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Home | People | Admissions Information | Research | Publications | Seminars | Travel
Computing Department Seminars - 2003 Series
Title: Ambient Sensing - a simple
form of pervasive computing?
Professor Ian Marshall
Professor Ian Marshall is a research manager with BTexact
technologies, and technical director of the DTI funded NWTM Envisense
centre (investigating pervasive computing applied to environmental
monitoring). He is currently also a part time Royal Society Industry
fellow at University College London and visiting Professor of
telecommunications at
His talk will focus on two
main areas of current research; i) the use of pervasive computing to monitor natural
systems (coastal erosion, fish stocks, climate, river pollution, geohazard),
and ii) the use of low level intelligence to enable context-aware autonomous
decision making in pervasive infrastructures of this kind.
This research is a multidisciplinary effort, covering low-cost hardware, ad-hoc
wireless communication, and autonomous adaptive middleware, with a strong focus
on supporting real applications and enabling non-technical end users. The
key issues are enabling facilities such as self-configuration, self-repair, and
self-optimisation (for security and performance) that are appropriately
engineered for small situated devices in complex environments, and that satisfy
the needs of end-users without them needing access to deep understanding of system
parameters. Currently much of the work is focused on the use of
nature-inspired decentralised adaptive algorithms, proven by brute force
simulation.
Some details are at http://www.adastral.ucl.ac.uk/sensornets/ but
the site is in an early state of development.
Title: Quality of Service
Issues for World-Wide
Prof. Gregor von Bochmann
The next-generation
communication infrastructures will use digital multimedia technologies and
evolve largely over IP-based networks. For instance IP telephony will involve
not only voice communication, but also live video and possibly shared spaces
for collaboration. However, the facilities and parameters used in a particular
instance of communication will depend largely on the preferences of users and
the hardware/software limitations of their terminal devices.
We envision an automatic
negotiation process that selects the most appropriate communication parameters,
which will depend on the device profiles and the user preferences (user
profiles). A so-called user home directory could be used to store the user's
quality of service and call processing preferences in a known location. Such a
home directory is key to user mobility so that the user, possibly at some
remote location, may use any device that is locally available (including mobile
terminals).
We will explain how the
functions of the home directory can be used for:
ˇ
the automatic selection of call quality parameters for multimedia
conferencing between mobile users;
ˇ
the authentication and accounting of mobile users;
ˇ
providing presence information, as in certain chat facilities.
We will also discuss how
the quality negotiation can be adapted to situations where a very large number
of users participate in a video broadcast, and how hand-held and/or wearable
devices can be integrated into this distributed application architecture,
possibly leading to the distribution of some of the user profile information.
Seminar Sponsor: The Vodafone Foundation
Congestion Control for Sensor
Networks
Sensor
networks operate under light load and then suddenly become active in response
to a detected or monitored event. This results in large, sudden and correlated
impulses of data being generated that must be delivered to a small set of sinks
without significantly disrupting the fidelity of the sensing application. It is
during these impulse periods that congestion is likely and the information
being carried of most importance. We believe that without solving the
congestion problem the wide-scale adoption of self organizing sensor network
technology could be jeopardized. In this talk we will discuss this problem and
detail one proposal for alleviating it called CODA (COngestion Detection and
Avoidance).
This
is work carried out with Chieh-Yih Wan and Shane B. Eisenman.
Bio:
Andrew
T. Campbell is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at
Computing Department Seminars - 2002 Series
o
Research and opportunities at Simula
Research Laboratory
Frank Eliassen
Abstract:
In March 2000, the Norwegian parliament
decided to establish an IT and knowledge park at Fornebu where the old Oslo
airport used to be. As part of this decision the Norwegian government also
decided that the IT and knowledge park should contain a research unit. This
research unit is now established under name Simula Research Laboratory (SRL)
and has been in operation since summer 2001. Simula Research Laboratory shall
undertake basic long term research in the area of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) and is funded by the Norwegian Government. SRL is committed to
international research collaboration and offers extended opportunities for
international visiting researchers and PhD students.
