Communication Protocol

Both human collaboration and software agent collaboration have been thoroughly studied, but there is relatively little research on hybrid human-agent teamwork. Some research has identified the roles that agents could play in hybrid teams: supporting individual team members, being a teammate, or supporting the team as a whole . Some other work [57] has investigated trust concepts as the fundamental building block for effective human-agent teamwork or posited the types of shared knowledge that promote mutual understanding between cooperating humans and agents . However, many of the facets of human agent teamwork models, such as communication protocols for forming mutual intelligibility, performing team monitoring to assess progress, forming joint goals, addressing task interdependencies in hybrid teamwork are still unexplored. In this report, we address the following questions:

In this paper, we assess the state of the art of Quality of Services (QoS) support in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Unlike traditional end-to-end multimedia applications, many non-end-to-end mission-critical applications envisioned for WSNs have brought forward new QoS requirements on the network. Further, unique characteristics of WSNs, such as extremely resource-constrained sensors, large-scale random deployment, and novel data-centric communication protocols, pose unprecedented challenges in the area of QoS support in WSNs. Thus, we first review the techniques for QoS support in traditional networks, analyze new QoS requirements in WSNs from a wide variety of applications classified by data delivery models, and propose some non-end-to-end collective QoS parameters. Next, the challenges of QoS support in this new paradigm are presented. Finally, we comment on current research efforts and identify many exciting open issues in order to stimulate more research interest in this largely unexplored area.

Minimizing implementation time and manual configuration, as well as straightforward upgradability are the key requirements of efficient substation automation systems. For larger utilities this often necessitates achieving interoperability between different devices from multiple vendors. Since the early 1990's it was noticed that the speed of advances in communication technology seemed to overpass its power system counterpart, which called for more adaptability by substation automation systems and higher independence from the underlying communication technology. The natural shift in the industry from proprietary communication protocols to open access standards was therefore further accelerated and was directed towards more advanced solutions that provide an interoperable and future proof environment. In order to be able to respond to these concerns, IEC 61850 was proposed as a future proof, adaptable communication protocol, capable of providing interoperability in a multi-vendor environment and with a highly advanced object oriented modeling structure. The migration from legacy protocols and de facto standards such as Modbus, DNP3, and IEC 60870-5 has already started and it seems likely that it will continue at a steady pace in the future. In addition to the efforts to provide an advanced solution for substation automation systems, there is also a need for extending the "automation" benefits to beyond the substations either downstream, at the feeder level or upstream, at a higher level of network management. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of the current status of communication networks for substations using IEC 61850, and also discuss the possible future trends for extending the scope of the standard and using its capabilities for other applications within the distribution system.

Due to the existence of multiple stakeholders with conflicting goals and policies, alterations to the existing Internet are now limited to simple incremental updates; deployment of any new, radically different technology is next to impossible. To fend off this ossification once and for all, network virtualization has been propounded as a diversifying attribute of the future inter-networking paradigm. By allowing multiple heterogeneous network architectures to cohabit on a shared physical substrate, network virtualization provides flexibility, promotes diversity, and promises security and increased manageability. In this paper, we present a network virtualization model with a set of quintessential design goals, survey the past and the state-of-the-art of network virtualization, and discuss the future challenges that must be addressed to realize a viable network virtualization model.

The combined powers of web-based geographic information systems (GIS) and on-line remote sensing tools can significantly reduce the high cost and labor associated with environmental monitoring and natural resource management. This paper introduces an integrated web-based GIS architecture by combining three levels of geographic information services (GIServices): data archive, information display, and spatial analysis. A prototype web site, WGAT (Web-based GIS and Analytic Tools), has been developed to provide easy access of geospatial information and to facilitate web-based image analysis and change detection capabilities for natural resource managers and regional park rangers. The web-based integration framework emphasizes user-oriented services, distributed network environments, metadata standards, communication protocols, client/server computation, and ubiquitous access.

Abstrak Pengaturan dan monitoring kecepatan putar motor DC dalam sebuah sistem proses sangat penting peranannya dalam implementasi industri. Pengaturan dan monitoring kecepatan putar motor DC ini menggunakan perangkat antarmuka komputer dimana dalam industri hal ini diperlukan untuk memudahkan operator dalam mengatur dan memonitor kecepatan motor.

