004 Datenverarbeitung; Informatik
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To deliver the best user experience (UX), the human-centered design cycle (HCDC) serves as a well-established guideline to application developers. However, it does not yet cover network-specific requirements, which become increasingly crucial, as most applications deliver experience over the Internet. The missing network-centric view is provided by Quality of Experience (QoE), which could team up with UX towards an improved overall experience. By considering QoE aspects during the development process, it can be achieved that applications become network-aware by design. In this paper, the Quality of Experience Centered Design Cycle (QoE-CDC) is proposed, which provides guidelines on how to design applications with respect to network-specific requirements and QoE. Its practical value is showcased for popular application types and validated by outlining the design of a new smartphone application. We show that combining HCDC and QoE-CDC will result in an application design, which reaches a high UX and avoids QoE degradation.
Group-based communication is a highly popular communication paradigm, which is especially prominent in mobile instant messaging (MIM) applications, such as WhatsApp. Chat groups in MIM applications facilitate the sharing of various types of messages (e.g., text, voice, image, video) among a large number of participants. As each message has to be transmitted to every other member of the group, which multiplies the traffic, this has a massive impact on the underlying communication networks. However, most chat groups are private and network operators cannot obtain deep insights into MIM communication via network measurements due to end-to-end encryption. Thus, the generation of traffic is not well understood, given that it depends on sizes of communication groups, speed of communication, and exchanged message types. In this work, we provide a huge data set of 5,956 private WhatsApp chat histories, which contains over 76 million messages from more than 117,000 users. We describe and model the properties of chat groups and users, and the communication within these chat groups, which gives unprecedented insights into private MIM communication. In addition, we conduct exemplary measurements for the most popular message types, which empower the provided models to estimate the traffic over time in a chat group.
The strict restrictions introduced by the COVID-19 lockdowns, which started from March 2020, changed people’s daily lives and habits on many different levels. In this work, we investigate the impact of the lockdown on the communication behavior in the mobile instant messaging application WhatsApp. Our evaluations are based on a large dataset of 2577 private chat histories with 25,378,093 messages from 51,973 users. The analysis of the one-to-one and group conversations confirms that the lockdown severely altered the communication in WhatsApp chats compared to pre-pandemic time ranges. In particular, we observe short-term effects, which caused an increased message frequency in the first lockdown months and a shifted communication activity during the day in March and April 2020. Moreover, we also see long-term effects of the ongoing pandemic situation until February 2021, which indicate a change of communication behavior towards more regular messaging, as well as a persisting change in activity during the day. The results of our work show that even anonymized chat histories can tell us a lot about people’s behavior and especially behavioral changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and thus are of great relevance for behavioral researchers. Furthermore, looking at the pandemic from an Internet provider perspective, these insights can be used during the next pandemic, or if the current COVID-19 situation worsens, to adapt communication networks to the changed usage behavior early on and thus avoid network congestion.
In time-sensitive networks (TSN) based on 802.1Qbv, i.e., the time-aware Shaper (TAS) protocol, precise transmission schedules and, paths are used to ensure end-to-end deterministic communication. Such resource reservations for data flows are usually established at the startup time of an application and remain untouched until the flow ends. There is no way to migrate existing flows easily to alternative paths without inducing additional delay or wasting resources. Therefore, some of the new flows cannot be embedded due to capacity limitations on certain links which leads to sub-optimal flow assignment. As future networks will need to support a large number of lowlatency flows, accommodating new flows at runtime and adapting existing flows accordingly becomes a challenging problem. In this extended abstract we summarize a previously published paper of us [1]. We combine software-defined networking (SDN), which provides better control of network flows, with TSN to be able to seamlessly migrate time-sensitive flows. For that, we formulate an optimization problem and propose different dynamic path configuration strategies under deterministic communication requirements. Our simulation results indicate that regularly reconfiguring the flow assignments can improve the latency of time-sensitive flows and can increase the number of flows embedded in the network around 4% in worst-case scenarios while still satisfying individual flow deadlines.
