Now showing 1 - 10 of 18
  • Publication
    Diversity & interoperability : wireless technologies in ambient assisted living
    Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) demands the seamless integration of a range of technologies such that the particular needs of the elderly may be met. Given the heterogeneity of the elderly population, in their needs and circumstances amongst others, this is a significant challenge. In essence, it demands that a disparate suite of technologies be deployed, integrated, managed and interacted with in a seamless and intuitive fashion. In this paper, how this heterogeneity may be managed is discussed. In particular, the use of ontologies and middleware are proposed as potential solutions to this heterogeneity problem.
      648
  • Publication
    An agent-based domestic electricity consumption advisory system
    This paper introduces an agent-based domestic electricity consumption advisory system. It reflects upon the diffculties of realizing the ubiquitous sensing vision which underpins such systems. It advocates the need for an effective middleware which will support the evolution of heterogeneous, distributed, collaborative intelligent sensing artifacts. To this end, it introduces the SIXTH Middleware.
      783
  • Publication
    Managing diversity in practical ambient assisted living ecosystems
    Though the motivation for developing ambient assisted living (AAL) systems is incontestable, significant challenges exist in realizing the ambience that is essential to the success of such systems. By definition, an AAL system must be omnipresent, tracking occupant activities in the home and identifying those situations where assistance is needed or would be welcomed. Embedded sensors offer an attractive mechanism for realizing ambience as their form factor and harnessing of wireless technologies aid in their seamless integration into pre-existing environments. However, the heterogeneity of the end-user population, their disparate needs and the differing environments in which they inhabit, all pose particular problems regarding sensor integration and management.
      475
  • Publication
    Implicit interaction : a prerequisite for practical AmI
    Intelligent User Interfaces represent one of the three distinguishing characteristics of AmI environments. Such interfaces are envisaged as mediating between the services available in an arbitrary physical environment and its inhabitants. To be effective, such interfaces must operate in both proactive and passive contexts, implicitly and explicitly anticipating and responding to user requests. In either case, an awareness of the prevailing situation is essential – a process that demands a judicious combination of data and decision fusion, as well as collaborative and centralized decision making. Given the constraints of AmI environments realizing a distributed lightweight computational infrastructure augmented with a need to address user needs in a timely manner poses significant challenges. In this paper, various issues essential to enabling seamless, intuitive and instinctive interaction in AmI environments are explored.
      408
  • Publication
    Ambience & collaboration embedded agents in a human-centered world
    Supporting people in the pursuit of their everyday activities is a laudable objective and one which researchers in various disciplines including computing, actively seek to accomplish. The dynamic nature of the end-user community, the environments in which they operate, and the multiplicity of tasks in which they engage in, all seem to conspire against the desired objective of providing services to the end-user community in a transparent, intuitive and context -aware fashion. Indeed, this inherent complexity raises fundamental problems for software engineers as they frequently lack the tools to effectively model the various scenarios that dynamic user behaviour give rise to. This difficulty is not limited to exotic applications or services; rather, it is characteristic of situations where a number of factors must be identified, interpreted, and reconciled such that an accurate model of the prevailing situation at a given moment in time can be constructed. Only in this way, can services be delivered that take into account the prevailing human, social, environmental and technological conditions. Constructing such services calls for a software solution that exhibits, amongst others, diffusion, autonomy, cooperation and intelligence. In this paper, the potential of embedded agents for realising such solutions is explored.
      448
  • Publication
    The clarity modular ambient health and wellness measurement platform
    Emerging healthcare applications can benefit enormously from recent advances in pervasive technology and computing. This paper introduces the CLARITY Modular Ambient Health and Wellness Measurement Platform, which is a heterogeneous and robust pervasive healthcare solution currently under development at the CLARITY Center for Sensor Web Technologies. This intelligent and context-aware platform comprises the Tyndall Wireless Sensor Network prototyping system, augmented with an agent-based middleware and frontend computing architecture. The key contribution of this work is to highlight how interoperability, expandability, reusability and robustness can be manifested in the modular design of the constituent nodes and the inherently distributed nature of the controlling software architecture.
    Scopus© Citations 5  869
  • Publication
    Exercise in the smart workplace
    Employees that engage in even moderate amounts of exercise during their working day suffer less from stress and are more tolerant in the various irritations that accompany normal working life. Though it cannot be said with certainty that such workers are more productive, tentative evidence suggest that this may well be the case. A useful service of a smart office or work environment is to contribute to the health and well-being of those that inhabit such spaces. One practical approach to this is to monitor the exercise that employees engage in during the day, and using this as a basis, motivate them to engage in further physical activity. In this paper, issues relating to monitoring employee physical activity are explored.
      581
  • Publication
    Timing and radius considerations for maintaining connectivity QoS
    Given the potential scale on which a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) can be deployed, multi-hop communication will be a pivotal component of the system. When redundant nodes are deployed, which are hibernated opportunistically to conserve energy, it is crucial that sub-graphs of the network are not disconnected by the hibernation of a node. In order to ensure connectivity is preserved for all nodes in the area, a protocol is required that oversees routing integrity is maintained. Since this routing topology must be present at all times, this set represents the minimum number of nodes that must be active at any given time for a functioning network. In this paper, the performance of such a protocol is evaluated, in terms of message delivery and node lifetime for various timing and radius parameters. The selection of these, control the potential energy conserved by the nodes through the hibernation process, which can increase operational longevity. In addition, the radius governs the networks resilience to expired nodes, while timing parameters manage the responsiveness of the topology to failed and exhausted sensors. In this paper, we demonstrate the trade-offs that exist when selecting specific values for these variables as well as the impact these have on a number of Quality of Service (QoS) metrics for WSN performance, namely longevity and message delivery.
      526
  • Publication
    Agent migration and communication in WSNs
    Intelligent agents offer a viable paradigm for enabling AmI applications and services. As WSN technologies are anticipated to provide an indispensable component in many application domains, the need for enabling the agent paradigm to encompass such technologies becomes more urgent. The resource-constrained ad-hoc nature of WSNs poses significant challenges to conventional agent frameworks. In particular, the implications for agent functionality and behaviour in a WSN context demand that issues such as unreliable message delivery and limited power resources, amongst others, be considered. In this paper, the practical issues of agent migration and communication are considered in light of WSN constraints. The discussion is illustrated through a description of approaches adopted by Agent Factory Micro Edition (AFME).
      1405Scopus© Citations 21
  • Publication
    Virtual sensor networks : an embedded agent approach
    Many documented instances of existing research on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) use deployments that either fall short of, or barely meet, the resource requirements of the application. In this paper, it is envisaged that future WSN deployments will far exceed the resource requirements of any one single application. In a similar fashion to the use of virtual machines on a mainframe, sub-networks of adequate resources will be carved out of the entire deployment to fulfil the requirements of multiple applications. These will be hosted simultaneously on the network, and in many cases, certain WSN nodes will form a component in a number of these Virtual Sensor Networks (VSN). Such VSNs will also be dynamic in nature, adapting resources as nodes go offline. An additional requirement of such networks will be to engage in opportunistic power management, such as node hibernation, while the networks are adapting. In this paper, a solution for both of these issues is proposed, underpinned by a Multi-Agent System (MAS) resident on individual nodes. This solution facilitates both the practical operation of adaptive VSNs, while ensuring aggregate energy consumption can be minimised.
      2583Scopus© Citations 14