Middleware System Research Articles

A-194 Point of Care Glucose Test Time Interval Data Used as a Proxy Indicator for Glucose Meter Cleaning and Disinfection Adequacy Between Patient Testing Episodes

Abstract Background At a community hospital within our health system (269 inpatient beds and 46 glucose meters), a condition level finding was cited for blood found on one meter during a routine regulatory survey. Point of Care (POC) test instrument portability is often an essential characteristic in choosing to perform a POC test at the bedside. Glucose meters are in close proximity to patients who are providing fingerstick blood samples for immediate testing. The process of obtaining the blood sample and applying it to the test strip may result in blood inadvertently getting on a caregiver’s gloves and the glucose meter itself. Per the testing protocol, when testing different patients consecutively, the caregiver safely discards the used test strip, changes gloves, and performs the cleaning and disinfecting (C&D) of the glucose meter to ensure the next patient is not exposed to blood from the previous test. The C&D procedure requires a minimum two minutes of drying time. We estimate that consecutive POC glucose tests should have about a three minute gap when the meter gets proper C&D between patients. We sought to determine whether the time interval between tests could be used an indicator of improved C&D compliance during a process improvement project. Methods As a patient safety concern, improved compliance with C&D steps was needed. Various stakeholder groups conducted a three month long campaign of education, training, and surveillance to improve C&D compliance. As a proxy for monitoring the C&D, data on test times from individual glucose meters was downloaded from the POC middleware system. Sample information, patient identifiers, and test results were not obtained. Time intervals between tests were calculated and the number of tests that occurred on the same instrument with short intervals (< 3minutes) were counted. Results Data from the POC middleware system was downloaded from the month prior to and immediately following the project (July and November). In July, there were 733 instances of glucose tests being carried out within three minutes of a previous test on the same instrument, from a total of 6622 tests (11.1%). In November, there were 565 occurrences (out of 6445 tests, or 8.8%), a decrease of 23% from the beginning count, and a drop of 2.3% among all tests. A follow up survey found no instances of blood on meters. Conclusions Using the time between tests interval as a proxy for monitoring glucose meter C&D is straightforward when the data is readily available. In our application of this process, an improvement in the number of short intervals was found, but the number of short intervals was not completely eliminated. This is likely due to occurrences when a test was repeated on the same patient or when training or competency was taking place, circumstances in which C&D not required. To observe patient privacy, our data collection approach could not eliminate these potential confounders of our data.

Customizable and adaptable middleware of things

SummaryMiddleware has become an essential element in the construction of distributed Internet of Things (IoT) applications. While it plays a central role in hiding the complexities of distribution, middleware systems have also been responsible for dealing with the uncertainties in IoT environments, such as changes during operation (e.g., inaccuracies in sensor data collection) and fluctuations in resource availability, for example, the battery. These uncertainties demand attention as they can result in application failures or, even worse, jeopardize the safety of applications. Existing middleware systems are being enhanced with self‐adaptive capabilities to address these uncertainties. It means they can make runtime adjustments to the middleware and applications (built atop them) without complete shutdowns. Despite the variety of available adaptive solutions, IoT applications often face uncertainties, each requiring a distinct adaptive action. For instance, the need to fine‐tune a thing's workload due to battery consumption is a common challenge. Furthermore, these applications are susceptible to changes occurring at various layers, presenting a complex challenge of managing them simultaneously. This paper introduces Middleware Extendify (MEx), a solution for building and executing IoT adaptive middleware systems. MEx simplifies the implementation of middleware and provides an underlying environment that executes the middleware and supports a range of adaptation mechanisms. This approach ensures that the middleware meets the evolving demands of applications and copes with changes at runtime. The evaluation of MEx encompasses different adaptive middleware implementations to measure the impact of the proposed adaptation mechanisms. The results indicate that adaptation comes with acceptable performance costs while offering the ability to fine‐tune middleware functionality or align IoT applications more effectively.

