[ecoop-info] Invitation: International Seminar on AmI and WSNs in Luxembourg

[Reza Razavi]

We apologize in advance for multiple copies.
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Call for Participation:
- Åmbiance International Seminar on
   Ambient Intelligence and Wireless Sensor Networks
- University of Luxembourg,
   Faculty of Sciences, Technology and Communication
- November 10th, 2006 - 09:30to 16:00.
- Web: http://wiki.uni.lu/csc/($C5)mbiance+Workshop.html

Invited Speakers:
AGHA, Gul. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
ARBAB, Farhad. CWI and Leiden University, The Netherlands
CARDON, Alain. Université Le Havre and LIP6, France
PERROT, Jean-François. Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), France

Speakers from the University of Luxembourg:
BOUVRY, Pascal; HOGIE, Luc; MALVETTI, Massimo; RAZAVI, Reza

Program:
Please see below, also available on line at:
http://wiki.uni.lu/csc/($C5)mbiance+Workshop+Program.html

Contact: reza.razavi at uni.lu
For organization reasons, we would greatly 
appreciate if you could confirm your 
participation by email to the contact person.

Motivation and Background:
This seminar is organized by the Åmbiance 
project, funded by the University of 
Luxembourg.  Åmbiance relates to Ambient 
Intelligence (AmI), and is realized in close 
collaboration with a team of outstanding 
researchers in leading universities and research 
institutes in the USA and Europe. The goal of 
this workshop is to present our contribution in 
different scientific areas relevant to the project.

Research in AmI is promoted by the European 
Commission's Information Society Technologies 
Advisory Group (ISTAG), to provide citizens with 
ubiquitous, secure, reliable, and personalized 
services (ambient services). A key enabling 
technology for AmI is Wireless Sensor Networks 
(WSNs), i.e., networks of (very) large numbers of 
autonomous, spatially distributed, tiny, 
low-powered computers, endowed with 
communication, sensing and actuating 
capabilities. They are wirelessly connected both 
to each other and to the Internet and Enterprise 
Information Systems. They coordinate to 
cooperatively monitor physical or environmental 
conditions. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) 
applications belong to this class of systems.

WSN nodes are, however, prone to failures (for 
example, if they run out of energy) and 
communication between them is unreliable. 
Programming such networks requires addressing 
these limitations. Unfortunately, current methods 
for WSN programming lead developers to mix 
high-level concerns such as quality of service 
requirements, for instance timeliness, 
reliability, application logic, adaptivity, with 
low-level concerns like resource management, 
synchronization, communication, routing, data 
filtering and aggregation. This makes developing 
software for WSNs a costly and error-prone 
endeavor, even for expert programmers. Moreover, 
the service that end-users may expect from a WSN 
may dynamically change over time, as can the hardware topology.

To address these issues, the Åmbiance project has 
developed a platform which supports dynamic 
macroprogramming by multiple non-professional 
programmers concurrently. Our approach consists 
of not only abstracting away low-level concerns 
and allowing application designers to write code 
in a high-level language that captures the 
operation of the WSN as a whole (called also 
macroprogramming), but also minimizing the 
required programming knowledge to empower 
ordinary users to interact with the network, in 
order to intuitively formulate the expected 
ambient services at run-time. Moreover, our 
architecture supports an open concurrent system – 
requests may come in asynchronously from 
uncoordinated end-users. Requests are formulated 
through an intuitive and omnipresent World Wide 
Web interface. Applications that require 
ubiquitous and concurrent execution utilizing 
real-time data can be supported by such 
architectures. An Open Source licensing policy 
will foster future sustainability of the project results.

Program:
09:30 Welcome Reception
10:00 Opening'
         * Massimo Malvetti, Professor at the 
University of Luxembourg (UL) and currently Dean 
of the Faculty of Sciences, Technology, and Communication (FSTC).
         * Pascal Bouvry, Professor at UL-FSTC 
and head of the Computer Science and Communication Research Unit (CSC).
         * Reza Razavi, Researcher at UL and lead 
of the Autonomous Systems Group.

