Real-time Systems

This paper describes the validation study of our software that uses combined webcam and microphone data for real-time, continuous, unobtrusive emotion recognition as part of our FILTWAM framework. FILTWAM aims at deploying a real time multimodal emotion recognition method for providing more adequate feedback to the learners through an online communication skills training. Herein, timely feedback is needed that reflects on their shown intended emotions and which is also useful to increase learners’ awareness of their own behaviour. At least, a reliable and valid software interpretation of performed face and voice emotions is needed to warrant such adequate feedback. This validation study therefore calibrates our software. The study uses a multimodal fusion method. Twelve test persons performed computer-based tasks in which they were asked to mimic specific facial and vocal emotions. All test persons’ behaviour was recorded on video and two raters independently scored the showed emotions, which were contrasted with the software recognition outcomes. A hybrid method for multimodal fusion of our multimodal software shows accuracy between 96.1% and 98.6% for the best-chosen WEKA classifiers over predicted emotions. The software fulfils its requirements of real-time data interpretation and reliable results.

The rapid development of location based services i.e. Navigation has enabled tracking of user more ever before and the tracking has increased. These technologies provide the services based on the geographical location of the current user. However, the personal location information generated by such technologies is at risk of being misused unless protection capabilities are built into the design of such technology. These concerns may ultimately prevent society from achieving the benefits from these technologies available to customer. The assumption of the increasing location-information about individual customer. Tracking technology is continuously expanding and providing the services based on the social needs. In this paper, we have designed and implemented an appr the use of location-based services that anonymized the Data Set of the trajectories with k anonymization. After k anonymization, each possible location sample of each trajectory is further anonymized using the space and time grouping. The major goal of this paper is to create a system that takes the input data set of the trajectories and creates anonymized version of this data set. This Privacy protection technique will help to protect the whole trajectory of the user. Implementation is done in C language and tested on GPS trajectory dataset (Microsoft Research Asia) Geolife project on 64 bit dual core 2.0 GHz with 2GB RAM over a Ubuntu platform.

Cache memory, although important for boosting application performance, is also a source of execution time variability, and this makes its use difficult in systems requiring  worst case execution time (WCET) guarantees. Cache locking is a promising approach for simplifying WCET estimation and providing predictability and hence, several commercial processors provide  ability for locking cache.  However, cache locking also has several disadvantages (e.g. extra misses for unlocked blocks, complex algorithms required for selection of locking contents, etc.) and hence, a careful management is required to realize the full potential of cache locking. In this paper, we present a survey of techniques proposed for cache locking. We categorize the techniques in several groups to underscore their similarities and differences. We also discuss the opportunities and obstacles in using cache locking. We hope that this paper will help researchers in getting insights into cache locking schemes and will also stimulate further work in this area.

A network-centric university teaching and research environment based around mobile robots is described. It supports teaching a wide spectrum of computer science and engineering subjects (eg digital electronics, computer architecture, operating systems, communications, distributed processing, software engineering, machine vision, artificial intelligence, embedded computer design, real-time computing, HCI, Computer Graphics, Virtual Reality etc) within a single unified experimental environment. This enables students to combine their coursework so as to build more complex, interesting and industrially relevant systems thereby significantly increasing their motivation and knowledge. The laboratory infrastructure makes extensive use of networks to produce a versatile and cost effectiveness teaching and research environment. This paper will focus on the teaching aspects of the laboratory describing the technical infrastructure showing how it is used to support the Essex University information technology curriculum and report on the effectiveness of the approach. Finally, to demonstrate the more general academic synergy provided by this laboratory a short overview of some of the research applications is presented.

With the advancement in the automation industry, to
perform complex remote operations is required. Advancements in the networking technology has led to the development of different architectures to implement control from a large distance. In various control applications of the modern industry, the agents, such as sensors, actuators, and controllers are basically geographically distributed. For efficient working of a control application, all of the agents have to exchange information through a communication media. At present, an increasing number of distributed control systems are based on platforms made up of conventional PCs running open-source real-time operating systems. Often, these systems needed to have
networked devices supporting synchronized operations with
respect to each node . A framework is studied that relies on
standard software and protocol as RTAI, EtherCAT, RTnet and
IEEE 1588. RTAI and its various protocols are studied in
network control systems environment.

In wireless networks, due to huge amount of packets convergent nature of upstream traffic and limited wireless bandwidth, network congestion happens easy, which is a serious problem to be solved. The congestion control scheme is necessary to be solved out which can detect congestion precisely and regulate it fairly. To achieve this objective, a fuzzy logic based congestion control is proposed which takes advantage of current buffer occupancy and congestion detection is proposed to diagnose problem at each node level. In addition, it periodically calculates the congestion degree using fuzzy logic theory. At the same time each upstream traffic rate is emphasized according to the value of congestion degree. The scheme can quickly solve the status and trends of the network load, and adjust quickly to avoid a lot of packet losses. Simulations are conducted for the proposal which shows that this implementation efficiently sorts out the traffic and minimizes the packet loss. Simulation model also addresses the problem in order to deprive the congestion in wireless network.