IOT Equipped Sustainable Farming: A Review of Applications and Challenges

The rapid population growth is a compelling surge need for food which results in a shift towards smart farming practices. Moreover, agriculture is facing with several issues such as shrinking natural resources, limitation of cultivable land, unpredictable weather conditions, increase in crop diseases. Consequently, the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are being associated with agriculture to reduce operational efforts while increasing productivity. Radio frequency identification, wireless sensor networks (WSN), cloud computing, end-user apps, and middleware systems are a few of the technologies that are integrated into the Internet of Things. In this paper, numerous applications and challenges of IoT have been discussed. Further, an ecosystem for agriculture is presented which discusses that how IoT is solving different challenges faced by the farmers.

An autonomous blockchain‐based computational broker for e‐science

AbstractBlockchain infrastructures have emerged as a disruptive technology and have led to the realization of cryptocurrencies (peer‐to‐peer payment systems) and smart contracts. They can have a wide range of application areas in e‐Science due to their open, public nature and global accessability in a trustless manner. We propose and implement a smart contract called eBlocBroker, which is an autonomous blockchain‐based middleware system for volunteer computing and providing data resources for e‐Science. The eBlocBroker infrastructure connects requesters who need to combine applications (jobs) with datasets and run them via an Ethereum‐based private blockchain network (Bloxberg) on providers that utilize computational and data resources on clouds or home servers. It uses cloud storage, such as B2DROP, IPFS, or Google Drive, to store and transfer data between requesters and providers. Each provider utilizes the Slurm workload manager to execute jobs submitted through eBlocBroker. In this paper, we demonstrate how an autonomous organization programmed as a smart contract can be used to deploy a marketplace that supports data and computation‐intensive research projects. We propose a cost model implemented as a function in the smart contract which calculates and records computation and dataset usage costs. We develop a Python‐based system to communicate with eBlocBroker and orchestrate jobs' execution on the provider's end. We present eBlocBroker's features, infrastructure, implementation, algorithms and experimental results.

A ROS-Based Open Tool for Controlling an Educational Mobile Robot

Commercial educational robots provide an accessible entry point into the world of robotics. However, their programming is often limited to specific platforms, which can make it challenging to acquire the skills necessary for industry and research. In this study, we introduce an open-access tool developed using C++ and Arduino IDE that enables us to manage a commercial mobile robot through the Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware. This provides programmers with the ability to work in a powerful programming environment, such as Python. The robot used is the CrowBot BOLT, a kit based on ESP32 that enables wireless communication and includes various peripherals for application development. The mobile robot topics include robot velocities, RGB LEDs, a buzzer, a programmable button, and proximity, light, and line sensors. The proposal is assessed using two controllers: one for proximity and the other for tracking angular light. Both controllers are developed using Visual Studio Code. The experimental results demonstrated the proper functioning of the tool. Additionally, the response time was evaluated, and it was found that optimal performance is achieved at a frequency of 10 Hz. In summary, this proposal provides an accessible option for students and developers seeking to gain skills in robotics using ROS. The project’s repository is located at https://github.com/joseVarelaAldas/ROS-Crowbot.

Design and implementation of distributed middleware for CRAFT remote handling system

The software system of remote handling control system (RHCS) for the comprehensive research facility for fusion technology (CRAFT) consists of multiple subsystems and various device controllers running on different hosts or servers. A high-performance CRAFT remote handling (RH) middleware (CRMW) is designed to address the high real-time requirements for task response and data transmission in this distributed scenario, as well as the scalability of the RHCS. CRMW adopts a low-coupling, high-cohesion, and component-based architectural design, comprising a component-based software development framework and a real-time communication port. The robot framework allows encapsulating devices or functional modules in the RHCS as reusable components, while the communication port provides low-latency and stable communication quality. It supports various communication modes such as publish/subscribe, server/client, and multiple transmission protocols, while also offering distributed components like remote procedure call (RPC). Corresponding experimental results demonstrate that CRMW can deliver low-latency and stable task response and data transmission, fully meeting the requirements for task execution and system management in the RHCS.

