VirtuaLab - studiocapponi.com

Multi-agent application for railways

Here is an interesting study, presented at the 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2009) in Budapest.

This paper from Netherland describes the work about a novel real-world socio-technical research system for the purpose of rescheduling train drivers in the event of disruptions. The research system is structured according to the Actor-Agent paradigm: here agents assist in rescheduling tasks of train drivers.

Abbink, E.J.W., Mobach, D.G.A., Fioole, P.J., Kroon, L.G., van der Heijden, E.H.T., Wijngaards, N.J.E.,
Actor-Agent Application for Train Driver Rescheduling,
Proc. of 8th Int. Conf. on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2009),
Decker, Sichman, Sierra, and Castelfranchi (eds.), May, 10�15, 2009, Budapest, Hungary.

ITS 2009 topics @ Stockholm

Let's have a look at the ITS World congress 2009 topics for technical and scientific papers. Comparing to earlier ITS meetings, the list provides a more comprehensive view, with an interdisciplinary approach; not only it encompasses state-of-the-art information on a wide range of transportation topics, but it also raises and discusses issues that provide direction for the future.
Of course, ICT plays always a key role.

1.ITS for transport and traffic managers
1. Demand management and access control
2. Traffic management
3. Public transport management
4. Traffic prediction
5. Incident and event management
6. Traffic modelling and simulation
7. Parking management

2.ITS for travellers and users
1. Connected traveller services
2. Infotainment and mobility services
3. Location based services
4. Navigation and positioning
5. Traveller information, In-Vehicle Information Systems (IVIS)
6. Multimodal information
7. ITS for public transport

3.ITS for drivers
1. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems(ADAS) /Intelligent Vehicle Systems (IVS)
2. eSafety
3. Human Machine Interaction
4. Nomadic devices
5. Speed advice/management and driver impairments
6. Cooperative services

4.ITS for freight and logistics
1. Urban logistics
2. Intermodal transport and logistics
3. International transport corridors (incl.megatrucks)
4. Dangerous goods management
5. Freight and fleet management
6. Standardised data exchange
7. Tracking and tracing

5.ITS addressing societal challenges
1. ITS for vulnerable users
2. ITS for children, elderly and disabled
3. ITS privacy and liability
4. ITS against social exclusion
5. ITS for enforcement
6. ITS for disaster management
7. ITS for security

6.ITS infrastructure
1. Data collection and aggregation
2. Digital maps
3. Network information maintenance and update
4. Cooperative vehicle infrastructure systems
5. Infrastructure use charging
6. Communication systems
7. Data exchange
8. ITS as a critical infrastructure

7.ITS deployment challenges
1. Business cases and policy support
2. ITS costs, impact and benefits
3. Standardisation and interoperability
4. Incentive programmes
5. Field operational tests
6. Public procurement
7. Awareness raising, education and training
8. Public-private partnerships
9. eTransactions (payment, booking, ticketing, tolling, cross borders)

8.ITS for our climate
1. Politics and control mechanisms
2. Drivers and travellers perspectives
3. Controlling with focus on climate
4. ITS deployment for a better climate
5. Green traffic management
6. Green navigation
7. Green transport and logistics

As a leading country in ITS deployment, Sweden has arranged a variety of project showcases and demonstrations, and has organised technical visits to locations of interest to the worldwide ITS community.
Stockholm will be a checkpoint for new ideas, together with known studies and transportation models that could be now applied on real implementations, leveraging mature technologies; more powerful tools can be designed and engineered into system solutions in order to provide stable and effective impacts on transportation systems.

Play with Wabble!

Are you a Scrabble fan?

.

Now you can play with Wabble, a Free Online Multi-Player, Ajax-Powered Word Game developed by Ryan Buterbaugh
Wabble is a word game that you can play right in your browser. No need to register, no software to download and no Java or Flash interfaces. Just type in a username and password and create or join a game.

