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Boost converters suffer from a bandwidth limitation caused by the right-half plane zero (RHPZ), which occurs in the control-to-output transfer function. In contrast, there are many applications that require superior dynamic behavior. Further, size and cost of boost converter systems can be minimized by reduced voltage deviations and fast transient responses in case of large signal load transients. The key idea of the proposed ΔV/Δt-intervention control concept is to adapt the controller output to its new steady state value immediately after a load transient by prediction from known parameters. The concept is implemented in a digital control circuit, consisting of an ASIC in a 110 nm-technology and a Xilinx Spartan-6 field programmable gate array (FPGA). In a boost converter with 3.5V input voltage, 6.3V output voltage, 1.2A load, and 500 kHz switching frequency, the output voltage deviations are 2.8x smaller, scaling down the output capacitor value by the same factor. The recovery times are 2.4x shorter in case of large signal load transients with the proposed concept. The control is widely applicable, as it supports constant switching frequencies and allows for duty cycle and inductor current limitations. It also shows various advantages compared to conventional control and to selected adaptive control concepts.
This paper introduces a highly scalable heteromodular origami art technique for constructing 3D framework structures using elementary struts and connectors folded from uncut sheets of standard A4 office paper. The presented technique, named ZEBRA, allows the design of meter-scale architectural objects, such as truss bridges and towers, which are capable of bearing substantial mechanical loads. Moving parts, ranging from simple levers to complete multi-bar linkages, can be integrated into static frameworks using a set of kinematic extensions. An overview is given of how the ZEBRA system can be used to teach university students various theoretical and practical aspects of the engineering sciences in an entertaining and hands-on way.
Workshops and tutorials
(2018)
The 19th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2018) hosted two workshops and three tutorials. The workshops and tutorials complemented and enhanced the main conference program, offering a wider knowledge perspective around the conference topics. The topics of the two workshops were Hybrid Development Approaches in Software Systems Development (HELENA) and Managing Quality in Agile & Rapid Software Development Processes (QUaSD). The topics of the tutorials were The human factor in agile transitions – using the personas concept in agile oaching, Process Management 4.0 – Best Practices, and Domain-specific languages for specification, development, and testing of autonomous systems.
Objective: This paper aims at getting an understanding of current problems and challenges with roadmapping processes in companies that are facing volatile markets with innovative products. It also aims at gathering ideas and attempts on how to react to those challenges.
Method: As an initial step towards the objectice a semi-structured expert interview study with a case company in the Smart Home domain was conducted. Four employees from the case company with different roles around product roadmaps have been interviewed and a content analysis of the data has been performed.
Results: The study shows a significant consensus among the interviewees about several major challenges and the necessity to change the traditional roadmapping process and format. The interviewees stated that based on their experience traditional feature-based product roadmaps are increasingly losing their benefits (such as good planning certainty) in volatile environments. Furthermore, the ability to understand customer needs and behaviors has become highly important for creating and adjusting product roadmaps. The interviewees see the need for both, sufficiently stable goals on the roadmap and flexibility with respect to products or features to be developed. To reach this target the interviewees proposed to create roadmaps based on outcome goals instead of product features. In addition, it was proposed to decrease the level of detail of the roadmaps and to emphasize the long-term view. Decisions about which feature to develop should be open as long as possible. Expected benefits of such a new way of product roadmapping are higher user centricity, a stable overall direction, more flexibility with respect to development decisions, and less breaking of commitments.
Rapid prototyping platforms reduce development time by allowing quick prototyping of a prototype idea and achieve more time for actual application development with user interfaces. This approach has long been followed in technical platforms, such as the Arduino. To transfer this form of prototyping to wearables, WearIT is presented in this paper.WearIT consists of four components as a wearable prototyping platform: (1) a vest, (2) sensor and actuator shields, (3) its own library and (4) a motherboard consisting of Arduino, Raspberry Pi, a board and a GPS module. As a result, a wearable prototype can be quickly developed by attaching sensor and actuator shields to the WearIT vest. These sensor and actuator shields can then be programmed through the WearIT library. Via Virtual Network Computing (VNC) with a remote computer, the screen contents of the Raspberry Pi can be accessed and the Arduino be programmed.
Digital Enterprise Architecture allows multiple viewpoints on a company’s IT landscape. To gain valuable information out of huge amounts of operational data, it is indispensable to have both an understanding of the operations architecture and an engine capable of managing Big Data. The mechanism of understanding huge amounts of data is based on three main steps: collect, process and use. The main idea is focused on extracting valuable information out of Big Data to make better design decisions. The Elastic Stack is an open-source solution to comfortably and quickly handle Big Data scenarios.
