Medical devices used for surgical or therapeutic purposes require a high degree of safety and effectiveness. Software is critical component of many such medical devices. The software architecture of a system defines organizational structure and the runtime characteristic of the application used to control the operation of the system and provides a set of frameworks that are used to develop that. As such, the design of software architecture is a critical element in achieving the intended functionality, performance, and safety requirements of a medical device. This architecture uses object-oriented design techniques, which model the underlying system as a set of objects that interact to achieve their goals. The architecture includes a number of frameworks comprised of a set of classes that can be extended to achieve different functionality required for a medical device. The Input/ Output (IO) framework includes a number of core classes that implement periodic and a periodic input output with varying priority requirements, provides a hardware neutral interface to the application logic, and a set of classes that can be extended to both meet the hardware IO specifics of a target platform and create new sensor and actuator types for client applications. The Devices framework provides a blueprint to develop the controller logic of the medical device in terms of abstractions that parallel the hardware components of the medical device. The Configuration framework allows creation and configuration of a medical device from an XML (Extensible Markup Specification) specification that specifies the configuration of the device based on abstract factories that can be extended to meet requirements of a specific medical device. The Controller is the component of the architecture that defines classes that implement reception of commands from and transmission of status and data to a local or remote client and dictate the structure of threads, thread priorities and policies for this purpose. The Diagnostics package of the architecture defines a framework for developing components that monitor the health of the system and detect emergency conditions. The architecture is implemented in C++ and runs on a real-time LINUX operating system. At this time, the architecture is used in development of two of the St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division’s medical devices; one of these has FDA class III and the other class II classification.

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Advancements in batteries, microprocessors as well as an extra emphasis being put on the environment has pushed electric vehicles to the forefront of today. Despite the many benefits of electric vehicles, range anxiety and long charge times are hurdles to overcome. These shortfalls are a result of the current battery technology regardless of the many breakthroughs over the last decade. Lithium-ion Batteries and other modern chemistries pose a number of challenges in testing and research when compared to the traditional lead acid batteries. Current test systems fall short in providing a complete testing solution with. The focus of this thesis is to develop a complete software framework for battery characterization: testing, modelling and characterization to accompany battery testing hardware developed by D&V Electronics. The first step in battery characterization, involves battery testing in order to obtain data. This required development of the test software and a number of battery tests, including: Charge and discharge, state of charge vs. open circuit voltage curve generation, Electro-Impedance Spectroscopy, and capacity test. Research was done in order to ensure developed test procedures lined up with that of other publications. All data from the testing data is logged to a central database, allowing for the second major development, the model framework. The model framework is composed of seven different battery models that can be parameterized with the touch of a button, using data collected from the tester. It is a software framework that is meant to be expandable by abstracting the details of a model from the tester. This allows for new models and parameterization techniques to be integrated into the software without the need of new software development. Lastly, all development was used to do a battery characterization of a prismatic battery cell. All tests were conducted on a battery over two hundred cycles, followed by battery parameterization using the mode framework. The battery models were then used to simulate a US06 drive profile and compared to the same profile with measurements taken from the tester. With an average root mean square error of 8 millivolts, the battery characterization using the framework proved to be a success. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt einen Entwurf für eine flexible und robuste Steuerungsarchitektur für Roboter- und Fertigungssysteme vor. Dabei wurde versucht ein offenes Konzept zu realisieren, welches einen vereinfachten Engineeringprozess ermöglicht. Hierzu wird innerhalb der Steuerung eine Trennung zwischen einem funktionellen verhaltensbasierten und einem ablauforientierten Modell vorgeschlagen. Dieser Ansatz wird durch die Verwendung von Aktionsprimitiven innerhalb einer hybriden Robotersteuerung ermöglicht. Diese garantieren durch ihre ausgeprägte Modularität eine hohe Flexibilität und Erweiterbarkeit des entstandenen Systems. Im Beitrag wird sowohl der entstandene Entwurf diskutiert als auch eine prototypische objektorientierte Implementierung vorgestellt sowie erste Ergebnisse präsentiert. / This paper presents a framework for a flexible and robust control architecture for robotic systems. The design incorporates an application independent system concept which allows a simplified engineering process. For this purpose a distinction between a functional behavioural and a sequential control system model is proposed. This approach is based on the utilisation of action primitives within a hybrid control architecture. The use of these primitives affords a high level of modularity through increasing flexibility and expandability of the resulting system. In this paper the proposed framework will be discussed as well as a prototypical object-oriented implementation and first results.

