14057421
Transformation and exchange of multimedia objects in distributed multimedia systems
One of the challenges in the design of a distributed multimedia system is devising suitable specification models for various schemas in different levels of the system. Another important research issue is the integration and synchronization of heterogeneous multimedia objects. In this paper, we present our models for multimedia schemas and transformation algorithms. They transform high-level multimedia objects into schemas that can be used to support the presentation and communication of the multimedia objects. A key module in the system is the Object Exchange Manager (OEM). In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the OEM module, and discuss in detail the interaction between the OEM and other modules in a distributed multimedia system.
34016873
Parsing 2D Languages by a Pictorial GLR Parser
15816324
Multi-level specification and protocol design for distributed multimedia communication
The major challenge in the design of an efficient distributed multimedia system is the integration and support of a wide variety of applications. Investigating the basic issues involved in the design and specification of distributed muttimcdia systems is the focus of this paper. A basic layered network architecture is proposed as the uniform framework for the investigation of different levels of functionality typically associated with the communication network that supports multimedia communication. Within this framework, we propose to identify the communication requirements for multimedia applications and characterize a set of communication primitives which specify different qualities of scrvicc to reflect different real-time rcquircmcnts. ‘Ilis investigation is guided by an efficient and flexible multi-level specification model. We will characterize this model and show that the model can be amenable to the construction of a set of communication primitives that support synchronization and communication of multimedia applications.
39945679
Iconic Language Design for People with Significant Speech and Multiple Impairments
35519508
Extending Visual Languages for Multimedia
Visual languages, which let users customize iconic sentences, can be extended to accommodate multimedia objects, letting users access media dynamically. Teleaction objects, or multimedia objects with knowledge structures, can be designed using visual languages to automatically respond to events and perform tasks like "find related books" in a virtual library.
17298481
Iconic language design for people with significant speech and multiple impairments
We present an approach of iconic language design for people with significant speech and multiple impairments (SSMI), based upon the theory of Icon Algebra and the theory of Conceptual Dependency (CD) to derive the meaning of iconic sentences. An interactive design environment based upon this methodology is described.
20494586
The implementation of a secure and pervasive multimodal Web system architecture
While most users currently access Web applications from Web browser interfaces, pervasive computing is emerging and offering new ways of accessing Internet applications from any device at any location, by utilizing various modes of interfaces to interact with their end users. The PC and its back-end servers remain important in a pervasive system, and the technology could involve new ways of interfacing with a PC and/or various types of gateways to back-end servers. In this research, cellular phone was used as the pervasive device for accessing an Internet application prototype, a multimodal Web system (MWS), through voice user interface technology. This paper describes how MWS was developed to provide a secure interactive voice channel using an Apache Web server, a voice server, and Java technology. Securing multimodal applications proves more challenging than securing traditional Internet applications. Various standards have been developed within a context of Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) platform to secure multimodal and wireless applications. In addition to covering these standards and their applicability to the MWS system implementation, this paper also shows that multimodal user-interface page can be generated by using XSLT stylesheet which transforms XML documents into various formats including XHTML, WML, and VoiceXML.
7920215
The design of a secure and pervasive multimodal Web system
While most users currently receive Web services from Web browser interfaces, pervasive computing is emerging and offering new ways of accessing Internet applications from any device at any location (Satyanarayanan, 2002; Estrin et al., 2002), by utilizing various modes of interfaces to interact with their end users. The PC and its back-end servers remain important in a pervasive system, and the technology could involve new ways of interfacing with a PC and/or various types of gateways to back-end servers. In this research, cellular phone was used as the pervasive device for accessing an Internet application prototype, a multimodal Web system (MWS), through voice user interface technology (Anerousis and Panagos, 2002). This paper describes how MWS was designed to provide a secure interactive voice channel using an Apache Web server, a voice server, and a Java servlet engine. It was also shown that multimodal user-interface pages can be generated by using XSLT stylesheet which transforms XML documents into various formats including XHTML, WML, and VoiceXML.
7967901
The effect of machine availability on the worst-case performance of LPT
We consider the makespan minimization parallel machine scheduling problem where each machine may be unavailable for a known time interval. For this problem, we investigate how the worst-case behavior of the longest processing time first algorithm (LPT) is affected by the availability of machines. In particular, for given m machines, we analyze the cases where arbitrary number, λ, ranging from one to m - 1, machines are unavailable simultaneously. Then, we show that the makespan of the schedule generated by LPT is never more than the tight worst-case bound of 1 + ½ ⌊m/(m - λ)⌋ times the optimum makespan.
44477744
Efficient selection of scheduling rule combination by combining design of experiment and ordinal optimization-based simulation
In a fab with heterogeneous machine groups, the number of scheduling policies grows in a combinatorial way because each machine group has its specific dispatching rules. In this paper, we design a fast simulation methodology by an innovative combination of the notions of ordinal optimization (OO) and design of experiments (DOE) to efficiently select a good scheduling policy for fab operation, Instead of finding the exact performance among scheduling policies, our approach compares their relative orders of performance to a specified level of confidence. The DOE method is exploited to largely reduce the number of scheduling policies to be evaluated by the OO-based simulation. Simulation results of applications to scheduling wafer fabrications show that most of the OO-based DOE simulations require 2 to 3 orders of magnitude less computation time than those of traditional approach, and the speedup is up to 7,000 times in certain cases.
613728
Dynamic scheduling rule selection for semiconductor wafer fabrication
We exploit the speed of an ordinal optimization (OO)-based simulation tool designed by Hsieh et al. (1999) to investigate dynamic selection of scheduling rules for semiconductor wafer fabrication (FAB). Although a scheduling rule is a combination of loading wafer release and dispatching rules, this paper specifically focuses on dispatching when significant amount of wafers-in-process are held due to engineering causes and when major machine failures occur. Four prominent dispatching rules combined with the wafer release policy of workload regulation constitute a basic set of rule options. The dispatching rule may be weekly selected based on FAB states over a four-week horizon. A total of 756 rule options are then evaluated and ranked by the OO-based simulation tool under the performance index of mean cycle time and throughput rate. Results demonstrate the value of dynamic rule selection for uncertainty handling, the insightful selection of good rules and the needs for further research.