Recognizing actions of humans, reliably inferring their meaning and being able to potentially exchange mutual social information are core challenges for autonomous systems when they directly share the same space with humans. Today’s technical perception solutions have been developed and tested mostly on standard vision benchmark datasets where manual labeling of sensory ground truth is a tedious but necessary task. Furthermore, rarely occurring human activities are underrepresented in such data leading to algorithms not recognizing such activities. For this purpose, we introduce a modular simulation framework which offers to train and validate algorithms on various environmental conditions. For this paper we created a dataset, containing rare human activities in urban areas, on which a current state of the art algorithm for pose estimation fails and demonstrate how to train such rare poses with simulated data only.
Engineers of the research project “Digital Product Life-Cycle” are using a graph-based design language to model all aspects of the product they are working on. This abstract model is the base for all further investigations, developments and implementations. In particular at early stages of development, collaborative decision making is very important. We propose a semantic augmented knowledge space by means of mixed reality technology, to support engineering teams. Therefore we present an interaction prototype consisting of a pico projector and a camera. In our usage scenario engineers are augmenting different artefacts in a virtual working environment. The concept of our prototype contains both an interaction and a technical concept. To realise implicit and natural interactions, we conducted two prototype tests: (1) A test with a low-fidelity prototype and (2) a test by using the method Wizard of Oz. As a result, we present a prototype with interaction selection using augmentation spotlighting and an interaction zoom as a semantic zoom.
Durch das stetige Wachstum an neuen Technologien und Möglichkeiten steht der Verschmelzung von Technologien mit dem Menschen kaum noch etwas im Wege. Die Untersuchung der Implantate und die damit verbundenen Risiken sind ein Teil dieser Arbeit. Von Bedeutung sind hier die Funktionsweise und die IT-Sicherheitsaspekte. Alle in dieser Arbeit dargestellten Implantate benötigen eine Kommunikation nach außen. Diese Kommunikationsmöglichkeit birgt Risiken, die nicht nur auf die Daten der Träger beschränkt sind, sondern auch gesundheitliche Risiken beinhalten.
Eines der gängigsten bildgebenden Verfahren in der Medizin ist die Sonografie. Jedoch ist die Reproduzierbarkeit der Ultraschalldiagnostik bis heute noch immer ein Problem, wodurch Fehldiagnosen gestellt werden. Durch das in diesem Papier vorgestellte prototypische System zur Unterstützung für Medizinstudenten in Ultraschallseminaren sollen Anforderungen zur Reproduzierbarkeit einer Ultraschalluntersuchung definiert werden. Durch Experteninterviews wurden Einblicke in die klinischen Abläufe und den Krankenhaus-Alltag gewonnen, welche Inhalte relevant sind, um die Reproduzierbarkeit von Ultraschalluntersuchungen zu ermöglichen.
This research addresses the question of why employees use enterprise social networks (ESN). Against the background of technology acceptance research, we propose an extended unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model, adapt it to an ESN context, and test our model against data from ESN users of large and medium-sized enterprises. We use partial least squares structural equation modeling to gain insights into the determinants of ESN use. This paper contributes to ESN acceptance research by evaluating a model containing determinants of ESN use. It also examines the effects of determinants on five different usage dimensions of ESN. The results reveal that facilitating conditions are the main driver of ESN use while the impact of intention to use is comparably small. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Digital transformation has changed corporate reality and, with that, firms’ IT environments and IT governance (ITG). As such, the perspective of ITG has shifted from the design of a relatively stable, closed and controllable system of a self-sufficient enterprise to a relatively fluid, open, agile and transformational system of networked co adaptive entities. Related to this paradigm shift in ITG, this paper aims to clarify how the concept of an effective ITG framework has changed in terms of the demand for agility in organizations. Thus, this study conducted 33 qualitative interviews with executives and senior managers from the banking industry in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Analysis of the interviews focused on the formation of categories and the assignment of individual text parts (codings) to these categories to allow for a quantitative evaluation of the codings per category. Regarding traditional and agile ITG dimensions, 22 traditional and 25 agile dimensions were identified. Moreover, agile strategies within the agile ITG construct and ten ITG patterns were identified from the interview data. The data show relevant perspectives on the implementation of traditional and new ITG dimensions and highlight ambidextrous aspects in ITG frameworks.
While there are several theoretical comparisons of Object Orientation (OO) and Service Orientation (SO), little empirical research on the maintainability of the two paradigms exists. To provide support for a generalizable comparison, we conducted a study with four related parts. Two functionally equivalent systems (one OO and one SO version) were analyzed with coupling and cohesion metrics as well as via a controlled experiment, where participants had to extend the systems. We also conducted a survey with 32 software professionals and interviewed 8 industry experts on the topic. Results indicate that the SO version of our system possesses a higher degree of cohesion, a lower degree of coupling, and could be extended faster. Survey and interview results suggest that industry sees systems built with SO as more loosely coupled, modifiable, and reusable. OO systems, however, were described as less complex and easier to test.
