Networked Robots using ATLAS Service-Oriented Architecture in the Smart Spaces

Summary form only given. A new program of intelligent service robot entitled as ubiquitous robotic companion (URC) project is introduced, where the project is funded by Ministry of Information and Communication, Republic of Korea from 2004 for 4 years. In the project, a new paradigm of intelligent robot, URC is newly defined by fusion of robot, network and information technologies, in which software robot and embedded robot are also introduced as well as the conventional robot. All three actors are connected by high speed network infra and provide high quality service to human users at any time and any place. That is why the project is entitled as ubiquitous robotic companion. In the presentation, some more details about URC together with consisting subprojects were introduced.

A robotic service framework supporting automated integration of ubiquitous sensors and devices

In general, it requires lots of complicated and expensive processing functions to find the exact location of a mobile target. For example, Ubiquitous Robotic Companion (URC) system should be equipped with powerful resources or be given an aid from the external servers to find its location for itself. Sensor network that consists of inexpensive low-power sensors can provide an efficient solution to find the exact location of such a mobile target at a low price. In such applications, if all sensor nodes have to always wake up to find location of the mobile robot, we have to pay a lot of waste of resources such as battery power and channel utilization. In this paper, we propose a cheap and energy efficient location tracking method of a mobile robot by minimizing the number of sensor nodes participating in the task of target tracking.

Ubiquitous computing as the integration of sensors, smart devices, and intelligent technologies to form a “smart space” environment relies on the development of both middleware and networking technologies. Several kinds of smart space middleware have been developed and OSGi (Open Service Gateway Initiative) was initiated mainly for interoperability support with service distribution among various middleware environments. In this paper, we analyze the weaknesses in the OSGi service platform such as a non-distributed framework, passive user management, device management, and service bundle management. Moreover, we propose that in a smart space environment, Location-aware SBM (Service Bundle Manager) is most capable of efficiently managing various service bundles. This paper concludes with the implementation results for the SBM.

In this paper, design of framework architecture of pervasive computing system providing seamless inter space interactions between private and public smart spaces is presented. The seamless inter space interaction issues are related to establishing user's service environment by allocating relevant resources in a new location where there are no prior settings for the user or where there are current users already being served in the new location. In the realm of pervasive computing, we can have different types of smart spaces, offering proactive and intelligent services, which are islands of smart spaces independent from each other. As users move about, they will have to roam from private smart space to public smart space and vice versa. When they enter a new island of smart space, they will have to setup their devices and service manually to get the same or different services they had at the previous location. Users might be living in a non-pervasive computing environment because this manual operation is inappropriate to its generic features of proactive and intelligent services of pervasive computing. The framework architecture will provide seamless inter space interactions initiated by changes in users' location to acquire negotiations of resources for new and current residents regarding service provision with limited available networked devices.

Smart Spaces offer very promising means to creating context-aware environments. Unfortunately, the lack of enough information about users within Smart Spaces limits their usefulness. We propose a novel solution that integrates smart spaces with social networks through the IP multimedia subsystem to create truly context-aware and adaptive spaces. By utilizing the wealth of user information present within Social Networks, smarter and more adaptive spaces can be created. We therefore propose the design and implementation of SocioSpace, a Smart Spaces framework that utilizes the Social context. We design and implement all components of SocioSpace including the central server, the location management system, social network interfacing components, service delivery server and user agents. We then run various scenarios to test the reliability of the system. The results show the effectiveness of our framework in successfully creating smart spaces that can truly utilize social networks to deliver adaptive services that enhance the users' experiences and make the environment more beneficial to them.

The experience of full automation without explicit user direction may induce anxiety among smart space users. The use of explicit mediators between users and fully automated systems may help to mitigate users’ anxiety. While robots mediators are one possible solution, several issues remain, including high complexity and limited collaboration between robots and smart space platforms, reducing overall system reliability. This paper proposes the Integrated Control Architecture for Robotic mediator in Smart environments (ICARS) as a solution to improve the integration and reliability of robot mediators within automated smart spaces. Assuming relatively thin network robots as robotic mediators to enable a wide distribution with less cost, ICARS provides a well-organized software framework consisting of three layers to integrate robots and smart spaces: a flexible communication/device model, an adaptive service model for the integrated robot control architecture, and a behavior-based high-level collaboration model. In this paper, we also present details of the design, implementation, and an application scenario conducted with ICARS. The results show that ICARS enables flexible integration of the diverse devices associated with robots and environments, adaptive service provision for collaborative services, and easier development of high-level collaborative applications with decent performance.

