Junkbots – it is not one thing!

• Turner S (2013) Junkbots – it is not one thing! Engage 2013 27-28th September 2013

The School of Science and Technology at the University of Northampton have been working with local schools to create robots made from junk. This is an initiative by the University to introduce environmental sustainability, engineering and computing to students and has been funded by Northampton Enterprise Limited and east midlands development agency (emda). 

For more details on the junkbots project go to: http://junkbots.blogspot.co.uk/ 

This and other posters at Engage 2013 can be found at: https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/engage2013/poster-party

WiMax - WiFi Techniques for Baseband Convergence

A new book by Dr Ali Al-Sherbaz, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton "WiMax - WiFi Techniques for Baseband Convergence" has recently being published by Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN 

978-3-659-49970-8

Book Details
This book illustrates solutions that, when implemented in any heterogeneous wireless network, shall enhance the existing standard without impacting the standard or changing the wireless transceiver’s functions. Thus achieving efficient interoperability at much reduced overheads. The techniques proposed in this research are centred on the lower layers. This because of the facts that WiMax and WiFi standards have not addressed the backward compatibility of the two technologies at the MAC and PHY layers for the baseband functions. The proposed technique is to combine WiMax and WiFi signals so to utilise the same "baseband implementation chain" to handle both of these technologies, thus insuring ubiquitous data communication. WiMax-WiFi Baseband Convergence (W2BC) implementation is proposed to offer an optimum configurable solution targeted at combining the 802.16d WiMax and the 802.11a,n WiFi technologies. This approach provides a fertile ground for future work into combining more OFDM based wireless technologies. The W2BC can achieve saving in device cost, size, power consumption and implementation complexity when compared to side-by-side implementations for these two technologies.

27th November 2013 - Northampton BCS Branch AGM and Lecture

27th November 2013 - Northampton BCS Branch AGM and Lecture

The AGM will commence at 19.00hrs.

Following the AGM, there will be a Chair's Invitation lecture on Mobile Application with 3 separate speakers commencing at 20:00 hours. Refreshments will be available from 19:30 hours.

Speakers:

Barney Duffy will provide an overview on Mobile Applications; 

Espen Svennevik will talk on Development methodologies;

Adam Bradley will talk about NHS based web applications.

Location: Room TBC, Avenue Campus, University of Northampton, St Georges Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JD

How to find Avenue Campus

Analyse the Risks of Ad Hoc Programming in Web Development and Develop a Metrics of Appropriate Tools

A paper has recent being published by Dr Ali Al-Sherbaz, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton 

Analyse the Risks of Ad Hoc Programming in Web Development and Develop a Metrics of Appropriate Tools

Manish Gubhaju^,, Ali Al-Sherbaz

Abstract

Today the World Wide Web has become one of the most powerful tools for business promotion and social networking. As the use of websites and web applications to promote the businesses has increased drastically over the past few years, the complexity of managing them and protecting them from security threats has become a complicated task for the organizations. On the other hand, most of the web projects are at risk and less secure due to lack of quality programming. Although there are plenty of frameworks available for free in the market to improve the quality of programming, most of the programmers use ad hoc programming rather than using frameworks which could save their time and repeated work. The research identifies the different frameworks in PHP and .NET programming, and evaluates their benefits and drawbacks in the web application development. The research aims to help web development companies to minimize the risks involved in developing large web projects and develop a metrics of appropriate frameworks to be used for the specific projects. The study examined the way web applications were developed in different software companies and the advantages of using frameworks while developing them. The findings of the results show that it was not only the experience of developers that motivated them to use frameworks. The major conclusions and recommendations drawn from this research were that the main reasons behind web developers avoiding frameworks are that they are difficult to learn and implement. Also, the motivations factors for programmers towards using frameworks were self-efficiency, habit of learning new things and awareness about the benefits of frameworks. The research recommended companies to use appropriate frameworks to protect their projects against security threats like SQL injection and RSS injection.

The paper can be found at: http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajis/1/1/2/index.html

Robots link Northampton, Babylon and Baghdad

A paper has recently being published on a collaboration between University of Northampton; University of Babylon; and University of Technology, Baghdad on path-finding using multiple robots in a dynamic environment.

Probabilistic Multi Robot Path Planning in Dynamic Environments: A Comparison between A* and DFS

Safaa H Shwail, Alia Karim and Scott Turner.
International Journal of Computer Applications

Abstract

In this paper, a probabilistic roadmap planner algorithm with the multi robot path planning problem have been proposed by using the A* search algorithm in a dynamic environment. The whole process consists of two phases. In the first phase: Preprocessing phase, the work space is converted into the configuration space, constructing a probabilistic roadmap graph in the free space, and finding the optimal path for each robot using a global planner that avoids the collision with thestatic obstacles. The second phase: Moving phase, moves each robot in a prioritized manner from its starting point to its ending point through a near optimal path with avoiding collision with the moving obstacles and the other robots. A comparison has been done with the depth first algorithm to see the difference. The simulation results shows that choosing A* search algorithm affect positively the speed of the two phases together in comparison to the depth first search algorithm. 

Full paper is available at: http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume82/number7/pxc3892251.pdf

Citation

Safaa H Shwail, Alia Karim and Scott Turner. Article: Probabilistic Multi Robot Path Planning in Dynamic Environments: A Comparison between A* and DFS. International Journal of Computer Applications 82(7):29-34, November 2013. Published by Foundation of Computer Science, New York, USA

DOI: 

10.5120/14130-2251

Robot visit at Buckingham School

Taken from: Coderdojo at The Buckingham School - Northampton University – Visits Buckingham School:

The room awaited as the man with the robots arrived.  A hushed silence, whilst eager minds listened to what Scott Turner Associate professor as Northampton University outlined the plan for the evenings activities/workshop.  Teams of students were given motors, helicopter blades/wheels/ pens and tape and challenged to problem solve.  The other half of the group split into two halves to look at the two robots – RoboNova-1 and Sphero experimenting with mini challenges, bit of robot football and speed challenge.  Thanks must go to Scott and Team for visiting.

To go to the original follow: http://buckinghamschoolcoderdojo.edublogs.org/northampton-university-visits-buckingham-school/

'via Blog this'

MSc Computing Projects 2013

A sample of the MSc Computing projects completed in 2013 at the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton.

Investigation and Development of a Networking and Cyber Security Lab

Fungai P. Mundoma

For more details go to : http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/msc-student-work-investigation-and.html

MOBILE NETWORK SYSTEM FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT

OLATUNDE AYANLEYE 

For more details go to : http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/msc-student-work-mobile-network-system.html

Chatbot: an innovative approach towards learning and teaching process in today’s education system.

Poonam Bhatia

For more details go to: http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/msc-student-work-chatbot-innovative.html

Cloud Computing Infrastructure
Hang Xu

For more details go to: http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/msc-work-implementation-of-openstack.html

Interactive TV applied to internet broadcast media 

James Smith

For more information go to: http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/msc-dissertation-interactive-tv.html

The University of Northampton's, Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies offers five courses within the MSc Computing postgraduate provision (shown below) all available either part-time or full-time. 

• MSc Computing
• MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
• MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
• MSc Computing (Immersive Technologies)