Submitted by Maria Aparecida (cidazen@gmail.com) on 2017-07-26T13:52:12Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Debora Stefanello.pdf: 4211863 bytes, checksum: 01fdbcf038800472fbd854b22bc2e341 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-26T13:52:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Debora Stefanello.pdf: 4211863 bytes, checksum: 01fdbcf038800472fbd854b22bc2e341 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-01-25 / CAPES / In recent years, some research has taken into account problems related to the development of software systems, especially those that make use of context, i.e. context-aware systems. In this dissertation the complexity of context-aware system development is discussed. The proposed solution aims to provide support for the context-aware system development through a framework based on MDE and Weaving. On the one hand, MDE allows the use of models to manage complexity in software development, while the weaving technique supports the creation of interrelations between elements of different but complementary models. The weaving technique is used to create a weaving model that establishes interrelationships between the elements of a Platform Independent Model (PIM) and several Platform Description Model (PDMs). An implementation of the proposed framework and an illustrative example help to understand the proposal and its feasibility. A comparison between the proposed solution and the works found in the literature Done, showing the negative and positive points of the proposed solution. / Nos últimos anos, algumas pesquisas têm levado em conta as problemáticas relacionadas ao desenvolvimento de sistema de software, em especial, aqueles que fazem o uso de contexto, i.e. context-aware systems. Nesta dissertação de mestrado, abordase a complexidade no desenvolvimento de context-aware system. A solução proposta visa fornecer suporte para o desenvolvimento de context-aware system através de um framework baseado em MDE e Weaving. Por um lado, MDE permite a utilização de modelos para gerenciar a complexidade no desenvolvimento de sofware, enquanto a técnica de weaving suporta a criação de inter-relacionamentos entre elementos de modelos diferentes, mas complementares. A técnica de weaving é utilizada para criar um modelo de weaving que estabelece inter-relacionamentos entre os elementos de um PIM (Platform Independent Model) e de vários PDMs (Platform Description Model). Uma implementação do framework proposto e um exemplo ilustrativo ajudam a entender a proposta e mostram a sua viabilidade. Um comparativo entre a solução proposta e os trabalhos encontrados na literatura é feito, mostrando os pontos negativos e positivos da solução proposta.

Submitted by Alison Vanceto (alison-vanceto@hotmail.com) on 2017-05-09T12:58:24Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DissBRS.pdf: 3255630 bytes, checksum: e4d94f1ee923813cfd91e76e992dbfa8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-06-01T18:49:57Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissBRS.pdf: 3255630 bytes, checksum: e4d94f1ee923813cfd91e76e992dbfa8 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (ronisp@ufscar.br) on 2017-06-01T18:50:12Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DissBRS.pdf: 3255630 bytes, checksum: e4d94f1ee923813cfd91e76e992dbfa8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T19:49:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DissBRS.pdf: 3255630 bytes, checksum: e4d94f1ee923813cfd91e76e992dbfa8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-30 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Context: Traditional testing approaches, considering the context of Adaptive Systems (ASs), have been evaluated incipiently and superficially with respect to their effectiveness in identifying faults. It is very clear the challenge of guaranteeing the correctness of ASs, due to the adaptive properties of these systems. Thus, the following question raises: how to characterise adequately and broadly the difficulties for testing ASs? There is not an approach that is driven by challenges found in the literature. Goals: In this work, we analysed and characterised the challenges faced by the testing activity when applied to ASSs. By characterising the challenges, we investigated testing strategies based on them. Methodology: In order to achieve the goals, we performed the following steps: (i) characterising the state-of-art of testing of ASs, using a Systematic Literature Review (SLR); (ii) investigating the challenges in source codes of real ASs that are available online in source code repositories; (iii) defining the testing strategy named T, based on the characterised challenges; (iv) defining the testing strategy T* based on the challenges and comprised by three testing approaches; (v) evaluating the effectiveness of the strategies T and T*; and (vi) investigating the challenges along the application of T and T*. Results: the main results were: (i) a characterisation of fine-grained and coarse-grained challenges for testing ASs; and (ii) two testing strategies based on such challenges. We evaluated the strategies by running an exploratory study which encompassed one AS and both testing strategies. Conclusion: The characterisation of challenges supported the definition and execution of the testing strategies. These strategies were able to reduce the impact of the challenges and to identify faults in the AS. / Contexto: Abordagens de teste tradicionais sao ainda incipientes e superficialmente avaliadas quanto a sua efetividade em revelar defeitos em Sistemas Adaptativos (SAs). E nítido o desafio de garantir a corretude de SAs levando-se em consideração as características de adaptacao desses sistemas, culminando na seguinte pergunta: como caracterizar adequadamente, de forma abrangente, as dificuldades para se testar SAs? Na literatura nao foi encontrada qualquer