Real-world Interface Research Articles

Don’t Trust the Cloud, Verify

Cloud services have turned remote computation into a commodity and enable convenient online collaboration. However, they require that clients fully trust the service provider in terms of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Toward reducing this dependency, this article introduces VICOS , a protocol for verification of integrity and consistency for cloud object storage that enables a group of mutually trusting clients to detect data integrity and consistency violations for a cloud object storage service. It aims at services where multiple clients cooperate on data stored remotely on a potentially misbehaving service. VICOS enforces the consistency notion of fork-linearizability, supports wait-free client semantics for most operations, and reduces the computation and communication overhead compared to previous protocols. VICOS is based on a generic authenticated data structure. Moreover, its operations cover the hierarchical name space of a cloud object store, supporting a real-world interface and not only a simplistic abstraction. A prototype of VICOS that works with the key-value store interface of commodity cloud storage services has been implemented, and an evaluation demonstrates its advantage compared to existing systems.

Distributed and Modular CAN-Based Architecture for Hardware Control and Sensor Data Integration.

In this article, we present a CAN-based (Controller Area Network) distributed system to integrate sensors, actuators and hardware controllers in a mobile robot platform. With this work, we provide a robust, simple, flexible and open system to make hardware elements or subsystems communicate, that can be applied to different robots or mobile platforms. Hardware modules can be connected to or disconnected from the CAN bus while the system is working. It has been tested in our mobile robot Rato, based on a RWI (Real World Interface) mobile platform, to replace the old sensor and motor controllers. It has also been used in the design of two new robots: BellBot and WatchBot. Currently, our hardware integration architecture supports different sensors, actuators and control subsystems, such as motor controllers and inertial measurement units. The integration architecture was tested and compared with other solutions through a performance analysis of relevant parameters such as transmission efficiency and bandwidth usage. The results conclude that the proposed solution implements a lightweight communication protocol for mobile robot applications that avoids transmission delays and overhead.

English

Nowadays, the remote Home Automation turns out to be more and more significant and appealing. It improves the value of our lives by automating various electrical appliances or instruments. This paper describes GSM (Global System Messaging) based secured device control system using App Inventor for Android mobile phones. App Inventor is a latest visual programming platform for developing mobile applications for Android-based smart phones. The Android Mobile Phone Platform becomes more and more popular among software developers, because of its powerful capabilities and open architecture. It is a fantastic platform for the real world interface control, as it offers an ample of resources and already incorporates a lot of sensors. No need to write programming codes to develop apps in the App Inventor, instead it provides visual design interface as the way the apps looks and use blocks of interlocking components to control the app’s behaviour. The App Inventor aims to make programming enjoyable and accessible to novices.

Crossmodal spatial attention

In this review, I highlight some of the most exciting recent developments in the area of crossmodal spatial attention, focusing on studies that question the automaticity of exogenous spatial orienting following the peripheral presentation of spatially uninformative unimodal cues. The latest research, showing that multisensory cues capture participants' spatial attention more effectively than unimodal cues, is also reviewed. There has been a rapid growth of interest in the application of laboratory-based studies of crossmodal attention to real-world interface design, and this research is discussed, focusing, in particular, on the design of multisensory warning signals for drivers. Finally, I outline a number of key issues for future applied research in the study of crossmodal exogenous spatial attention.

K-eXplorer : 携帯電話と組み込み拡張ポートK-stationsによるユビキタス実世界インタフェースの構築(「ウェアラブル・ユビキタス技術」特集)

K-eXplorer : 携帯電話と組み込み拡張ポートK-stationsによるユビキタス実世界インタフェースの構築(「ウェアラブル・ユビキタス技術」特集)

K-eXplorer : 携帯電話と分散複合ポートによる実世界インタフェース

K-eXplorer : 携帯電話と分散複合ポートによる実世界インタフェース

Comment: Applications of robotics in the clinical laboratory

The implementation of a robotic workstation in the clinical laboratory involves considerations and compromises common to any instrument design and development activity. The trade-off between speed and flexibility not only affects the way the instrument interacts with human operators and other devices (the ‘real-world interface’), but also places limitations on the adaptation of chemistries to the given instrument. Mechanical optimization for speed and reproducibility places restrictions on the imprecision of consumables. Attempts to adapt a robot to a constrained system may entail compromises that either degrades the theoretically-attainable quality of results, or requires human interaction to compensate for physical or mechanical limitations. The general considerations of function and workflow, programming and support, and reliability place practical limits on the implementation of robotic workstations in the clinical laboratory.