The basic premis of this report is to explain the relation of kernel space and user space. It will show how the processor and computer memory work together with the operating system to protect operating system routines from misuse by user programs. After reading through this the reader should have an understanding of what kernel space is, how it is protected and how user programs gain access to its contents in a controlled manner. Fuse is used as an example in the conclusion, explaining how that particular application can be used to implement a simple dependency tracking overlay in a filesystem.

The goal with this thesis was to build parts of a service that, depending on a user’s interests and previous activity, can deliver interesting news for that user. The service integrates with social medias to gather information about a user’s interests and his or hers friend’s interests. In this way the system can deliver targeted news for the specified user. The system consists of two main parts, a server side system (which consists of several parts) and a user application. The user application is responsible for showing news and communicating with the server side. The server side system consists of three parts.– Front-end server which handles all communication between the user application and the server side. It also crawls social medias for information about a certain user.– Back-end server which delivers targeted news to a certain user.– A database, used by the server on the server side for sharing and storing data. This thesis focuses on a user application (used by a user on e.g an iPhone or Android mobile-phone) and a front-end server (used in the server side system).

The goal with this project was to improve an existing face recognition system for video streams by using adaptive object tracking to track faces between frames. The knowledge of what faces occur and do not occur in subsequent frames was used to filter false faces and to better identify real ones. The recognition ability was tested by measuring how many faces were found and how many of them were correctly identified in two short video files. The tests also looked at the number of false face detections. The results were compared to a reference implementation that did not use object tracking. Two identification modes were tested: the default and strict modes. In the default mode, whichever person is most similar to a given image patch is accepted as the answer. In strict mode, the similarity also has to be above a certain threshold. The first video file had a fairly high image quality. It had only frontal faces, one at a time. The second video file had a slightly lower image quality. It had up to two faces at a time, in a larger variety of angles. The second video was therefore a more difficult case. The results show that the number of detected faces increased by 6-21% in the two video files, for both identification modes, compared to the reference implementation. In the meantime, the number of false detections remained low. In the first video file, there were fewer than 0.009 false detections per frame. In the second video file, there were fewer than 0.08 false detections per frame. The number of faces that were correctly identified increased by 8-22% in the two video files in default mode. In the first video file, there was also a large improvement in strict mode, as it went from recognising 13% to 85% of all faces. In the second video file, however,neither implementation managed to identify anyone in strict mode. The conclusion is that object tracking is a good tool for improving the accuracy of face recognition in video streams. Anyone implementing face recognition for video streams should consider using object tracking as a central component.

This thesis starts with a brief introduction to neural networks and the tuning of neural networks using genetic algorithms. An improved genetic algorithm is benchmarked using the technical paper Proben1 as a starting point. The benefits of using a genetic algorithm as well as results of the benchmark tests in comparison to a resilient backpropagation algorithm are discussed. The improved genetic algorithm is not a universal solution to all classification problems. Even though it outperforms  the resilient backpropagation algorithm slightly in these benchmark tests more benchmarking on more vast solution domains must be performed.

This thesis describes a general framework for synchronizing behaviors in a complex robot, using a Finite State Machine. The framework is developed in C++ and with the robotic framework ROS. It will be used for the EU funded research project CROPS for developing a fruit harvesting robot. The thesis also focuses on how to connect a robot behavior to a state that makes pre-emptive multitasking possible. One important thing about connecting a behavior to a state is which kind of communication to use; publish-subscribe, request-reply, or a goal-feedback-result communication. These communications can be used by two different state interfaces. Another important point regarding connecting a behavior to a state is the definition of state transitions. The state transitions are defined in a text file in yaml format. There are also three different ways of implementing state transactions presented. Passing data by ROS messages, by ROS parameter server and by saving and loading data in and from the Finite State Machine. The framework has been successfully implemented in CROPS and is able to control a robot arm.