Electromigration (EM) is becoming a progressively severe reliability challenge due to increased interconnect current densities. A shift from traditional (post-layout) EM verification to robust (pro-active) EM aware design - where the circuit layout is designed with individual EM-robust solutions - is urgently needed. This tutorial will give an overview of EM and its effects on the reliability of present and future integrated circuits (ICs). We introduce the physical EM process and present its specific characteristics that can be affected during physical design. Examples of EM countermeasures which are applied in today’s commercial design flows are presented. We show how to improve the EM-robustness of metallization patterns and we also consider mission proiles to obtain application-oriented current density limits. The increasing interaction of EM with thermal migration is investigated as well. We conclude with a discussion of application examples to shift from the current post layout EM verification towards an EM aware physical design process. Its methodologies, such as EM-aware routing, increase the EM-robustness of the layout with the overall goal of reducing the negative impact of EM on the circuit’s reliability.
Early reduction of risks in a startup or an innovation project is highly important. Appropriate means for risk reduction, such as testing business models with different kinds of experiments exist. However, deciding what to test and how to select the right test, is challenging for many startups and innovation projects. This article presents the so-called Business Experiments Navigator (BEN), a toolkit to assist startup and innovation processes. It compliments other tools such as the Business Model Canvas or the Lean Startup process. The main contribution of BEN is to bridge the gap between the riskiest assumptions of a business model and the multitude of available testing techniques by providing assumption templates. The Business Experiments Navigator has been validated in several workshops. Results show that it creates awareness among the workshop participants that a business model is based on assumptions which impose risks and need to be validated. Further, users of BEN were able to identify relevant assumptions and map different kinds of assumptions to appropriate testing techniques. The process applied in the workshops, as well as the assumption templates, helped the participants understand the main concepts and transfer their learnings, to their own business ideas.
Digital transformation has changed corporate reality and, with that, firms’ IT environments and IT governance (ITG). As such, the perspective of ITG has shifted from the design of a relatively stable, closed and controllable System of a self-sufficient Enterprise to a relatively fluid, open, agile and transformational system of networked co-adaptive entities. Related to this paradigm shift in ITG, this paper aims to clarify how the concept of an effective ITG framework has changed in terms of the demand for agility in organizations. Thus, this study conducted 33 qualitative interviews with executives and senior managers from the banking industry in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Analysis of the interviews focused on the formation of categories and the assignment of individual text parts (codings)
to these categories to allow for a quantitative evaluation of the codings per category. Regarding traditional and agile ITG dimensions, 22 traditional and 25 agile dimensions in terms of structures, processes and relational mechanisms were identified. Moreover, agile strategies within the agile ITG construct and ten ITG patterns were identified from the interview data. The data show relevant perspectives on the implementation of traditional and new ITG dimensions and highlight ambidextrous aspects in ITG in the German-speaking banking industry.
Being able to monitor the heart activity of patients during their daily life in a reliable, comfortable and affordable way is one main goal of the personalized medicine. Current wearable solutions lack either on the wearing comfort, the quality and type of the data provided or the price of the device. This paper shows the development of a Textile Sensor Platform (TSP) in the form of an electrocardiogram (ECG)-measuring T-shirt that is able to transmit the ECG signal to a smartphone. The development process includes the selection of the materials, the design of the textile electrodes taking into consideration their electrical characteristics and ergonomy, the integration of the electrodes on the garment and their connection with the embedded electronic part. The TSP is able to transmit a real-time streaming of the ECG-signal to an Android smartphone through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Initial results show a good electrical quality in the textile electrodes and promising results in the capture and transmission of the ECG signal. This is still a working- progress and it is the result of an interdisciplinary master project between the School of Informatics and the School of Textiles & Design of the Reutlingen University.
Creating new business models, products or services is challenging in fast changing unpredictable environments. Often, product teams need to make many assumptions (e.g., assumptions about future demands) that might not be true. These assumptions impose risks to the success and these risks need to be mitigated early. One of the principles of the Lean Startup approach is to identify and prioritize the riskiest assumptions in order to validate them as early as possible. This helps to avoid wasting effort and time. In the literature there are several different methods for identifying and prioritizing the riskiest assumptions reported. However, only little research exists about the practical application of these methods in practice and how to teach them. In this paper, we present and empirically analyze a workshop format that we have developed for teaching the prioritization of Lean Startup assumptions. We aim at raising the awareness for assumption thinking among the participants and teach them through group work how to prioritize assumptions. The results of the analysis of a multitude of conducted workshops show that the applied method did lead to reasonable results and accompanying learning effects. In addition, the participants got aware of assumption thinking and liked learning in a practical way.
