Mikael Desertot

Component based Framework to Create Mobile Cross-platform Applications

Abstract Smartphones provide a set of native functionalities and another set of functionalities available through third-party applications. The emergence of more and more actors, without standards to provide their devices or OS, stops the cross-platform development. Indeed, a developer would have to learn many programmatic languages and create many user interfaces for many devices. To resolve this problem, several solutions often consist in the creation of a com- mon SDK to only write the application once. Then, the application code is translated in native code for each target platform. In this paper, we propose a solution based on a component model. A set of configurable components is implemented for the targeted platforms. A component will have a common interface independent from the host OS. Finally, a new language will offer developers a single instruction call to any component through its interface. This instruction is common on any platforms to simplify the implementation of a cross-platform application.

A context aware framework for services management in the transportation domain

The transportation domain brings particular needs dealing with the specificities of the environment (highly mobile, distributed, unstable network connection, …). In this paper, we propose a dynamic adaptable framework responding to the needs of transportations applicative services. Among the most important services we can name positioning, time or communication capabilities. To achieve both this flexibility and automate context adaptation, we rely on a Service Oriented architecture and experiment our proposition on the inter-vehicular communication system, VESPA. This framework is based on the use of context informations for the transportation domain.

A framework for mobile and context-aware applications applied to vehicular social networks

The notion of context has become very important in computer science, especially when users are highly mobile. In a short period of time the environment changes; communication networks can become available or unavailable, user communities can appear or disappear, etc. The work presented in this paper focuses on the transportation domain and more particularly on applications which accompany and assist the user in transportation activities (e.g., driving, visiting a city, etc.) through the use of ad hoc social networks. We present a case study related to the VESPA system, designed to help drivers by providing them with diverse information (e.g., traffic information, available parking spaces, etc.); we show how the framework we propose can help the system deal with context issues. In the last part, we analyze different mechanisms of changing application behavior through the use of services, an important step towards making our devices reactive to new situations.

When the context changes, so does my transportation application: VESPA

Abstract The notion of context has become very important in computer science, especially when mobility of users is involved. For humans, it is instinctive to adapt to our environment, to the people around us, or to the situation. It becomes less evident regarding our computational devices. If we consider handheld devices (e.g., smartphones) that are available today, we can notice a wide choice of applications, some of which have started to take context into account. But research in this domain is still very active, as deciding what information influences which application is a complex problem. The work presented in this paper focuses on the transportation domain and more particularly on applications designed to assist the user in transportation activities (e.g., driving, visiting a city, ...). As multiple applications should react in a similar way to the context changes, we propose a framework for their execution and context management. In this paper we present a case study related to the VESPA system, designed to assist drivers by providing them diverse information (e.g., traffic information, available parking spaces, etc.), by showing how it can help dealing with context issues.

COMMON FRAMEWORK: A HYBRID APPROACH TO INTEGRATE CROSS-PLATFORM COMPONENTS IN MOBILE APPLICATION

There is a multitude of mobile OS: iOS android, Windows Phone 8 and each OS provides its own standards and tools. This heterogeneity in the mobile domain forces developers to implement an application for e ach mobile platform. To achieve that, developers need t o master several languages (Java, Objective-C…). They also need to have several devices at their disposal (PC, Mac, many smartphones …). Then, after applications distributions, developers have to main tain several source codes. In this study, we tackle this problematic. Our goal is to soften the differences between each OS in order to simplify the development of cross-platform third-party applications. To achieve that, we have defined a framework called COMMON (Component Oriented programming for Mobile Multi OsiNtegration). This framework allows the integration of cross-platform components in any app lication (iOS android). To run our components on an y OS, we provide an implementation for each platform. However, to make their integrations easier, we als o provide a common public interface of each component, which is platform-independent. Besides, we provid e a common language, also platform-independent, allowing the integration and use of any component in any native application (iOS android). This language is based on annotations. Finally, we have implemented a cross-compiler, which translates the source code wr itten with our language to native source code: Obje ctiveC for iOS, Java for Android,… In this study, we hav e shown that our solution offers performance and memory consumption closed to native applications. Finally, with COMMON, mobile developers implement less lines of source code than with a native applic ation. In your test application, we have saved 30%.

A dynamic service-oriented framework for the transportation domain

The transportation domain brings particular needs dealing with the specificities of the environment (highly mobile, distributed, unstable network connection, …). In this paper, we propose a first step in providing a dynamic adaptable framework responding to the non-functional needs of transportations applicative services. Among the most important services we can name positioning, time or communication capabilities. To achieve both this flexibility and automate context adaptation, we rely on a Service Oriented architecture and experiment our proposition on the inter-vehicular communication system, VESPA.

Sensing user context and habits for run-time energy optimization

Optimizing energy consumption in modern mobile handheld devices plays a very important role as lowering energy consumption impacts battery life and system reliability. With next-generation smartphones and tablets, the number of sensors and communication tools will increase and more and more communication interfaces and protocols such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS, UMTS, and LTE will be incorporated. Consequently, the fraction of energy consumed by these components will be larger. Nevertheless, the use of the large amount of data from the different sensors can be beneficial to detect the changing user context, to understand habits, and to detect running application needs. All these information, when used properly, may lead to an efficient energy consumption control.This paper proposes a tool to analyze user/application interaction to understand how the different hardware components are used at run-time and optimize them. The idea here is to use machine learning methods to identify and classify user behaviors and habit information. Using this tool, a software has been developed to control at run-time system component activities that have high impacts on the energy consumption. The tool allows also to predict future applications usages. By this way, screen brightness, CPU frequency, Wi-Fi connectivity, and playback sound level can be optimized while meeting the applications and the user requirements. Our experimental results show that the proposed solution can lower the energy consumption by up to 30 % versus the out-of-the-box power governor, while maintaining a negligible system overhead.

Run-time users/applications interaction analysis for power consumption optimization

Personal and mobile computing systems represents nowadays one of the biggest market segment and fastest adopted products. The importance of saving power for these handheld devices is critical. The benefits are increasing battery life and system reliability. In these systems, power not only goes to the processing elements but also to Input/Output (IO) subsystem such communication peripherals and LCD display. In this paper, we propose a new tool that offers exploiting users information such as its position, needs and history to reduce energy consumption.

Enhancing the CATS Framework by Providing Asynchronous Deployment for Mobile Application

The work presented in this paper focuses on the use of the CATS framework (a framework dedicated to the adaptation and the deployment of context aware services in the transportation context) on applications designed to assist the user in transportation activities (e.g., driving assistant, visiting a city, finding a parking place etc.). We present a solution to deploy and use these services when users do not have a connection to WAN by using asynchronous solutions based on smart cities infrastructures. A prototype has been developed and evaluated at the end of this paper.

Seamless Context Adaptation on a Service-Oriented Framework

This article describes an easy, efficient way to manage context-aware applications with the help of metadata. We rely on CATS, our proposition for an application framework embedded on mobile devices. It is designed to host applications conforming to the SOA principles for achieving a flexible and dynamic architecture. Our framework provides non-functional capabilities for context management and for the adaptations required at context changes. In this article we focus on the use of iPOJO handlers and the advantages they bring to the OSGi technology.