Integrated Cloud Computing Environment for Upstream Geoscience Workflows

Extensive computing resources are required to leverage todays advanced geoscience workflows that are used to explore and characterize giant petroleum resources. In these cases, high-performance workstations are often unable to adequately handle the scale of computing required. The workflows typically utilize complex and massive data sets, which require advanced computing resources to store, process, manage, and visualize various forms of the data throughout the various lifecycles. This work describes a large-scale geoscience end-to-end interpretation platform customized to run on a cluster-based remote visualization environment. A team of computing infrastructure and geoscience workflow experts was established to collaborate on the deployment, which was broken down into separate phases. Initially, an evaluation and analysis phase was conducted to analyze computing requirements and assess potential solutions. A testing environment was then designed, implemented and benchmarked. The third phase used the test environment to determine the scale of infrastructure required for the production environment. Finally, the full-scale customized production environment was deployed for end users. During testing phase, aspects such as connectivity, stability, interactivity, functionality, and performance were investigated using the largest available geoscience datasets. Multiple computing configurations were benchmarked until optimal performance was achieved, under applicable corporate information security guidelines. It was observed that the customized production environment was able to execute workflows that were unable to run on local user workstations. For example, while conducting connectivity, stability and interactivity benchmarking, the test environment was operated for extended periods to ensure stability for workflows that require multiple days to run. To estimate the scale of the required production environment, varying categories of users’ portfolio were determined based on data type, scale and workflow. Continuous monitoring of system resources and utilization enabled continuous improvements to the final solution. The utilization of a fit-for-purpose, customized remote visualization solution may reduce or ultimately eliminate the need to deploy high-end workstations to all end users. Rather, a shared, scalable and reliable cluster-based solution can serve a much larger user community in a highly performant manner.

Teleoperated Service Robot with an Immersive Mixed Reality Interface

Teleoperated service robots can perform more complex and precise tasks as they combine robot skills and human expertise. Communication between the operator and the robot is essential for remote operation and strongly affects system efficiency. Immersive interfaces are being used to enhance teleoperation experience. However, latency or time delay can impair the performance of the robot operation. Since remote visualization involves transmitting a large amount of video data, the challenge is to decrease communication instability. Then, an efficient teleoperation system must have a suitable operation interface capable of visualizing the remote environment, controlling the robot, and having a fast response time. This work presents the development of a service robot teleoperation system with an immersive mixed reality operation interface where the operator can visualize the real remote environment or a virtual 3D environment representing it. The virtual environment aims to reduce the latency on communication by reducing the amount of information sent over the network and improve user experience. The robot can perform navigation and simple tasks autonomously or change to the teleoperated mode for more complex tasks. The system was developed using ROS, UNITY 3D, and sockets to be exported with ease to different platforms. The experiments suggest that having an immersive operation interface provides improved usability for the operator. The latency appears to improve when using the virtual environment. The user experience seems to benefit from the use of mixed reality techniques; this may lead to the broader use of teleoperated service robot systems.

ReVisE: Remote visualization environment for large numerical simulation datasets

The paper presents a new open-source visualization system, named ReVisE, aimed to provide interactive visualization of large datasets, which are results of complex numerical simulations. These datasets are hosted on a remote server or a supercomputer. The design of the system is briefly described. Dataset representation, proposed for interactive visualization and implemented in the system, is discussed. The effectiveness of our approach is confirmed by results of performance measurements on test and real-life large datasets. A comparison with other visualization systems is presented. Future plans of system development are outlined.

Sensor Node Network for Remote Moisture Measurement in Timber Based on Bluetooth Low Energy and Web-Based Monitoring System

This paper proposes an IoT system based on wireless BLE connectivity to monitor the moisture content of wood, using a compact and low-cost moisture device that relies on a resistance measurement method valid for an ultra-wide range of resistance values. This device is digitally controlled with a BLE-incorporated micro-controller characterized by its small size and low power consumption, providing long-life battery. The proposed system consists of two main parts: first, the BLE moisture device including the moisture content measurement and wireless capability (BLE); second, the cloud-based monitoring platform, providing remote visualization and control for all the sensor nodes of the network. The complete infrastructure shows how multiple nodes can read and transmit moisture content of timber in buildings using small and unattended devices, with data saved in a central database and monitored by multiple commercial devices such as PC, smartphone, tablet, etc. The proposed system is innovative, scalable and low cost, and it can be deployed in wooden buildings and the wood industry, providing a practical solution that will help to avoid rot and other damaging effects caused by the moisture content.

Surface profiling of the underground infrastructure in the technology of IT platforms - Part II

The article is devoted to one of main elements of the technology of IT PLATFORMS, i.e. VIRTUAL PROFILING of the underground infrastructure. Implementing of this technology to the wide scale can very much change investment and administrative processes. This section presents information on the technology of SURFACE UNDERGROUND INFRASTRUCTURE using VIRTUAL REALITY 3D. This technology is extremely useful for interactive support of investment processes. It can be useful for effective engineering work associated with interactive remote visualization in real mode. Keywords: IT platform; Virtual profiling; Underground infrastructure