In dem vorliegenden Zwischenbericht sind die Arbeiten und Ergebnisse zusammengefasst, die im Rahmen des Projektes GalvanoFlex_BW während der ersten acht Projektmonate der insgesamt 2 1/2 jährigen Laufzeit durchgeführt und erzielt wurden. Ziel des Projektes ist die Untersuchung und Verbesserung der Energieeffizienz in Industrieunternehmen mit dem speziellen Fokus auf der Einführung stromoptimiert betriebener KWK-Anlagen. Entsprechend des Arbeits- und Zeitplans sind die Literaturrecherche, die Festlegung von Prozesstypen, die Datenerfassung, die Strategieentwickung zur stromoptimierten KWK, die Optimierung der Schnittstelle zwischen KWK und Gleichrichtern, der Aufbau der Branchenplattform und die sozial-wissenschaftliche Begleitforschung beschrieben. Der aktuelle Projektstand deckt sich dabei im Wesentlichen mit den Vorgaben aus dem vorgelegten Zeitplan.
Micro grids often consist of energy generators, storages and consumers with controllers which are not prepared for their integration into communication networks for energy systems. In this paper it will be presented, how standards from the field of energy automation can be applied in such controllers. The data for communication interfaces can be structured according to the IEC 61850- or the VHPREADY standard. It is investigated which requirements must be supported to implement such data models within the controllers. For the transmission of the data we propose the OPC UA protocol, which supports extensive security measures and which is today available for nearly all modern types of controllers and computers.
The very first International Workshop on Software-intensive Business: Start-ups, Ecosystems and Platforms (SiBW 2018) was held in Espoo (Greater Helsinki), Finland on December 3rd, 2018 – just a day before SLUSH 2018, the world’s biggest startup event. Thanks to the collaboration with the organizers of SLUSH, many of the software-intensive business researchers and practitioners took part also in this event.
The international workshop gathered together 35 registered attendees, from Sweden, Germany, Latvia, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands representing both academia as well as industry. The event itself was sponsored by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the workshop was organized by the newly founded Software-intensive Business research community together with Software Startup Research Network (SSRN).
In current times, a lot of new business opportunities appeared using the potential of the Internet and related digital technologies, like Internet of Things, services computing, cloud computing, big data with analytics, mobile systems, collaboration networks, and cyber physical systems. Enterprises are presently transforming their strategy, culture, processes, and their information systems to become more digital. The digital transformation deeply disrupts existing enterprises and economies. Digitization fosters the development of IT environments with many rather small and distributed structures, like Internet of Things. This has a strong impact for architecting digital services and products. The change from a closed-world modeling perspective to more flexible open-world and living software and system architectures defines the moving context for adaptable and evolutionary software approaches, which are essential to enable the digital transformation. In this paper, we are putting a spotlight to service oriented software evolution to support the digital transformation with micro granular digital architectures for digital services and products.
Die Simulation menschlichen Gruppenverhaltens kann bei der Kapazitäten-, Risiko- und Evakuierungs Planung von Gebäuden hilfreich sein, bei der Produktion von Filmen für eindrucksvolle Massen-Szenen eingesetzt werden oder virtuelle Schauplätze in Echtzeit-Anwendungen beleben. Die Herausforderungen liegen vor allem in einem realistischen Erscheinungsbild der virtuellen Crowd, glaubwürdigem Verhalten innerhalb eines sozialen Verbundes, realitätsnahen Animationen und der Wahrung der Echtzeitfähigkeit interaktiver Anwendungen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird der aktuelle Stand der Technik vorgestellt, Technologien evaluiert und ein Crowd Simulation Prototyp mit der Unity Engine implementiert.
Segmentierung von Polypen in Koloskopie-Bilddaten : eine Potentialanalyse von Deep-Learning-Methoden
(2018)
Kolorektale Karzinome haben eine hohe Sterblichkeitsrate, wenn sie spät entdeckt werden. Eine frühzeitige Entfernung von bösartigen Polypen im Magen-Darm-Trakt, die deren Vorstufen bilden, bietet jedoch hohe Überlebenschancen. Bei Darmspiegelungen werden gerade kleine Polypen aber recht häufig übersehen. Zuverlässige bildverarbeitende Systeme, die Polypen in einem Koloskopie-Frame nicht nur detektieren, sondern pixelgenau segmentieren, könnten Ärzten bei Darmkrebs-Screenings helfen. Diese Arbeit analysiert den aktuellen Stand der Segmentierung von Polypen im Gastrointestinaltrakt. Weiterführend wird untersucht, inwiefern die in letzter Zeit sehr erfolgreichen Methoden des Deep Learning hier Vorteile bieten.
Die Segmentierung und das Tracking von minimal-invasiven robotergeführten Instrumenten ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil für verschiedene computer assistierte Eingriffe. Allerdings treten in der minimal-invasiven Chirurgie, die das Anwendungsfeld für den hier beschriebenen Ansatz darstellt, häufig Schwierigkeiten durch Reflexionen, Schatten oder visuelle Verdeckungen durch Rauch und Organe auf und erschweren die Segmentierung und das Tracking der Instrumente.
