Visual aspect-oriented modeling of explorable extended reality environments

The availability of various extended reality (XR) systems for tracking users’ and objects’ behavior opens new opportunities for analyzing users’ and objects’ interactions and autonomous actions. Such analysis can be especially useful and attainable to domain experts when it is based on domain knowledge related to a particular application, liberating the analysts from going into technical details of 3D content. Analysis of XR users’ and objects’ behavior can provide knowledge about the users’ experience, interests and preferences, as well as objects’ features, which may be valuable in various domains, e.g., training, design and marketing. However, the available methods and tools for building XR focus on 3D modeling and programming rather than knowledge representation, making them unsuitable for domain-oriented analysis. In this paper, a new visual approach to modeling explorable XR environments is proposed. It is based on a semantic representation of aspects, which extend the primary code of XR environments to register their behavior in a form explorable with reasoning and queries, appropriate for high-level analysis in arbitrary domains. It permits domain experts to comprehend and analyze what happened in an XR environment regarding users’ and objects’ actions and interactions. The approach has been implemented as an extension to MS Visual Studio and demonstrated in an explorable immersive service guide for household appliances. The evaluation results show that the approach enables efficient development of explorable XR and may be useful for people with limited technical skills.

Modeling-framework for model-based software engineering of complex Internet of things systems

<abstract> <p>Internet of things (IoT) systems are composed of variety of units from different domains. While developing a complete IoT system, different professionals from different domains may have to work in collaboration. In this paper we provide a framework which allows using discrete and continuous time modeling and simulation approaches in combination for IoT systems. The proposed framework demonstrates on how to model Ad-hoc and general IoT systems for software engineering purpose. We demonstrate that model-based software engineering on one hand can provide a common platform to overcome communication gaps among collaborating stakeholders whereas, on the other hand can model and integrate heterogeneous components of IoT systems. While modeling heterogeneous IoT systems, one of the major challenges is to apply continuous and discrete time modeling on intrinsically varying components of the system. Another difficulty may be how to compose these heterogeneous components into one whole system. The proposed framework provides a road-map to model discrete, continuous, Ad-hoc, general systems along with composition mechanism of heterogeneous subsystems. The framework uses a combination of Agent-based modeling, Aspect-oriented modeling, contract-based modeling and services-oriented modeling concepts. We used this framework to model a scenario example of a service-oriented IoT system as proof of concept. We analyzed our framework with existing systems and discussed it in details. Our framework provides a mechanism to model different viewpoints. The framework also enhances the completeness and consistency of the IoT software models.</p> </abstract>

Cloud-Based Virtual Port-Container Terminal Establishment and Operation Analysis

Worldwide, governments are making efforts to enhance the efficiency of port terminals by applying new technologies developed in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This study aims to systematically analyze port productivity and operational efficiency by establishing cloud-based virtual port-container terminals using operational data from Busan Port terminals. Accordingly, the integrated aspect-oriented modeling approach is applied to actual operational data from port-container terminals to develop a reusable, extendible and modifiable control system. This technique is used to establish a virtualized port-container terminal. In addition, this study presents a way to solve various problems arising from port-container terminals by analyzing real-time operation data generated by the terminals through a cloud system, as well as suggests ways to streamline operations. The methodology presented in this study can be applied to establish optimal operating systems for various ports and to develop and operate future port-container terminal systems.

Aspects and roles in software modeling: A composition based comparison

It?s intriguing how the work on inherent aspect-oriented modeling almost completely ignores the similarity between aspect-oriented and role based decomposition and composition. Ever since the notion of aspect entered the software development arena, it has been compared to the notion of role. Findings range from identifying greater similarities to more cautious observations that albeit aspects and roles are similar, they appear to be more as complimentary with a significant effort needed to really bring them together in programming. Even a cursory comparison of Theme/UML, which represents a design part of Theme, probably the best known and most comprehensive approach to aspect-oriented modeling, to OOram, a prominent representative of approaches to role based modeling that influenced UML, reveals striking similarities in both decomposition and composition. Within a more comprehensive effort of finding the principles of a sustainable approach to aspect-oriented modeling, this paper pursues further this observation by establishing a partially reversible transformation of a Theme/UML model to the corresponding OOram model that proves principal analogy of themes to OOram collaboration view diagrams accompanied by the corresponding scenario view and interface view diagrams. An important implication is that aspects have their counterpart not in roles themselves, but in role collaboration. Based on these results, a possibility of using UML composite structure diagrams for aspect-oriented design is sketched out in the paper.