estrategia de teste que seja guiada por desafios de teste caracterizados. Objetivos: Neste trabalho buscou-se compreender e caracterizar os desafios impostos a atividade de teste de SAs. Uma vez caracterizados, os desafios, propos-se investigar estrategias de teste baseadas nestes desafios. Metodologia: Para atingir o objetivo seguiram-se as etapas: (i) caracterizacao do estado da arte por meio de uma Revisao Sistematica (RS); (ii) investigacao da existencia de desafios de teste em SAs presentes em repositórios de código-fonte; (iii) definho de uma estrategia de teste, denominada T, com base nos desafios caracterizados da RS; (iv) definicao de uma estrategia de teste combinada, denominada T*, composta por três abordagens de teste; (v) avaliaçao da efetividade das estrategias T e T*; e, por fim, (vi) investigacao da presença dos desafios nos SAs analisados, por meio das estrategias T e T*. Resultados: Os principais resultados foram: (i) uma caraterizacao de desafios para o teste de SAs; e (ii) e uma definicao de estrategias de teste baseadas nos desafios caracterizados. A avaliacao foi realizada com a aplicacao de um estudo exploratório, utilizando um SA, de uma estrategia de teste somente baseada em desafios (T) e de uma estrategia de teste baseada em desafios combinada com outras abordagens (T*), a fim de comparar os resultados de ambas as estrategias. Conclusão: A caracterizacao dos desafios auxiliou na definicao e execucao de estrategias de teste, as quais mitigaram os desafios presentes nos SAs e puderam identificar defeitos.

Submitted by Cássia Santos (cassia.bcufg@gmail.com) on 2016-09-23T12:05:51Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Guilherme Silva Marques - 2016.pdf: 2715063 bytes, checksum: 3bafbdca7ace292dda958959884eaeb3 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-09-26T12:00:37Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Guilherme Silva Marques - 2016.pdf: 2715063 bytes, checksum: 3bafbdca7ace292dda958959884eaeb3 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-26T12:00:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Guilherme Silva Marques - 2016.pdf: 2715063 bytes, checksum: 3bafbdca7ace292dda958959884eaeb3 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-05 / Dey et al. [10] define context as the information set that can be used to characterize the status of an entity (e.g. person, place or object relevant to the user-application interaction). Perera et al. [36] propose a context information life cycle in 4 phases: acquisition, modeling, reasoning and dissemination. Context modeling consists in representing the real world in computing and, according to Bettini et al. [2], a good information context modeling mitigates the complexity of context-aware applications. In the context of this work, a systematic review demonstrated that the literature has focused on context information modeling, but with less emphasis on the architectural project. The main problem addressed on this work is the creation and evaluation of architectural projects that work together on the context modeling phase of a Semantic Context-Aware System (SCAS), which uses ontologies as main information modeling technique. This work proposes an architectural solution to two relevant services of the ontology-based context modeling phase: the former represents context information collected through sensors, and the latter aggregates context information represented by the former for a same individual or entity. Both architectural designs were built using well-known architectural styles and design patterns, as well as were evaluated against architectural designs of similar projects. As a result, the main contributions include the architectural designs of ontology-based services for context representation and aggregation as references for the development of SCAS in terms of the context modeling phase. / Contexto é o conjunto de informações que pode ser utilizado para caracterizar a situação de uma entidade (pessoa, lugar ou objeto relevante para a interação usuário-aplicação) [10]. Perera et al. [36] propõem um ciclo de vida para a informação de contexto composto por 4 etapas: aquisição, modelagem, raciocínio e disseminação. A etapa de modelagem de contexto consiste em representar o mundo real na computação. Segundo Bettini et. al. [2] “uma boa modelagem de informação de contexto reduz a complexidade das aplicações sensíveis a contexto”. Um Sistema Sensível ao Contexto Semântico (SSCS) é um sistema computacional que utiliza ontologias que, segundo Gruber [15], é “uma especificação explícita de uma conceitualização”, e consistem em uma das formas de modelar as informações de contexto. Como resultado de uma revisão sistemática feita pelo autor deste trabalho evidenciou que na literatura o foco dos trabalhos tem sido na modelagem da informação de contexto com menor enfoque no uso de projeto arquitetural. Com base nisso, o principal problema endereçado neste trabalho é a criação e avaliação dos projetos arquiteturais que trabalhem em conjunto na modelagem do ciclo de vida de contexto em SSCS. Objetiva-se elaborar uma solução arquitetural para sistemas sensíveis ao contexto semântico baseado em ontologias. Propôs-se neste trabalho o projeto arquitetural para o software de representação ontológica de contexto e para o software de agregação ontológica de contexto. O primeiro representa as informações coletadas através de sensores e o segundo agrega as informações representadas para um mesmo indivíduo ou entidade. Realizou-se, assim, a avaliação dos projetos arquiteturais propostos e explana-se sobre os resultados obtidos, comparando-os com outros projetos existentes na literatura. Com a obtenção dos resultados propostos, espera-se contribuir com a literatura, apresentando projetos arquiteturais e avaliações destes, auxiliando, assim, o desenvolvimento de SSCS no que se refere à modelagem do ciclo de vida de contexto.