The expanding computer landscape leads us toward ubiquitous computing, in which smart gadgets seamlessly provide intelligent services anytime, anywhere. Smartphones and other smart devices with multiple sensors are at the vanguard of this paradigm, enabling context-aware computing. Similar setups are also known as smart spaces. Context-aware systems, primarily deployed on mobile and other resource-constrained wearable devices, use a variety of implementation approaches. Rule-based reasoning, noted for its simplicity, is based on a collection of assertions in working memory and a set of rules that regulate decision-making. However, controlling working memory capacity efficiently is a key challenge, particularly in the context of resource-constrained systems. The paper's main focus lies in addressing the dynamic working memory challenge in memory-constrained devices by introducing a systematic method for content removal. The initiative intends to improve the creation of intelligent systems for resource-constrained devices, optimize memory utilization, and enhance context-aware computing.

With the rapid increase of interest in independent living along with the continual growth of the global aging population, there is a significant need for developing technological solutions that are trustworthy, functional, and scalable. Towards this vision, we developed a novel framework that provides an organic, evolving, and immersive assistive interaction between human, robot, and their environment. Our contribution is in the system design and the computing aspect of the proposed solution. At the system level, we are utilizing the concept of the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) to integrate smart personal devices and smart space automation technologies with social companion robot(s) and mixed/augmented reality smart glasses. At the computing level, we propose utilizing advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) towards providing task assistance in daily activities, smart space control, and improving emotion and mood through Affective Computing. We provide details of our IoRT system integration and quantitative experimental results on Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) which is one of the core components for Affective Computing. We improved FER utilizing Deep Learning on the edge and then deployed it on our Social Companion Robot (SCR) called Miro. We integrated the SCR with a Mixed Reality smart glass (Microsoft Hololens 2) and smart home automaton hub (Google). While the smart automation controller is directly in charge of controlling the environment (e.g., lighting, temperature), the robot can increase the control level with a more context-aware decision providing a socially embodied control.KeywordsHuman-robot-interactionInternet of Robotic Things (IoRT)Social companion robotsSmart home automationSocial embodimentAffective computingMixed/augmented realityIndependent living

The mechanisms based on the distributed environment have become an obvious choice for solutions, while they have not been limited only to a specific domain (i.e., crypto-currency). Rather, it has influenced other industries to develop robust privacy and security solutions, such as smart houses, smart electrical grids, smart agriculture, smart health care, smart transportation, etc. These Cyber-Physical Systems heavily depend on IoT-based smart devices that constitute a networked system of devices dependent on each other for the smooth operation of the overall system. Hence, security and privacy have become an integral part of all the architectural frameworks they operate in. The adoption of these architectures, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Cyber-Physical Things (IoCPT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), and Internet of Everything (IoE), has reinforced the need to develop solutions based on a distributed environment. Distributed ledger technology, i.e., Blockchain, has taken the lead and may support the development of solutions with robust privacy and security. We provide an updated review of authentication mechanisms developed on blockchain technology that enforce decentralized architectures. We discuss the security issues regarding the authentication of these IoT-enabled smart devices. We evaluate and analyze the study of the proposed literature schemes that pose authentication challenges in terms of computational costs, communication overheads, and models applied to attain robustness. Hence, lightweight solutions for managing, maintaining, processing, and storing authentication data of IoT-enabled assets are a must. From an integration perspective, cloud computing has provided strong support. In contrast, decentralized ledger technology, i.e., Blockchain, and lightweight cryptosystems are the areas for much more to explore. Finally, we discuss the future research challenges, which present an improvement standpoint to help address the ambiguities.