Cloud-Based Architecture for Production Information Exchange in European Micro-Factory Context

In a constantly changing world, information stands as one of the most valuable assets for a manufacturing site. However, exchanging information is not a straightforward process among factories, and concerns regarding the trustability and validation of transactions between various stakeholders have emerged within the context of micro-factories. This work presents an architecture designed to enable information exchange among heterogeneous stakeholders, taking advantage of the cloud infrastructure. It was designed to enable the use of several tools, connected through a middleware system deployed on the cloud. To demonstrate the potential of this architecture, a platform was instantiated, and two use cases—designed to accurately represent real manufacturing sites—were implemented.

An Analysis of DoS Attack on Robot Operating System

The emergence of robotic technologies has made a significant contribution in industry. Robot Operating System (ROS) is becoming a standard framework for industrial systems uses as a middleware system with many versions. However, the initial design of ROS does not include cyber-security concepts. The intense interest in robot systems, the security concerns and vulnerabilities of these systems have started to attract the attention of attackers. One of these attacks is DoS attack that targeting system availability by slowing down or crashing a service rather than obtaining the information or system. In this study, the impact of DoS attack has been analyzed in various scenarios for both in application and transport layer of the ROS middleware.In the experiments four different volume of DoS attacks are performed in five different experiment scenarios on ROS. To understand the impact of DoS attack, network traffics are monitored using Tshark. The resulting effects measured with some Quality of Service parameters that are delay and packet loss.

Middleware Key Technologies Supporting Panoramic Display of Low-voltage Distribution Substation Area Operation

A panoramic display system for low-voltage distribution substation areas is built in this paper to meet the visual monitoring requirements of equipment operation status in low-voltage distribution substation areas. Aiming at the characteristics of complicated data structure, decentralized deployment, and equipment isomerization of power equipment, a middleware for panoramic display system of low-voltage distribution substation area operation is designed. The residual search method realizes the data identification to give a timely warning. Heterogeneous data is clustered by the K-means method. Simulation results verify the better performance of the proposed middleware for low-voltage substation operation.

Efficient algorithms for electric vehicles’ min-max routing problem

An increase in greenhouse gases emission from the transportation sector has led companies and the government to elevate and support the production of electric vehicles (EV). With recent developments in urbanization and e-commerce, transportation companies are replacing their conventional fleet with EVs to strengthen the efforts for sustainable and environment-friendly operations. However, deploying a fleet of EVs asks for efficient routing and recharging strategies to alleviate their limited range and mitigate the battery degradation rate. In this work, a fleet of electric vehicles is considered for transportation and logistic capabilities with limited battery capacity and scarce charging station availability. We introduce a min-max electric vehicle routing problem (MEVRP) where the maximum distance traveled by any EV is minimized while considering charging stations for recharging. We propose an efficient branch and cut framework and a three-phase hybrid heuristic algorithm that can efficiently solve a variety of instances. Extensive computational results and sensitivity analyses are performed to corroborate the efficiency of the proposed approach, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Finally a data-driven simulation implemented with the robot operating system (ROS) middleware are performed to corroborate the efficiency of the proposed approach, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

An Efficient Framework for Autonomous UAV Missions in Partially-Unknown GNSS-Denied Environments

Nowadays, multirotors are versatile systems that can be employed in several scenarios, where their increasing autonomy allows them to achieve complex missions without human intervention. This paper presents a framework for autonomous missions with low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Global Navigation Satellite System-denied (GNSS-denied) environments. This paper presents hardware choices and software modules for localization, perception, global planning, local re-planning for obstacle avoidance, and a state machine to dictate the overall mission sequence. The entire software stack has been designed exploiting the Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware and has been extensively validated in both simulation and real environment tests. The proposed solution can run both in simulation and in real-world scenarios without modification thanks to a small sim-to-real gap with PX4 software-in-the-loop functionality. The overall system has competed successfully in the Leonardo Drone Contest, an annual competition between Italian Universities with a focus on low-level, resilient, and fully autonomous tasks for vision-based UAVs, proving the robustness of the entire system design.