Der große Vorteil eines q-Gramm Indexes liegt darin, dass es möglich ist beliebige Zeichenketten in einer Dokumentensammlung zu suchen. Ein Nachteil jedoch liegt darin, dass bei größer werdenden Datenmengen dieser Index dazu neigt, sehr groß zu werden, was mit einem deutlichem Leistungsabfall verbunden ist. In dieser Arbeit wird eine neuartige Technik vorgestellt, die die Leistung eines q-Gramm Indexes mithilfe zusätzlicher M-Matrizen für jedes q-Gramm und durch die Kombination mit einem invertierten Index erhöht. Eine M-Matrix ist eine Bit-Matrix, die Informationen über die Positionen eines q-Gramms enthält. Auch bei der Kombination von zwei oder mehreren Q-Grammen bieten diese M-Matrizen Informationen über die Positionen der Kombination. Dies kann verwendet werden, um die Komplexität der Zusammenführung der q-Gramm Trefferlisten für eine gegebene Suchanfrage zu reduzieren und verbessert die Leistung des n-Gramm-invertierten Index. Die Kombination mit einem termbasierten invertierten Index beschleunigt die durchschnittliche Suchzeit zusätzlich und vereint die Vorteile beider Index-Formate. Redundante Informationen werden in dem q-Gramm Index reduziert und weitere Funktionalität hinzugefügt, wie z.B. die Bewertung von Treffern nach Relevanz, die Möglichkeit, nach Konzepten zu suchen oder Indexpartitionierungen nach Wichtigkeit der enthaltenen Terme zu erstellen.
Globale Selbstlokalisation autonomer mobiler Roboter - Ein Schlüsselproblem der Service-Robotik
(2003)
Die Dissertation behandelt die Problemstellung der globalen Selbstlokalisation autonomer mobiler Roboter, welche folgendermaßen beschrieben werden kann: Ein mobiler Roboter, eingesetzt in einem Gebäude, kann unter Umständen das Wissen über seinen Standort verlieren. Man geht nun davon aus, dass dem Roboter eine Gebäudekarte als Modell zur Verfügung steht. Mit Hilfe eines Laser-Entfernungsmessers kann das mobile Gerät neue Informationen aufnehmen und damit bei korrekter Zuordnung zur Modellkarte geeignete hypothetische Standorte ermitteln. In der Regel werden diese Positionen aber mehrdeutig sein. Indem sich der Roboter intelligent in seiner Einsatzumgebung bewegt, kann er die ursprünglichen Sensordaten verifizieren und ermittelt im besten Fall seine tatsächliche Position.Für diese Problemstellung wird ein neuer Lösungsansatz in Theorie und Praxis präsentiert, welcher die jeweils aktuelle lokale Karte und damit alle Sensordaten mittels feature-basierter Matchingverfahren auf das Modell der Umgebung abbildet. Ein Explorationsalgorithmus bewegt den Roboter während der Bewegungsphase autonom zu Sensorpunkten, welche neue Informationen bereitstellen. Während der Bewegungsphase werden dabei die bisherigen hypothetischen Positionen bestärkt oder geschwächt, sodaß nach kurzer Zeit eine dominante Position, die tatsächliche Roboterposition,übrigbleibt.
The thesis looks at the question asking for the computability of the dot-depth of star-free regular languages. Here one has to determine for a given star-free regular language the minimal number of alternations between concatenation on one hand, and intersection, union, complement on the other hand. This question was first raised in 1971 (Brzozowski/Cohen) and besides the extended star-heights problem usually refered to as one of the most difficult open questions on regular languages. The dot-depth problem can be captured formally by hierarchies of classes of star-free regular languages B(0), B(1/2), B(1), B(3/2),... and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2),.... which are defined via alternating the closure under concatenation and Boolean operations, beginning with single alphabet letters. Now the question of dot-depth is the question whether these hierarchy classes have decidable membership problems. The thesis makes progress on this question using the so-called forbidden pattern approach: Classes of regular languages are characterized in terms of patterns in finite automata (subgraphs in the transition graph) that are not allowed. Such a characterization immediately implies the decidability of the respective class, since the absence of a certain pattern in a given automaton can be effectively verified. Before this work, the decidability of B(0), B(1/2), B(1) and L(0), L(1/2), L(1), L(3/2) were known. Here a detailed study of these classes with help of forbidden patterns is given which leads to new insights into their inner structure. Furthermore, the decidability of B(3/2) is proven. Based on these results a theory of pattern iteration is developed which leads to the introduction of two new hierarchies of star-free regular languages. These hierarchies are decidable on one hand, on the other hand they are in close connection to the classes B(n) and L(n). It remains an open question here whether they may in fact coincide. Some evidence is given in favour of this conjecture which opens a new way to attack the dot-depth problem. Moreover, it is shown that the class L(5/2) is decidable in the restricted case of a two-letter alphabet.
