Impromptu : an interactive programming environment for composition and performance

Interactive development environments are making a resurgence. The traditional batch style of programming, edit -> compile -> run, is slowly being reevaluated by the development community at large. Languages such as Perl, Python and Ruby are at the heart of a new programming culture commonly described as extreme, agile or dynamic. Musicians are also beginning to embrace these environments and to investigate the opportunity to use dynamic programming tools in live performance. This paper provides an introduction to Impromptu, a new interactive development environment for musicians and sound artists.

Scaffolding children’s robot building and programming activities

Since 2001 the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE) at the University of Queensland has been involved in RoboCupJunior activities aimed at providing children with the Robot building and programming knowledge they need to succeed in RoboCupJunior competitions. These activities include robotics workshops, the organization of the State-wide RoboCupJunior competition, and consultation on all matters robotic with schools and government organizations. The activities initiated by ITEE have succeeded in providing children with the scaffolding necessary to become competent, independent robot builders and programmers. Results from state, national and international competitions suggest that many of the children who participate in the activities supported by ITEE are subsequently able to purpose- build robots to effectively compete in RoboCupJunior competitions. As a result of the scaffolding received within workshops children are able to think deeply and creatively about their designs, and to critique their designs in order to make the best possible creation in an effort to win.

A programming language for software components

Component software has many benefits, most notably increased software re-use; however, the component software process places heavy burdens on programming language technology, which modern object-oriented programming languages do not address. In particular, software components require specifications that are both sufficiently expressive and sufficiently abstract, and, where possible, these specifications should be checked formally by the programming language. This dissertation presents a programming language called Mentok that provides two novel programming language features enabling improved specification of stateful component roles. Negotiable interfaces are interface types extended with protocols, and allow specification of changing method availability, including some patterns of out-calls and re-entrance. Type layers are extensions to module signatures that allow specification of abstract control flow constraints through the interfaces of a component-based application. Development of Mentok's unique language features included creation of MentokC, the Mentok compiler, and formalization of key properties of Mentok in mini-languages called MentokP and MentokL.

Coordinated road-junction traffic control by dynamic programming

This paper presents a novel approach to road-traffic control for interconnected junctions. With a local fuzzy-logic controller (FLC) installed at each junction, a dynamic-programming (DP) technique is proposed to derive the green time for each phase in a traffic-light cycle. Coordination parameters from the adjacent junctions are also taken into consideration so that organized control is extended beyond a single junction. Instead of pursuing the absolute optimization of traffic delay, this study examines a practical approach to enable the simple implementation of coordination among junctions, while attempting to reduce delays, if possible. The simulation results show that the delay per vehicle can be substantially reduced, particularly when the traffic demand reaches the junction capacity. The implementation of this controller does not require complicated or demanding hardware, and such simplicity makes it a useful tool for offline studies or realtime control purposes.

The Spartan-3E Tutorial 1 : Introduction to FPGA Programming, Version 1.0

This tutorial is designed to help new users become familiar with using the Spartan-3E board. The tutorial steps through the following: writing a small program in VHDL which carries out simple combinational logic; connecting the program inputs and outputs to the switches, buttons and LEDs on the Spartan-3E board; and downloading the program to the Spartan-3E board using the Project Navigator software.

A stochastic model for natural feature representation

This paper presents a robust stochastic model for the incorporation of natural features within data fusion algorithms. The representation combines Isomap, a non-linear manifold learning algorithm, with Expectation Maximization, a statistical learning scheme. The representation is computed offline and results in a non-linear, non-Gaussian likelihood model relating visual observations such as color and texture to the underlying visual states. The likelihood model can be used online to instantiate likelihoods corresponding to observed visual features in real-time. The likelihoods are expressed as a Gaussian Mixture Model so as to permit convenient integration within existing nonlinear filtering algorithms. The resulting compactness of the representation is especially suitable to decentralized sensor networks. Real visual data consisting of natural imagery acquired from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is used to demonstrate the versatility of the feature representation.

Discovering characteristics of stochastic collections of process models

Process models in organizational collections are typically modeled by the same team and using the same conventions. As such, these models share many characteristic features like size range, type and frequency of errors. In most cases merely small samples of these collections are available due to e.g. the sensitive information they contain. Because of their sizes, these samples may not provide an accurate representation of the characteristics of the originating collection. This paper deals with the problem of constructing collections of process models, in the form of Petri nets, from small samples of a collection for accurate estimations of the characteristics of this collection. Given a small sample of process models drawn from a real-life collection, we mine a set of generation parameters that we use to generate arbitrary-large collections that feature the same characteristics of the original collection. In this way we can estimate the characteristics of the original collection on the generated collections.We extensively evaluate the quality of our technique on various sample datasets drawn from both research and industry.

Tangible programming elements for young children

Tangible programming elements offer the dynamic and programmable properties of a computer without the complexity introduced by the keyboard, mouse and screen. This paper explores the extent to which programming skills are used by children during interactions with a set of tangible programming elements: the Electronic Blocks. An evaluation of the Electronic Blocks indicates that children become heavily engaged with the blocks, and learn simple programming with a minimum of adult support.