3D modeling and visualization has become a key component of scientific research and development in many domains. Adding new routers, switches or firewalls, the computer networks are becoming more and more complex. The paradigm of introducing computer networks in three dimensions helps a lot to protect and provide services to networks. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is detecting the network anomalies based on a 3D visualization of computer network. The interactivity between network administrator and the application happens in real-time. This means that if a breakdown occurs, the network administrator will be informed in real time and will be able immediately to switch off the broken device and then repair it. Practically, we realized a 3D modeling and visualization of our university computer network with more than thousand devices and it works well.

Real time streaming over a wireless cellular
network is highly adventure and prominent field to
multimedia mobile users. Real time streaming involves
watching TV on mobile, stream on demand video clips
and place video telephony calls using multimedia capable
mobile devices. A Cyclic Redundancy Code (CRC), when
used properly, can be an effective and relatively
inexpensive method to detect data corruption across
communication channels. A large amount of data may
transmit on real time on cellular network. While
transmitting an input data over a cellular network, it is
not guarantee to recover it at the receiver side because of
input packet drops and congestion and therefore mobile
users find difficulties during the streaming congestion has
to be remove as it is the main cause for packet loss and
delay that degrade the quality of service in networks. But
improving the quality of real time streaming in wireless
cellular network is still a huge challenge. This paper
presents a brief review survey on various researches on
Congestion Controls in Streaming over wireless cellular
networks.
Keywords—Congestion Control, Cyclic Redundancy
Check (CRC), stochastic model, Quality of Service,
video streaming.

In this paper, a real time, user independent eyeball tracking approach is presented. The system is implemented by using a low cost webcam. The robustness of the system is measured by several criteria such as users of different age where some of the users are wearing glasses under varying lighting condition, pose, eye orientation and distance from camera. The size and location of the region of interest which contains both eyes are made adaptive. Derivative Dynamic Time Warping is chosen as the classifier for this experiment since it can match patterns from data sequences with different lengths. Finally, the results, advantages, limitations and future works of the proposed method are reported. The online eye tracking procedure shows good accuracy and robustness when processing online image sequences at 50 frames/s on a 253 GHz Pavilion DV4 HP notebook. © 2011 ISSN.

www.ijicic.org/10-03020-1.pdf 
http://eprints.um.edu.my/2057/

Gesture-based interaction models can be efficient and simpler to understand if designed to correspond to common user interactions with the physical world. This paper presents a 3D interface and its implementation to quickly perform navigation and manipulation tasks in multi-scale and multi-resolution 3D scenes using a low-cost consumer sensor: the Leap Motion controller. The developed system has the goal of exploring the potential of accurate hands and fingers tracking alongside mid-air 3D gestures, to investigate specific design advantages and issues they present in such complex environments.

"https://vimeo.com/fluxations/psfirstsoloside  FluxNOISations solo from an improvised duet performed with FluxNoisations and circuit-bent radio  (for front on view of the complete performance visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eBra9gd5QQ )  In this solo, Joshua B. Mailman: FluxNoisations (sounds of wood, metal, water, sandpaper, sticks, etc. and live computer graphics controlled through infrared camera motion-capture and sensor gloves)  All sounds and graphics are generated in the moment of performance.  The event includes improvised live computer graphics, a colorful spectacle projected on a large screen, controlled by spontaneous body- and hand-movements of Mailman, through his FluxNoisations interactive-dance system. Through this system, Mailman simultaneously generates and steers a stream of percussive-noise sound."

The Turing Machine model of computation captures only one of its fundamental tenets – the manipulation of symbols. Through this simplification it has relegated two important aspects of computation – time and energy – to the sidelines of computer science. This is unfortunate, because time and energy harbor the largest challenges to life as we know it, and are therefore key reasons why intelligence exists. As a result, time and energy must be an integral part of any serious analysis and theory of mind and thought. Following Turing's tradition, in a misguided effort to strengthen computer science as a science, an overemphasis on mathematical formalization continued as an accepted approach, eventually becoming the norm. The side effects include artificial intelligence research largely losing its focus, and a significant slowdown in progress towards understanding intelligence as a phenomenon. In this position paper I briefly present the arguments behind these claims.

Ensuring that timing constraints in a real-time system are satisfied and met is of utmost importance. There are different static analysis methods that are introduced to statically evaluate the correctness of such systems in terms of timing properties, such as schedulability analysis techniques. Regardless of the fact that some of these techniques might be too pessimistic or hard to apply in practice, there are also situations that can still occur at runtime resulting in the violation of timing properties and thus invalidation of the static analyses' results. Therefore, it is important to be able to test the runtime behavior of a real-time system with respect to its timing properties. In this paper, we introduce an approach for testing the timing properties of real-time systems focusing on their internal clock constraints. For this purpose, test cases are generated from timed automata models that describe the timing behavior of real-time tasks. The ultimate goal is to verify that the actual timing behavior of the system at runtime matches the timed automata models. This is achieved by tracking and time-measuring of state transitions at runtime.