The field of small satellite formations and constellations attracted growing attention, based on recent advances in small satellite engineering. The utilization of distributed space systems allows the realization of innovative applications and will enable improved temporal and spatial resolution in observation scenarios. On the other side, this new paradigm imposes a variety of research challenges. In this monograph new networking concepts for space missions are presented, using networks of ground stations. The developed approaches combine ground station resources in a coordinated way to achieve more robust and efficient communication links. Within this thesis, the following topics were elaborated to improve the performance in distributed space missions: Appropriate scheduling of contact windows in a distributed ground system is a necessary process to avoid low utilization of ground stations. The theoretical basis for the novel concept of redundant scheduling was elaborated in detail. Additionally to the presented algorithm was a scheduling system implemented, its performance was tested extensively with real world scheduling problems. In the scope of data management, a system was developed which autonomously synchronizes data frames in ground station networks and uses this information to detect and correct transmission errors. The system was validated with hardware in the loop experiments, demonstrating the benefits of the developed approach.
Neural networks have to capture mathematical relationships in order to learn various tasks. They approximate these relations implicitly and therefore often do not generalize well. The recently proposed Neural Arithmetic Logic Unit (NALU) is a novel neural architecture which is able to explicitly represent the mathematical relationships by the units of the network to learn operations such as summation, subtraction or multiplication. Although NALUs have been shown to perform well on various downstream tasks, an in-depth analysis reveals practical shortcomings by design, such as the inability to multiply or divide negative input values or training stability issues for deeper networks. We address these issues and propose an improved model architecture. We evaluate our model empirically in various settings from learning basic arithmetic operations to more complex functions. Our experiments indicate that our model solves stability issues and outperforms the original NALU model in means of arithmetic precision and convergence.
In today's Internet, services are very different in their requirements on the underlying transport network. In the future, this diversity will increase and it will be more difficult to accommodate all services in a single network. A possible approach to cope with this diversity within future networks is the introduction of support for running isolated networks for different services on top of a single shared physical substrate. This would also enable easy network management and ensure an economically sound operation. End-customers will readily adopt this approach as it enables new and innovative services without being expensive. In order to arrive at a concept that enables this kind of network, it needs to be designed around and constantly checked against realistic use cases. In this contribution, we present three use cases for future networks. We describe functional blocks of a virtual network architecture, which are necessary to support these use cases within the network. Furthermore, we discuss the interfaces needed between the functional blocks and consider standardization issues that arise in order to achieve a global consistent control and management structure of virtual networks.
Currently, we observe a strong growth of services and applications, which use the Internet for data transport. However, the network requirements of these applications differ significantly. This makes network management difficult, since it complicated to separate network flows into application classes without inspecting application layer data. Network virtualization is a promising solution to this problem. It enables running different virtual network on the same physical substrate. Separating networks based on the service supported within allows controlling each network according to the specific needs of the application. The aim of such a network control is to optimize the user perceived quality as well as the cost efficiency of the data transport. Furthermore, network virtualization abstracts the network functionality from the underlying implementation and facilitates the split of the currently tightly integrated roles of Internet Service Provider and network owner. Additionally, network virtualization guarantees that different virtual networks run on the same physical substrate do not interfere with each other. This thesis discusses different aspects of the network virtualization topic. It is focused on how to manage and control a virtual network to guarantee the best Quality of Experience for the user. Therefore, a top-down approach is chosen. Starting with use cases of virtual networks, a possible architecture is derived and current implementation options based on hardware virtualization are explored. In the following, this thesis focuses on assessing the Quality of Experience perceived by the user and how it can be optimized on application layer. Furthermore, options for measuring and monitoring significant network parameters of virtual networks are considered.