The first part of this talk will present SRL
- its overall, goal, organization and research activities with a focus towards
research in the area of network architectures and distributed systems. The
second part of
the talk will present one of the
projects in the area of distributed systems in more detail. The transparent
active gateway services (TAGS) project addresses architectures, mechanisms,
services and protocols for application defined computations within the network
through application level gateway services. A particular concern of the
project is automatic resolution of incompatibilities between heterogeneous
participants in multimedia multi-party bindings. The TAGS project is also
related to the QoSBeans project - a collaborative effort between SRL,
University of Tromso and Lancaster University.
o
Wednesday 30
January 2002 - 2pm, Lecture Theatre 2,
Smart
Graphics in Hybrid Navigation Systems
Antonio Kruger ,
Abstract:
The
talk will describe the role of intelligent graphics generation (Smart
Graphics) for a pedestrian navigation system consisting of stationary information
booths and a mobile communication structure that supports way descriptions for
pedestrians. The graphical presentations for both the booths and the mobile
devices are generated from a common source and for the common task of way
finding, but they use different techniques to convey possibly different subsets
of the relevant information. The form of the presentations is depending on
technical limitations of the output media, accuracy of location information,
and cognitive restrictions of the user. I will analyse what information
needs to be conveyed, how limited resources influence the presentation of this
information, and argue, that by generating all different presentations in a
common framework, a consistent appearance across devices can be achieved. I
will suggest how different device classes can complement each other in
facilitating the navigation task. The talk will be illustrated with examples
from the system REAL, a running implementation of the presented
concepts.
Antonio Krüger's Bio
Antonio
Krüger received a diploma in computer science and economics at Saarland
University in 1995. Afterwards he joined the Cognitive Science Programme of
Saarland University and finished it with a doctoral degree in 1999. He was
early involved in several artificial intelligence projects at the German
Research Centre for AI (DFKI GmbH), and more recently at the AI Lab of Saarland
University (Chair of Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster), where he is holding the position
of a senior researcher. He is a co-founder of Eyeled GmbH, a company
specialised on localised mobile solutions. Antonio's fields of interest
are the automatic generation of graphics for intelligent user interfaces and
the design of personal navigation systems. In this context he is looking at generation
processes that take into account both the limited technical resources of output
devices and the limited cognitive resources of the users. Most recent
examples of such systems come from the domain of mobile and ubiquitous
computing. Antonio is involved in projects on pedestrian navigation
systems and advanced museum guides.
o
Wednesday 20
February 2002- 2pm, Lecture Theatre 2,
Title:
"Finite model theory, complexity theory and program schemes" and
"The MathFIT initiative"
Iain Stewart,
Abstract: "Finite model theory is all about what one can say about classes of finite structures (such as graphs, strings and so on) using logic; and computational complexity is all about what one can compute on finite inputs within given resources. There is a very strong link between finite model theory and computational complexity theory (exemplified by Fagin's Theorem that a problem is in NP if and only if it can be defined in existential second-order logic). Often, this link is strongest when the finite structures are (essentially) strings: on arbitrary finite structures, the link between resource-bounded computation and logical definability is nowhere near as clear-cut. In this introductory talk, I will introduce this subject, known as descriptive complexity, and I will also introduce models of computation, program schemes, for computing on arbitrary finite structures, and show how a consideration of these models can lead to new results in finite model theory and descriptive complexity. The talk will be introductory in nature and suitable for a general audience.
The speaker is Co-ordinator of MathFIT. The broad aim of the Mathematics for Information Technology (MathFIT: http://www.mathfit.ac.uk/) initiative is to support, through research grants, visiting fellowships, networks, workshops and summer schools, high-quality interdisciplinary research in areas at the interface between mathematics and computer science. It is jointly sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the London Mathematical Society (LMS), and began in the summer of 1996, was subsequently expanded in spring 2000 and will run until 2003."
o
Wednesday 24
April 2002- 2pm, C32,
Title:
First-hand experiences of
agile processes: real world extreme Programming
Simon Monk, Steve Alexander,
Abstract: Simon Monk and Steve
Alexander present their experiences of two different flavours of extreme
programming (XP).
Simon introduces XP, describing the practices,
processes and pay-offs. He also describes his own experience of introducing XP
to software product-based company.
