Scalable Data Analysis Application to Web Usage Data

The number of hits to web pages continues to grow. The web has become one of the most popular platforms for disseminating and retrieving information. Consequently, many website operators are encouraged to analyze the use of their sites in order to improve their response to the expectations of internet users. However, the way a website is visited can change depending on a variety of factors. Usage models must therefore be continuously updated in order to accurately reflect visitor behavior. This remains difficult when the time dimension is neglected or simply introduced as an additional numeric attribute in the description of the data. Data mining is defined as the application of data analysis and discovery algorithms on large databases with the goal of discovering non-trivial models. Several algorithms have been proposed in order to formalize the new models discovered, to build more efficient models, to process new types of data, and to measure the differences between the data sets. However, the most traditional algorithms of data mining assume that the models are static and do not take into account the possible evolution of these models over time. These considerations have motivated significant efforts in the analysis of temporal data as well as the adaptation of static data mining methods to data that evolves over time. The review of the main aspects of data mining dealt with in this thesis constitutes the body of this chapter, followed by a state of the art of current work in this field as well as a discussion of the major issues that exist there. Interest in temporal databases has increased considerably in recent years, for example in the fields of finance, telecommunications, surveillance, etc. A growing number of prototypes and systems are being implemented to take into account the time dimension of data explicitly, for example to study the variability over time of analysis results. To model an application, it is necessary to choose a common language, precise and known by all members of a team. UML (unified modeling language, in English, or unified modeling language, in French) is an object-oriented modeling language standardized by the OMG. This chapter aims to present the modeling with the diagrams of packages and classes built using UML. This chapter presents the conceptual model of the data, and finally, the authors specify the SQL queries used for the extraction of descriptive statistical variables of the navigations from a warehouse containing the preprocessed usage data.

Optimal Camera Placement in a Virtual Environment

Camera placement in a virtual environment consists of positioning and orienting a 3D virtual camera so as to respect a set of visual or cinematographic properties defined by the user. Carrying out this task is difficult in practice. Indeed, the user has a clear vision of the result he wants to obtain in terms of the arrangement of the objects in the image. In this chapter, the authors identify three areas of research that are relatively little covered by the literature dedicated to camera placement and which nevertheless appear essential. On the one hand, existing approaches offer little flexibility in both solving and describing a problem in terms of visual properties, especially when it has no solution. They propose a flexible solution method which computes the set of solutions, maximizing the satisfaction of the properties of the problem, whether it is over constrained or not. On the other hand, the existing methods calculate only one solution, even when the problem has several classes of equivalent solutions in terms of satisfaction of properties. They introduce the method of semantic volumes which computes the set of classes of semantically equivalent solutions and proposes a representative of each of them to the user. Finally, the problem of occlusion, although essential in the transmission of information, is little addressed by the community. Consequently, they present a new method of taking into account occlusion in dynamic real-time environments.

The Gamification in Education, Healthcare, and Industry

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) consist of large numbers of sensor nodes, which are limited in battery power and communication range and have multi-modal sensing capabilities. In this chapter, energy-efficient data aggregation technique is proposed to improve the lifetime of the sensor. Here, the author has used three layer architecture by deploying mobile element/node, which can periodically visit cluster heads (CHs) at which first level data aggregation has been applied to eliminate redundancy. After collecting data from all CHs, mobile element itself will perform second level of data aggregation to eliminate further redundancy. After collecting data from CHs, mobile element will move towards base station/sink and transmits data to base station/sink in order to save energy of entire network. Here, the author has made an attempt to prove that in WSN during data gathering if mobile elements are used to collect the aggregated data from CHs, energy consumption of the entire network will be reduced. The proposed data aggregation with mobile node helps in improving the lifetime of the WSN.

Current Trends, Challenges, and Future Prospects for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

In the recent years, innovations such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and internet of things have enhanced user experience dramatically. In general, AR is completely different from VR and provides real-time solutions to users by projecting layers of information on real-world environments. Advancements in computer-generated sensory have made the concept of believable virtual environments a reality. With the availability of such technologies, one can investigate “how these technologies can be applied beyond gaming or other useful applications” and “how further improvements can be made to allow for full digital immersion.” This chapter provides a detailed description about AR and VR, followed by interesting real-world examples of AR applications. In addition, this chapter discusses the issues and challenges faced with AR/VR with a motivation of exploring the options for improvement.