[pt] O processamento de consultas em Sistemas de Gerência de Banco de Dados tradicionais tem sido largamente estudado na literatura e utilizado comercialmente com enorme sucesso. Isso é devido, em parte, à eficiência das Máquinas de Execução de Consultas (MEC) no suporte ao modelo de execução tradicional. Porém, o surgimento de novos cenários de aplicação, principalmente em conseqüência do modelo computacional da web, motivou a pesquisa de novos modelos de execução, tais como: modelo adaptável e modelo contínuo, além da pesquisa de modelos de dados semi-estruturados, tal como o XML, ambos não suportados pelas MEC tradicionais. O objetivo desta tese consiste no desenvolvimento de uma MEC extensível frente a diferentes modelos de execução e de dados. Adicionalmente, esta proposta trata de maneira ortogonal o modelo de execução e o modelo de dados, o que permite a avaliação de planos de execução de consultas (PEC) com fragmentos em diferentes modelos. Utilizou-se a técnica de framework de software para a especificação da MEC extensível, produzindo o framework QEEF (Query Execution Engine Framework). A extensibilidade da solução reflete-se em um meta-modelo, denominado QUEM (QUery Execution Meta-model), capaz de exprimir diferentes modelos em um meta-PEC. O framework QEEF pré-processa um meta-PEC e produz um PEC final a ser avaliado pela MEC instanciada. Como parte da validação desta proposta, instanciou-se o QEEF para diferentes modelos de execução e de dados. / [en] Querying processing in traditional Database Management Systems (DBMS) has been extensively studied in the literature and adopted in industry. Such success is, in part, due to the performance of their Query Execution Engines (QEE) for supporting the traditional query execution model. The advent of new query scenarios, mainly due to the web computational model, has motivate the research on new execution models such as: adaptive and continuous, and on semistructured data models, such as XML, both not natively supported by traditional query engines. This thesis proposes the development of an extensible QEE adapted to the new execution and data models. Achieving this goal, we use a software design approach based on framework technique to produce the Query Execution Engine Framework (QEEF). Moreover, we address the question of the orthogonality between execution and data models, witch allows for executing query execution plans (QEP) with fragments in different models. The extensibility of our solution is specified by in a QEP by an execution meta- model named QUEM (QUery Execution Meta-model) used to express different models in a meta-QEP. During query evaluation, the latter is pre-processed by the QEEF producing a final QEP to be evaluated by the running QEE. The QEEF is instantiated for different execution and data models as part of the validation of this proposal.