Networked control systems (NCS) have gained an increasing attention in recent years due to their flexibility and cost reduction. The two main problems affecting stability and performance of closed-loop NCS are packet delay and drop. The problem of delay is severe in large scale NCS where the sensor-controller-actuator are connected via a network with large number of switches and routers. In this paper, we propose a real time optimization algorithm, called asexual reproduction optimization (ARO) which is inspired by asexual reproduction, to find the least delay link in the control loop. Simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithm remarkably outperforms the recently cited genetic algorithm (GA) in finding the minimum delay link.

The literature describes tracking devices that allow a single detector coupled to a spinning FM reticle to determine target location. The spinning FM reticles presented were limited to single parameter reticles of frequency vs angle, frequency vs radius, or phase. This study presents these parameters with their capabilities and limitations and shows that multiple parameters can be integrated into a single reticle. Also, a general equation is developed that describes any FM reticle of the spinning type.

Complex software systems typically involve features like time, concurrency and probability, with probabilistic computations playing an increasing role. However, it is currently challenging to formalize languages incorporating all those features. Recently, the language PTSC has been proposed to integrate probability and time with shared-variable concurrency (Zhu et al. (2006, 2009)  and ), where the operational semantics has been explored and a set of algebraic laws has been investigated via bisimulation. This paper investigates the link between the operational and algebraic semantics of PTSC, highlighting both its theoretical and practical aspects.

The link is obtained by deriving the operational semantics from the algebraic semantics, an approach that may be understood as establishing soundness of the operational semantics with respect to the algebraic semantics. Algebraic laws are provided that suffice to convert any PTSC program into a form consisting of a guarded choice or an internal choice between programs, which are initially deterministic. That form corresponds to a simple execution of the program, so it is used as a basis for an operational semantics. In that way, the operational semantics is derived from the algebraic semantics, with transition rules resulting from the derivation strategy. In fact the derived transition rules and the derivation strategy are shown to be equivalent, which may be understood as establishing completeness of the operational semantics with respect to the algebraic semantics.

That theoretical approach to the link is complemented by a practical one, which animates the link using Prolog. The link between the two semantics proceeds via head normal form. Firstly, the generation of head normal form is explored, in particular animating the expansion laws for probabilistic interleaving. Then the derivation of the operational semantics is animated using a strategy that exploits head normal form. The operational semantics is also animated. These animations, which again supports to claim soundness and completeness of the operational semantics with respect to the algebraic, are interesting because they provide a practical demonstration of the theoretical results.

The idea of closed-loop interaction in in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology has been successfully implemented in the dynamic clamp concept strongly impacting the research of membrane and synaptic properties of neurons. In this paper we show that this concept can be easily generalized to build other kinds of closed-loop protocols beyond (or in addition to) electrical stimulation and recording in neurophysiology and behavioral studies for neuroethology. In particular, we illustrate three different examples of goal-driven real-time closed-loop interactions with drug microinjectors, mechanical devices and video event driven stimulation. Modern activity-dependent stimulation protocols can be used to reveal dynamics (otherwise hidden under traditional stimulation techniques), achieve control of natural and pathological states, induce learning, bridge between disparate levels of analysis and for a further automation of experiments. We argue that closed-loop interaction calls for novel real time analysis, prediction and control tools and a new perspective for designing stimulus-response experiments, which can have a large impact in neuroscience research.

The Multithreaded Application Real-Time executor (MARTe) is a data driven framework environment for the development and deployment of real-time control algorithms. The main ideas which led to the present version of the framework were to standardize the development of real-time control systems, while providing a set of strictly bounded standard interfaces to the outside world and also accommodating a collection of facilities which promote the speed and ease of development, commissioning and deployment of such systems. At the core of every MARTe based application, is a set of independent inter-communicating software blocks, named Generic Application Modules (GAM), orchestrated by a real-time scheduler. The platform independence of its core library provides MARTe the necessary robustness and flexibility for conveniently testing applications in different environments including non-real-time operating systems. MARTe is already being used in several machines, each with its own peculiarities regarding hardware interfacing, supervisory control configuration, operating system and target control application. This paper presents and compares the most recent results of systems using MARTe: the JET Vertical Stabilization system, which uses the Real Time Application Interface (RTAI) operating system on Intel multi-core processors; the COMPASS plasma control system, driven by Linux RT also on Intel multi-core processors; ISTTOK real-time tomography equilibrium reconstruction which shares the same support configuration of COMPASS; JET error field correction coils based on VME, PowerPC and VxWorks; FTU LH reflected power system running on VME, Intel with RTAI.