub system

Banking applications require a high standard of security, resilience and adaptation. The results presented here were obtained from a case study of the deployment of the security metrics-driven adaptive security solutions of a distributed middleware in the context of monetary transfers. The focus of this study is on the analysis of the applicability of security metrics for adaptive authentication, authorization, and end-to-end confidentiality, and the applicability of trust metrics.

Fine-Grained Continuous Usage Control of Service Based Grids --- The GridTrust Approach

Access control techniques designed for single domain infrastructures, where users are known by domain administrators, provide considerable liberty in the usage of resources. This paradigm is not suitable for highly scalable and decentralised systems such as Grids and service oriented architectures (SOA), where resources are shared between domains, and users come from remote domains. One approach is to provide policy-driven autonomic solutions that operate a continuous monitoring of the usage of resources by users. This paper presents the services and tools offered by the GridTrust Security Framework (GSF). GSF addresses three layers of the next generation of grid (NGG) architecture: the Grid application layer, the Grid service middleware layer, and the Grid foundation layer. The framework is composed of security and trust services and tools provided at the middleware and Grid foundation middleware layers. Various business case studies are being developed to validate the GridTrust results.

Towards an Energy-Aware Cloud Architecture for Smart Grids

Energy consumption in Cloud computing is a significant issue in regards to aspects such as the cost of energy, cooling in the data center and the environmental impact of cloud data centers. Smart grids offers the prospect of dynamic costs for a data center’s energy usage. These dynamic costs can be passed on to Cloud users providing incentives for users to moderate their load while also ensuring the Cloud providers are insulated from fluctuations in the cost of energy. The first step towards this is an architecture that focuses on energy monitoring and usage prediction. We provide such an architecture at both the PaaS and IaaS layers, resulting in energy metrics for applications, VMs and physical hosts, which is key to enabling active demand in cloud data centers. This architecture is demonstrated through our initial results utilising a generic use case, providing energy consumption information at the PaaS and IaaS layers. Such monitoring and prediction provides the groundwork for providers passing on energy consumption costs to end users. It is envisaged that the resulting varying price associated with energy consumption can help motivate the formation of methods and tools to support software developers aiming to optimise energy efficiency and minimise the carbon footprint of Cloud applications.

PaaS-IaaS Inter-Layer Adaptation in an Energy-Aware Cloud Environment

Cloud computing providers resort to a variety of techniques to improve energy consumption at each level of the cloud computing stack. Most of these techniques consider resource-level energy optimization at IaaS layer. This paper argues energy gains can be obtained by creating a cooperation between the PaaS layer (in charge of hosting the application/service) and the IaaS layer (in charge of handling the computing resources). It presents a novel method based on steering information and decision taking to trigger the PaaS and IaaS layers to adapt their energy mode in service operation, therefore enabling the Cloud stack to actively adapt to changing situations. Experimental results demonstrate such adaptation achieves dynamic energy management in each of the PaaS and IaaS cloud layers.

ASCETiC - Adapting Service lifeCycle towards EfficienT Clouds

Reducing energy consumption is increasingly gaining attention in the area of Cloud computing, as means to reduce costs and improve corporate sustainability image. ASCETiC is focused on providing novel methods and tools to support software developers to optimise energy efficiency and minimise the carbon footprint resulting from developing, deploying and running software in Clouds. At the same time, quality of service, experience and perception are still taken into account, so energy efficiency will complement them and boost Cloud efficiency at several dimensions. ASCETiC primary focus is to relate software design and energy use, which will depend on the deployment conditions and the correct operation of the software by means of an adaptive environment. This paper presents specific objectives for the project, as well as requirements, business goals and architecture for the resultant Open Source Cloud stack providing energy efficiency at software, platform and infrastructure Cloud layers.

GEMOM Platform Prototype Validation through Case Studies - Main Results and Viewpoints to Exploitation

I. Introduction GEMOM (Genetic Message Oriented Secure Middleware) is an EU FP7 ICT project. Its main contribution is the design and development of a secure, self-organizing and resilient messaging platform, enabling reliable message sourcing and delivery in business-critical application. The GEMOM middleware, with its secure, resilient, selfhealing and adaptive messaging infrastructure allows for flexible and robust messaging solutions and offers advanced monitoring, management and maintenance services. Specific and final project activities are focused on validating GEMOM key features through the above mentioned five application scenarios. Final results on ongoing testing activities will presented at the workshop.

Expressing Quality of Service and Protection Using Federation-Level Service Level Agreement

Frameworks for service level agreements (SLAs) have been developed to allow services to discover and negotiate SLAs dynamically, without direct human intervention. We give a description of the experiences of two projects which are building on existing work in SLAs: the main advantages being to obtain better overall services (including pricing) for the consumer, and the SLAs are useful as a component of, or extension to, cloud federations. We also argue that the “Quality of Protection” is an important part of SLAs.