Abstract The Internet of Things vision proposes a global platform in an unforeseen scale for distributed applications that rely on data provided by interconnected resource-constrained things. In such large-scale systems, centralized control of system operation by a single component through vertical interactions becomes unfeasible. Ideally, decentralized control in the proximity of things enables to take into account the local dynamic resource availability and environmental characteristics that are used to optimize the application execution. To realize decentralization, capabilities for horizontal interactions, that complement the vertical interactions, and for opportunistic participation of things are needed. This thesis explores mobile agent technology to implement distributed Internet of Things applications that benefit from both vertical and horizontal interactions of the application components. First, a resource-oriented reactive mobile agent architecture and a software framework are presented. The framework facilitates RESTful interactions between agents and other system components and provides a REST-based interface to build opportunistic agent-based applications. Two agent platforms are presented that integrate resource-constrained things into the framework as mobile agent hosts. Second, mobile agent based mobile crowdsensing and edge computing applications are evaluated with large-scale simulations and real-world experiments. The results show that energy consumption is decreased in the participating things, in comparison with the existing approaches, by agent-based in-network data processing and control of the thing operation. This thesis makes a valuable contribution by enabling mobile agent operations in a heterogeneous set of resource-constrained things. The presented empirical evidence shows how mobile agent technology increases energy efficiency in distributed application execution. The presented mobile agent architecture and software framework potentially accelerate the utilization of mobile agent technology in the Internet of Things. / Tiivistelmä Esineiden Internet liittää resurssirajoitteiset sulautetut laitteet laajamittaisesti Internet-verkkoon, jossa niiden tuottamaa tietoa hyödynnetään hajautettujen järjestelmien sovelluksissa. Esineiden Internetin järjestelmien odotetaan skaalautuvan niin laajoiksi, ettei keskitetty, vertikaaliseen vuorovaikutukseen perustuva järjestelmähallinta ole enää käyttökelpoinen ratkaisu. Hajautettu hallinta lähellä tietoa tuottavia laitteita tuo etuja, kun paikallisesti sovelluksen suorituksessa otetaan huomioon toimintaympäristön tila ja voidaan reagoida dynaamisesti resurssien saatavuuteen. Hajautus Esineiden Internetin sovellusalustoilla edellyttää menetelmiä sekä laitteiden vertikaaliseen ja horisontaaliseen vuorovaikutukseen, että niiden dynaamisen osallistumisen mahdollistamiseksi sovelluksen suorittamisessa. Tässä työssä tutkittiin mobiiliagentti-teknologiaa hajautettujen sovellusten toteuttamiseen Esineiden Internet-ympäristössä. Työssä esitettiin resurssisuuntautunut arkkitehtuuri reaktiivisille mobiiliagenteille sekä ohjelmistokehys, joita käyttäen voidaan toteuttaa agenttipohjaisia hajautettuja sovelluksia. Ohjelmistokehys perustuu REST-arkkitehtuurimalliin, jonka pohjalta esitettiin yhdenmukainen rajapinta agenttien ja järjestelmäkomponenttien väliseen vuorovaikutukseen. Ohjelmistokehyksen osana toteutettiin kaksi mobiiliagentti-ohjelmistoalustaa resurssirajoitteisille sulautetuille laitteille. Työssä tarkasteltiin mobiiliagentti-pohjaisten Esineiden Internet-sovellusten energiatehokkuutta simuloinneilla sekä tosielämän kokeilla. Tarkastelun kohteeksi valittiin joukkoistettu mobiilihavainnointi sekä reunalaskennan ulottaminen resurssirajoitteisiin laitteisiin. Saadut tulokset osoittavat, että laitteiden energiankulutusta voidaan pienentää verrattuna aiemmin esitettyihin ratkaisuihin hyödyntämällä mobiiliagentteja tiedonkäsittelyyn laitteessa sekä laitteen toiminnan ohjaamiseen. Työssä esitetty resurssisuuntautunut mobiiliagenttiarkkitehtuuri sekä ohjelmistokehys edesauttavat mobiiliagentti-teknologian hyödyntämistä resurssirajoitteisissa sulautetuissa laitteissa. Tosielämän kokeista saadut tulokset osoittavat mobiiliagenttiteknologian hyötyjä hajautettujen sovellusten toteuttamisessa Esineiden Internetiin.

Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt einen Entwurf für eine flexible und robuste Steuerungsarchitektur für Roboter- und Fertigungssysteme vor. Dabei wurde versucht ein offenes Konzept zu realisieren, welches einen vereinfachten Engineeringprozess ermöglicht. Hierzu wird innerhalb der Steuerung eine Trennung zwischen einem funktionellen verhaltensbasierten und einem ablauforientierten Modell vorgeschlagen. Dieser Ansatz wird durch die Verwendung von Aktionsprimitiven innerhalb einer hybriden Robotersteuerung ermöglicht. Diese garantieren durch ihre ausgeprägte Modularität eine hohe Flexibilität und Erweiterbarkeit des entstandenen Systems. Im Beitrag wird sowohl der entstandene Entwurf diskutiert als auch eine prototypische objektorientierte Implementierung vorgestellt sowie erste Ergebnisse präsentiert. / This paper presents a framework for a flexible and robust control architecture for robotic systems. The design incorporates an application independent system concept which allows a simplified engineering process. For this purpose a distinction between a functional behavioural and a sequential control system model is proposed. This approach is based on the utilisation of action primitives within a hybrid control architecture. The use of these primitives affords a high level of modularity through increasing flexibility and expandability of the resulting system. In this paper the proposed framework will be discussed as well as a prototypical object-oriented implementation and first results.

Chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in various industries, and thereare many options available for businesses and organisations. Several studieshave investigated open-source chatbots and identified their core strengths,implementation, and integration capabilities however few have investigatedopen-source chatbot frameworks and libraries in a specific use case such asmedicine. The project's objective was to evaluate a selection of chatbots ormore specifically two frameworks: Botkit and Rasa, and two libraries:ChatterBot, and Natural which was utilised together with Botkit and alanguage model which is DialoGPT. The evaluation focuses specifically onaccuracy, consistency, and response time. Frequently asked questions fromthe World Health Organization and COVID-19 related Dialogue Datasetfrom GitHub were utilised to test the chatbots' abilities in handling differentqueries and accuracy was measured through metrics like Jaccard similarity,bilingual evaluation understudy (BLEU), and recall oriented gistingevaluation (ROUGE) scores, consistency through Jaccard similarity betweenthe generated responses and response time was taken to be the average timefor a response in seconds. The analysis revealed unique strengths andlimitations for each chatbot model. Rasa displayed robust performance inaccuracy, consistency, and customisation capabilities if the chatbot works ina particular topic with acceptable response times. DialoGPT demonstratedstrong conversational abilities and contextually relevant responses withtrade-offs in consistency. ChatterBot showed consistency, though sometimesstruggled with advanced queries, and Botkit with Natural stood out for itsquick response times, albeit with limitations in accuracy and scalability.Despite implementation challenges, these open-source frameworks, libraries,and models offer promising solutions for organisations intending to harnessconversational agents' technology. The study suggests encouraging furtherexploration and refinement in this rapidly evolving field.

[pt] Determinar a proveniência dos dados, isto é, o processo que levou a esses dados, é vital em muitas áreas, especialmente quando é essencial que os resultados ou ações sejam confiáveis. Com o crescente número de aplicações baseadas em inteligência artificial, criou-se a necessidade de torná-las capazes de explicar seu comportamento e responder às suas decisões. Isso é um desafio, especialmente se as aplicações forem distribuídas e compostas de vários agentes autônomos, formando um Sistema Multiagente (SMA). Uma maneira fundamental de tornar tais sistemas explicáveis é rastrear o comportamento do agente, isto é, registrar a origem de suas ações e raciocínios, como em uma depuração onisciente. Embora a ideia de proveniência já tenha sido explorada em alguns contextos, ela não foi extensivamente explorada no contexto de SMA, deixando muitas questões para serem compreendidas e abordadas. Nosso objetivo neste trabalho é justificar a importância da proveniência dos dados para SMA, discutindo quais perguntas podem ser respondidas em relação ao comportamento do SMA, utilizando a proveniência e ilustrando, através de cenários de aplicação, os benefícios que a proveniência proporciona para responder a essas questões. Este estudo envolve a criação de um framework de software, chamado FProvW3C, que suporta a coleta e armazenamento da proveniência dos dados produzidos pelo SMA, que foi integrado a plataforma BDI4JADE (41), formando o que denominamos de Prov-BDI4JADE. Por meio desta plataforma, utilizando exemplos de sistemas autônomos, demostramos com rigor que, o uso da proveniência de dados em SMA é uma solução sólida, para tornar transparente o processo de raciocínio e ação do agente. / [en] Determining the data provenance, that is, the process that led to those data, is vital in many areas, especially when it is essential that the results or actions be reliable. With the increasing number of applications based on artificial intelligence, the need has been created to make them capable of explaining their behavior and be responsive to their decisions. This is a challenge especially if the applications are distributed, and composed of multiple autonomous agents, forming a Multiagent System (MAS). A key way of making such systems explicable is to track the agent s behavior, that is, to record the source of their actions and reasoning, as in an omniscient debugging. Although the idea of provenance has already been explored in some contexts, it has not been extensively explored in the context of MAS, leaving many questions to be understood and addressed. Our objective in this