Design and Implementation of Data Service Middleware in Earthquake Precursor Instrument Platform

With the gradual development of the earthquake signal early warning system, more and more earthquake precursor signal observation instruments and equipment have been added to the earthquake signal early warning system, which has also caused various compatibility issues. This article designs a data service middleware solution based on B/S architecture for the interaction between earthquake precursor signal observation equipment and remote access terminals on the earthquake precursor instrument platform. Combining embedded technology, it achieves compatible and universal deployment of heterogeneous terminals, and achieves the ideal function of data service middleware. At the same time, in the data service middleware system, real-time data access, presentation, and log upload and download of earthquake precursor instruments are implemented, as well as remote editing of basic information such as instrument IP addresses and station positions, as well as instrument status monitoring and other functions.

Detailed Study on Electronic Data Energy Consumption Monitoring System Based on the Construction of Internet of Things

Background: Buildings, in the traditional sense, are becoming increasingly incapable of meeting modern humans’ pursuit of high-quality living and working environments. With the increasing pace of urban development, modern buildings are becoming increasingly popular. Objective: We investigate an electronic data energy consumption monitoring system based on the construction of Internet of Things for the airport building. Aim: A model based on Dynamic Programming Genetic Algorithm (DPGA) is proposed to generate parameter and service models based on user scenarios. Methods: Two definitions are presented for the communication format between the middleware and the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN); the software and hardware functions of the nodes of the system's WSN are designed, and part of the node is implemented. Finally, the specific implementation of the application program interface and data interface between the modules of the middleware system are described considering the internal environment of a typical office building as an example. The deployment plan of system nodes in specific environments and the division of similar areas are discussed Results: The platform can strictly monitor and manage energy-consuming equipment. Conclusion: The proposed model can be used to achieve reasonable distribution of energy consumption, energy saving, and humanised and automated energy consumption monitoring functions in the office areas of large office buildings in modern cities.

Enhancing user interaction with context-awareness in cultural spaces

The emergence of the Internet of Things has fueled a proliferation of smart things in many fields, including cultural spaces. Context-awareness addresses the production of large volumes of context by analyzing raw data and adding a meaning to them. Middleware systems have emerged, which perform context modelling and reasoning, supporting context-aware applications. The services provided by such applications can be personalized, automated and adapted to the current situation, thus enhancing the user interaction with the devices and the digital environment. In this work, a context-aware middleware system is presented, based on a hybrid reasoning schema, which combines multiple techniques to efficiently address each problem. The proposed middleware system is evaluated in a cultural space, where scenarios were designed and tested, using a mixture of real and artificial data. The experiments measured the accuracy, performance in terms of reaction time and scalability and the interactivity enhancement, achieved by the proposed middleware.

Development of an Energy Efficient and Cost Effective Autonomous Vehicle Research Platform.

Commercialization of autonomous vehicle technology is a major goal of the automotive industry, thus research in this space is rapidly expanding across the world. However, despite this high level of research activity, literature detailing a straightforward and cost-effective approach to the development of an AV research platform is sparse. To address this need, we present the methodology and results regarding the AV instrumentation and controls of a 2019 Kia Niro which was developed for a local AV pilot program. This platform includes a drive-by-wire actuation kit, Aptiv electronically scanning radar, stereo camera, MobilEye computer vision system, LiDAR, inertial measurement unit, two global positioning system receivers to provide heading information, and an in-vehicle computer for driving environment perception and path planning. Robotic Operating System software is used as the system middleware between the instruments and the autonomous application algorithms. After selection, installation, and integration of these components, our results show successful utilization of all sensors, drive-by-wire functionality, a total additional power* consumption of 242.8 Watts (*Typical), and an overall cost of $118,189 USD, which is a significant saving compared to other commercially available systems with similar functionality. This vehicle continues to serve as our primary AV research and development platform.