Distribution Automation (DA) is viewed as an integral component of the Smart Grid paradigm. It facilitates the employment of computer technology and communication infrastructure to advance management and operation of the distribution network from a semi-automated approach towards a fully automated one. SCADA systems, advanced sensors, and electronic controllers are integrated into the DA system in order to achieve the desired performance and reliability at the distribution network. Interoperability of all the components participating in the DA system requires communication standards covering not only the devices in the substation, but all the components from the substation to the point of interface with the end consumers. While the IEC 61850 standard was originally addressing applications and communications within the substation, recent work is undergone for extending it beyond the substation fence. With its object oriented structure, IEC 61850 can provide comprehensive and accurate information models for various components of distribution automation systems, while providing an efficient solution for this naturally multi-vendor environment. This paper provides some concrete examples on how IEC 61850 can be employed in the context of distribution automation applications, and what measures need to be taken to enable it to efficiently respond to some of the emerging technologies in DA systems.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has promised a future where everything gets connected. Unfortunately, building a single global ecosystem of Things that communicate with each other seamlessly is virtually impossible today. The reason is that the IoT is essentially a collection of isolated " Intranets of Things " , also referred to as " vertical silos " , which cannot easily and efficiently interact with each other. Smart cities are perhaps the most striking examples of this problem since they comprise a wide range of stakeholders and service providers who must work together, including urban planners, financial organisations, public and private service providers, telecommunication providers, industries, citizens, and so forth. Within this context, the contribution of this paper is threefold: (i) discuss business and technological implications as well as challenges of creating successful open innovation ecosystems, (ii) present the technological building blocks underlying an IoT ecosystem developed in the framework of the EU Horizon 2020 programme, (iii) present a smart city pilot (Heat Wave Mitigation in Métropole de Lyon) for which the proposed ecosystem significantly contributes to improving interoperability between a number of system components, and reducing regulatory barriers for joint service co-creation practices.

IEC 61850 was proposed as a standard protocol for communications within the substation. In its current edition, the standard does not cover communications outside the substation, either with the control center or with other substations, for instance for remote protection. However, during the recent years, there has been a general belief that some features of the standard can be efficiently utilized for applications outside the substation as well. With the advent of new monitoring and control technologies the idea of power system automation at the distribution system and feeder level is crossing new boundaries. In such applications, accessing the accurate data is a necessity. With its future-proof object oriented structure, IEC 61850 can provide comprehensive and accurate information models for various components of distribution automation systems. This paper provides some examples on how the standard can be employed for this purpose, and what measures need to be taken to enable it to efficiently respond to some of the emerging technologies in distribution automation systems.

Inter-vehicle communication (IVC) protocols have the potential to increase the safety, efficiency, and convenience of transportation systems involving planes, trains, automobiles, and robots. The applications targeted include peer-to-peer networks for web surfing, coordinated braking, runway incursion prevention, adaptive traffic control, vehicle formations, and many others. The diversity of the applications and their potential communication protocols has challenged a systematic literature survey. We apply a classification technique to IVC applications to provide a taxonomy for detailed study of their communication requirements. The applications are divided into type classes which share common communication organization and performance requirements. IVC protocols are surveyed separately and their fundamental characteristics are revealed. The protocol characteristics are then used to determine the relevance of specific protocols to specific types of IVC applications.

In this paper, we explore mechanisms for defending against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, have become one of the major threats to the operation of the Internet today. We propose a novel scheme for detecting and preventing the most harmful and difficult to detect DDoS Attacks-those that use IP address spoofing to disguise the attack flow. Our scheme is based on a firewall that can distinguish the attack packets (containing spoofed source addresses) from the packets sent by legitimate users, and thus filters out most of the attack packets before they reach the victim. Unlike the other packet-marking based solutions, our scheme has a very low deployment cost; We estimate that an implementation of this scheme would require the cooperation of only about 20% of the Internet routers in the marking process. The scheme allows the firewall system to configure itself based on the normal traffic of a Web server, so that the occurrence of an attack can be quickly and precisely detected. We have extensively tested our scheme by simulating DDoS attacks with up to several thousand attackers and the experimental results show that more than 90% of attack packets can be effectively filtered-out without much affecting the flow of legitimate packets to the victim Web-server.