The increased occurrence of Software-Defined-Networking (SDN) not only improves the dynamics and maintenance of network architectures, but also opens up new use cases and application possibilities. Based on these observations, we propose a new network topology consisting of a star and a ring topology. This hybrid topology will be called wheel topology in this paper. We have considered the static characteristics of the wheel topology and compare them with known other topologies.
With the progress in robotics research the human machine interfaces reach more and more the status of being the major limiting factor for the overall system performance of a system for remote navigation and coordination of robots. In this monograph it is elaborated how mixed reality technologies can be applied for the user interfaces in order to increase the overall system performance. Concepts, technologies, and frameworks are developed and evaluated in user studies which enable for novel user-centered approaches to the design of mixed-reality user interfaces for remote robot operation. Both the technological requirements and the human factors are considered to achieve a consistent system design. Novel technologies like 3D time-of-flight cameras are investigated for the application in the navigation tasks and for the application in the developed concept of a generic mixed reality user interface. In addition it is shown how the network traffic of a video stream can be shaped on application layer in order to reach a stable frame rate in dynamic networks. The elaborated generic mixed reality framework enables an integrated 3D graphical user interface. The realized spatial integration and visualization of available information reduces the demand for mental transformations for the human operator and supports the use of immersive stereo devices. The developed concepts make also use of the fact that local robust autonomy components can be realized and thus can be incorporated as assistance systems for the human operators. A sliding autonomy concept is introduced combining force and visual augmented reality feedback. The force feedback component allows rendering the robot's current navigation intention to the human operator, such that a real sliding autonomy with seamless transitions is achieved. The user-studies prove the significant increase in navigation performance by application of this concept. The generic mixed reality user interface together with robust local autonomy enables a further extension of the teleoperation system to a short-term predictive mixed reality user interface. With the presented concept of operation, it is possible to significantly reduce the visibility of system delays for the human operator. In addition, both advantageous characteristics of a 3D graphical user interface for robot teleoperation- an exocentric view and an augmented reality view – can be combined.
In this thesis, we present novel approaches for formation driving of nonholonomic robots and optimal trajectory planning to reach a target region. The methods consider a static known map of the environment as well as unknown and dynamic obstacles detected by sensors of the formation. The algorithms are based on leader following techniques, where the formation of car-like robots is maintained in a shape determined by curvilinear coordinates. Beyond this, the general methods of formation driving are specialized and extended for an application of airport snow shoveling. Detailed descriptions of the algorithms complemented by relevant stability and convergence studies will be provided in the following chapters. Furthermore, discussions of the applicability will be verified by various simulations in existing robotic environments and also by a hardware experiment.
Modern immersive multimodal technologies enable the learners to completely get immersed in various learning situations in a way that feels like experiencing an authentic learning environment. These environments also allow the collection of multimodal data, which can be used with artificial intelligence to further improve the immersion and learning outcomes. The use of artificial intelligence has been widely explored for the interpretation of multimodal data collected from multiple sensors, thus giving insights to support learners’ performance by providing personalised feedback. In this paper, we present a conceptual approach for creating immersive learning environments, integrated with multi-sensor setup to help learners improve their psychomotor skills in a remote setting.
The DAEDALUS mission concept aims at exploring and characterising the entrance and initial part of Lunar lava tubes within a compact, tightly integrated spherical robotic device, with a complementary payload set and autonomous capabilities.
The mission concept addresses specifically the identification and characterisation of potential resources for future ESA exploration, the local environment of the subsurface and its geologic and compositional structure.
A sphere is ideally suited to protect sensors and scientific equipment in rough, uneven environments.
It will house laser scanners, cameras and ancillary payloads.
The sphere will be lowered into the skylight and will explore the entrance shaft, associated caverns and conduits. Lidar (light detection and ranging) systems produce 3D models with high spatial accuracy independent of lighting conditions and visible features.
Hence this will be the primary exploration toolset within the sphere.
The additional payload that can be accommodated in the robotic sphere consists of camera systems with panoramic lenses and scanners such as multi-wavelength or single-photon scanners.
A moving mass will trigger movements.
The tether for lowering the sphere will be used for data communication and powering the equipment during the descending phase.
