Cooperation using a robotic ad hoc network made from Bluetooth, JXTA, OSGi and other commercial off the shelf (COTS) products

Abstract - Mobile devices in the near future will need to collaborate to fulfill their function. Collaboration will be done by communication. We use a real world example of robotic soccer to come up with the necessary structures required for robotic communication. A review of related work is done and it is found no examples come close to providing a RANET. The robotic ad hoc network (RANET) we suggest uses existing structures pulled from the areas of wireless networks, peer to peer and software life-cycle management. Gaps are found in the existing structures so we describe how to extend some structures to satisfy the design. The RANET design supports robot cooperation by exchanging messages, discovering needed skills that other robots on the network may possess and the transfer of these skills. The network is built on top of a Bluetooth wireless network and uses JXTA to communicate and transfer skills. OSGi bundles form the skills that can be transferred. To test the nal design a reference implementation is done. Deficiencies in some third party software is found, specifically JXTA and JamVM and GNU Classpath. Lastly we look at how to fix the deciencies by porting the JXTA C implementation to the target robotic platform and potentially eliminating the TCP/IP layer, using UDP instead of TCP or using an adaptive TCP/IP stack. We also propose a future areas of investigation; how to seed the configuration for the Personal area network (PAN) Bluetooth protocol extension so a Bluetooth TCP/IP link is more quickly formed and using the STP to allow multi-hop messaging and transfer of skills.

Challenging endoscopy reprocessing guidelines: a prospective study investigating the safe shelf life of flexible endoscopes in a tertiary gastroenterology unit.

Professional prac− tice guidelines for endoscope reprocessing re− commend reprocessing endoscopes between each case and proper storage following repro− cessing after the last case of the list. There is lim− ited empirical evidence to support the efficacy of endoscope reprocessing prior to use in the first case of the day; however, internationally, many guidelines continue to recommend this practice. The aim of this study is to estimate a safe shelf life for flexible endoscopes in a high−turnover gastroenterology unit. Materials and methods: In a prospective obser− vational study, all flexible endoscopes in active service during the 3−week study period were mi− crobiologically sampled prior to reprocessing be− fore the first case of the day (n = 200). The main outcome variables were culture status, organism cultured, and shelf life. Results: Among the total number of useable samples (n = 194), the overall contamination rate was 15.5 %, with a pathogenic contamination rate of 0.5 %. Mean time between last case one day and reprocessing before the first case on the next day (that is, shelf life) was 37.62 h (SD 36.47). Median shelf life was 18.8 h (range 5.27± 165.35 h). The most frequently identified organ− ism was coagulase−negative Staphylococcus, an environmental nonpathogenic organism. Conclusions: When processed according to es− tablished guidelines, flexible endoscopes remain free from pathogenic organisms between last case and next day first case use. Significant re− ductions in the expenditure of time and resources on reprocessing endoscopes have the potential to reduce the restraints experienced by high−turnover endoscopy units and improve ser− vice delivery.

Carbonate cementation in sandstones of the Plover Formation, North West Shelf, W.A