In this paper we study two problems which often occur in various applications arising in wireless sensor networks. These are the problem of reaching an agreement on the value of local variables in a network of computational agents and the problem of cooperative solution to a convex optimization problem, where the objective function is the aggregate sum of local convex objective functions. We incorporate the presence of a random communication graph between the agents in our model as a more realistic abstraction of the gossip and broadcast communication protocols of a wireless network. An added ingredient is the presence of local constraint sets to which the local variables of each agent is constrained. Our model allows for the objective functions to be nondifferentiable and accommodates the presence of noisy communication links and subgradient errors. For the consensus problem we provide a diminishing step size algorithm which guarantees asymptotic convergence. The distributed optimization algorithm uses two diminishing step size sequences to account for communication noise and subgradient errors. We establish conditions on these step sizes under which we can achieve the dual task of reaching consensus and convergence to the optimal set with probability one. In both cases we consider the constant step size behavior of the algorithm and establish asymptotic error bounds.

Antes del protocolo DMX512 existía una proliferación de sistemas y protocolos por parte de diversos fabricantes, el más difundido era el control analógico lineal, sistema con el cual cada uno de los dimmers (regulador de intensidad) necesitaba de un control con un conductor proveniente de la consola. Cuanto más aumentaba el número de canales, también lo hacían el número de contactos y de conectores. Los cables y los conectores multipolares eran pesados, obstaculizantes y costosos. Los problemas eran frecuentes y la incompatibilidad estaba asegurada. Cada fabricante utilizaba diferentes conectores e identificaciones de los pines.

In traditional face-to-face classrooms, collaborative learning has been endorsed as an effective pedagogy that fosters skills of analysis, communication and higher order thinking. Increasingly, as online learning environments for tertiary learners make use of course support systems, there is greater recognition of the potential of communications technologies to foster dialogue, networking and team skills among learners. Such skills are now among the recognised core attributes that graduates are expected to develop. In face-toface classroom students learn the skills of collaboration and teamwork by engaging in tasks defined and supervised by a teacher. In online environments teacher presence is often limited to task definition, management and feedback functions. Team skills and collaboration therefore need to be supported though different pedagogies and processes such as establishing a climate of trust and openness, communication protocols, resolution of conflict and group processes that provide sanctions and support. In this paper we describe an innovative approach to building the skills of decision-making and conflict resolution, leadership and clarity in goal setting and communication. A case study of tertiary learners illustrates how the essential aspects of task definition, resources to support group learning and integrated online assessment foster team skills.

Within a smart home environment the information processing is supposed to be thoroughly integrated into everyday objects. This introduces the need to keep track of the everyday objects and their state changes produced based on the userpsilas interaction with them. Such information is useful in recognizing the userpsilas activities, situations, etc. In this paper we present a ZigBee communication protocol

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile stations with wireless interfaces which form a temporary network without using any central administration. MANETs are more vulnerable to attacks because they have some specific characteristics as complexity of wireless communication and lack of infrastructure. Hence security is an important requirement in mobile ad hoc networks. One of the attacks against network integrity in MANETs is the Black Hole Attack. In this type of attack all data packets are absorbed by malicious node, hence data loss occurs. In this paper we investigated the impacts of Black Hole attacks on the network performance. We have simulated black hole attacks using Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) and have measured the packet loss in the network without and with a black hole attacks. Also, we measured the packet loss when the number of black hole attacks increases.

This paper outlines the principles on which the U.S. Department of Defense packet internet architecture is based and characterizes some of the protocols which implement the architecture. Major factors which influenced the development of this architectural model include experimental and operational experience with a large number of interconnected packet networks, assessments and evaluations of military requirements for national and international interoperability and multiple jurisdiction operation, and specific concerns regarding security, survivability and operation under crisis conditions.

