Representació qualitativa asíncrona de senyals per a la supervisió de sistemes dinàmics

L'objectiu general d'aquest treball és trobar i mostrar una eina que permeti obtenir una representació dels senyals procedents de sistemes dinàmics adequada a les necessitats dels sistemes de Supervisió Experta de processos. Aquest objectiu general es pot subdividir en diverses parts, que són tractades en els diferents capítols que composen el treball i que es poden resumir en els següents punts: En primer lloc, cal conèixer les necessitats dels sistemes de Supervisió: La gran quantitat de dades que provenen dels processos fa necessari el tractament d'aquestes dades per obtenir-ne d'altres, més elaborades, amb un nivell més elevat de representació. La utilització de raonament qualitatiu, pròpia dels éssers humans, comporta la necessitat de representar simbòlicament els senyals, de traduir les dades numèriques en símbols. La Supervisió de sistemes dinàmics comporta que el temps sigui una variable fonamental, la asincronia dels esdeveniments significatius per a la Supervisió fa que les representacions més adequades i útils dels senyals siguin asíncrones. Finalment,l'ús dels coneixements experimentals en la Supervisió dels processos comporta que les representacions més naturals siguin les més útils. Aquestes necessitats fan de la representació dels senyals mitjançant episodis l'eina amb més possibilitats per assolir els objectius que es volen assolir. Per això, es presenta un formalisme que permet descriure i incloure-hi la formalització i les diferents aproximacions a aquest tipus de representació ja existents i, al mateix temps, augmentar-ne la significació a través de característiques dels senyals que no es tenen en compte en les aproximacions ja existents. El següent pas és aprofitar el nou formalisme per obtenir una nova representació amb un grau més gran de significació, cosa que s'aconsegueix representant explícitament les discontinuïtats i els períodes estacionaris o d'estabilitat, molt significatius en Supervisió de processos. Un problema sempre present en el tractament de senyals és el soroll que els afecta. Per aquest motiu es presenta un mètode que permet filtrar el soroll de manera que les representacions resultants quedin afectades el mínim possible per aquest tractament. Finalment, es presenta l'aplicació en línia de les eines descrites. La representació en línia dels senyals comporta el tractament de la incertesa inherent al coneixement parcial del senyal (un episodi no pot ser determinat i caracteritzat completament fins que no s'acaba). L'obtenció de resultats amb determinats graus de certesa és perfectament coherent amb la seva utilització posterior mitjançant Sistemes Experts o altres eines de la IA. Totes les aportacions del treball vénen acompanyades d'exemples i/o aplicacions que permeten observar-ne la utilitat i les limitacions.

Technology enhanced learning and augmented reality : an application on multimedia interactive books

Multimedia Interactive Book (miBook) reflects the development of a new concept of virtual interpretation of traditional text books and audio-visual content. By encompassing new technological approaches, using augmented reality technology, allows the final user to experience a variety of sensorial stimuli while enjoying and interacting with the content; therefore enhancing the learning process. miBook stands for a global educational intention to enable people not only to access but also to appropriate intellectually valuable contents coming from different linguistic and cultural contexts.

Multimedia telephone systems as a valuable communication tool for the hearing-impaired

This paper discusses videoconferencing systems as a communication tool for the hearing impaired.

Multi-modal fingerprinting for multimedia assets: optimisation of media security protection in online distribution environments

Since the advent of the internet in every day life in the 1990s, the barriers to producing, distributing and consuming multimedia data such as videos, music, ebooks, etc. have steadily been lowered for most computer users so that almost everyone with internet access can join the online communities who both produce, consume and of course also share media artefacts. Along with this trend, the violation of personal data privacy and copyright has increased with illegal file sharing being rampant across many online communities particularly for certain music genres and amongst the younger age groups. This has had a devastating effect on the traditional media distribution market; in most cases leaving the distribution companies and the content owner with huge financial losses. To prove that a copyright violation has occurred one can deploy fingerprinting mechanisms to uniquely identify the property. However this is currently based on only uni-modal approaches. In this paper we describe some of the design challenges and architectural approaches to multi-modal fingerprinting currently being examined for evaluation studies within a PhD research programme on optimisation of multi-modal fingerprinting architectures. Accordingly we outline the available modalities that are being integrated through this research programme which aims to establish the optimal architecture for multi-modal media security protection over the internet as the online distribution environment for both legal and illegal distribution of media products.

