Martin Hanneghan

Dynamic service composition in home appliance networks

The proliferation of networked appliances and the complex functions they provide make it ever harder for a specialist, let alone an ordinary home user, to configure them to provide a given service. The use of flexible middleware architectures, combined with application level services will allow for better exploitation of these features both for the benefit of performance and simplicity. For example, a TV, DVD player and radio all have output speakers and are capable of producing sound, however there is no common framework to harness this functionality. In this paper we address this issue and propose a home network architecture that interconnects home appliances and their associated services using descriptive ontologies to guide the composition process itself. In this network, home appliances are interconnected using a Service Integration Controller (SIC), which discovers and dynamically composes the services they provide and efficiently coordinates the communications between all services independent of the protocol being used. The prototype we implemented uses a home entertainment system as a case study and shows that this framework fulfils the requirements of the system design.

Multiple density maps information fusion for effectively assessing intensity pattern of lifelogging physical activity

Physical activity (PA) measurement is a crucial task in healthcare technology aimed at monitoring the progression and treatment of many chronic diseases. Traditional lifelogging PA measures require relatively high cost and can only be conducted in controlled or semi-controlled environments, though they exhibit remarkable precision of PA monitoring outcomes. Recent advancement of commercial wearable devices and smartphones for recording one’s lifelogging PA has popularized data capture in uncontrolled environments. However, due to diverse life patterns and heterogeneity of connected devices as well as the PA recognition accuracy, lifelogging PA data measured by wearable devices and mobile phones contains much uncertainty thereby limiting their adoption for healthcare studies. To improve the feasibility of PA tracking datasets from commercial wearable/mobile devices, this paper proposes a lifelogging PA intensity pattern decision making approach for lifelong PA measures. The method is to firstly remove some irregular uncertainties (IU) via an Ellipse fitting model, and then construct a series of monthly based hour-day density map images for representing PA intensity patterns with regular uncertainties (RU) on each month. Finally it explores Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence fusing information from these density map images for generating a decision making model of a final personal lifelogging PA intensity pattern. The approach has significantly reduced the uncertainties and incompleteness of datasets from third party devices. Two case studies on a mobile personalized healthcare platform MHA [1] connecting the mobile app Moves are carried out. The results indicate that the proposed approach can improve effectiveness of PA tracking devices or apps for various types of people who frequently use them as a healthcare indicator.

A semantic framework for self-adaptive networked appliances

User demands and technological advances are moving us closer to the pervasive computing vision. The home of the future includes networked appliances that publish the functions they offer as intelligent middleware services providing flexible, intuitive and zero-maintenance mechanisms for dynamic service composition, deployment, extensibility, management and usage. Whilst much work exists relating to service-oriented frameworks, this typically relies on attribute-based service matching and discovery, which is inherently restrictive since no universally agreed service description or taxonomy is available to describe services homogeneously. Device manufacturers inadvertently use different vocabularies to describe services and therefore ambiguities between terms are likely. In this paper we address these issues and describe our networked appliance service utilisation framework (NASUF), which illustrates how services offered by networked appliances can be semantically composed to extend device capabilities and perform a plethora of data adaptation functions to automatically resolve any composition conflicts that may occur. We have developed a prototype to test NASUF and our findings show that the framework can dynamically compose services provided by networked appliances in peer-to-peer networks.

Game Content Model: An Ontology for Documenting Serious Game Design

Computer games is a form of real-time interactive software wrapped in creatively crafted media that offers game-players engaging, goal-directed play. Designing computer games requires adequate experience and great attention to detail to describe the rules, play and aesthetics that compose the interactive experience. For inexperienced game designers, formalised methods such as game design languages and game meta-models can provide a guide and language to produce a game design specification correct by design. This paper introduces a new game content model that can aid game designers document specification of game design.

DiSUS: Mobile Ad Hoc Network Unstructured Services

Mobile devices are situated in an environment that consists of infrastructure and ad hoc networks. Unlike infrastructure networks, ad hoc networks are highly dynamic, wireless and do not have any centralised administration. These two environments accommodate two types of services: one type is registered and discovered using toolsets found within structured networks, e.g., JINI and UDDI, and the other type of service is situated within a network that has no structure, as in P2P. Our work highlights a key solution for providing unstructured services in a mobile ad hoc environment. This paper shows how mobile ad hoc systems can construct and semantically discover unstructured services in their environment. We describe the Distributed Semantic Unstructured Services (DiSUS) framework; the protocols used and describe the functionality of the prototype system we have developed.

Ellipse fitting model for improving the effectiveness of life-logging physical activity measures in an Internet of Things environment

The popular use of wearable devices and mobile phones makes the effective capture of life-logging physical activity (PA) data in an Internet of Things (IoT) environment possible. The effective collection of measures of PA in the long term is beneficial to interdisciplinary healthcare research and collaboration from clinicians, researchers and patients. However, due to heterogeneity of connected devices and rapid change of diverse life patterns in an IoT environment, life-logging PA information captured by mobile devices usually contains much uncertainty. In this study, the authors project the distribution of irregular uncertainty by defining a walking speed related score named as daily activity in physical space and present an ellipse-fitting model-based validity improvement method for reducing uncertainties of life-logging PA measures in an IoT environment. The experimental results reflect that the proposed method remarkably improves the validity of PA measures in a healthcare platform.

Improving the Validity of Lifelogging Physical Activity Measures in an Internet of Things Environment

Recently, the popular use of wearable devices and mobile apps makes the effectively capture of lifelogging physical activity data in an Internet of Things (IoT) environment possible. The effective collection of measures of physical activity in the long term is beneficial to interdisciplinary healthcare research and collaboration from clinicians, researchers to patients. However, due to heterogeneity of connected devices and rapid change of diverse life patterns in an IoT environment, lifelogging physical activity information captured by mobile devices usually contains much uncertainty. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of existing life-logging physical activity measurement devices, and identify regular and irregular uncertainties of these activity measures in an IoT environment. We then project the distribution of irregular uncertainty by defining a walking speed related score named as Daily Activity in Physical Space (DAPS). Finally, we present an ellipse fitting model based validity improvement method for reducing uncertainties of life-logging physical activity measures in an IoT environment. The experimental results reflect that the proposed method effectively improves the validity of physical activity measures in a healthcare platform.

Fusing games technology and pedagogy for games-based learning through a model driven approach

Computer games have been closely linked to learning in recent years through the educational potential of game-based learning. Many believe that it is now appropriate to adopt this innovative approach to motivate the current generation of learners in regaining their interest in learning certain topics. However, this approach is impeded by the limited availability of ‘serious’ games. Developments in software engineering that enable automatic generation of software artefacts through diagrams and modelling techniques promises a new hope for game-based learning adopters, especially those with little or no technical knowledge, to produce their own serious games for use in game-based learning. This paper describes our model-driven approach designed to aid non-technical domain experts in the production of serious games.

The World-Wide Web as Platform for Supporting Interactive Concurrent Engineering

This paper describes the use of the Internet and World-Wide Web (WWW) as a means for disseminating information and enabling collaborative working in a Concurrent Engineering (CE) environment. It discusses the authors architecture for a concurrent engineering support environment, the CONCERT environment, and describes the implementation of a WWW-based interface to this environment.

The Design Of An Object-Oriented Repository To Support Concurrent Engineering

In this paper we discuss the requirements and design of a repository that can be used to support a Concurrent Engineering (CE) philosophy. We identify three fundamental support services that are of use in a concurrent engineering environment: distribution support, computer supported co-operative working support and repository support. These requirements are modelled and applied in conjunction with the design and implementation of a concurrent engineering support repository.