Different methods for coordinated motion of the paper or board machine sections were used, mainly depending on the production date. Present solutions are based on individual sectional AC or DC drives as parts of the network control system. The drives are integrated in the control and supervision system with the application of a high performance communication protocol, usually PROFIBUS, Ethernet or DeviceNet. Quality of control system of any paper machine is ensured and the software development procedure is kept straightforward with the use of the universal control block presented in this paper. The generalized structure of the proposed control block is suitable for application on different sections found in paper or board machines, with adequate parametrization. The performance of the block is tested on the dry-end of machine, where the definite amount of sheet tension is required by the technological process. The tension force saliently couples the adjacent drives, which can compromise the performance of the drives, and even lead to unstable operation. The proposed control system structure achieves stable operation of drives coupled through the material, with the possibility to control the sheet tension force.

operations on a resource as previously described, has good stability and performance properties [11]. 4) When the current time approaches the Start Time of an operation, the operation is released and its Start Time is fixed. When the execution of an operation is completed, it is removed from the resource's list.

Distributed architectures for industrial applications are a new opportunity to realize cost-effective, flexible, scalable and reliable systems. Direct interfacing of sensors and actuators to the industrial communication network improves the system performance, because process data and diagnostics can be simultaneously available to many systems and also shared on the Web.

In densely deployed wireless sensor networks (WSN), sensor observations are highly correlated in the space domain. Furthermore, the nature of the physical phenomenon constitutes the temporal correlation between each consecutive observation of a sensor node. These spatial and temporal correlations along with the collaborative nature of the WSN bring significant potential advantages for the development of efficient communication protocols well-suited for the WSN paradigm. In this paper, a theoretical framework is developed to model the spatial and temporal correlations in sensor networks. The objective of this framework is to enable the development of efficient communication protocols which exploit these advantageous intrinsic features of the WSN paradigm. Based on this framework, possible approaches are explored to exploit spatial and temporal correlation for efficient medium access and reliable event transport in WSN, respectively.

The second Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment (CanX) satellite, CanX-2, aims to support Canadian researchers while expanding the capabilities of nanosatellites. Designed and built at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies' Space Flight Laboratory (UTIAS/SFL), CanX-2 will include experiments in GPS technologies, earth observation, advanced materials, and space communications protocols. In addition to the science payloads, CanX-2 will also fly engineering payloads such as a momentum-bias attitude control system, an experimental S-band communications system, a custom onboard computer, and a miniature propulsion system. With such an ambitious science platform, CanX-2 hopes to demonstrate the use of a nanosatellite as a valuable scientific tool that is cost-and schedule-effective for today's researchers. With a target launch in late 2005 into a highly inclined orbit, the experiments and satellite subsystems described in this paper will help pave the way for future nanosatellite science missions both at UTIAS/SFL and other institutions.

In Body Area Networks (BANs), quality of service is
needed to provide reliable data communication over prioritized
data streams coming from energy constrained sensors attached
to, or possibly implanted in, patients. In this work, we focus on
BAN for real-time data streaming applications, where the realtime
nature of data streams is of critical importance for providing
a useful and efficient sensorial feedback for the user while system
lifetime should be maximized. Thus, bandwidth, throughput and
energy efficiency of the communication protocol must be carefully
optimized. In this paper, we present an Energy-Balanced Rate
Assignment and Routing Protocol (EBRAR). EBRAR selects
routes based on the residual energy, thus, instead of continuously
routing data through an optimized (energy efficient) fixed path,
the data is transported more intelligently and the burden of
forwarding the data is more equally spread among the nodes.
Another unique property of EBRAR is its ability to provide
adaptive resource allocation. Our experimental results show that
the proposed protocol performs well in terms of balancing energy
consumption across the BAN and thus guarantees longer network
lifetime.

This paper describes an integrating hardware and software ensemble for the development of microcontroller-based computer numerical control system. The discuss is focused on design and implementation of the communication between the PC and a numerical control machine. Among topics covered are: the C#/.NET serial port programming, and further, how to create a Windows application for sending, trough a COM port, the Computer Aided Design/Manufacturing data needed by a numerical control machine. A PIC microcontroller-based communication hardware module was developed and tested.

