004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik
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Internet applications are becoming more and more flexible to support diverge user demands and network conditions. This is reflected by technical concepts, which provide new adaptation mechanisms to allow fine grained adjustment of the application quality and the corresponding bandwidth requirements. For the case of video streaming, the scalable video codec H.264/SVC allows the flexible adaptation of frame rate, video resolution and image quality with respect to the available network resources. In order to guarantee a good user-perceived quality (Quality of Experience, QoE) it is necessary to adjust and optimize the video quality accurately. But not only have the applications of the current Internet changed. Within network and transport, new technologies evolved during the last years providing a more flexible and efficient usage of data transport and network resources. One of the most promising technologies is Network Virtualization (NV) which is seen as an enabler to overcome the ossification of the Internet stack. It provides means to simultaneously operate multiple logical networks which allow for example application-specific addressing, naming and routing, or their individual resource management. New transport mechanisms like multipath transmission on the network and transport layer aim at an efficient usage of available transport resources. However, the simultaneous transmission of data via heterogeneous transport paths and communication technologies inevitably introduces packet reordering. Additional mechanisms and buffers are required to restore the correct packet order and thus to prevent a disturbance of the data transport. A proper buffer dimensioning as well as the classification of the impact of varying path characteristics like bandwidth and delay require appropriate evaluation methods. Additionally, for a path selection mechanism real time evaluation mechanisms are needed. A better application-network interaction and the corresponding exchange of information enable an efficient adaptation of the application to the network conditions and vice versa. This PhD thesis analyzes a video streaming architecture utilizing multipath transmission and scalable video coding and develops the following optimization possibilities and results: Analysis and dimensioning methods for multipath transmission, quantification of the adaptation possibilities to the current network conditions with respect to the QoE for H.264/SVC, and evaluation and optimization of a future video streaming architecture, which allows a better interaction of application and network.
Semantic Fusion for Natural Multimodal Interfaces using Concurrent Augmented Transition Networks
(2018)
Semantic fusion is a central requirement of many multimodal interfaces. Procedural methods like finite-state transducers and augmented transition networks have proven to be beneficial to implement semantic fusion. They are compliant with rapid development cycles that are common for the development of user interfaces, in contrast to machine-learning approaches that require time-costly training and optimization. We identify seven fundamental requirements for the implementation of semantic fusion: Action derivation, continuous feedback, context-sensitivity, temporal relation support, access to the interaction context, as well as the support of chronologically unsorted and probabilistic input. A subsequent analysis reveals, however, that there is currently no solution for fulfilling the latter two requirements. As the main contribution of this article, we thus present the Concurrent Cursor concept to compensate these shortcomings. In addition, we showcase a reference implementation, the Concurrent Augmented Transition Network (cATN), that validates the concept’s feasibility in a series of proof of concept demonstrations as well as through a comparative benchmark. The cATN fulfills all identified requirements and fills the lack amongst previous solutions. It supports the rapid prototyping of multimodal interfaces by means of five concrete traits: Its declarative nature, the recursiveness of the underlying transition network, the network abstraction constructs of its description language, the utilized semantic queries, and an abstraction layer for lexical information. Our reference implementation was and is used in various student projects, theses, as well as master-level courses. It is openly available and showcases that non-experts can effectively implement multimodal interfaces, even for non-trivial applications in mixed and virtual reality.
This work is composed of three main parts: remote control of mobile systems via Internet, ad-hoc networks of mobile robots, and remote control of mobile robots via 3G telecommunication technologies. The first part gives a detailed state of the art and a discussion of the problems to be solved in order to teleoperate mobile robots via the Internet. The focus of the application to be realized is set on a distributed tele-laboratory with remote experiments on mobile robots which can be accessed world-wide via the Internet. Therefore, analyses of the communication link are used in order to realize a robust system. The developed and implemented architecture of this distributed tele-laboratory allows for a smooth access also with a variable or low link quality. The second part covers the application of ad-hoc networks for mobile robots. The networking of mobile robots via mobile ad-hoc networks is a very promising approach to realize integrated telematic systems without relying on preexisting communication infrastructure. Relevant civilian application scenarios are for example in the area of search and rescue operations where first responders are supported by multi-robot systems. Here, mobile robots, humans, and also existing stationary sensors can be connected very fast and efficient. Therefore, this work investigates and analyses the performance of different ad-hoc routing protocols for IEEE 802.11 based wireless networks in relevant scenarios. The analysis of the different protocols allows for an optimization of the parameter settings in order to use these ad-hoc routing protocols for mobile robot teleoperation. Also guidelines for the realization of such telematics systems are given. Also traffic shaping mechanisms of application layer are presented which allow for a more efficient use of the communication link. An additional application scenario, the integration of a small size helicopter into an IP based ad-hoc network, is presented. The teleoperation of mobile robots via 3G telecommunication technologies is addressed in the third part of this work. The high availability, high mobility, and the high bandwidth provide a very interesting opportunity to realize scenarios for the teleoperation of mobile robots or industrial remote maintenance. This work analyses important parameters of the UMTS communication link and investigates also the characteristics for different data streams. These analyses are used to give guidelines which are necessary for the realization of or industrial remote maintenance or mobile robot teleoperation scenarios. All the results and guidelines for the design of telematic systems in this work were derived from analyses and experiments with real hardware.