The thesis propose a new design solution of the web application and air assessment tool: SIMAIR, a product of The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI). The current solution of SIMAIR is outdated regarding the interaction and visual apperance, as a result it is in need of a user adaption. No user study has been perform earlier and for that reason SMHI needs an increased knowledge about the users. The objectives of this thesis are therefore to perform a user study, develop a more user-friendly design and implementan interactive prototype of the new design solution. By using the design method Goal-Directed Design, a design target of the wide spread user group was found and personas of the user archetypes were developed. By narrowing down the target audience, the new design was more well defined and the chances to create a product that satisfied the users' needs increased. The design target and the personas was used to find goals and motivations, as well as aptitudes and attitudes, of the users. "Seriousness", "Professionalism" and "Reliability" were the objectives for the new design. They formed the basis for the creation and development of a modernized and user-friendly graphical user interface of SIMAIR. The prototypeto visualize the new interface, was developed by using HTML5, CSS3 and the JavaScript libraryJQuery. These technologies are also, well suited for further development and usability improvement of SIMAIR.

The increasing acceptance of using mobile devices and applications to perform every day tasks has created a market for applications handling personal assets of a user. Applicationsmanaging transactions and personal and financial information place demands on the design and implementation. One issue to consider is how to support the user perception of reliability. A literature review, accompanied by a user study, show that important aspects to have in mind are trust, privacy, familiarity and security. These aspects can be incorporated in the design by, for example, providing accurate and timely information and relevant feedback. Design guidelines presented by the above mentioned study of perceived reliability, are used while designing an application aimed to manage pension errands. Functionality supported are viewing detailed information of ITP 1 insurances and changing funds of a specific insurance.

The mining industry has recognized the need for streamlining the production using modern process control systems. In this thesis, a graphical user interface has been designed that gives the mine operator an improved overview of the physical mine, its production and involved resources compared to current user interfaces. A conceptual demonstrator was developed that implements essential features, including a traditional process view showing production points and ore movement, an enhanced Gantt chart and a geographical mine view using a visualization technique for 3D to 2D mapping. In depth individual research has also been conducted, focusing on Gantt charts adapted for continuous mining processes and a design process reflection that discusses the diffculties faced by university students in real work environments and suggestions for overcoming them.

Audio/Video streaming has widely been used in different applications but the social communication applications have especially raised its usage. The aim of this thesis is to design and develop an improved Audio/Video streaming solution for a Swedish company Bambuser and can easily be extended with new features where necessary. Currently Bambuser is using the Flash Media Server (FMS) for streaming the media, but it is license based and adds the extra cost to the company's budget. It does not support a wide range of platforms (e.g. OpenBSD and various Linux distributions) and also has limited options for the streaming. There is no real time monitoring and controlling functionality, which can show the status of essential services to the user, needed for the streaming (for example if the camera is working, microphone is turned on, battery power status. etc.). In order to solve these issues the GStreamer is used, which is an Open source multimedia streaming framework. The GStreamer environment was tested on different Linux distributions. The research and implementation includes the creation of the streaming pipeline and analyzing which options (i.e. GStreamer elements and plugins) are required to stream the media. It also includes the testing of different pipeline parameters (for example video rate, audio rate etc.) and noting their effects in a real working environment. Python binding with GStreamer is used to have better control over the pipeline. Another requirement of this project was to add the functionality of monitoring and control that shows the status of essential services to the user. Implementation of this part is done by using server and client side coding. Further improvements and suggestions are also proposed in this report.

This thesis work present deformable template matching with dynamic programming for foot tracking in smart phones. This report discusses how edge image of foot can be used as line template which is then allowed to deform up to 30 percent to match feet of variable sizes. The optimal solution is calculated using dynamic programming. The limitation of computing resources is main problem in performing image processing in smart phones. This approach tracks foot in real time i.e 30 frames per second. Android smart phone piano and football application are developed and tested in different circumstances to check developed algorithm.