Wabble is still in development, implementing new features.
At the moment, you can play in English, German, Catalan and Italian.

I helped Ryan to debug Wabble and I work on software localization; including coded translation, dictionaries (from the Scrabblemmario project) and playing rules for the Italian language.

Enjoy playing with Wabble! :-)

New VirtuaLab Studies

I opened two projects, dealing with AI & Computational Linguistics.

To be honest, Scrabblemmario is a phoenix rebirthing from an elder project. Now I have new friends support, powerful tools and more raw material to work with, so I was encouraged to make a quantum leap and restart the study.
Scarabaeus is a challenging Scrabble game bot project, involving italian language-based heuristics and uncertainty prediction.

Have a look at the updated section page to learn more about them.

Wanna hack the Google phone? :)

Jay Freeman, a.k.a. saurik, has managed to install Debian on a T-Mobile G1 smartphone. I wrote about it some weeks ago.

In this way, he obtained a device which is capable of running both Google's Android and the Debian install; an unrestricted OS with a huge pack of applications available, and a tweaked mobile phone platform for ant use and experiment.

I know, this is probably only for geek people, but this configuration would give you full control over your G1's filesystem and allows you to install whatever applications you might want.
Uhm, I'd like to be a German phone user!

"If you're interested in getting your hands dirty and playing with Debian-on-G1, Freeman has set up a G1-Hackers mailing list, where you can find like-minded individuals to chat with," writes Ars Technica's Erica Sadun.

Maybe this is the greatest world viral marketing campaign in ICT ever; nevertheless, the HTC Dream will be a valid base for state-of-the-art Linux OS, ARM-based, OSS, all-in-one personal system solution.

I'm already thinking about Chinese/Taiwanese industry developing low-cost G1 clones!

BOINC - Rosetta@home promo

Joining the Docking@Home project!

I joined the Docking@home project. My User ID: 2619

Docking@Home is a collaborative project that aims to accomplish both bioscience and computer science goals. From the bioscience point of view, the project aims to further knowledge of the atomic details of protein-ligand interactions and, by doing so, will search for insights into the discovery of novel pharmaceuticals. From the computer science point of view, this project aims to extend volunteer computing to enable adaptive multi-scale modeling of the docking applications: different models that represent the same phenomena in nature with different level of accuracy and resource requirements will be chosen at run-time based on results collected so far and characteristics of the protein-ligand complex. Docking@Home involves collaboration among the University of Delaware, The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), and the University of California - Berkeley and is powered by BOINC.

Docking@Home is part of the DAPLDS project (or Dynamically Adaptive Protein-Ligand Docking System project) and is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Joining Rosetta@home project

I'm now part of the BOINC.Italy team, and joined the Rosetta@home project.

WCC 2008

I partecipated to the 20th World Computer Congress (WCC 2008), the event organized under the advocacy of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) that took take place for the first time in Italy, in Milan from 7th to 10th September 2008, at the MIC - Milano Convention Centre.

There were various technical conferences: I attended to The 4th International Conference on Open Source Systems

The goal of OSS 2008 was to provide an international forum where a diverse community of professionals from academia, industry and public administration can come together to share research findings and practical experiences. The conference was also meant to provide information and education to practitioners, identify directions for further research, and to be an ongoing platform for technology transfer.

The conference consisted of research papers presentations, workshops, tutorials, panels, and project demonstration.

Just to open my mind, a good plunge into the fresh water of realistic software and system development in business and research for the next future!

Android phone

The Android phone G1�s specs are still unknown but this phone for T-Mobile is rumored to have a 528Mhz Qualcomm 7201 processor; Data kit for USB connectivity in the box; 64-128MB Internal RAM; 256MB Internal ROM, 1GB MicroSD card; Dedicated camera button; 3.1MP camera (no flash) 2048 x 1536; Video playback files - H.264, streaming, 3GPP, MPEG4, and Codec 3GP and a Dedicated YouTube Player.