The growth of the Internet of Thing (IoT) results in an expanded attack that requires end-to-end security techniques. IoT applications involve in a business-oriented such as insurance and banking, and mission-critical crisis such as e-health and intelligent transportation systems. One of the most protocols commonly used for resource discovery in IoT is the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) protocol which fits the constrained devices. There is a need for security support in CoAP for the IoT environment. This paper presents a security approach using TACACS+ to strengthen the security of CoAP. The proposed security mechanism separately supports access control, authentication, and accounting. It has been implemented using a mobile phone and a Raspberry Pi. The mobile phone is used as a client, and the Raspberry Pi is used as a server. The implementation composes of a TI SensorTag and a WeMo switch that are used as resources. This paper, also, presents performance indexes of the security technique in terms of CPU usage, time computation, latency, energy consumption, and traffic exchange between a client and a server. The experimental results show the proposed method is compatible with IoT devices.

We present Air to Air Communication (AAC) 1,2 , a wireless protocol designed for communication among airplanes as well as airplanes and control centers. AAC enables the broadcast of emergency and surveillance information such as realtime video over the network even in presence of adverse conditions such as coordinated terrorist attacks. AAC is very robust. AAC minimizes the number of retransmissions and therefore reduce the collisions, which could considerably delay transmissions and disrupt the communications during emergency situations. AAC performs very well in highly dynamic ad hoc networks of airplane. AAC has the potential to significantly enhance the security of the homeland by closely monitoring the airplane which, if hijacked by terrorists or criminals, could be used as weapons. We have evaluated AAC through analysis and ns-2 simulations.

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) or quantum cryptography has been developed within the last decade; it is proved that QKD is secure against computer attacks and it is considered as a promising solution towards absolute security within long-term cryptosystems. Currently, research efforts are required to make strongly secure the existing communication protocols; we suggest as an issue to improve their security levels by integrating QKD. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using QKD for local area networks (LAN); we propose thus a scheme for integrating quantum cryptography in the TLS protocol. This will much contribute to enhance the process of authentication and data encryption. We present also an example to illustrate the feasibility of our scheme's implementation.

Web technologies, as tools, are most popular and widely used today not only in the everyday life but in industry as well. Examples of such technologies are the browsers, search engines, related communication protocols and their implementations, mechanisms for creating dynamic and active Web sites, security mechanisms, etc. These technologies lead to requirements for substantial changes in the methodologies for development and deployment of all systems and subsystems, which constitute any business process. Changes and/or new decisions are necessary to make possible the modern Web-based technological tools to be used effectively for Web-based business processes. A methodology for developing business software components as basic building elements of industrial information systems, implemented and deployed in Web-based computing environment is proposed and discussed in this paper. The methodology is based on the idea of creating a unified framework for representing business activities as a basis for business process modeling. Respective models, methods and techniques ensure the business objects and components to applied to currently most accepted three-tier Web application architecture using XML document as distributed object. For illustrative purposes only the proposed methodology is applied step by step, with respective comments, to developing a part of inventory subsystem of industrial information system as a case study. #

performing random simulations or by generating a C program. It can perform an exhaustive verification that can establish with mathematical certainty whether or not a given behavior is error-free. PROMELA is used to specify a system behavior in a formal validation model that defines interactions of processes in a distributed system and allows for the dynamic creation of concurrent processes. We have analyzed and verified various properties of the DHCP protocol such as absence of deadlock, livelock, and improper termination under various conditions such as message loss or arbitrary errors. We obtained the expected execution of the protocol using simulation. No invalid end-state or Non-progress cycle were found. We have also formalized a linear time temporal logic (LTL) to verify whether messages are exchanged properly and whether two clients may get the same IP address at the same time. No violation of the first claim was found, but the latter was violated.

with staff of the battered women's agency to expand and illustrate the quantitative data. The analysis shows that when a woman received battered women's services or had a protective order, a completed court case was more likely and numbers of arrests rose. We found that these associations were strongest when women received both battered women's services and at least one protective order.