10:30 Programming Models and Tools for Networked Embedded Systems'
         * Speaker: Gul Agha, Professor of 
Computer Science and Research Professor in 
Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University 
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
         * Abstract: In order to realize the 
potential of sensor networks, the problem of 
coordinating large numbers of embedded nodes must 
be addressed.  I will describe a program of 
research to build new paradigm of computing for 
sensor networks.  Specifically, the talk will 
describe the nature of algorithms on sensor 
networks, methods to facilitate programming 
sensor networks, and reasoning about the behavior 
of sensor networks.  I will describe middleware 
services such as self-localization, an actor 
language for mobile agents, and a new model 
checking algorithm for reasoning about the 
quantitative properties of large-scale sensor 
networks. The research agenda will be illustrated 
by software tools and experimental results on sensor networks.

11:15 Adaptive Object-Models: a synthetic approach
         * Speaker: Jean-François Perrot, 
Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at 
Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), Paris, France.
         * Abstract: We discuss the conceptual 
basis of Adaptive Object Models (AOMs) against 
the background of classical Object Orientd 
Programming.  Basically, AOMs allow classes to be 
modified at run-time. We distinguish between 
altering the attribute strucure of a class and 
modifying its behavior. The latter requires the 
construction of a complete model of computation, 
such as Razavi's Dart framework. Dart also 
purports to lend itself to user interfaces that 
are easily understood and adopted by 
non-programmers. We give an outline of Dart and 
discuss its adequacy to its intended goals. This 
talk will serve as a prelimnary to Dr. Razavi's 
presentation in the same Workshop.

12:00 Ambiance Platform for End-user Macroprogramming WSNs
         * Speaker: Reza Razavi' Researcher at 
UL, and Principal Investigator for the Åmbiance project.
         * Abstract: The goal of Åmbiance project 
is to support the dynamic exploitation of 
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for remote 
monitoring and actuation activities by concurrent 
ordinary end-users. Adaptive Object Models (AOMs) 
are a sophisticated way of building 
object-oriented systems for businesses that are 
rapidly changing. They let domain experts adapt 
the behavior of the system to new and local 
requirements at runtime. In this talk I explain 
how the Åmbiance goal is achieved by extending 
the AOM architectural style with a combination of 
the following two techniques: (1) fine-grained, 
domain-specific service composition at runtime 
using the Dart framework, and (2) dynamic 
transformation of high-level specifications of 
the end-users' queries into low-level executable 
code for a system of Mobile Agents running, 
interacting and migrating on distributed sensor 
nodes. We propose the first WSN query engine to 
combine dynamicity and query specification by 
non-professional programmers, thus allowing users 
to take greater advantage of WSNs.

12:45 Lunch (sandwiches will be provided by the workshop).

13:45 The adaptive complex systems and the artificial consciousness problematic
         * Speaker: Alain Cardon, Professor of 
Computer Science at Université Le Havre, France, 
and permanent member of the Computer Science 
Laboratory  of Université Pierre and Marie Currie (LIP6), Paris.
         * Abstract': We present the adaptive and 
self-adaptive systems and we present the 
architecture and the specifications for a system 
generating artificial consciousness facts and 
artificial emotions. We present the state of development of our prototype.

14:30 Composition by Interaction
         * Speaker: Farhad Arbab, CWI and Leiden University, The Netherlands.
         * Abstract:
Since the inception of programming, composition 
of algorithms has served as the driving force 
behind software composition. The models and 
techniques that have emerged out of this focus do 
not adequately meet our modern requirements, such 
as third-party composition of black-box 
components, or dynamic composition of the 
behavior of independent distributed subsystems 
and services. Concurrency arises naturally as a 
primary concern in these settings.

15:15 Simulating Large Multi-Hop Ad-Hoc Networks 
using Madhoc and Service Modelling
         * Speaker Pascal Bouvry, Professor at UL-FSTC, and head of the CSC.
         * Speaker Luc Hogie, Ph.D. candidate, 
jointly at Université Le Havre and UL.
         * Abstract: Madhoc is a open-source 
mobile ad-hoc network simulator targeting large 
scale networks composed of numerous mobile 
devices.  It includes various mobility models and 
has been used for designing new generations of 
services.  The design of new broadcast protocols 
will serve as a case study and be illustrated by 
a demonstration of the product.

16:00 End of the workshop  
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