Dynamic Data Mining Based on the Stability of Dynamic Models

This work presents a new approach based on the use of stable dynamic models for dynamic data mining. Data mining is an essential technique in the process of extracting knowledge from data. This allows us to model the extracted knowledge using a formalism or a modeling technique. However, the data needed for knowledge extraction is collected in advance, and it can take a long time to collect. The objective is therefore to move towards a solution based on the modeling of systems using dynamic models and to study their stability. Stable dynamic models provide us with a basis for dynamic data mining. In order to achieve this objective, the authors propose an approach based on agent-based models, the concept of fixed points, and the Monte-Carlo method. Agent-based models can represent dynamic models that mirror or simulate a dynamic system, where such a model can be viewed as a source of data (data generators). In this work, the concept of fixed points was used in order to represent the stable states of the agent-based model. Finally, the Monte-Carlo method, which is a probabilistic method, was used to estimate certain values, using a very large number of experiments or runs. As a case study, the authors chose the evacuation system of a supermarket (or building) in case of danger, such as a fire. This complex system mainly comprises the various constituent elements of the building, such as rows of shelves, entry and exit doors, fire extinguishers, etc. In addition, these buildings are often filled with people of different categories (age, health, etc.). The use of the Monte-Carlo method allowed the authors to experiment with several scenarios, which allowed them to have more data to study this system and extract some knowledge. This knowledge allows us to predict the future situation regarding the building's evacuation system and anticipate improvements to its structure in order to make these buildings safer and prevent the greatest number of victims.

An Useful Review on Optical Character Recognition for Smart Era Generation

In this chapter, the authors have reviewed on optical character recognition. The study belongs to both typed characters and handwritten character recognition. Online and offline character recognition are two modes of data acquisition in the field of OCR and are also studied. As deep learning is the emerging machine learning method in the field of image processing, the authors have described the method and its application of earlier works. From the study of the recurrent neural network (RNN), a special class of deep neural network is proposed for the recognition purpose. Further, convolutional neural network (CNN) is combined with RNN to check its performance. For this piece of work, Odia numerals and characters are taken as input and well recognized. The efficacy of the proposed method is explained in the result section.

Augmented Reality Application

Augmented reality (AR) is an extension of extended reality that superimposes virtual images onto real world view. It has been implemented across a versatile range of fields including education, entertainment, military, and much more. Unlike virtual reality (VR), AR focuses on enhancing the real-world view and enriching people with a better way to display the learning content in an attractive way. AR provides content simulation and interaction which can display textual data in a more immersive way which can retain learner's concentration for longer periods of time. Technology has always helped people with disabilities. Mentally differently abled children require special attention right from their childhood. Many applications have analysed the challenges faced on a daily basis by the differently abled. Hence, AR-based learning would make their learning much more easier through the personalized and immersive platform. In the given context, this chapter analyses the use of AR in education and developed an AR-learning platform for mentally differently abled based on Unity3D and Vuforia.

Augmented and Virtual Reality and Its Applications

Augmented reality (AR) overlies manually made materials directly over the real-world materials. This chapter addresses the technological and design frameworks required to create realistic motion tracking environments, realistic audio, 3D graphical interactions, multimodal sensory integration, and user interfaces and games using virtual reality to augmented reality. Similarly, the portfolio required to build a personal VR or AR application is detailed. Virtual and augmented reality industry committed innovative technologies that can be explored in the field of entertainment, education, training, medical and industrial innovation, and the development are explored. Augmented reality (AR) allows the physical world to be enhanced by incorporating digital knowledge in real time created by virtual machine. Few applications that have used augmented and virtual reality in real-world applications are discussed.

Multimedia Data Transmission

Investigating multimedia traffic over optical networks that provide extremely high data rates makes it a very attractive medium for multiservice transmission in building networks at low cost. Recently, there has been active research going on congestion control in optical networks to provide the communication reliability and bandwidth efficiency. The authors investigate the mutual diversity technique as a candidate solution for congestion control over multimedia traffic in optical network. This chapter proposes a new robust medium access control (MAC) protocol, called mutual diversity MAC (MD-MAC), where each terminal proactively selects a consort for mutual operation and lets it pass on concurrently so that this mitigates interference from nearby terminals and thus improves the reliability of network and its bandwidth efficiency. For meticulous evaluation, this study presents and uses a realistic reception by taking bit error rate (BER) and the corresponding frame error rate (FER) into consideration.

LIFI-Based Radiation-Free Monitoring and Transmission Device for Hospitals/Public Places

A wireless patient monitoring system involves remote supervision of sensitive patients by wirelessly transmitting patient information to distant locations, especially in pandemic situations like COVID-19. Li-fi-based communication protocol is used in healthcare which helps in reducing the challenges faced by medical professionals in effectively monitoring multiple patients as well as average persons in public places. Due to COVID-19, doctors/healthcare workers are compelled to work with infected patients. This proposed technique lets them observe patients without being on their bedside, whether in the hospital or at home. This device can also be installed in public places to detect the abnormal and symptomatic persons who are affected by COVID-19. It is used to monitor patient health, ranging from heart rate, body temperature, ECG, breathing, non-invasive blood pressure, oxygen saturation, etc. Wireless patient monitoring using li-fi eliminates national therapy barriers. Thus, a li-fi-based patient monitoring system will lead to a significant role in Healthcare services. The radiation-free device shall be implemented in all the industries to find the COVID-19-affected persons easily.