Dieser Beitrag stellt einen Deep Learning Ansatz für ein markerloses Tracking von minimal-invasiven Instrumenten vor und wird sowohl auf simulierten als auch realen Daten getestet. Es wird ein simulierter als auch realer Datensatz mit Ground Truth Kennzeichnung für die binäre Segmentierung von Instrument und Hintergrund erstellt. Für den simulierten Datensatz werden Bilder aus einem simulierten Instrument und realem Hintergrund zusammengesetzt. Im Falle des realen Datensatzes spricht man von der Zusammensetzung der Bilder aus einem realen Instrument und Hintergrund. Insgesamt wird auf den simulierten Daten eine Pixelgenauigkeit von 94.70 Prozent und auf den realen Daten eine Pixelgenauigkeit von 87.30 Prozent erreicht.
The need for creating digitally enhanced products, services, and experiences as well as the emergence of new or modified business models has a significant impact on the automotive domain. Innovative solutions and new topics such as Smart Mobility or Connectivity require current automotive development processes to undergo major changes. They need to be redesigned in a way that it is possible to learn and adapt continuously at a fast pace. Agile methods are promising approaches to address these new challenges. However, agile methods are not tailored to the specific characteristics of the automotive domain such as software product line (SPLs) development. Although, there have been efforts to apply agile methods in the automotive domain, widespread adoptions have not yet taken place.
As production workspaces become more mobile and dynamic it becomes increasingly important to reliably monitor the overall state of the environment. Therein manipulators or other robotic systems likely have to be able to act autonomously together with humans and other systems within a joint workspace. Such interactions require that all components in non-stationary environments are able to perceive the state relative to each other. As vision-sensors provide a rich source of information to accomplish this, we present RoPose, a convolutional neural network (CNN) based approach, to estimate the two dimensional joint configuration of a simulated industrial manipulator from a camera image. This pose information can further be used by a novel targetless calibration setup to estimate the pose of the camera relative to the manipulator’s space. We present a pipeline to automatically generate synthetic training data and conclude with a discussion of the potential usage of the same pipeline to acquire real image datasets of physically existent robots.
Lithographical hotspot (LH) detection using deep learning (DL) has received much attention in the recent years. It happens mainly due to the facts the DL approach leads to a better accuracy over the traditional, state-of-the-art programming approaches. The purpose of ths study is to compare existing data augmentation (DA) techniques for the integrated circuit (IC) mask data using DL methods. DA is a method which refers to the process of creating new samples similar to the training set, thereby helping to reduce the gap between classes as well as improving the performance of the DL system. Experimental results suggest that the DA methods increase overall DL models performance for the hotspot detection tasks.
Die minimal-invasive Chirurgie (MIC) entwickelt sich durch den Einsatz von medizinischen Robotern wie dem da Vinci System von Intuitive Surgical stetig weiter. Hierdurch kann eine bessere oder gleichwertige Operation bei deutlich geringerer körperlicher Belastung des Operateurs erreicht werden. Dabei entstehen jedoch neue Problemstellungen wie beispielsweise Kollision zwischen Roboterarmen und die benötigte Zeit zum Einrichten einer geeigneten Roboterkonfiguration. Daher ist eine effiziente Vorbereitung und Planung der Interventionen erforderlich. Diese Arbeit präsentiert einen Ansatz für eine verbesserte Planung mit Augmented Reality (AR) und einer Robotik Simulationssoftware (RS). Die Robotik Simulation dient zur Berechnung einer Roboterkonfiguration unter Vorgabe der Port-Positionen. Augmented Reality wird verwendet, um die berechneten Pose in der realen Umgebung zu visualisieren und somit leichter in den Operationssaal zu übertragen.
A shift in attitudes to purchasing departments can be perceived. No longer is the chief goal solely to reduce costs; the procurement function is assuming strategic relevance in the business model, leveraging the supplier as a foundation for innovation. The knowledge accumulated by suppliers is accessed over the journey of long-term partnerships to streamline business practice. Businesses are finding themselves in increasingly competitive environments, and thus need to address inefficiencies in supplier management. “Procurement 4.0” is a concept used in discussing digitalisation in business processes, referring to the process of supplier relationship management and optimisation. This model and its application to supplier relationship management will be the focus of this article. Realising the efficiencies to be obtained in buyer-supplier relationships through “Procurement 4.0” will be explored, primarily through an emphasis on digitalisation of the relationship between the procurement department and supplier.
