16256064
Emotionally reactive television
When is an interface simple? Is it when it is invisible or very obvious, even intrusive? From the time TV was created, watching TV is considered as a static activity. TV audiences have very limited choices to interact with TV, such as turning on/off, increasing/decreasing volume, and traversing among different channels. This paper suggests that TV program should have social responses to people, such as affording and accepting audience's emotional feeling with the growth of technologies. This paper presents HiTV, an Emotionally-Reactive TV system using a digitally augmented soft ball as affect-input interfaces that can amplify TV program's video/audio signals. HiTV transforms the original video and audio into effects that intrigue and fulfill people's emotional expectation.
19284732
Smart sinks: real-world opportunities for context-aware interaction
Can implicit interaction with a computer easily drive useful interface improvements in physical world settings? This paper presents a case study presenting multiple such context-aware interaction improvements in a sink. We have identified opportunities where automated interfaces at the sink have positive consequences for safety, hygiene and ecology. The danger of scalding oneself with hot water is confronted by transforming the water into a graphical user interface and using image understanding to dispense the proper temperature of water. Audio-visual feedback at the sink can motivate users to conserve water. Used in combination with an RFID reader, the sink can serve as an effective means of verifying hand-washing compliance for clean environments. Finally, automatic actuation of the sink's height based on the user and task can prevent burns and ergonomic injuries. This project demonstrates that the integration of digital interaction in a hostile environment can facilitate and improve our daily rituals.
38028125
Lover's cups: drinking interfaces as new communication channels
This paper shows how computer interfaces can enhance common activities and use them as communication method between people. In this paper, the act of drinking is used as an input of remote communication with the support of computer interfaces. We present Lover's Cups which enable people to share the time of drinking with someone they care about in different places. Using a wireless connection, an otherwise ordinary pair of cups becomes a communication device, amplifying the social aspect of drinking behavior.
207558887
Self-adaptive neuro-fuzzy systems for autonomous underwater vehicle control
This paper presents a systematic approach for developing a concise self-adaptive neurofuzzy inference system (SANFIS) with a fast hybrid parameter learning algorithm for on-line learning of the control knowledge for autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) control. The multi-layered network structure of SANFIS incorporates fuzzy basis functions for better function approximations. We investigate three SANFIS structures with three different types of fuzzy IF-THEN rule-based models and cast the rule formation problem as a clustering problem. A recursive least-squares algorithm and a modified Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm with limited memory are exploited to accelerate the parameter learning process. This hybrid parameter learning algorithm together with an on-line clustering technique and rule examination provide SANFIS with the capability of selforganizing and self-adapting its internal structure (i.e. the fuzzy rules and term sets) for learning the required control knowledge for an AUV to follow desired trajectories. Computer simulations for modeling a control system for an AUV have been conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed SANFIS.
9639915
Support for adaptivity in ARMCI using migratable objects
Many new paradigms of parallel programming have emerged that compete with and complement the standard and well-established MPI model. Most notable, and successful, among these are models that support some form of global address space. At the same time, approaches based on migratable objects (also called virtualized processes) have shown that resource management concerns can be separated effectively from the overall parallel programming effort. For example, Charm++ supports dynamic load balancing via an intelligent adaptive run-time system. It is also becoming clear that a multi-paradigm approach that allows modules written in one or more paradigms to coexist and co-operate will be necessary to tame the parallel programming challenge. ARMCI is a remote memory copy library that serves as a foundation of many global address space languages and libraries. This paper presents our preliminary work on integrating and supporting ARMCI with the adaptive run-time system of Charm++ as a part of our overall effort in the multi-paradigm approach
16111193
Bounding Cache-Related Preemption Delay for Real-Time Systems
Cache memory is used in almost all computer systems today to bridge the ever increasing speed gap between the processor and main memory. However, its use in multitasking computer systems introduces additional preemption delay due to the reloading of memory blocks that are replaced during preemption. This cache-related preemption delay poses a serious problem in realtime computing systems where predictability is of utmost importance. We propose an enhanced technique for analyzing and thus bounding the cache-related preemption delay in fixed-priority preemptive scheduling focusing on instruction caching. The proposed technique improves upon previous techniques in two important ways. First, the technique takes into account the relationship between a preempted task and the set of tasks that execute during the preemption when calculating the cache-related preemption delay. Second, the technique considers the phasing of tasks to eliminate many infeasible task interactions. These two features are expressed as constraints of a linear programming problem whose solution gives a guaranteed upper bound on the cache-related preemption delay. This paper also compares the proposed technique with previous techniques using randomly generated task sets. The results show that the improvement on the worst-case response time prediction by the proposed technique over previous techniques ranges between 5 percent and 18 percent depending on the cache refill time when the task set utilization is 0.6. The results also show that as the cache refill time increases, the improvement increases, which indicates that accurate prediction of cache-related preemption delay by the proposed technique becomes increasingly important if the current trend of widening speed gap between the processor and main memory continues.
9335901
Performance upgrade for large object bases using disk arrays
The authors propose the use of multiple disks to increase the bandwidth of disk I/O so as to alleviate the I/O bottleneck problem existed in OODB applications. However, a major difficulty in using multiple disks for the support of OODBs is that an object may reference or be referenced by other objects through associations. This requires that the search of objects be sequential through the association links, which is sometimes referred to as the navigational search of objects in an object base. This restriction limits the concurrency in object retrieval and invalidates the use of multiple disks. Techniques such as clustering/indexing of objects do not help to resolve this problem. By using a two-phase query processing strategy previously proposed by them, objects of interest can be accessed in parallel from multiple disk. The aim of the paper is to design a probability-based evaluation model to estimate the performance of using multiple disks and to compare it with a single disk system. The result shows that the scheme is viable and a significant improvement is achieved while multiple disks are used.
2097119
Coordinated search and track by multiple phased array radars
This paper addresses the search and track coordination problems of multiple shipboard radars. The proposed approach first exploits the physical characteristics of a single phased array radar to improve its effective capacity. Its effective capacity is abstracted by a closed-form equation called a schedulability envelope. Using the schedulability envelope for each radar, we deal with search and track coordination as a relative-load-balancing problem in a multiresource environment. The simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly improves the overall capacity of a multiship multiradar system.