1,721,132 research outputs found
Managing safety and mission completion via collective run-time adaptation
Full text linkMobile Multi-Robot Systems (MMRSs) are an emerging class of systems that are composed of a team of robots, various devices (like movable cameras, sensors) which collaborate with each other to accomplish defined missions. Moreover, these systems must operate in dynamic and potentially uncontrollable and unknown environments that might compromise the safety of the system and the completion of the defined mission. A model of the environment describing, e.g., obstacles, no-fly zones, wind and weather conditions might be available, however, the assumption that such a model is both correct and complete is often wrong. In this paper, we describe an approach that supports execution of missions at run time. It addresses collective adaptation problems in a decentralized fashion, and enables the addition of new entities in the system at any time. Moreover, it is based on two adaptation resolution methods: one for (potentially partial) resolution of mission-related issues and one for full resolution of safety-related issues
A family of domain-specific languages for specifying civilian missions of multi-robot systems
No full textThe next future will be pervaded by robots performing a variety of tasks (e.g., environmental monitoring, patrolling large public areas for security assurance). So far, researchers and practitioners are mainly focusing on hardware/software solutions for specialized and complex tasks; however, despite the accuracy and the advanced capabilities of current solutions, this trend leads to task-specific solutions, difficult to be reused and combined. In this paper we propose a family of domain-specific languages for specifying missions of multi-robot systems by means of models that are (i) independent from the technologies, (ii) ready to be analysed, simulated, and executed, (iii) extensible to new application areas, and (iv) closer to the problem domain, thus democratizing the use of robots to non-technical operators. We show the applicability of the proposed family of languages in a real project in the domain of autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles
A Study on MDE Approaches for Engineering Wireless Sensor Networks
No full textModel-Driven Engineering (MDE) can be considered as the right tool to reduce the complexity of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) development through its principles of abstraction, separation of concerns, reuse and automation. In this paper we present the results of a systematic mapping study we performed for providing an organized view of existing MDE approaches for designing WSNs. A total number of 780 studies were analysed, among them, we selected 16 papers as primary studies relevant for review. We setup a comparison framework for these studies, and classified them based on a set of common parameters. The main objective of our research is to give an overview about the state-of-the-art of MDE approaches dedicated to WSN design, and finally, discuss emerging challenges that have to be considered in future MDE approaches for engineering WSNs
Adopting MDE for Specifying and Executing Civilian Missions of Mobile Multi-Robot Systems
Full text linkRobots are meant to replace humans for a broad variety of everyday tasks, such as environmental monitoring or patrolling large public areas for security assurance. The main focus of researchers and practitioners has been on providing tailored software and hardware solutions for very specific and often complex tasks. On one hand, these solutions show great potential and provide advanced capabilities for solving the specific task. On the other hand, the polarized attention to task-specific solutions makes them hard to reuse, customize, and combine. In this paper we propose a family of domain-specific modeling languages for the specification of civilian missions of mobile multi-robot systems. These missions are meant to be described in terms of models that are: 1) closer to the general problem domain; 2) independent from the underlying technologies; 3) ready to be analyzed, simulated, and executed; and 4) extensible to new application domains, thus opening up the use of robots to even non-technical operators. Moreover, we show the applicability of the proposed family of languages in two real-world application domains: unmanned multicopters and autonomous underwater vehicles
The Role of Parts in the System Behaviour
No full textIn today’s world, we are surrounded by software-based systems that control so many critical activities. Every few years we experiment dramatic software failures and this asks for software that gives evidence of resilience and continuity. Moreover, we are observing an unavoidable shift from stand-alone systems to systems of systems, to ecosystems, to cyber-physical systems and in general to systems that are composed of various independent parts that collaborate and cooperate to realise the desired goal.Our thesis is that the resilience of such systems should be constructed compositionally and incrementally out of the resilience of system parts. Understanding the role of parts in the system behaviour will (i) promote a “divide-and-conquer strategy” on the verification of systems, (ii) enable the verification of systems that continuously evolve during their life-time, (iii) allow the detection and isolation of faults, and (iv) facilitate the definition of suitable reaction strategies. In this paper we propose a methodology that integrates needs of flexibility and agility with needs of resilience. We instantiate the methodology in the domain of a swarm of autonomous quadrotors that cooperate in order to achieve a given goal
A4WSN: an architecture-driven modelling platform for analysing and developing WSNs