Learning a procedural task: effectiveness of multimedia presentations

Three experiments investigated the effectiveness of presenting procedural information through different media and their combinations. Experiment 1 examined the effectiveness of text, line drawings, text and line drawings, video. and video stills for learning a first aid task. The results showed an advantage of text and line drawings and of the video presentation over the other three conditions for both bandaging performance and answering questions about the task. Experiment 2 showed that the beneficial effect of the combination of text and pictures could not be accounted for simply in terms of a dual coding explanation. Rather, the effectiveness of the media and their combinations was influenced by the extent to which they conveyed action information. Finally, Experiment 3 showed no evidence of a contiguity effect: text and pictures were as effective when presented together on the same screen as when they were presented separately. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

State-of-the-art for entity-centric repository and authoring environment for multimedia

Many projects, e.g. VIKEF [13] and KIM [7], present grounded approaches for the use of entities as a means of indexing and retrieval of multimedia resources from heterogeneous sources. In this paper, we discuss the state-of-the-art of entity-centric approaches for multimedia indexing and retrieval. A summary of projects employing entity-centric repositories are portrayed. This paper also looks at the current state-of-the-art authoring environment, Macromedia Authorware, and the possibility of potential extension of this environment for entity-based multimedia authoring.

Profiling management for personalised multimedia delivery on-demand within the AXMEDIS framework

Media content distribution on-demand becomes more complex when performed on a mass scale involving various channels with distinct and dynamic network characteristics, and, deploying a variety of terminal devices offering a wide range of capabilities. It is practically impossible to create and prepackage various static versions of the same content to match all the varying demand parameters of clients for various contexts. In this paper we present a profiling management approach for dynamically personalised media content delivery on-demand integrated with the AXMEDIS Framework. The client profiles comprise the representation of User, Device, Network and Context of content delivery based on MPEG-21:DIA. Although the most challenging proving ground for this personalised content delivery has been the mobile testbed i.e. the distribution to mobile handsets, the framework described here can be deployed for disribution, by the AXMEDIS PnP module, through other channels e.g. satellite, Internet to a range of client terminals e.g. desktops, kiosks, IPtv and other terrminals whose baseline terminal capabilities can be made availabe by the manufacturers as is normal.

Semantic organization to enhance active learning based on distributed multimedia educational resources

In order to organize distributed educational resources efficiently, to provide active learners an integrated, extendible and cohesive interface to share the dynamically growing multimedia learning materials on the Internet, this paper proposes a generic resource organization model with semantic structures to improve expressiveness, scalability and cohesiveness. We developed an active learning system with semantic support for learners to access and navigate through efficient and flexible manner. We learning resources in an efficient and flexible manner. We provide facilities for instructors to manipulate the structured educational resources via a convenient visual interface. We also developed a resource discovering and gathering engine based on complex semantic associations for several specific topics.

A framework towards multi-modal fingerprinting scheme for multimedia assets

Fingerprinting is a well known approach for identifying multimedia data without having the original data present but what amounts to its essence or ”DNA”. Current approaches show insufficient deployment of three types of knowledge that could be brought to bear in providing a finger printing framework that remains effective, efficient and can accommodate both the whole as well as elemental protection at appropriate levels of abstraction to suit various Foci of Interest (FoI) in an image or cross media artefact. Thus our proposed framework aims to deliver selective composite fingerprinting that remains responsive to the requirements for protection of whole or parts of an image which may be of particularly interest and be especially vulnerable to attempts at rights violation. This is powerfully aided by leveraging both multi-modal information as well as a rich spectrum of collateral context knowledge including both image-level collaterals as well as the inevitably needed market intelligence knowledge such as customers’ social networks interests profiling which we can deploy as a crucial component of our Fingerprinting Collateral Knowledge. This is used in selecting the special FoIs within an image or other media content that have to be selectively and collaterally protected.

A framework towards a multi-modal fingerprinting scheme for multimedia assets

Fingerprinting is a well known approach for identifying multimedia data without having the original data present but instead what amounts to its essence or 'DNA'. Current approaches show insufficient deployment of various types of knowledge that could be brought to bear in providing a fingerprinting framework that remains effective, efficient and can accommodate both the whole as well as elemental protection at appropriate levels of abstraction to suit various Zones of Interest (ZoI) in an image or cross media artefact. The proposed framework aims to deliver selective composite fingerprinting that is powerfully aided by leveraging both multi-modal information as well as a rich spectrum of collateral context knowledge including both image-level collaterals and also the inevitably needed market intelligence knowledge such as customers' social networks interests profiling which we can deploy as a crucial component of our fingerprinting collateral knowledge.

Applying semiotic analysis to the design and modeling of distributed multimedia systems

Semiotics is the study of signs. Application of semiotics in information systems design is based on the notion that information systems are organizations within which agents deploy signs in the form of actions according to a set of norms. An analysis of the relationships among the agents, their actions and the norms would give a better specification of the system. Distributed multimedia systems (DMMS) could be viewed as a system consisted of many dynamic, self-controlled normative agents engaging in complex interaction and processing of multimedia information. This paper reports the work of applying the semiotic approach to the design and modeling of DMMS, with emphasis on using semantic analysis under the semiotic framework. A semantic model of DMMS describing various components and their ontological dependencies is presented, which then serves as a design model and implemented in a semantic database. Benefits of using the semantic database are discussed with reference to various design scenarios.