In this paper we study connectivity augmentation problems. Given a connected graph G with some desirable property, we want to make G 2-vertex connected (or 2-edge connected) by adding edges such that the resulting graph keeps the property. The aim is to add as few edges as possible. The property that we consider is planarity, both in an abstract graph-theoretic and in a geometric setting, where vertices correspond to points in the plane and edges to straight-line segments.
We show that it is NP-hard to nd a minimum-cardinality augmentation that makes a planar graph 2-edge connected. For making a planar graph 2-vertex connected this was known. We further show that both problems are hard in the geometric setting, even when restricted to trees. The problems remain hard for higher degrees of connectivity. On the other hand we give polynomial-time algorithms for the special case of convex geometric graphs.
We also study the following related problem. Given a planar (plane geometric) graph G, two vertices s and t of G, and an integer c, how many edges have to be added to G such that G is still planar (plane geometric) and contains c edge- (or vertex-) disjoint s{t paths? For the planar case we give a linear-time algorithm for c = 2. For the plane geometric case we give optimal worst-case bounds for c = 2; for c = 3 we characterize the cases that have a solution.
Network planning has come to great importance during the past decades. Today's telecommunication, traffic systems, and logistics would not have been evolved to the current state without careful analysis of the underlying network problems and precise implementation of the results obtained from those examinations. Graphs with node and arc attributes are a very useful tool to model realistic applications, while on the other hand they are well understood in theory. We investigate network design problems which are motivated particularly from applications in communication networks and logistics. Those problems include the search for homogeneous subgraphs in edge labeled graphs where either the total number of labels or the reload cost are subject to optimize. Further, we investigate some variants of the dial a ride problem. On the other hand, we use node and edge upgrade models to deal with the fact that in many cases one prefers to change existing networks rather than implementing a newly computed solution from scratch. We investigate the construction of bottleneck constrained forests under a node upgrade model, as well as several flow cost problems under a edge based upgrade model. All problems are examined within a framework of multi-criteria optimization. Many of the problems can be shown to be NP-hard, with the consequence that, under the widely accepted assumption that P is not equal to NP, there cannot exist efficient algorithms for solving the problems. This motivates the development of approximation algorithms which compute near-optimal solutions with provable performance guarantee in polynomial time.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) covers a broad spectrum of computational problems and use cases. Many of those implicate profound and sometimes intricate questions of how humans interact or should interact with AIs. Moreover, many users or future users do have abstract ideas of what AI is, significantly depending on the specific embodiment of AI applications. Human-centered-design approaches would suggest evaluating the impact of different embodiments on human perception of and interaction with AI. An approach that is difficult to realize due to the sheer complexity of application fields and embodiments in reality. However, here XR opens new possibilities to research human-AI interactions. The article’s contribution is twofold: First, it provides a theoretical treatment and model of human-AI interaction based on an XR-AI continuum as a framework for and a perspective of different approaches of XR-AI combinations. It motivates XR-AI combinations as a method to learn about the effects of prospective human-AI interfaces and shows why the combination of XR and AI fruitfully contributes to a valid and systematic investigation of human-AI interactions and interfaces. Second, the article provides two exemplary experiments investigating the aforementioned approach for two distinct AI-systems. The first experiment reveals an interesting gender effect in human-robot interaction, while the second experiment reveals an Eliza effect of a recommender system. Here the article introduces two paradigmatic implementations of the proposed XR testbed for human-AI interactions and interfaces and shows how a valid and systematic investigation can be conducted. In sum, the article opens new perspectives on how XR benefits human-centered AI design and development.