Full text linkThis paper proposes A4WSN, an architecture-driven modelling platform for the development and the analysis of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A WSN consists of spatially distributed sensor nodes that cooperate in order to accomplish a specific task. Sensor nodes are cheap, small, and battery-powered devices with limited processing capabilities and memory. WSNs are mostly developed directly on the top of the operating system. They are tied to the hardware configuration of the sensor nodes, and their design and implementation can require cooperation with a myriad of system stakeholders with different backgrounds. The peculiarities of WSNs and current development practices bring a number of challenges, ranging from hardware and software coupling, limited reuse, and the late assessment of WSN quality properties. As a way to overcome a number of existing limitations, this study presents a multi-view modelling approach that supports the development and analysis of WSNs. The framework uses different models to describe the software architecture, hardware configuration, and physical deployment of a WSN. A4WSN allows engineers to perform analysis and code generation in earlier stages of the WSN development life cycle. The A4WSN platform can be extended with third-party plug-ins providing additional analysis or code generation engines. We provide evidence of the applicability of the proposed platform by developing PlaceLife, an A4WSN plug-in for estimating the WSN lifetime by taking various physical obstacles in the deployment environment into account. In turn, PlaceLife has been applied to a real-world case study in the health care domain as a running example
State of the art of cyber-physical systems security: An automatic control perspective
Full text linkCyber-physical systems are integrations of computation, networking, and physical processes. Due to the tight cyber-physical coupling and to the potentially disrupting consequences of failures, security here is one of the primary concerns. Our systematic mapping study sheds light on how security is actually addressed when dealing with cyber-physical systems from an automatic control perspective. The provided map of 138 selected studies is defined empirically and is based on, for instance, application fields, various system components, related algorithms and models, attacks characteristics and defense strategies. It presents a powerful comparison framework for existing and future research on this hot topic, important for both industry and academia
Enhancing Trustability of Android Applications via User-Centric Flexible Permissions
Full text linkThe Android OS market is experiencing a growing share globally. It is becoming the mobile platform of choice for an increasing number of users. People rely on Android mobile devices for surfing the web, purchasing products, or to be part of a social network. The large amount of personal information that is exchanged makes privacy an important concern. As a result, the trustability of mobile apps is a fundamental aspect to be considered, particularly with regard to meeting the expectations of end users. The rigidities of the Android permission model confine end users into a secondary role, offering the only option of choosing between either privacy or functionalities. In this paper, we aim at improving the trustability of Android apps by proposing a user-centric approach to the flexible management of Android permissions. The proposed approach empowers end users to selectively grant permission by specifying (i) the desired level of permissions granularity and (ii) the specific features of the app in which the chosen permission levels are granted. Four experiments have been designed, conducted, and reported for evaluating it. The experiments consider performance, usability, and acceptance from both the end user's and developer's perspective. Results confirm confidence on the approach.</p
Collaborative Model-Driven Software Engineering: A Classification Framework and a Research Map
No full textContext: Collaborative Model-Driven Software Engineering (MDSE) consists of methods and techniques where multiple
stakeholders manage, collaborate, and are aware of each others’ work on shared models.
Objective: Collaborative MDSE is attracting research efforts from different areas, resulting in a variegated scientific body of knowledge. This
study aims at identifying, classifying, and understanding existing collaborative MDSE approaches.
Method: We designed and conducted a systematic mapping study. Starting from over 3,000 potentially relevant studies, we applied a rigorous
selection procedure resulting in 106 selected papers, further clustered into 48 primary studies along a time span of 19 years. We rigorously
defined and applied a classification framework and extracted key information from each selected study for subsequent analysis.
Results: Our analysis revealed the following main findings: (i) there is a growing scientific interest on collaborative MDSE in the last years; (ii)
multi-view modeling, validation support, reuse, and branching are more rarely covered with respect to other aspects about collaborative
MDSE; (iii) different primary studies focus differently on individual dimensions of collaborative MDSE (i.e., model management, collaboration,
and communication); (iv) most approaches are language-specific, with a prominence of UML-based approaches; (v) few approaches support
the interplay between synchronous and asynchronous collaboration.
Conclusion: This study gives a solid foundation for classifying existing and future approaches for collaborative MDSE. Researchers and
practitioners can use our results for identifying existing research/technical gaps to attack, better scoping their own contributions, or
understanding existing ones
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