Les systèmes d'information mobiles et ambiants liés à la localisation et à la navigation évoluent progressivement vers des environnements à petite échelle. La nouvelle frontière scientifique et technologique concerne les applications qui assistent les utilisateurs dans leurs déplacements et activités au sein d’espaces bâtis dits «indoor» (e.g., aéroports, musées, bâtiments). La recherche présentée par cette thèse développe une représentation de données spatiales d'un environnement «indoor» qui tient compte des dimensions contextuelles centrées sur l'utilisateur et aborde les enjeux de gestion de données mobiles. Un modèle de données «indoor» hiérarchique et sensible au contexte est proposé. Ce modèle intègre différentes dimensions du contexte en plus de la localisation des entités concernées, telles que le temps et les profils des utilisateurs. Ce modèle est basé sur une structure arborescente dans laquelle l'information spatiale est représentée à différents niveaux d'abstraction. Cette conception hiérarchique favorise un traitement adaptatif et efficace des Requêtes Dépendantes de la Localisation (RDL) qui sont considérées comme des éléments clés pour le développement des différentes catégories de services de géolocalisation sensibles au contexte. Un langage de requêtes continues est développé et illustré par des exemples de requêtes RDL. Ce langage exploite le concept des granules spatiales, et permet de représenter les requêtes continues et dépendantes de la localisation en prenant compte des préférences de l'utilisateur au moment de l'exécution.Cette approche de modélisation est complétée par le développement d'une architecture générique pour le traitement continu des requêtes RDL et par la conception et la mise en oeuvre de plusieurs algorithmes qui permettent un traitement efficace des requêtes dépendantes de la localisation sur des objets mobiles en «indoor». Plusieurs algorithmes de traitement continu des requêtes de recherche de chemin hiérarchique et des requêtes de zone appliquées à des objets statiques et/ou en mouvement sont présentés. Ces algorithmes utilisent une approche hiérarchique et incrémentale afin d'exécuter efficacement les requêtes RDL continues. Un prototype encapsulant le modèle de données hiérarchique, les opérateurs et les contraintes introduits dans le langage de requête ainsi que les différents algorithmes et méthodes pour la manipulation de requêtes RDL a été développé comme une extension du SGBD Open Source PostgreSQL. Une étude expérimentale des solutions développées a été menée pour étudier la performance et le passage à l'échelle à l'égard des propriétés intrinsèques des solutions proposées. / The range of applications in ambient information systems progressively evolves from large to small scale environments. This is particularly the case for applications that assist humans in navigation-related activities in indoor spaces (e.g., airports, museums, office buildings). The research presented by this Ph.D. dissertation develops a data and knowledge representation of an indoor environment that takes into account user-centred contextual dimensions and mobile data management issues. We introduce a hierarchical, context-dependent, and feature-based indoor spatial data model. This model takes into account additional contextual dimensions such as time, user profiles, and real-time events. The model is based on a tree structure in which location information is represented at different levels of abstraction. The hierarchical design favours performance and scalability of location-dependent query processing. A query grammar is developed and implemented on top of that model. This query language supports continuous location-dependent queries and takes into account user preferences at execution time. The concept of location granules is introduced at the query execution and presentation levels.This modelling approach is complemented by the development of a generic architecture for continuous query processing. Several algorithms for location dependent query processing over indoor moving objects have been designed and implemented. These algorithms include path searches and range queries applied to both static and moving objects. They are based on an incremental approach in order to execute continuous location-dependent queries.The operators and constraints introduced in the query language and the algorithms for location-dependent query processing have been implemented as a database extension of the open source DBMS PostgreSQL, and where the hierarchical network-based indoor data model has been developed at the logical level. Several experiments have been conducted to evaluate the scalability and performance of the whole framework.