Furthermore, the connector tether-sphere will host a WIFI access point, such that data of the conduit can be transferred to the surface relay station. During the exploration phase, the robot will be disconnected from the cable, and will use wireless communication.
Emergency autonomy software will ensure that in case of loss of communication, the robot will continue the nominal mission.
The first step towards aerial planetary exploration has been made. Ingenuity shows extremely promising results, and new missions are already underway. Rotorcraft are capable of flight. This capability could be utilized to support the last stages of Entry, Descent, and Landing. Thus, mass and complexity could be scaled down.
Autorotation is one method of descent. It describes unpowered descent and landing, typically performed by helicopters in case of an engine failure. MAPLE is suggested to test these procedures and understand autorotation on other planets. In this series of experiments, the Ingenuity helicopter is utilized. Ingenuity would autorotate a ”mid-air-landing” before continuing with normal flight. Ultimately, the collected data shall help to understand autorotation on Mars and its utilization for interplanetary exploration.
Lightning has fascinated humanity since the beginning of our existence. Different types of lightning like sprites and blue jets were discovered, and many more are theorized. However, it is very likely that these phenomena are not exclusive to our home planet. Venus’s dense and active atmosphere is a place where lightning is to be expected. Missions like Venera, Pioneer, and Galileo have carried instruments to measure electromagnetic activity. These measurements have indeed delivered results. However, these results are not clear. They could be explained by other effects like cosmic rays, plasma noise, or spacecraft noise. Furthermore, these lightning seem different from those we know from our home planet. In order to tackle these issues, a different approach to measurement is proposed. When multiple devices in different spacecraft or locations can measure the same atmospheric discharge, most other explanations become increasingly less likely. Thus, the suggested instrument and method of VELEX incorporates multiple spacecraft. With this approach, the question about the existence of lightning on Venus could be settled.
Learning is a central component of human life and essential for personal development. Therefore, utilizing new technologies in the learning context and exploring their combined potential are considered essential to support self-directed learning in a digital age. A learning environment can be expanded by various technical and content-related aspects. Gamification in the form of elements from video games offers a potential concept to support the learning process. This can be supplemented by technology-supported learning. While the use of tablets is already widespread in the learning context, the integration of a social robot can provide new perspectives on the learning process. However, simply adding new technologies such as social robots or gamification to existing systems may not automatically result in a better learning environment. In the present study, game elements as well as a social robot were integrated separately and conjointly into a learning environment for basic Spanish skills, with a follow-up on retained knowledge. This allowed us to investigate the respective and combined effects of both expansions on motivation, engagement and learning effect. This approach should provide insights into the integration of both additions in an adult learning context. We found that the additions of game elements and the robot did not significantly improve learning, engagement or motivation. Based on these results and a literature review, we outline relevant factors for meaningful integration of gamification and social robots in learning environments in adult learning.
Practical optimization problems often comprise several incomparable and conflicting objectives. When booking a trip using several means of transport, for instance, it should be fast and at the same time not too expensive. The first part of this thesis is concerned with the algorithmic solvability of such multiobjective optimization problems. Several solution notions are discussed and compared with respect to their difficulty. Interestingly, these solution notions are always equally difficulty for a single-objective problem and they differ considerably already for two objectives (unless P = NP). In this context, the difference between search and decision problems is also investigated in general. Furthermore, new and improved approximation algorithms for several variants of the traveling salesperson problem are presented. Using tools from discrepancy theory, a general technique is developed that helps to avoid an obstacle that is often hindering in multiobjective approximation: The problem of combining two solutions such that the new solution is balanced in all objectives and also mostly retains the structure of the original solutions. The second part of this thesis is dedicated to several aspects of systems of equations for (formal) languages. Firstly, conjunctive and Boolean grammars are studied, which are extensions of context-free grammars by explicit intersection and complementation operations, respectively. Among other results, it is shown that one can considerably restrict the union operation on conjunctive grammars without changing the generated language. Secondly, certain circuits are investigated whose gates do not compute Boolean values but sets of natural numbers. For these circuits, the equivalence problem is studied, i.\,e.\ the problem of deciding whether two given circuits compute the same set or not. It is shown that, depending on the allowed types of gates, this problem is complete for several different complexity classes and can thus be seen as a parametrized) representative for all those classes.