Nikola Ivković

Verifying worst case delays in controller area network

Controller Area Network (CAN) protocol was developed to fulfill high availability and timing demands in modern cars, but today it is also used in many other mission critical applications with hard real-time requirements. We present a compact model of the CAN bus specified by a timed automaton and prove its applicability for estimating worst case delays which are crucial for hard real-time systems. Using our model we detected flaws in previous approaches to determine the worst case delays in CAN systems.

Distributed Simulations of Physical Phenomena Based on Windows Machines

Simulating physical phenomena can be computationally very demanding, making the distributed approach attractive. Scientific computing and other computationally complex tasks are often performed on dedicated cluster or grid of computers usually running some distribution of Linux operating system. In this article we propose a simulation framework that can utilize general purpose computers running Windows operating system to share available computational resources. The proposed system is composed of simulation client, the network of distributors, and workers. The presented framework has architecture and design that provides a flexible and efficient system with good scalability and fault tolerance properties. The performed tests on the prototype application show that our approach is viable.

Agents as Bots – An Initial Attempt Towards Model-Driven MMORPG Gameplay

Massively multi-player on-line role-playing games (MMORPGs) present a large-scale, digital environment that fosters organizational behaviour of players in which multi-agent systems (MASs) can be used for various purposes including but not limited to automated testing, bot detection or analysis of social player behaviour and human – artificial agent interaction. A work-in-progress model-driven MAS development environment for such games is presented. An open-source MMORPG called The Mana World (TMW) is used as an example scenario on which the various components of the system are tested.

Automated MMORPG Testing – An Agent-Based Approach

A work-in-progress agent-based framework for automated testing of an open-source massively multi-player on-line role playing game (MMORPG) called The Mana World is presented. The implemented system, in its current state, allows for model-driven development of tests using a graphical user interface (GUI), implementation of automated artificial players (bots) and their use in testing the quests (player tasks) of the game. The system is implemented using Python, SPADE, SWI Prolog and AToM\(^3\).

Towards an agent-based automated testing environment for massively multi-player role playing games

Automated testing in massively multi-player on-line role playing games (MMORPG) is a challenging task due to the complexity of such games and their large numbers of mutually distributed but interacting components. Large-scale multi-agent systems (LSMAS) provide us with a suitable formalism to address such complex problems. Herein a first step towards an automated game testing environment, built for the open source Mana World MMORPG, will be presented that allows the implementation of software agents and agent organizations and provide the developers with valuable game-play and testing data.

Making programming education more accessible for visually impaired

Modern programming paradigms have brought many different challenges for visually impaired programmers. Graphical interfaces have become one of the biggest obstacles for visually impaired programming professionals. The same problems that relate to visually impaired programmers also apply to programming education in which it is very challenging to make educational interfaces accessible for visually impaired and for other students with disabilities. In order to make programming more suitable for students with visual impairment an educational system that enables voice-based control of its elements has been developed for the purpose of their programming education. The results of using this kind of system and its impact on visually impaired students are presented and discussed in this paper.

MIA: A multi-purpose intelligent assistant

Business systems as well as corresponding websites are constantly growing in their complexity and it is harder and harder to use them and find desired functionality or information. Intelligent assistants can be used as a mean of enabling users to find information they seek and to get the answers they require in a way that is quicker and more suited for wider types of users compared to traditional approach because they are not required to know the system in detail but rather to communicate with appropriate intelligent assistant in a more natural language which is similar to talking with their colleagues. Intelligent assistants should be as easy to develop and maintain as possible because of the need to constantly improve them in order to get the intelligent assistants to provide the latest information. In this paper a multi-purpose intelligent assistant (MIA) is proposed and its architecture as well as the perception of various business systems about the usage of such assistant are presented and discussed.