To host a value-added internet service, like a web page with a large user base, an organization either has to rely on cash donations or it has to monetize the service. The monetization of the service often means degrading the quality of the service or making it less appealing. This is why this project introduces a new business model where services can be run by the users themselves by letting them donate computer resources. This again should lower the operating cost of the service. The new business model is introduced by developing a framework that allows developers to implement their services in a way that let dedicated users participate in hosting the service. First the framework was developed, and then the framework was used to develop an example implementation of a distributed web page. For it to be realistic that users would be able to partake in an operation like this, a project goal was to make sure that the technical demand from users are low. The framework is written with this in mind and the reached simplicity is presented at the end of the report.

For a group of friends going to a concert or a festival, finding concerts that everyone is happy with can be challenging as everyone have their own preferences and wishes when it comes to music.In this thesis, a prototype of a group recommendation system for concerts is presented to solve this issue. The prototype is context sensitive; it takes a user's location and time into account when giving recommendations. The prototype implements three algorithms to recommend concerts by taking advantage of what users have listened to before: a collaborative filtering algorithm (k-Nearest Neighbor), a Matrix Factorization algorithm, and a Hybrid approach of these two.The thesis was written following the Design Science Research paradigm. The thesis covers the design and implementation of the prototype in addition to a brief review of the state of the art of the recommendation systems literature. The usability of the prototype was evaluated using the System Usability Scale, and a user centered evaluation was performed to evaluate the quality of recommendations. The results from the usability evaluation shows that users generally were satisfied with the usability of the prototype. The results from the Quality Evaluation shows that the k-Nearest Neighbor and Hybrid approach produces satisfactory results whereas the Matrix Factorization implementation is lagging a bit behind. The users testing the prototype were generally satisfied with the quality of recommendations, however further evaluation is needed to draw any final conclusions.

SINTEF Energy (hereafter called SINTEF) develops complex compu- tational models for energy production in Norway. These models are controlled by command line interfaces when used for testing, in meetings, or in other contexts. They may, to some extent, be visualized with Python or MATLAB scripts, but lacks a good graphical user interface, as well as including the users in an interactive manner. SINTEF desires to look at the capabilities of moving some of today’s CLI-based workflow to a mobile environment, with an interactive user interface. They want to expand their view, exploring new ways of working. They also want to know if their current information models are able to handle these new environments.We will develop a front-end application for an Android tablet. With an agile prototyping methodology, we identify requirements to make such an application both user-friendly and useful to the end users. The application is primarily a proof-of-concept to illustrate the potential of making a new interface to SINTEFs existing computational models. The development process is also used to see if SINTEFs existing information models are extensive enough to match with the new mobile environments. The application will first and foremost be evaluated by its potential to present a prototype GUI, but also by a set of design principles regarding mobile design, and its strengths and weaknesses.Our concept illustrates the potential of visualizing parts of SINTEFs existing applications to a mobile device in an interactive manner. The users saw a potential in saving time by using such an application. The application is also used to suggest an extension to SINTEFs existing information model. This proposed CIM extension has been implemented in our application, and is generally viable for other software applications utilizing information model.

This project has been performed as a master thesis and contributes to the UbiCollab project, which is a service-oriented platform for ubiquitous collaboration where social interactions may occur both naturally and unconstrained of situation and location.Social medias have had a rapid growth throughout the last decade.People tend to share everything they do, and where they do it. With the simultaneously growth of mobile applications, application developers integrate social networking services into their application to reach a greater audience. It is easy to integrate one network into their application, but when multiple networks are integrated, the code tends to become more complex. Developers usually choose only one service to keep it simple. This has the disadvantage of making users of different social medias unable to share their geographical location and communicate with each other.During our work with this master, we have created a middleware that is able to share and manage geographical places across social networks, in order to make it easier for developers to make location-based applications for multiple social services.With this implementation we support core features for sharing geographical places in social networks. However, the system needs to support additional features to be treated as a suitable alternative to existing tools.

In this report I propose a method of navigation for differentially wheeled robots inspired by path integration in certain social insects like bees and ants. It is a very simple method, intended for use in low-tech robots with very limited hardware, such as swarm robots. Path integration is essentially dead reckoning as used by animals, calculating the relative position based on the movements made since the last known position. It is a tried and true method of navigation that also has significant flaws, especially in that inaccuracies accumulate and magnify over time. In this report I want to examine whether communication and information sharing between robots in a swarm can alleviate some of the drawbacks, and make it a viable method for navigation for swarm robots over relatively short distances.

In the later years robotics has seen a huge increase within domestic use, and have now become an affordable tool in the daily life of most people. The goal of this project was to investigate the differences between a physical and virtual robot in terms of increased content knowledge, learning motivation, and interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). To investigate this we conducted an experiment at Trondheim’m International School (THIS), using a quasi-experimental setup with two treatment group, virtual and physical robot. The results showed that there does not exist a statistically significant difference in content knowledge gain, motivation or interest between the robotics group and the simulator group.

In the later years robotics has seen a huge increase within domestic use, and have now become an affordable tool in the daily life of most people. The goal of this project was to investigate the differences between a physical and virtual robot in terms of increased content knowledge, learning motivation, and interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). To investigate this we conducted an experiment at Trondheim’m International School (THIS), using a quasi-experimental setup with two treatment group, virtual and physical robot. The results showed that there does not exist a statistically significant difference in content knowledge gain, motivation or interest between the robotics group and the simulator group.

The goal of the project in this thesis is to explore the viability of an approach to user adaptation where the application context is significantly more constraining than in most cases seen in previous academic work.The project describes and implements a system for rolling out product features incrementally in an optimal way, based on feature adoption statistics within user segments. In other words, the described system should allow for simple personalization of the product.When analyzing the adoption rate of new features, we find that there are indeed clear differences between the identified user segments. However, limitations due to the lack of stable user identity make adaptation approaches based on these data unfeasable in practice.

This paper presents an algorithm to solve a variant of the bin packing problem with additional constraints on the order of items. The performance of this algorithm is tested, both for optimal solutions and approximations given by early termination, and is found to be limited for optimal solutions, but fairly efficient for decent approximations.

I denne masteroppgaven ser vi på hvordan man kan bruke elementer fra spill til å øke motivasjonen for å gjøre ulike oppgaver. Et system som gir detaljert og ærlig tilbakemelding med medaljer og andre elementer fra spill ble utviklet, og testet på en del brukere. Konklusjonen er at ærlig tilbakemelding kan ha en motiverende effekt.