Einpaarige Verkabelungssysteme gewinnen aufgrund des Internets der Dinge und aufgrund deren Einsatz im Automobil- bzw. Industriebereich zunehmend an Bedeutung. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird gezeigt, wie bei der Übertragung über ein einpaariges Kabel die Bitrate bei gleichbleibender Übertragungsbandbreite durch Nutzung des Phantomkreises erhöht werden kann. Als Übertragungsverfahren kommt jeweils eine 16-stufige Pulsamplitudenmodulation zum Einsatz. Die Ergebnisse werden durch Augendiagramme qualitativ und durch die Messung der Symbolfehler bzw. der Bitfehler quantitativ untersucht.
Milk-run systems are becoming more and more popular when it comes to in-plant material supply. Planning and dimensioning such a system poses challenges, which are difficult to overcome, especially in scenarios characterized by a large number of hard constraints and by well-established processes. This paper is set to ease the task of the planner by presenting an innovative flexible method for the planning and dimensioning of in-plant milk-run systems in high constrained scenarios. After an overview on tugger train systems and existing planning methods, an extensive description of the new method will be given. The new method proposed will be critically analyzed and discussed before suggesting forthcoming research.
This paper addresses what we call the investment question: under what plausible circumstances, if any, can variable renewable energy (VRE, and solar photovoltaic (PV) in particular) be a good investment? Although VRE has been growing rapidly world-wide, it is generally subsidized. Under what cost and market conditions can solar PV flourish without subsidy? We employ solar insolation and market price data from the U.S. and from Germany to gain insight into the investment question. We find that unsubsidized solar PV is or may soon be a justifiable investment, but that market arrangements may play a crucial role in determining success. We end by sketching a proposal that amounts to a reformed capacity market that would afford participation of solar PV.
Sleep study can be used for detection of sleep quality and in general bed behaviors. These results can helpful for regulating sleep and recognizing different sleeping disorders of human. In comparison to the leading standard measuring system, which is Polysomnography (PSG), the system proposed in this work is a non-invasive sleep monitoring device. For continuous analysis or home use, the PSG or wearable Actigraphy devices tends to be uncomfortable. Besides, these methods not only decrease practicality due to the process of having to put them on, but they are also very expensive. The system proposed in this paper classifies respiration and body movement with only one type of sensor and also in a noninvasive way. The sensor used is a pressure sensor. This sensor is low cost and can be used for commercial proposes. The system was tested by carrying out an experiment that recorded the sleep process of a subject. These recordings showed excellent results in the classification of breathing rate and body movements.
Modern persistent Key/Value stores are designed to meet the demand for high transactional throughput and high data ingestion rates. Still, they rely on backwards-compatible storage stack and abstractions to ease space management, foster seamless proliferation and system integration. Their dependence on the traditional I/O stack has negative impact on performance, causes unacceptably high write-amplification, and limits the storage longevity.
In the present paper we present NoFTL KV, an approach that results in a lean I/O stack, integrating physical storage management natively in the Key/Value store. NoFTL-KV eliminates backwards compatibility, allowing the Key/Value store to directly consume the characteristics of modern storage technologies. NoFTLKV is implemented under RocksDB. The performance evaluation under LinkBench shows that NoFTL-KV improves transactional throughput by 33%, while response times improve up to 2.3x. Furthermore, NoFTL KV reduces write-amplification 19x and improves storage longevity by imately the same factor.
SLAM systems are mainly applied for robot navigation while research on feasibility for motion planning with SLAM for tasks like bin-picking, is scarce. Accurate 3D reconstruction of objects and environments is important for planning motion and computing optimal gripper pose to grasp objects. In this work, we propose the methods to analyze the accuracy of a 3D environment reconstructed using a LSD-SLAM system with a monocular camera mounted onto the gripper of a collaborative robot. We discuss and propose a solution to the pose space conversion problem. Finally, we present several criteria to analyze the 3D reconstruction accuracy. These could be used as guidelines to improve the accuracy of 3D reconstructions with monocular LSD-SLAM and other SLAM based solutions.
Context: Software product lines are widely used in automotive embedded software development. This software paradigm improves the quality of software variants by reuse. The combination of agile software development practices with software product lines promises a faster delivery of high quality software. However, the set up of an agile software product line is still challenging, especially in the automotive domain. Goal: This publication aims to evaluate to what extend agility fits to automotive product line engineering. Method: Based on previous work and two workshops, agility is mapped to software product line concerns. Results: This publication presents important principles of software product lines, and examines how agile approaches fit to those principles. Additionally, the principles are related to one of the four major concerns of software product line engineering: Business, Architecture, Process, and Organization. Conclusion: Agile software product line engineering is promising and can add value to existing development approaches. The identified commonalities and hindering factors need to be considered when defining a combined agile product line engineering approach.