The paper deals with low-level fieldbus interconnections intended for use in simple digital measurement and control applications employing ASI (Actuator-Sensor-Interface), which specifies an industrial communication connection between the foremost binary sensors and actuators and a controlling site. The kernel of the paper stems from two case studies that offer a more detailed insight into system design employing ASI interconnections. The first case deals with a regular implementation of the gateway between ASI and NBIP (nine-bit inter-processor protocol), which exemplifies a microcontroller-dedicated protocol, whereas the second case introduces an ASI-ASI coupler enabling the realization of hierarchical ASI systems.

Advanced window wall systems have the potential to provide demand response by reducing peak electric loads by 20-30% in many commercial buildings through the active control of motorized shading systems, switchable window coatings, operable windows, and ventilated doubleskin facade systems. These window strategies involve balancing daylighting and solar heat gains, heat rejection through ventilation, and night-time natural ventilation to achieve space-conditioning and lighting energy use reductions without the negative impacts on occupants associated with other demand responsive (DR) strategies.

Recent advances in wireless technologies have led to the development of intelligent, in-vehicle safety applications designed to share information about the actions of nearby vehicles, potential road hazards, and ultimately predict dangerous scenarios or imminent collisions. These vehicle safety communication (VSC) technologies rely on the creation of autonomous, self-organizing, wireless communication networks connecting vehicles with roadside infrastructure and with each other. As the technical standards and communication protocols for VSC technologies are still being developed, certain ethical implications of these new information technologies emerge: Coupled with the predicted safety benefits of VSC applications is a potential rise in the ability to surveil a driver engaging in her everyday activities on the public roads. This paper will explore how the introduction of VSC technologies might disrupt the 'contextual integrity' of personal information flows in the context of highway travel and threaten one's 'privacy in public.' Since VSC technologies and their related protocols and standards are still in the developmental stage, the paper will conclude by revealing how close attention to the ethical implications of the remaining design decisions can inform and guide designers of VSC technologies to create innovate safety applications that increase public safety, but without compromising the value of one's privacy in public.

Many sensor networks have been deployed to monitor Earth's environment, and more will follow in the future. Environmental sensors have improved continuously by becoming smaller, cheaper, and more intelligent. Due to the large number of sensor manufacturers and differing accompanying protocols, integrating diverse sensors into observation systems is not straightforward. A coherent infrastructure is needed to treat sensors in an interoperable, platform-independent and uniform way. The concept of the Sensor Web reflects such a kind of infrastructure for sharing, finding, and accessing sensors and their data across different applications. It hides the heterogeneous sensor hardware and communication protocols from the applications built on top of it. The Sensor Web Enablement initiative of the Open Geospatial Consortium standardizes web service interfaces and data encodings which can be used as building blocks for a Sensor Web. This article illustrates and analyzes the recent developments of the new generation of the Sensor Web Enablement specification framework. Further, we relate the Sensor Web to other

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architecture style where software components that provide a piece of functionality communicate with each other via message they exchange. Within SOA these pieces are called services. Nowadays, the technology platform most associated with the realization of SOA is Web Services. Web Services have received much interest due to their ability to transcend programming language, operating system, network communication protocol, and data representation dependencies and issues.

Power consumption is a critical issue in many wireless sensor network scenarios where network life expectancy is measured in months or years. Communication protocols typically rely on synchronous operation and duty-cycle mechanisms to reduce the power usage at the cost of decreased network responsiveness and increased communication latency. A low-power radio-triggered device can be used to continuously monitor the channel and activate the node for incoming communications, allowing purely asynchronous operations. To be effective, the power consumption of this wake-up device must be on the order of tens of microwatts since this device is always active. This paper presents our first attempt at designing such a low-power receiver. Very few realizations of wake-up devices are reported in the literature and none presents power dissipation below 40 μW. Our design implements a complete wake-up device and initial results indicate an average power consumption below 20 μW, which is more than 2 times lower than other reported devices.

Near Field Communications (NFC) is a 13.56 MHz inductively coupled power delivery and communication protocol that extends the ISO 14443 RFID standard. Low cost NFC scanner subsystems are anticipated to be widely incorporated in coming generations of commodity cellular phones.