No início do século XX, poucas décadas depois do início da eletrificação das casas, o conceito de uma residência automatizada já era utilizado como símbolo de um futuro livre das tarefas domésticas. No entanto, mesmo com o desenvolvimento de tecnologias de suporte, a automação de residências nunca contemplou uma ampla disseminação e uso. Este trabalho realiza uma análise social, econômica, tecnológica, cultural e de saúde da sociedade, desde o início do século XX até os dias atuais, para entender o comportamento humano relativo ao ambiente residencial e identificar as possíveis causas que não favoreceram a implantação de sistemas de controle e automação nestes ambientes. Ele ainda propõe uma arquitetura de sistemas eletrônicos e computacionais para o ambiente residencial, baseada em um conjunto de requerimentos e de abstrações coerentes com o contexto socioeconômico vigente e factível diante das atuais disponibilidades tecnológicas, a fim de direcionar os esforços na área e fomentar o desenvolvimento de aplicações. Adicionalmente, é apresentada uma plataforma de desenvolvimento hardware, firmware e software , denominada Home Sapiens, cuja concepção, projeto e desenvolvimento foram feitos no contexto desta tese. Baseada em nós de controle distribuídos, ela permite o acesso aos dados provenientes de sensores, a geração de informações de contexto, a identificação de serviços e a manipulação das características do ambiente residencial segundo regras de decisão, planejamento e métodos de aprendizado baseados em técnicas de Inteligência Artificial / In the early twentieth century, a few decades after the beginning of the electrification of houses, the concept of an automated home was used as a symbol of a future free of domestic chores. However, even with the development of supporting technologies, the automation of homes never contemplated a wide dissemination and use. This paper presents an analysis social, economic, technological, cultural and health of society, from the early twentieth century to the present day, to understand human behavior on the residential environment and to identify possible causes that did not favor deployment of control systems and automation in these environments. It also proposes an architecture of computer and electronic systems for the residential environment, based on a set of applications and abstractions consistent with the current socioeconomic context and feasible under the available technology in order to direct efforts in the area and promote the development of applications. Additionally, the implementation of a framework hardware, firmware and software called Home Sapiens is presented, whose conception, design and development were made in the context of this thesis. Based on distributed control nodes, it provides access to data from sensors, the generation of information of context, the identification of services and handling characteristics of the residential environment in accordance with rules of decision, planning and learning methods based on Artificial Intelligence.

No início do século XX, poucas décadas depois do início da eletrificação das casas, o conceito de uma residência automatizada já era utilizado como símbolo de um futuro livre das tarefas domésticas. No entanto, mesmo com o desenvolvimento de tecnologias de suporte, a automação de residências nunca contemplou uma ampla disseminação e uso. Este trabalho realiza uma análise social, econômica, tecnológica, cultural e de saúde da sociedade, desde o início do século XX até os dias atuais, para entender o comportamento humano relativo ao ambiente residencial e identificar as possíveis causas que não favoreceram a implantação de sistemas de controle e automação nestes ambientes. Ele ainda propõe uma arquitetura de sistemas eletrônicos e computacionais para o ambiente residencial, baseada em um conjunto de requerimentos e de abstrações coerentes com o contexto socioeconômico vigente e factível diante das atuais disponibilidades tecnológicas, a fim de direcionar os esforços na área e fomentar o desenvolvimento de aplicações. Adicionalmente, é apresentada uma plataforma de desenvolvimento hardware, firmware e software , denominada Home Sapiens, cuja concepção, projeto e desenvolvimento foram feitos no contexto desta tese. Baseada em nós de controle distribuídos, ela permite o acesso aos dados provenientes de sensores, a geração de informações de contexto, a identificação de serviços e a manipulação das características do ambiente residencial segundo regras de decisão, planejamento e métodos de aprendizado baseados em técnicas de Inteligência Artificial / In the early twentieth century, a few decades after the beginning of the electrification of houses, the concept of an automated home was used as a symbol of a future free of domestic chores. However, even with the development of supporting technologies, the automation of homes never contemplated a wide dissemination and use. This paper presents an analysis social, economic, technological, cultural and health of society, from the early twentieth century to the present day, to understand human behavior on the residential environment and to identify possible causes that did not favor deployment of control systems and automation in these environments. It also proposes an architecture of computer and electronic systems for the residential environment, based on a set of applications and abstractions consistent with the current socioeconomic context and feasible under the available technology in order to direct efforts in the area and promote the development of applications. Additionally, the implementation of a framework hardware, firmware and software called Home Sapiens is presented, whose conception, design and development were made in the context of this thesis. Based on distributed control nodes, it provides access to data from sensors, the generation of information of context, the identification of services and handling characteristics of the residential environment in accordance with rules of decision, planning and learning methods based on Artificial Intelligence.