Plenty of theories, models, measures, and investigations target the understanding of virtual presence, i.e., the sense of presence in immersive Virtual Reality (VR). Other varieties of the so-called eXtended Realities (XR), e.g., Augmented and Mixed Reality (AR and MR) incorporate immersive features to a lesser degree and continuously combine spatial cues from the real physical space and the simulated virtual space. This blurred separation questions the applicability of the accumulated knowledge about the similarities of virtual presence and presence occurring in other varieties of XR, and corresponding outcomes. The present work bridges this gap by analyzing the construct of presence in mixed realities (MR). To achieve this, the following presents (1) a short review of definitions, dimensions, and measurements of presence in VR, and (2) the state of the art views on MR. Additionally, we (3) derived a working definition of MR, extending the Milgram continuum. This definition is based on entities reaching from real to virtual manifestations at one time point. Entities possess different degrees of referential power, determining the selection of the frame of reference. Furthermore, we (4) identified three research desiderata, including research questions about the frame of reference, the corresponding dimension of transportation, and the dimension of realism in MR. Mainly the relationship between the main aspects of virtual presence of immersive VR, i.e., the place-illusion, and the plausibility-illusion, and of the referential power of MR entities are discussed regarding the concept, measures, and design of presence in MR. Finally, (5) we suggested an experimental setup to reveal the research heuristic behind experiments investigating presence in MR. The present work contributes to the theories and the meaning of and approaches to simulate and measure presence in MR. We hypothesize that research about essential underlying factors determining user experience (UX) in MR simulations and experiences is still in its infancy and hopes this article provides an encouraging starting point to tackle related questions.
Social patterns and roles can develop when users talk to intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) daily. The current study investigates whether users assign different roles to devices and how this affects their usage behavior, user experience, and social perceptions. Since social roles take time to establish, we equipped 106 participants with Alexa or Google assistants and some smart home devices and observed their interactions for nine months. We analyzed diverse subjective (questionnaire) and objective data (interaction data). By combining social science and data science analyses, we identified two distinct clusters—users who assigned a friendship role to IVAs over time and users who did not. Interestingly, these clusters exhibited significant differences in their usage behavior, user experience, and social perceptions of the devices. For example, participants who assigned a role to IVAs attributed more friendship to them used them more frequently, reported more enjoyment during interactions, and perceived more empathy for IVAs. In addition, these users had distinct personal requirements, for example, they reported more loneliness. This study provides valuable insights into the role-specific effects and consequences of voice assistants. Recent developments in conversational language models such as ChatGPT suggest that the findings of this study could make an important contribution to the design of dialogic human–AI interactions.
Even today, the automatic digitisation of scanned documents in general, but especially the automatic optical music recognition (OMR) of historical manuscripts, still remains an enormous challenge, since both handwritten musical symbols and text have to be identified. This paper focuses on the Medieval so-called square notation developed in the 11th–12th century, which is already composed of staff lines, staves, clefs, accidentals, and neumes that are roughly spoken connected single notes. The aim is to develop an algorithm that captures both the neumes, and in particular its melody, which can be used to reconstruct the original writing. Our pipeline is similar to the standard OMR approach and comprises a novel staff line and symbol detection algorithm based on deep Fully Convolutional Networks (FCN), which perform pixel-based predictions for either staff lines or symbols and their respective types. Then, the staff line detection combines the extracted lines to staves and yields an F\(_1\) -score of over 99% for both detecting lines and complete staves. For the music symbol detection, we choose a novel approach that skips the step to identify neumes and instead directly predicts note components (NCs) and their respective affiliation to a neume. Furthermore, the algorithm detects clefs and accidentals. Our algorithm predicts the symbol sequence of a staff with a diplomatic symbol accuracy rate (dSAR) of about 87%, which includes symbol type and location. If only the NCs without their respective connection to a neume, all clefs and accidentals are of interest, the algorithm reaches an harmonic symbol accuracy rate (hSAR) of approximately 90%. In general, the algorithm recognises a symbol in the manuscript with an F\(_1\) -score of over 96%.
Crowdsourced network measurements (CNMs) are becoming increasingly popular as they assess the performance of a mobile network from the end user's perspective on a large scale. Here, network measurements are performed directly on the end-users' devices, thus taking advantage of the real-world conditions end-users encounter. However, this type of uncontrolled measurement raises questions about its validity and reliability. The problem lies in the nature of this type of data collection. In CNMs, mobile network subscribers are involved to a large extent in the measurement process, and collect data themselves for the operator. The collection of data on user devices in arbitrary locations and at uncontrolled times requires means to ensure validity and reliability. To address this issue, our paper defines concepts and guidelines for analyzing the precision of CNMs; specifically, the number of measurements required to make valid statements. In addition to the formal definition of the aspect, we illustrate the problem and use an extensive sample data set to show possible assessment approaches. This data set consists of more than 20.4 million crowdsourced mobile measurements from across France, measured by a commercial data provider.