work is to justify the importance of the data provenance to MAS, discussing which questions can be answered regarding the behavior of MAS using the provenance and illustrating, through application scenarios, to demonstrate the benefits that provenance provides to reply to these questions. This study involves the creation of a software framework, called FProvW3C, which supports the collects and stores the provenance of the data produced by the MAS, which was integrated with the platform BDI4JADE (41), forming what we call Prov-BDI4JADE. Through this platform, using examples of autonomous systems, we have rigorously demonstrated that the use of data provenance in MAS is a solid solution to make the agent’s reasoning and action process transparent.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-09-28T13:43:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ANTÔNIO DIAS DOS SANTOS JÚNIOR - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2013..pdf: 8158081 bytes, checksum: 790c106478af0576230e745f36a8b2d2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-28T13:43:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ANTÔNIO DIAS DOS SANTOS JÚNIOR - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGCC 2013..pdf: 8158081 bytes, checksum: 790c106478af0576230e745f36a8b2d2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-15 / Capes / Os avanços alcançados na área de tecnologia da informação e comunicação trouxeram a possibilidade de realizar em casa o monitoramento da saúde, o que antes só podia ser feito em locais especializados, como clínicas e hospitais. O monitoramento realizado no conforto da casa dos indivíduos permite prover serviços para um maior número de pessoas, otimizando o uso de recursos humanos e financeiros. Porém, este sistema de monitoramento enfrenta problemas, sendo o principal deles a dificuldade de uso e a falta de motivação dos usuários. Embora já exista a possibilidade e viabilidade em usar sensores para monitoramento, essa é uma atividade que ainda não está integrada ao cotidiano das pessoas. Para resolver o problema de falta de motivação nos usuários, jogos eletrônicos vêm sendo fortemente utilizados como ferramenta motivadora. Entretanto, os jogos que tentam motivar o jogador a exercitar-se ou a ser monitorado geralmente requerem que o jogador habitue-se com um estilo de jogo que não é parte de seu cotidiano. As ações realizadas dentro do jogo não são parte de seus jogos preferidos. Neste trabalho apresenta-se um arcabouço de software para monitorar dados de saúde através de jogos eletrônicos. Sua forma de captura de dados permite criar jogos para monitoramento ainda mantendo a jogabilidade. A validação do arcabouço se deu com o desenvolvimento de dois jogos, os quais foram testados com 18 pessoas na faixa de idade de 19 a 27 anos do Laboratório Embedded, da Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, e do Instituto Federal de Alagoas. Os resultados indicaram que os jogos foram considerados divertidos pela maioria das pessoas, que também declararam que os incluiriam em sua rotina diária. Além disso, foi possível coletar os dados de saúde de maneira a utilizá-los para a detecção de doenças motoras. / Health monitoring, which could only be done in specialized places, such as clinics and hospitais, can now be performed at home thanks to the advances in Information and Communication Technologies. Monitoring health data in the comfort of one's homes allows the provision of services to a greater number of people, optimizing human and financial resources. However, this system faces problems such as difficulty of use and lack of motivation in users. Although it is feasible to use sensors to monitor people, this is still something not easy to integrate to their daily lives. To tackle the lack of motivation among people who need to be monitored, electronic games have been extensively used as a motivational tool. However, games that intend to motivate the player to exercise or to be monitored usually have a different gameplay than what the player would enjoy. This work presents a software framework to monitor health data through electronic games, allowing it to be acquired while keeping the playability. The framework was used for the development of two games, tested by 18 people with ages ranging from 19 to 27, from the Embedded Laboratory at the Federal University of Campina Grande, and Federal Institute of Alagoas. Results showed that most people found the games to be funny, and also stated that they would include the games in their daily routine. Also, it was possible to collect health data to be used in the detection of motor diseases.