The mission of the research presented in this thesis is to give computers the power to sense and react to human activities. Without the ability to sense the surroundings and understand what humans are doing, computers will not be able to provide active, timely, appropriate, and considerate services to the humans. To accomplish this mission, the work stands on the shoulders of two giants: Machine learning and ubiquitous computing. Because of the ubiquity of sensor-enabled mobile and wearable devices, there has been an emerging opportunity to sense, learn, and infer human activities from the sensor data by leveraging state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. While having shown promising results in human activity recognition, most existing approaches using supervised or semi-supervised learning have two fundamental problems. Firstly, most existing approaches require a large set of labeled sensor data for every target class, which requires a costly effort from human annotators. Secondly, an unseen new activity cannot be recognized if no training samples of that activity are available in the dataset. In light of these problems, a new approach in this area is proposed in our research. This thesis presents our novel approach to address the problem of human activity recognition when few or no training samples of the target activities are available. The main hypothesis is that the problem can be solved by the proposed NuActiv activity recognition framework, which consists of modeling the hierarchical and sequential structure of human activities, as well as bringing humans in the loop of model training. By injecting human knowledge about the hierarchical nature of human activities, a semantic attribute representation and a two-layer attribute-based learning approach are designed. To model the sequential structure, a probabilistic graphical model is further proposed to take into account the temporal dependency of activities and attributes. Finally, an active learning algorithm is developed to reinforce the recognition accuracy using minimal user feedback. The hypothesis and approaches presented in this thesis are validated by two case studies and real-world experiments on exercise activities and daily life activities. Experimental results show that the NuActiv framework can effectively recognize unseen new activities even without any training data, with up to 70-80% precision and recall rate. It also outperforms supervised learning with limited labeled data for the new classes. The results significantly advance the state of the art in human activity recognition, and represent a promising step towards bridging the gap between computers and humans.

A l’avenir, l'agriculture et l'environnement vont pouvoir bénéficier de plus en plus de données hétérogènes collectées par des réseaux de capteurs sans fil (RCSF). Ces données alimentent généralement des outils d’aide à la décision (OAD). Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons spécifiquement aux systèmes sensibles et adaptatifs au contexte basés sur un RCSF et un OAD, dédiés au suivi de phénomènes naturels. Nous proposons ainsi une formalisation pour la conception et la mise en œuvre de ces systèmes. Le contexte considéré se compose de données issues du phénomène étudié mais également des capteurs sans fil (leur niveau d’énergie par exemple). Par l’utilisation des ontologies et de techniques de raisonnement, nous visons à maintenir le niveau de qualité de service (QdS) des données collectées (en accord avec le phénomène étudié) tant en préservant le fonctionnement du RCSF. Pour illustrer notre proposition, un cas d'utilisation complexe, l'étude des inondations dans un bassin hydrographique, est considéré. Cette thèse a produit un logiciel de simulation de ces systèmes qui intègre un système de simulation multi-agents (JADE) avec un moteur d’inférence à base de règles (Jess). / In the future, agriculture and environment will rely on more and more heterogeneous data collected by wireless sensor networks (WSN). These data are generally used in decision support systems (DSS). In this dissertation, we focus on adaptive context-aware systems based on WSN and DSS, dedicated to the monitoring of natural phenomena. Thus, a formalization for the design and the deployment of these kinds of systems is proposed. The considered context is established using the data from the studied phenomenon but also from the wireless sensors (e.g., their energy level). By the use of ontologies and reasoning techniques, we aim to maintain the required quality of service (QoS) level of the collected data (according to the studied phenomenon) while preserving the resources of the WSN. To illustrate our proposal, a complex use case, the study of floods in a watershed, is described. During this PhD thesis, a simulator for context-aware systems which integrates a multi-agent system (JADE) and a rule engine (Jess) has been developed.Keywords: ontologies, rule-based inferences, formalization, heterogeneous data, sensors data streams integration, WSN, limited resources, DSS, adaptive context-aware systems, QoS, agriculture, environment.