Supporting semantic web technologies in the pervasive service ecosystems middleware

Semantic Web technologies are strategic in order to fulfill the openness requirement of Self-Aware Pervasive Service Ecosystems. In fact they provide agents with the ability to cope with distributed data, using RDF to represent information, ontologies to describe relations between concepts from any domain (e.g. equivalence, specialization/extension, and so on) and reasoners to extract implicit knowledge. The aim of this thesis is to study these technologies and design an extension of a pervasive service ecosystems middleware capable of exploiting semantic power, and deepening performance implications.

ALMASat-1, ALMASat-EO and beyond: evolution of structural concepts and technologies towards multifunctional structures for microsatellites

Multifunctional Structures (MFS) represent one of the most promising disruptive technologies in the space industry. The possibility to merge spacecraft primary and secondary structures as well as attitude control, power management and onboard computing functions is expected to allow for mass, volume and integration effort savings. Additionally, this will bring the modular construction of spacecraft to a whole new level, by making the development and integration of spacecraft modules, or building blocks, leaner, reducing lead times from commissioning to launch from the current 3-6 years down to the order of 10 months, as foreseen by the latest Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) initiatives. Several basic functionalities have been integrated and tested in specimens of various natures over the last two decades. However, a more integrated, system-level approach was yet to be developed. The activity reported in this thesis was focused on the system-level approach to multifunctional structures for spacecraft, namely in the context of nano- and micro-satellites. This thesis documents the work undertaken in the context of the MFS program promoted by the European Space Agency under the Technology Readiness Program (TRP): a feasibility study, including specimens manufacturing and testing. The work sequence covered a state of the art review, with particular attention to traditional modular architectures implemented in ALMASat-1 and ALMASat-EO satellites, and requirements definition, followed by the development of a modular multi-purpose nano-spacecraft concept, and finally by the design, integration and testing of integrated MFS specimens. The approach for the integration of several critical functionalities into nano-spacecraft modules was validated and the overall performance of the system was verified through relevant functional and environmental testing at University of Bologna and University of Southampton laboratories.

Design and development of a Unity based framework for augmented worlds

The way we've always envisioned computer programs is slowly changing. Thanks to the recent development of wearable technologies we're experiencing the birth of new applications that are no more limited to a fixed screen, but are instead sparse in our surroundings by means of fully fledged computational objects. In this paper we discuss proper techniques and technologies to be used for the creation of "Augmented Worlds", through the design and development of a novel framework that can help us understand how to build these new programs.