The hotspot detection has received much attention in the recent years due to a substantial mismatch between lithography wavelength and semiconductor technology feature size. This mismatch causes diffraction when transferring the layout from design onto a silicon wafer. As a result, open or short circuits (i.e. lithography hotspots) are more likely to be produced. Additionally, increasing numbers of semiconductors devices on a wafer required more time for the lithography hotspot detection analysis. In this work, we propose a fast and accurate solution based on novel artificial neural network (ANN) architecture for precise lithography hotspot detection using a convolution neural network (CNN) adopting a state of-the-art technique. The experimental results showed that the proposed model gained accuracy improvement over current state-of-theart approaches. The final code has been made publicly available.
Maintainability assurance techniques are used to control this quality attribute and limit the accumulation of potentially unknown technical debt. Since the industry state of practice and especially the handling of service- and microservice-based systems in this regard are not well covered in scientific literature, we created a survey to gather evidence for a) used processes, tools, and metrics in the industry, b) maintainability-related treatment of systems based on service orientation, and c) influences on developer satisfaction w.r.t. maintainability. 60 software professionals responded to our online questionnaire. The results indicate that using explicit and systematic techniques has benefits for maintainability. The more sophisticated the applied methods the more satisfied participants were with the maintainability of their software while no link to a hindrance in productivity could be established. Other important findings were the absence of architecture-level evolvability control mechanisms as well as a significant neglect of service-oriented particularities for quality assurance. The results suggest that industry has to improve its quality control in these regards to avoid problems with long living service-based software systems.
Die Bedeutung und Stellung der Informationstechnologie erlebte in den letzten 60 Jahren einen fortlaufenden Wandel. Der anfänglich rein unterstützende Charakter entwickelte sich immer mehr zu einem wichtigen Bestandteil der Aufbau- und Ablauforganisation im Unternehmen. Ein definiertes IT-Servicemanagement im Unternehmen sieht sich mittlerweile gleichgeordnet mit den restlichen Fachabteilungen, tritt mit seinen Leistungen als Dienstleister auf und betrachtet die Fachabteilungen als „Kunde“. Neue Technologien und Innovationen und die daraus resultierenden Neudefinitionen bestehender Anforderungen sollen im Rahmen der Digitalisierung in Unternehmen positive Effekte zeigen. IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) wird als Framework für IT-Servicemanagement in der Industrie und im öffentlichen Dienst genutzt. Der Ansatz von ITIL unterstützte den Kulturwandel und sensibilisierte das Management und die Mitarbeiter darin, serviceorientiert zu denken. Da dieser Ansatz einen vordefinierten, zyklischen Ablauf hat, könnten schnell eintreffende Kundenanforderungen nicht fristgerecht umgesetzt werden, weshalb agile Methoden wie der DevOps-Ansatz in den Vordergrund rücken. Die Herausforderung besteht darin, den Kulturwandel bei der Einführung von DevOps in bestehenden ITIL-Strukturen in Unternehmen zu fördern.
Über die letzten Jahre nehmen die Verkehrsunfälle zwischen Fahrzeugen und Fahrrädern und Motorrädern immer weiter zu. Die Ursache ist meistens eine unachtsam geöffnete Fahrzeugtür, mit der ein anfahrender Zweiradfahrer kollidiert. Diese Unfälle können verheerende Folgen für alle Beteiligten haben. Aus diesem Grund soll der technologische Fortschritt, welcher sich durch die gesamte Automobilbranche zieht, um eine zusätzliche Komponente erweitert werden. Hierbei handelt es sich um ein System für Zweiradfahrer, welches eine sich öffnende Fahrzeugtür frühzeitig erkennen soll, den Fahrer somit frühzeitig warnen kann und gegebenenfalls Strategien zu Unfallvermeidung einleiten kann. Dieses Konzept soll die Entwicklung des Systems vorgeben und grundlegend erläutern.
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurde eine Software-Architektur entwickelt, mit der sich Interaktionen zwischen autonomen Fahrzeugen und Passanten im Straßenverkehr in einer simulierten Umgebung untersuchen lassen. Hierbei wird das autonome Fahrzeug durch einen externen Fahrsimulator gesteuert. Der Einsatz eines Motion-Capture-Systems ermöglicht dabei die Aufzeichnung und Übertragungen der Bewegungsdaten von Passant und Fahrer in die virtuelle Umgebung. Durch den Einsatz von head-mounted Displays sollen Akteure die virtuelle Umgebung möglichst als real empfinden. Auf Basis der entwickelten Software-Architektur wurde eine Simulationsumgebung realisiert, in der Interaktionen zwischen einem Passant und einem autonomem Fahrzeug untersucht werden können. Das Projekt soll das Potential von Motion-Capture gestützten Simulationsumgebungen für die Konzeption und Entwicklung von autonomen Fahrsystemen aufzeigen.
Digitization is the use of digital technologies for creating innovative digital business models and transforming existing business models, processes and systems. Digitization creates profound changes in the economy and society. Information is often captured and processed without human intervention using digital means. Digitization impacts nearly all products and services as well as the customer and the value-creation perspective.