Cash Expenditure Accounting Information System Operational Cost Driver At the Fleet Department of PT Cipta Krida Bahari Banjarmasin

This study is to describe the accounting information system for operating cash disbursements of drivers at the Fleet department of PT Cipta Krida Bahari Banjarmasin. The aim is to find out the procedures in the driver operating cost expenditure system. This study uses qualitative research in the form of a brief history of the company, organizational structure, duties, responsibilities, records, and documents used, as well as the operating cost driver expenditure system procedures at the flee department of PT Cipta Krida Bahari Banjarmasin. The research approach uses a descriptive approach related to the accounting information system for operating cash disbursements of drivers at the fleet department of PT Cipta Krida Bahari Banjarmasin. The results of the study can be concluded that the accounting information system for cash disbursements for operating costs of drivers in the fleet department of PT Cipta Krida Bahari Banjarmasin has related functions, namely the commercial sales function, operation function, driver function, fleet admin function, fleet leader function, manager function, and finance function. The procedure for disbursing cash for driver operational costs is the procedure for ordering goods by the customer, the procedure for submitting money for travel, procedures for disbursing/transferring money for travel, and the procedure for recording money for travel. Documents used in the cash disbursement system for a driver’s operating costs are travel documents, PUO, DA, manifest, SIJK, BBM notes, manifest, and TCA. The records used are the FAST system, Cash Advance application, TCA website, MCM system, Middleware system, Ramco system, and enterprise system

Retraction Note to: Intelligent oriented middleware system based navigation detection time orient node location identification in mobile ad hoc network

Retraction Note to: Intelligent oriented middleware system based navigation detection time orient node location identification in mobile ad hoc network

다중빔음향측심기 계측모델을 활용한 실시간 해저지형도 작성 모의시험

This paper proposes a measurement model of Multi-Beam Echo Sounder (MBES) for seabed mapping and introduces the result of conducting a seabed mapping simulation test in the Robot Operating System (ROS) middleware environment. The simulation test consists of four techniques: proposed measurement model of multibeam echo sounder, path generator by vehicle model, local-map generator, and Iterative Closest Point (ICP) based map registration for the global mapping. Seabed map information is handled in the form of the point cloud, and the ROS Rviz is used to visualize the simulation test results.

Investigation of Performance and Configuration of a Selected IoT System—Middleware Deployment Benchmarking and Recommendations

Nowadays Internet of Things is gaining more and more focus all over the world. As a concept it gives many opportunities for applications for society and it is expected that the number of software services deployed in this area will still grow fast. Especially important in this context are properties connected with deployment such as portability, scalability and balance between software requirements and hardware capabilities. In this article, we present results of practical tests with multiple clients representing sensors sending notifications to an IoT middleware—DeviceHive. Firstly, we investigate performance using two deployment configurations—containerized and bare-metal showing small overhead of the former under different loads by various numbers of IoT clients. We present scaling of the middleware on the server side using various numbers of cores as well as HyperThreading for all aforementioned configurations. Furthermore, we also investigated how containarization affects performance when the system is scaled with various numbers of nodes each using a predefined number of cores, considering memory usage of various configurations. The latter could be found useful when assigning cores to Docker nodes in cloud environments.

Reflections on Cyber Security Automation via SOA IoT Middleware

The Covid-19 pandemic forced companies to both alter their operation and adapt their activities and services provided. Indicatively, remote working, hybrid work models and teleconferences became the new reality, leading to the exponential increase of businesses’ dependency on IT infrastructures, including internet usage and cloud computing. Moreover, the geopolitical environment affects cybersecurity and the likelihood of cyber-attacks on critical infrastructures. To address these issues, companies must update their digital infrastructure and reduce cyber vulnerabilities; this can be achieved through the use of middleware. In this article, we define the terms “middleware” and “Service Orientated Architecture” (SOA). Then, we explain how SOA can be fused with current middleware systems, using Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) as a case study. Finally, we review how a Cyber IoT Middleware uses SOA.