Ancient sandstones include important reservoirs for hydrocarbons (oil and gas), but, in many cases, their ability to serve as reservoirs is heavily constrained by the effects of carbonate cements on porosity and permeability. This study investigated the controls on distribution and abundance of carbonate cements within the Jurassic Plover Formation, Browse Basin, North West Shelf, Australia. Samples were analysed petrographically with point counting of 59 thin sections and mineralogically with x-ray diffraction from two wells within the Torosa Gas Field. Selected samples were also analysed for stable isotopes of O and C. Sandstones are classified into eleven groups. Most abundant are quartzarenites and then calcareous quartzarenites. Lithology ranged between sandstones consisting of mostly quartz with scant or no carbonate in the form of cement or allochems, to sandstones with as much as 40% carbonate. The major sources of carbonate cement in Torosa 1 and Torosa 4 sandstones were found to be early, shallow marine diagenetic processes (including cementation), followed by calcite cementation and recrystallisation of cements and allochems during redistribution by meteoric waters. Blocky and sparry calcite cements, indicative of meteoric environments on the basis of stable isotope values and palaeotemperature assessment, overprinted the initial shallow marine cement phase in all cases and meteoric cements are dominant. Torosa 4 was influenced more by marine settings than Torosa 1, and thus has the greater potential for calcite cement. The relatively low compaction of calcite-cemented sandstones and the stable isotope data suggest deep burial cementation was not a major factor. Insufficient volcanic rock fragments or authigenic clay content infers alteration of feldspars was not a major source of calcite. Very little feldspar is present, altered or otherwise. Hence, increased alkalinity from feldspar dissolution is not a contributing factor in cement formation. Increased alkalinity from bacterial sulphate reduction in organic–rich fine sediments may have driven limited cementation in some samples. The main definable and significant source of diagenetic marine calcite cement originated from original marine cements and the nearby dissolution of biogenic sources (allochems) at relatively shallow depths. Later diagenetic fluids emplaced minor dolomite, but this cement did not greatly affect the reservoir quality in the samples studied.

Public hospital utilisation during the 1997 Arafura Games

In view of the upcoming Sydney Olympics and several recent reports describing the experience at the Atlantic Olympics, we report the findings of the only Australian study which, to our knowledge, measured the impact of a large-scale sporting event on a public hospital. The study also provided an avenue for increased surveillance for communicable diseases. We prospectively assessed the utilisation of the Royal Darwin Hospital (RDH) by visiting athletes, officials and spectators during the 1997 Arafura Games, a biannual, seven-day international sporting event which attracts some 4,000 athletes and their supporters from across Australia, South-East Asia and the Pacific. The RDH Emergency Department (ED) is the only free, 24- hour medical facility in Darwin and no additional staff or resources were provided during the Games period. Official facilities included two privately operated sports medicine clinics for the sole use of athletes with sporting injuries during prescribed hours in the week of competition, and the presence of St John Ambulance at venues...

A preliminary OSL chronology for coastal dunes on Moreton island, Queensland, Australia – Marginal deposits of A large-scale quaternary shelf sediment system

Moreton Island and several other large siliceous sand dune islands and mainland barrier deposits in SE Queensland represent the distal, onshore component of an extensive Quaternary continental shelf sediment system. This sediment has been transported up to 1000 km along the coast and shelf of SE Australia over multiple glacioeustatic sea-level cycles. Stratigraphic relationships and a preliminary Optically Stimulated Luminance (OSL) chronology for Moreton Island indicate a middle Pleistocene age for the large majority of the deposit. Dune units exposed in the centre of the island and on the east coast have OSL ages that indicate deposition occurred between approximately 540 ka and 350 ka BP, and at around 96±10 ka BP. Much of the southern half of the island has a veneer of much younger sediment, with OSL ages of 0.90±0.11 ka, 1.28±0.16 ka, 5.75±0.53 ka and <0.45 ka BP. The younger deposits were partially derived from the reworking of the upper leached zone of the much older dunes. A large parabolic dune at the northern end of the island, OSL age of 9.90±1.0 ka BP, and palaeosol exposures that extend below present sea level suggest the Pleistocene dunes were sourced from shorelines positioned several to tens of metres lower than, and up to few kilometres seaward of the present shoreline. Given the lower gradient of the inner shelf a few km seaward of the island, it seems likely that periods of intermediate sea level (e.g. ~20 m below present) produced strongly positive onshore sediment budgets and the mobilisation of dunes inland to form much of what now comprises Moreton Island. The new OSL ages and comprehensive OSL chronology for the Cooloola deposit, 100 km north of Moreton Island, indicate that the bulk of the coastal dune deposits in SE Queensland were emplaced between approximately 540 ka BP and prior to the Last Interglacial. This chronostratigraphic information improves our fundamental understanding of long-term sediment transport and accumulation on large-scale continental shelf sediment systems.