Steve discusses a variant of XP called
"sprinting", which is being used both in commercial settings, and for
large-scale open source software development.
o
Tuesday 7 May
2002 - 2pm, B39,
Title:
The 7 C's for Creating Living
Software
Professor Mehmet
Aksit, University of Twente, The
Abstract:
There are architectures which were built long ago but which are still enjoyed
and used by many people. We can say that these architectures are alive in the
sense that they keep on being at the center of social events and they are
harmoniously integrated with the everyday life of the people. What kinds of
knowledge, methods, materials and tools were utilized for creating the
architectures, which are still used today? What makes these architectures
living ? Can we apply these "architecture-design techniques"
to software
engineering? In this talk, I will try to answer the question how to make
software more living than it is today. There are at least 7 properties of
software models we consider important for creating living software. These are concern-oriented design processes,
canonical models, composable models, certifiable models, constructible models,
closure-property of models and controllable models. In this talk, I will
discuss the 7 C's and will present a research perspective for fulfilling these
objectives.
o
Wednesday 26
June 2002 - 2pm, C32,
Title tbc
Speaker
tbc
Abstract:
To
follow
o Wednesday 25 September 2002- 2pm, venue tbc
Title tbc
Joe McCarthy, Andersen Consulting
Abstract:
To follow
Wednesday 30 October 2002 – 2pm,
C32 Fylde.
Title: Peer-to-peer: Beyond file sharing
Dr.
Antony Rowstron, Microsoft Research,
Abstract: Peer-to-peer (p2p) computing, initially conceived
for the purpose of sharing music in the Internet, has proved to be a more
general paradigm for organizing large-scale distributed applications. In the
context of this talk, p2p systems are defined broadly as self-organizing,
decentralized, distributed systems where most or all communication is
symmetric. The self-organization, decentralization, diversity and numerocity of
resources inherent in the approach lend themselves to a large domain of
applications beyond file sharing, anonymity and anti-censorship.
Recent work on p2p overlay networks like CAN, Chord,
Pastry and Tapestry has made significant strides towards providing a generic
middleware that simplifies the construction of a wide range of p2p
applications. These overlay networks effectively shield applications from the
complexities of organizing and maintaining an overlay network, and from
distributing and locating resources. They provide applications built using them
with a simple API.
In the talk, I'll introduce these generic p2p
middleware systems, particularly focusing on Pastry (developed at MSR/Rice
University) and describe a number of applications that have been developed
using Pastry.
Pastry homepage: http://www.research.microsoft.com/~antr/Pastry/
Homepage: http://www.research.microsoft.com/~antr/
Biography: Antony I.T. Rowstron
received a M.Eng. degree in Computer Systems and Software Engineering in 1993
from the University of York, UK, and a D.Phil. degree in Computer Science in
1996 from the University of York, UK.
He has worked as a Research
Associate and then as a Senior Research Associate in the Computer Laboratory
and the Engineering Department, Cambridge University, UK. Since 1999 he has
worked as a Researcher at Microsoft Research Ltd in Cambridge UK. His research
interests are diverse and include distributed systems, coordination languages,
robotics, and ubiquitous computing.
Computing Department Seminars – 2003 Series
Wednesday
29 January 2003 – 2.30pm, C32,
Title: Ambient Sensing - a simple form of pervasive
computing?
Professor Ian Marshall
Professor Ian Marshall is a
research manager with BTexact technologies, and technical director of
the DTI funded NWTM Envisense centre (investigating pervasive computing
applied to environmental monitoring). He is currently also a part time
Royal Society Industry fellow at University College London and visiting Professor
of telecommunications at London South Bank University. His primary
research interest is in the automated control and management of complex
systems, including sensor networks. He was leader of the BT funded
Alpine project and the FP5 project Android. Over the last 10 years he has
published widely on policy based network & service management,
application layer active networking, internet traffic statistics, WWW systems
planning and distributed middleware. He is a member of the Institute
of Physics council, and a range of other government and institute panels
His talk
will focus on two main areas of current research; i) the use of pervasive
computing to monitor natural systems (coastal erosion, fish stocks, climate,
river pollution, geohazard), and ii) the use of low level intelligence to
enable context-aware autonomous decision making in pervasive infrastructures of
this kind. This research is a multidisciplinary effort,
covering low-cost hardware, ad-hoc wireless communication, and autonomous
adaptive middleware, with a strong focus on supporting real applications and
enabling non-technical end users. The key issues are enabling facilities
such as self-configuration, self-repair, and self-optimisation (for security
and performance) that are appropriately engineered for small situated devices
in complex environments, and that satisfy the needs of end-users without them
needing access to deep understanding of system parameters. Currently much
of the work is focused on the use of nature-inspired decentralised adaptive
algorithms, proven by brute force simulation.
Some
details are at http://www.adastral.ucl.ac.uk/sensornets/ but
the site is in an early state of development.
The 2001 , 2000 , 1999 , 1998 , 1997 , 1996 and 1995 Seminar Lists are still available.
Lancaster University WWW | Computing Department Intranet | Computing Department FTP server
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