Thursday 23 June 2016

Simulation to Physical robot - Welcoming robot

Experimenting with an Aldebaran NAO robot - nicknamed Smurf - to get a robot to deliver a short welcome.




Choregraphe program for the routine.




If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Friday 17 June 2016

unplugged activity - Thomas’ Tangles

An unplugged computing game developed by myself and my son - Thomas's Tangle was one the unplugged activities within a workshop at the Roehampton Festival of Computing today.




Unplugged Activity 3: Thomas’ Tangles
Exploring abstract patterns using randomness within an algorithm.

Using crayons, pencils or pens, we are going to follow an algorithm to create a random drawing. This could be done in pairs and you will need squared paper.
Person A: Rolls the dice and reads out the instructions.
Person B: Is the ‘robot carrying out the instructions.

IMG_0226.JPG


When the starting or central square is blocked and a new central square is needed the roles of A and B swap (so A is the ‘robot’ and B rolls the dice and reads out the instruction). The roles keep swapping.


Algorithm

Start from a random square – call it the centre square
Repeat until end of game
If die roll = 1
Roll die for number of moves
Check for blocks
If not blocked then
move die roll number of steps up the page
If die roll = 2
Roll die for number of moves
Check for blocks
If not blocked then
move die roll number of steps down the page
If die roll = 3
Roll die for number of moves
Check for blocks
If not blocked then
move die roll number of steps to the left
If die roll = 4
Roll die for number of moves
Check for blocks
If not blocked then
move die roll number of steps to the right
If die roll = 5
Roll die
If die = 1 change colour to Red
If die = 2 change colour to Blue
If die = 3 change colour to Black
If die = 4 change colour to Red
If die = 5 change colour to Orange
If die = 6 change colour to Yellow
If die roll = 6
Return to current centre square


Check for blocks:
If pathway blocked do not move then
reroll die
If number of spaces in the direction > die roll then
move until blocked
If all pathways blocked then
choose a new centre square






More details of the activity can be found in the forthcoming book.




If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Monday 13 June 2016

Algorithms for procedural terrain generation




Rose, T. J. and Bakaoukas, A. G. (2016) Algorithms and approaches for procedural terrain generation. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Virtual Worlds and Games for Serious Applications. Barcelona, Spain: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.


Abstract
This paper aims to discuss existing approaches to procedural terrain generation for games. This will include both the many functions that are used to generate ‘noise’ (something that has proved exceptionally useful in procedural terrain and texture synthesis) as well as some advanced procedural content generation techniques. The paper concludes with a summary of the discussed material while attempting to highlight areas for future research.


To read more go to http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/8520/

If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Indoor GPS-like system



Maghdi, H.Al-Sherbaz, A.Aljawad, N. and Lami, I. A. (2016) UNILS: Unconstrained Indoors Localization Scheme based on cooperative smartphones networking with onboard inertial, Bluetooth and GNSS devices. In: Proceedings of IEEE/ION PLANS 2016.Savannah, Georgia, USA: IEEE. 9781509020423. pp. 129-136.

Abstract
Location-based services (LBS) are becoming important services on today’s smartphones (SPs), tablets and wearable devices. Seamless outdoors-indoors navigation, and especially for accurate indoors localization, is the main demand of LBS users. Onboard WiFi, Bluetooth (BT) or inertialsensors technologies have been proven to somewhat provide alternative solutions in GNSS-signal-denied areas (i.e. indoors) to define SPs location. However, limited coverage of WiFi access-points (WAPs), pre-installed BT-anchors, constrained of WAPs/BT-anchors physical positions within a building, and limitations of existing localization techniques (in a standalone mode) on SPs are some of the main challenges to designing a spontaneous autonomous positioning solution with reliable accuracy at reasonable cost. This paper proposes an unconstrained indoors localization scheme (UNILS) based on cooperative SPs networking to tackle these challenges. The aim of this new scheme is to fuse multi-technologies measurements on SPs. The scheme uses relative-pseudoranging (based on time-of-arrival ‘TOA’ technique) approach between the connected SPs that are GNSS enabled, especially when the majority of the SPs are outdoors. Then the scheme combines this pseudoranges with uncertainty calculations from onboard dead-reckoning (DR) measurements using Kalman Filter, that
can provide seamless and improve location accuracy significantly, especially when deep indoors. This means, in deep indoors, UNILS can utilize only available devices/sensors on SPs, when communication with WAPs or BT-anchors is considered unreliable or unavailable, to offer reasonable cost & good localization performance. Results obtained from actual trials & simulations (using OPNET) of this scheme (based on Android-SPs network implementations for various indoors scenarios) show that around 3-meters accuracy can be achieved when locating SPs at various deep indoors situations.