Controlled flexibility and lifecycle management of business processes through extensibility

Vendors provide reference process models as consolidated, off-the-shelf solutions to capture best practices in a given industry domain. Customers can then adapt these models to suit their specific requirements. Traditional process flexibility approaches facilitate this operation, but do not fully address it as they do not sufficiently take controlled change guided by vendors' reference models into account. This tension between the customer's freedom of adapting reference models, and the ability to incorporate with relatively low effort vendor-initiated reference model changes, thus needs to be carefully balanced. This paper introduces process extensibility as a new paradigm for customizing reference processes and managing their evolution over time. Process extensibility mandates a clear recognition of the different responsibilities and interests of reference model vendors and consumers, and is concerned with keeping the effort of customer-side reference model adaptations low while allowing sufficient room for model change.

Report on the Development and Validation of the Best Practice Decision Matrix

The Co-operative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (CRC-CI) is funding a project known as Value Alignment Process for Project Delivery. The project consists of a study of best practice project delivery and the development of a suite of products, resources and services to guide project teams towards the best procurement approach for a specific project or group of projects. These resources will be focused on promoting the principles that underlie best practice project delivery rather than simply identifying an off-the-shelf procurement system. This project builds on earlier work by Sidwell, Kennedy and Chan (2002), on re-engineering the construction delivery process, which developed a procurement framework in the form of a Decision Matrix

Where the actions are : bring reality into virtual reality

This paper describes a work-in-progress on developing design environments that combine wireless and mobile technologies with augmented reality to facilitate bringing context from the physical environment to the virtual models for design work. One of the challenges for designers in a variety of end-user-oriented design disciplines such as architecture and industrial design has been capturing and replaying the contextual information of the intended domain of the artifact being designed. Either the technology is decidedly low-tech, such as charcoal drawings in a sketchbook, out-of-reach, such as immersive virtual reality CAVEs, or a “make-do” with existing technologies, such as a collage of digital photos. This paper describes a novel combination of “off-the-shelf” technologies that may allow designers more capability to create models using standard computer-aided design applications and augmented reality to combine the current, physical context with the projected, digital context. We demonstrate this approach in the building design domain to address a common problem in building construction, construction defect resolution.

Privacy and security in open and trusted health information systems

The Open and Trusted Health Information Systems (OTHIS) Research Group has formed in response to the health sector’s privacy and security requirements for contemporary Health Information Systems (HIS). Due to recent research developments in trusted computing concepts, it is now both timely and desirable to move electronic HIS towards privacy-aware and security-aware applications. We introduce the OTHIS architecture in this paper. This scheme proposes a feasible and sustainable solution to meeting real-world application security demands using commercial off-the-shelf systems and commodity hardware and software products.

Vitreous cryopreservation of nanofibrous tissue-engineered constructs generated using mesenchymal stromal cells

Development of an effective preservation strategy to fulfill off-the-shelf availability of tissue-engineered constructs (TECs) is demanded for realizing their clinical potential. In this study, the feasibility of vitrification, ice-free cryopreservation, for precultured ready-to-use TECs was evaluated. To prepare the TECs, bone marrow-derived porcine mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) were seeded in polycaprolactone-gelatin nanofibrous scaffolds and cultured for 3 weeks before vitrification treatment. The vitrification strategy developed, which involved exposure of the TECs to low concentrations of cryoprotectants followed by a vitrification solution and sterile packaging in a pouch with its subsequent immersion directly into liquid nitrogen, was accomplished within 11min. Stepwise removal of cryoprotectants, after warming in a 38 degrees C water bath, enabled rapid restoration of the TECs. Vitrification did not impair microstructure of the scaffold or cell viability. No significant differences were found between the vitrified and control TECs in cellular metabolic activity and proliferation on matched days and in the trends during 5 weeks of continuous culture postvitrification. Osteogenic differentiation ability in vitrified and control groups was similar. In conclusion, we have developed a time- and cost-efficient cryopreservation method that maintains integrity of the TECs while preserving MSCs viability and metabolic activity, and their ability to differentiate.