The experimental evidence that radio techniques can be used for synthesizing and analyzing non-integer electromagnetic (EM) orbital angular momentum (OAM) of radiation is presented. The technique used amounts to sample, in space and time, the EM field vectors and digitally processing the data to calculate the vortex structure, the spatial phase distribution, and the OAM spectrum of the radiation. The experimental verification that OAM-carrying beams can be readily generated and exploited by using radio techniques paves the way to an entirely new paradigm of radar and radio communication protocols.

We extend the computation and information sharing capabilities of networked robotics by proposing a cloud robotic architecture. The cloud robotics architecture leverages the combination of a virtual ad-hoc cloud formed by machine-to-machine (M2M) communications among participating robots, and an infrastructure cloud enabled by machine-to-cloud (M2C) communications. Cloud robotics utilizes elastic computing models, in which resources are dynamically allocated from a shared resource pool in the cloud, to support task offloading and information sharing in robotic applications. We propose communication protocols, and several elastic computing models to handle different applications. We discuss the technical challenges in computation, communications and security, and illustrate the potential benefits of cloud robotics in several applications.

The recent advances in cognitive radio technology based on software defined radio platforms have extended the capabilities of wireless communication systems. The unique ability of cognitive radios to alter their communication protocols to meet changing system demands make them great candidates for wireless applications that are difficult to implement using conventional wireless terminals. Small form factor platforms make cognitive radio portable and easy to deploy. This paper discusses the design and implementation methodology to build a cognitive radio on small form factor platform with heterogeneous processing architecture. The result of this discussion is a configurable wireless transceiver that features two important concepts of cognitive radio, namely configurability and adaptability.

This paper presents progress towards the development of an anthropomorphic 16 degree of freedom, 4 degree of mobility prosthetic hand for use by transradial amputees, named SmartHand. The hand is provided with 40 proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensors in the fingers and with a customized control architecture embedded in the palm. The compact size and weight will allow its use to a wide range of amputees in the near future. This paper shows the design and development of the mechanical structure, control architecture, communication protocol developed to deal with the hand, and briefly presents the sensor set embedded in the fingers. Joint sensors plots while a finger was closing at full speed demonstrate hand functionalities in terms of sensory, control and actuation systems. Finally a non-invasive userprosthesis interface that could be directly connected to the SmartHand for shared control experiments is briefly presented.

Midwifery emerged as a self-regulated profession in British Columbia in the context of a 2-year demonstration project beginning in 1998. The project evaluated accountability among midwives, defined as the provision of safe and appropriate care and maintenance of standards of communication set by the College of Midwives of British Columbia. Adherence to protocols was measured by using documentation designed specifically for the Home Birth Demonstration Project. Hospital and transport records for selected clients were reviewed by an expert committee. Outcomes among Home Birth Demonstration Project clients were compared with outcomes among women eligible for home birth but planning to deliver in hospital. Adherence to clinical and communication protocols was 96% or higher. Planned home birth was not associated with an increase in risk but prevalence of adverse outcomes was too low to be studied with precision. Recommendations of an expert review committee have been implemented or are under review. Midwives have demonstrated a high degree of compliance with reporting requirements and protocols. Comparisons of birth outcomes of planned home versus hospital births, while supporting home birth as a choice for women, were limited in scope and require ongoing study. Integration of home birth has been a dynamic process with guidelines and policy continuing to evolve.

Rapid advances in transmission technology and networking have resulted in development of hardware implementations of several communication protocols, called protocol controllers. Such controllers have been developed for several standard protocols such as X.25 and LAPD. Controllers for some transport layer protocols are also under development. Several controllers for the IEEE 802 local area networks have been developed. In this paper, these controllers are surveyed and some characteristics for classifying them are given. Some case studies from these controllers are given as illustrations. In addition, two new developments-the Protocol Engine and the Programmable Protocol Engine-are also described. The Protocol Engine, currently under development, will implement a new protocol called XTP which performs the functions of both the network and transport layers. The Programmable Protocol Engine will be able to implement several connection-oriented protocols by changing contents of a programmable RAM.