The current approach to the design, maintenance, and governance of service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions has focused primarily on flow-driven assembly and orchestration of reusable service components. The practical application of this approach in creating industry solutions has been limited, because flow-driven assembly and orchestration models are too rigid and static to accommodate complex, real-world business processes. Furthermore, the approach assumes a rich, easily configured library of reusable service components when in fact the development, maintenance, and governance of these libraries is difficult. An alternative approach pioneered by the IBM Research Division, model-driven business transformation (MDBT), uses a model-driven software synthesis technology to automatically generate production-quality business service components from high-level business process models. In this paper, we present the business entity life cycle analysis (BELA) technique for MDBT-based SOA solution realization and its integration into service-oriented modeling and architecture (SOMA), the end-to-end method from IBM for SOA application and solution development. BELA shifts the process-modeling paradigm from one that is centered on activities to one that is centered on entities. BELA teams process subject-matter experts with IT and data architects to identify and specify business entities and decompose business processes. Supporting synthesis tools then automatically generate the interacting business entity service components and their associated data stores and service interface definitions. We use a large-scale project as an example demonstrating the benefits of this innovation, which include an estimated 40 percent project cost reduction and an estimated 20 percent reduction in cycle time when compared with conventional SOA approaches.

A coalition of IoT devices, such as the smart houses, smart health care system, the smart device and many more, can share resources through communication lines. The Internet is integrated with the physical world over existing network infrastructure, allowing intelligent devices to share data more efficiently. As IOT devices have specific characteristics such as having low processing power, limited memory and energy, securing access to them requires special requirements. Because of their complex management of access, and their incredulity due to centralized control, conventional access control systems do not offer the security of data that IoT systems need. Blockchain technology is expected to enhance the IoT technology by ensuring trust and reducing overall overhead. We can address IoT's architectural shortcomings by including transparency, data encryption, auditable data, operational resilience, and immutability. In this paper, the most relevant findings are presented in the area of understanding blockchain applications to solve authorization and access control issues in IoT environments. Additionally, future suggestions and ideas are discussed in an effort to improve authentication and access control solutions over time.

In today’s world, many technologies have come up to make human life more comfortable. Nowadays through the Internet, it is possible for the people to get connected to the whole world and access any information easily. People can learn about current events happening around the world through television or Internet. People want everything smart. Smart houses are built nowadays to make their home connected to Internet. It can connect all the digital devices those communicate with each other through the Internet. World is changing, and life is changing too. Lot of improvement is also happening in the world of smart technologies. As a part of smart technology, a smart device is created called smart mirror. The smart mirror concept is inspired from the basic habit of people of looking into the mirror every day. A thought came to the mind why can’t make this mirror as a smart mirror. The result of this thought process is “smart mirror”.KeywordsAlexaRaspberry PiAIoT (Artificial Internet of Things)Face recognitionFlask

Emerging business models such as digital ecosystems involving collaborative innovation, participatory decision-making and flexible organizational structures are set to significantly affect inter- and intra-enterprise structure and functionality. This has seen the appearance of increasingly complex Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) scenarios featuring various partnership levels, increased resilience and adaptation to tougher compliance regulations, more seamless integration with process layers, etc. This complexity has brought about the need to broaden the SOA paradigm, so as to include business, infrastructure and multi-layering, resulting in an evolved concept known as Service-Oriented Enterprise Architecture (SOEA). This paper aims to describe the way new business and technology paradigms continue to affect the new SOEA approach and how the inherently holistic Enterprise Architecture (EA) frameworks and related practices can support the emerging complex dynamic, multi-layered and value-chained service-based scenario.

High competition generated by global markets requires from the manufacturing industry better quality, wider customization of products and fast delivery and response to production changes. In order to fulfill these need, Service- Oriented Architectures (SOA) have been deployed during the past few years as it facilitates the integration and scalability of manufacturing systems. Also a better support for factory personnel for control and monitoring of systems could provide the possibility to fulfill global market needs. This paper presents an approach to generate personalized information visualization for control and monitoring of a Service-Oriented Production Control System through adaptive multi-modal Human Machine Interfaces (HMI). The proposed system takes advantage of the available information received though Web Services (WS) from the production system and considers the monitored system, the environment and the users to generate the interfaces for visualizing the information in the best way for factory personnel. The proposed approach was implemented in a real testbed that is described in this paper. In the scenario, the personalized adaptive interfaces are generated for different users taking into account the context and the user as part of the system. Finally future work and implementation are discussed.