Informatics Inside : Connect(IT) : Informatik-Konferenz an der Hochschule Reutlingen, 9. Mai 2018
(2018)
Mit der Informatics Inside 2018 findet diese Veranstaltungsform bereits zum 10. Mal statt und wir freuen uns besonders auf dieses Jubiläum. Die diesjährige Konferenz steht unter dem Motto "connect(IT)" und zeigt damit einmal mehr die zentrale Bedeutung der Informatik im Zusammenhang mit Vernetzungen und dies auf allen Ebenen. Es geht nicht nur um die technische Vernetzung von Maschinen und Services, sondern auch um die Vernetzung von Menschen untereinander und die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Mensch und Maschine. Gerade die letzten beiden Punkte spiegeln einen der Schwerpunkte des Masterstudiengangs Human-Centered Computing sehr schön wieder. Sie finden in dem vorliegenden Tagungsband Fachbeiträge aus dem medizinischen Umfeld ebenso wie vielfältige Anwendungen aus dem Fahrzeugsektor. Selbstverständlich spielt das Thema Sicherheit in vernetzten Umgebungen eine wichtige Rolle und auch dazu finden Sie einen spannenden Beitrag. Der Kulturwandel im Bereich der Softwareentwicklung ist ebenso ein Thema wie Simulationen in verschiedenen Zusammenhängen.
Die Informatics Inside ist eine wissenschaftliche Konferenz des Masterstudiengangs Human-Centered Computing und wird von den Studierenden organisiert und durchgeführt. Sie erhalten während ihres Masterstudiums die Gelegenheit, sich in einem Fachgebiet ihrer Wahl zu vertiefen. Dies kann an der Hochschule, in einem Unternehmen, einem Forschungsinstitut oder im Ausland durchgeführt werden. Gerade diese flexible Ausgestaltung der Lehrveranstaltung "Wissenschaftliche Vertiefung" führt zu vielfältigen Themenfeldern, die von den Studierenden bearbeitet werden. Neben der eigentlichen fachlichen Vertiefung spielt auch die Präsentation von wissenschaftlichen Ergebnissen eine wichtige Rolle und dies nicht nur während des Studiums. Ein gewähltes Fachgebiet so allgemeinverständlich aufzubereiten und zu vermitteln, dass es auch für Nicht-Spezialisten verständlich wird, stellt immer wieder eine besondere Herausforderung dar.
The blockchain technology enables a common data basis between the participants. Entries are logged and the authenticity of the participants is guaranteed. In the case of a relationship between customers and producers, this would lead to verifiable cooperation, which would be a major step as companies enter into service contracts based on the flow of many small transactions through communication. This paper proposes an architecture that enables the creation and processing of orders between the customer and producers via a blockchain based production network. The handling of larger files which are traceable via the blockchain is also shown and the use of a public or permissioned blockchain for an application case is also considered.
Lots of movies are produced every year, too many to watch all of them and in particular, to get an overview about the evolution of typical movie genres and actors playing in them. Moreover, it is a challenging problem to detect correlations among the movies and the actors in those movies, in particular, if we are interested in time-varying data patterns like trends, countertrends, or anomalies and outliers. Those correlations are specifically interesting if they can be inspected on different levels of granularity, e.g., temporal, but also hierarchical in form of country- or continent-based correlations. In this paper we describe the IMDb Explorer, a webbased visualization tool that consists of two major views denoted by the movie cosmos and the career lines. Both views are linked and interactively manipulable while a list of user-defined metrics are explorable. We illustrate the usefulness of the visualization tool by applying it to the entire movie database provided by IMDb.
Free-floating e-scooter sharing is an upcoming trend in mobility, which has been spreading since 2015 in various German cities. Unlike the more scientifically explorend car sharing, the usage patterns and behaviors of e-scooter sharing customers are yet to be analyzed. This presumably discovers better ways to attract customers as well as adaptions of the business model in order to increase scooter utilization and therefore the profit of the e-scooter providers. As most of the customer's journey, from registration to scooter reservation and the ride itself, is digitally traceable, large datasets are available allowing for understanding of customers' needs and motivations. Based on these datasets of an e-scooter provider operating in a big German city we propose a customer clustering that identifies four different customer segments, which enables multiple conclusions to be drawn for business development and improving the problem-solution fit of the e-scooter sharing model.
Software and system development faces numerous challenges of rapidly changing markets. To address such challenges, companies and projects design and adopt specific development approaches by combining well-structured methods and flexible agile practices. Yet, the number of methods and practices is large and the actual process composition is often carried out in an ad-hoc manner. This paper reports on a survey on hybrid software development approaches. We study which approaches are used in practice, how different approaches are combined, and what contextual factors influence the use and combination of hybrid software development approaches.