Volkmar Schau

Smart City Logistik Erfurt (SCL): ICT-support for managing fully electric vehicles in the domain of inner city freight traffic

Until the year 2020, Germany has established a national development plan with the goal to push one million fully electric vehicles into use. Part of the plan is to establish a number of federally funded research projects which investigate and tackle domain specific problems, e.g. the limited driving range of electric cars. Freight traffic is especially hampered by those range restrictions. The Smart City Logistik (SCL) project strives for a practical and short term solution to this problem in the concrete context set by the city of Erfurt, Germany. The focus is on ICT-support for currently available, small and medium sized, fully electric vehicles that provide for the “last mile” in freight handling. The idea is to transfer the goods from large trucks with traditional gasoline-driven engines to smaller sized electric transporters, to support this fleet with an integrated online interface to usual logistics systems, and to estimate and manage each individual vehicles range, itinerary and route with a highly personalized in-car client. This paper provides an overview of ongoing work, as well as a look at specific concepts and structures in the projects layout.

Tracy: An Extensible Plugin-Oriented Software Architecture for Mobile Agent Toolkits

In this chapter we propose a software architecture for mobile agent toolkits and describe our Tracy toolkit as a reference implementation of this architecture. Agent toolkits mainly consist of a software system that forms an agency, which is responsible to host mobile and stationary software agents. In contrast to most architectures developed so far, which already define a large set of services for agent migration, communication, and security, we propose to employ a kernel-based approach. The kernel only provides fundamental concepts common to all agent toolkits and abstracts from any of these services. In particular, although Tracy was developed as a mobile agent toolkit, its kernel abstracts from all issues related to agent mobility, delegating this to an optional service implementation. This makes it possible to replace Tracy’s migration service with another implementation and even to have two different migration services in parallel. Service implementations are developed as plugins that can be started and stopped during run-time. We have already developed almost a dozen plugins for agent migration, communication, authentication and authorization, and security solutions, only to name a few. We believe that this architecture is a useful foundation for research on agentrelated topics as it allows research groups to implement their own results as a service which can be used by other groups running an agent system based on the same architecture.

Agent Migration as an Optional Service in an Extendable Agent Toolkit Architecture

In this paper we report on first experiences with a new software architecture for agent toolkits. Agent toolkits mainly consist of a software system that defines an agency, which is responsible to host software agents. Most architectures developed so far already define a large set of services, for example for agent migration, communication, and tracking. We propose to employ a kernel-based approach, where the kernel only provides fundamental concepts and functions common in all toolkits and abstracts from any of these services. We were able to show that in particular agent migration can be implemented as an optional service. We believe that this architecture is a useful foundation for research on agent-related topics as it allows research groups to implement their own results as a service which can be used by other groups running an agent system based on the same architecture.

A service-oriented software architecture for mobile agent toolkits

In this paper we propose a new software architecture for mobile agent toolkits. Agent toolkits mainly consist of a software system that forms an agency, which is responsible to host mobile and stationary software agents. In contrast to most architectures developed so far, which already define a large set of high-level services for agent migration and communication, we propose to employ a kernel-based approach. The kernel only provides fundamental concepts and functions and abstracts from any of these high-level services. We propose a new model for agencies and present our Tracy mobile agent toolkit acting as a reference implementation of our new model.

Applying stochastic methods for range prediction in E-mobility

In a time where environmental protection is a big topic, use of electric vehicles is steadily increasing. Many people have reservations to use this new technology because of the limited range of electric vehicle. The range is influenced by many parameters like velocity, ramp, weight and so on. In respect of such facts prediction of range is a very important but difficult topic. One thinkable solution is to model the electric vehicle by using physical properties. Such approaches are restricted to a specific vehicle type and it is not possible to transfer the solution without a good deal of work. In this paper, we present a new approach, which is not restricted to vehicle types, by using statistical methods.

Mobile Agent Communication in Highly Dynamic Networks: A Self-Adaptive Architecture inspired by the Honey Bee Colony

Communication is considered as a building block for mobile agent systems. In highly dynamic networks, thanks to environmental stimuli such as changes in connection quality and network topology, performance of communication between mobile agents may be degraded considerably. With focus on attaining fault tolerance and reliability, we propose a context-aware architecture for agent communication model inspired by the honey bee colony. To validate the hypothesis, a software prototype has been designed and implemented according to the proposed mechanism. Encouraging experimental results on a test system show that our approach brings benefits to a colony of agent platforms.

ICT-Systems for Electric Vehicles Within Simulated and Community Based Environments

The current living standard of industrial nations causes increasing CO2 emissions, particulate matter, and noise pollution. An essential amount of these environmental issues is induced by stop-and-go traffic within cities which is seriously characterized by short-distance freight transport trips with inner-city and suburban distances. The project Smart City Logistik (SCL) strives for a practical and short-term solution to this problem by ICT-Systems for electric vehicles (EVs). But planning, monitoring and analyzing for urban area logistics can become complicated and challenging to use. Evaluating them within acceptance tests requires a lot of experiments as well as a lot of equipment. The following approach within the SCL project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), tries to use the ICT-system as it is and connects that system through a dynamically and procedurally generated simulation environment, based on real terrain and community data.

Model-driven engineering tool comparison for architectures within heterogenic systems for Electric vehicle

System landscapes within logistical scenarios is highly heterogenic. Adding specific mechanisms, e.g. to support planing, monitoring and analyses for fully electrical powered vehicles, could become a mess or at least a challenge. While our project Smart City Logistic (SCL) is trying to manage this extension for multiple logistic scenarios, other projects want to do comparable system extensions as well. The following approach tries to evaluate how model-driven engineering (MDE) combined with generative frameworks can support the transfer from platform independent models to deployable solutions within the logistical domain. This paper compares specific MDE tools which can be used to support such a framework.

Generic and distributed runtime environment for model-driven game development

Massive multiplayer online games are large-scaled distributed systems to handle a huge amount of simultaneous players. Thus, development costs can be enormous. To deal with this, it is necessary to reduce redundant development steps in such distributed systems, e.g. by using code generators and model analysers to build components from already existing knowledge. Such knowledge could be the unique game logic. This paper reports realized approaches to derivate infrastructure from that logic within our middleware. Getting through this is achieved by using an abstract meta model for game design processes, harvest information from those design results and generate infrastructure for communication, controlling and persistance. Finally we evalutes its applicableness and useablity in multiple game projects.

ICT for Urban Area Logistics with Electric Vehicles Compared Within Simulated and Real Environments

ICT-systems for electric vehicles (EVs), e.g. planing, monitoring and analysing for urban area logistics, can become complex and difficult to use. Evaluating them within acceptance tests requires a lot of experimentees as well as a lot of equipment. Unfortunately, mostly more than available within the project. The following approach within the research project Smart City Logistik (SCL), funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), tries to use the ICT-system as it is and connects those system through a dynamicly and proceduraly generated simulation environment, based on real road and terrain data. Finally, the results will be compaired to real environments by using EVs.