To read more go to https://www.ion.org/plans/abstracts.cfm?paperID=3634


If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Bio-inspired streaming player


Sani, Y.Mu, M.Mauthe, A. and Edwards, C. (2016) A Bio-inspired HTTP-based adaptive streaming player. In: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME 2016). Seattle, USA: IEEE. (Accepted)


Abstract
In order to streamline video content distribution on a myriad of platforms over heterogeneous networks, HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS) has been increasingly adopted. In this paper we pilot a bio-inspired HAS optimisation design with the aim to maximise the overall use experiences of a video playback session. Evaluations conducted within a real-world Internet environment demonstrate the benefit of our design using quality indicators such as convergence time, start-up delay, average video rate, stability, and fairness.

To read more go to https://drmu.net/2016/04/30/paper-accepted-by-ieee-icme-grand-challenges/





If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Saturday 11 June 2016

Robot Arms in Schools Project



Santander UK recently provided the funding for an outreach project within the Department of Computing, University of Northampton - loaning robot arm kits, which are pretty much self-contained, out to schools to see what they can come up with and share with the wider community. 

The project is provide a robot arm kit to support computing and STEAM activities for a year and the schools taking part write a blog post (or more than one) http://robotschools.blogspot.co.uk/, sharing what they have done. Ten kits have been made available.
 
The chosen kit is the CBiS Education robot arm hub - select as it comes with the robot arm, cables, raspberry pi computer, etc as well as screen, keyboard and mouse (see the picture above). So it has everything needed to get going within a few minutes.  

In the first five days of the robot arms kits going into the schools, over half the ten robot arm kits are now in schools - four Primary schools and two Secondary Schools. 

Here are some of the tweets about what has happened already.























The project team are grateful to Santander UK for the funding; CBiS Education for their support and advice so far; last but not least the schools who have enthusiastically expressed an interest in taking part or who are taking part now. A blog for the project is now available at http://robotschools.blogspot.co.uk/.



If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Friday 10 June 2016

real-time ITS using VANETs: a case study for Northampton Town



Cite this paper as:

Al-Dabbagh M., Al-Sherbaz A., Turner S. (2018) Developing a Real-Time ITS Using VANETs: A Case Study for Northampton Town. In: Bi Y., Kapoor S., Bhatia R. (eds) Proceedings of SAI Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys) 2016. IntelliSys 2016. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 15. Springer, Cham


Abstract
Nowadays, road congestion issue is considered one of the most serious problems facing road users in various cities of the world. Therefore, tremendous research has been done in this field. Road information could significantly help to estimate congestion level on streets, leading to reduce traffic jams and decrease journey time, fuel consumption and pollution. In this sense, this paper proposes IRCA (Intelligent Road Congestion Avoidance), a new algorithm based on vehicle to Road Side Unit (RSU) communication type and graph theory to estimate traffic congestion in real time. Furthermore, it capable of providing suitable alternative routes and conveying these to the relevant vehicles. Northampton town was chosen as a location for modelling the proposed approach. In this paper, two cases have been compared; with and without IRCA algorithm. The simulation results indicate a significant reduction in terms of delay time, which means that the proposed algorithm has a better real-time management tool for dealing with traffic congestion.

To read more go to http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/8516/

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If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with

Routing algorithm optimization for Software Defined Network WAN


Al-Sadi, A.Al-Sherbaz, A.Xue, J. and Turner, S. J. (2016) Routing algorithm optimization for Software Defined Network WAN.In: Al-Sadeq International Conference on Multidisciplinary in IT and Communication Science and Applications (AIC-MITCSA) - IRAQ (9-10) May. Baghdad, Iraq: IEEE

Abstract

Software Defined Network (SDN) provides a new fine-grained interface enables the routing algorithm to have a global view of the network throughputs, connectivity and flows at the data-path. This paper aims to provide a novel approach for dynamic routing algorithm for Software Defined Network in Wide Area Network (SDN-WAN); based on using a modified shortest-widest path algorithm with a fine-grained statistical method from the OpenFlow interface, called Shortest-Feasible OpenFlow Path (SFOP). This algorithm is designed to identify the optimal route from source to destination, providing efficient utilization of the SDN-WAN resources. It achieves this aim by considering both the flow requirements and the current state of the network. SFOP computes the optimal path which provides the feasible bandwidth with the lowest hop count (delay). That will present better stability in SDN communication, QoS, and usage of available resources. Moreover, this algorithm will be the base for an SDN controller because it extracts the widest available bandwidth from source to destination for a single path. It enables the controller to decide whether it is enough to use this simple algorithm only, or if a more complicated algorithm that provides larger bandwidth such as multiple-path algorithms is needed. Finally, a testbed has been implemented using MATLAB Simulator, Pox controller, and Mininet emulator will be discussed. The latency comparison of SFOP algorithm with three other algorithm’s latencies shows that this algorithm finds better latency for an optimal path. Evidence will be shown that demonstrates that SFOP has good stability in dynamic changes of SDN-WAN.


To read more go to Routing algorithm optimization for Software Defined Network WAN



If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with