A miniaturised wideband frequency synthesiser

Wideband frequency synthesisers have application in many areas, including test instrumentation and defence electronics. Miniaturisation of these devices provides many advantages to system designers, particularly in applications where extra space and weight are expensive. The purpose of this project was to miniaturise a wideband frequency synthesiser and package it for operation in several different environmental conditions while satisfying demanding technical specifications. The four primary and secondary goals to be achieved were: 1. an operating frequency range from low MHz to greater than 40 GHz, with resolution better than 1 MHz, 2. typical RF output power of +10 dBm, with maximum DC supply of 15 W, 3. synthesiser package of only 150  100  30 mm, and 4. operating temperatures from 20C to +71C, and vibration levels over 7 grms. This task was approached from multiple angles. Electrically, the system is designed to have as few functional blocks as possible. Off the shelf components are used for active functions instead of customised circuits. Mechanically, the synthesiser package is designed for efficient use of the available space. Two identical prototype synthesisers were manufactured to evaluate the design methodology and to show the repeatability of the design. Although further engineering development will improve the synthesiser’s performance, this project has successfully demonstrated a level of miniaturisation which sets a new benchmark for wideband synthesiser design. These synthesisers will meet the demands for smaller, lighter wideband sources. Potential applications include portable test equipment, radar and electronic surveillance systems on unmanned aerial vehicles. They are also useful for reducing the overall weight and power consumption of other systems, even if small dimensions are not essential.

Airborne vision-based collision-detection system

Machine vision represents a particularly attractive solution for sensing and detecting potential collision-course targets due to the relatively low cost, size, weight, and power requirements of vision sensors (as opposed to radar and TCAS). This paper describes the development and evaluation of a real-time vision-based collision detection system suitable for fixed-wing aerial robotics. Using two fixed-wing UAVs to recreate various collision-course scenarios, we were able to capture highly realistic vision (from an onboard camera perspective) of the moments leading up to a collision. This type of image data is extremely scarce and was invaluable in evaluating the detection performance of two candidate target detection approaches. Based on the collected data, our detection approaches were able to detect targets at distances ranging from 400m to about 900m. These distances (with some assumptions about closing speeds and aircraft trajectories) translate to an advanced warning of between 8-10 seconds ahead of impact, which approaches the 12.5 second response time recommended for human pilots. We overcame the challenge of achieving real-time computational speeds by exploiting the parallel processing architectures of graphics processing units found on commercially-off-the-shelf graphics devices. Our chosen GPU device suitable for integration onto UAV platforms can be expected to handle real-time processing of 1024 by 768 pixel image frames at a rate of approximately 30Hz. Flight trials using manned Cessna aircraft where all processing is performed onboard will be conducted in the near future, followed by further experiments with fully autonomous UAV platforms.

Business process extensibility

Vendors provide reference process models as consolidated, off-the-shelf solutions to capture best practices in a given industry domain. Customers can then adapt these models to suit their specific requirements. Traditional process flexibility approaches facilitate this operation, but do not fully address it as they do not sufficiently take controlled change guided by vendors’ reference models into account. This tension between the customer’s freedom of adapting reference models, and the ability to incorporate with relatively low effort vendor-initiated reference model changes, thus needs to be carefully balanced. This paper introduces process extensibility as a new paradigm for customising reference processes and managing their evolution over time. Process extensibility mandates a clear recognition of the different responsibilities and interests of reference model vendors and consumers, and is concerned with keeping the effort of customer-side reference model adaptations low while allowing sufficient room for model change.

Modelling and control of a quad-rotor robot

To date, most quad-rotor aerial robots have been based on flying toys. Although such systems can be used as prototypes, they are not sufficiently robust to serve as experimental robotics platforms. We have developed the X-4 Flyer, a quad-rotor robot using custom-built chassis and avionics with off-the-shelf motors and batteries, to be a highly reliable experimental platform. The vehicle uses tuned plant dynamics with an onboard embedded attitude controller to stabilise flight. A linear SISO controller was designed to regulate flyer attitude.