Showing papers on "Object-oriented design published in 2008"

Faunus: An object oriented framework for molecular simulation.

Abstract: We present a C++ class library for Monte Carlo simulation of molecular systems, including proteins in solution. The design is generic and highly modular, enabling multiple developers to easily implement additional features. The statistical mechanical methods are documented by extensive use of code comments that – subsequently – are collected to automatically build a web-based manual. We show how an object oriented design can be used to create an intuitively appealing coding framework for molecular simulation. This is exemplified in a minimalistic C++ program that can calculate protein protonation states. We further discuss performance issues related to high level coding abstraction. C++ and the Standard Template Library (STL) provide a high-performance platform for generic molecular modeling. Automatic generation of code documentation from inline comments has proven particularly useful in that no separate manual needs to be maintained.

System, multi-tier interface and methods for management of operational structured data

Abstract: The invention provides a computer implemented, methods, systems, software program devices, and a Multi-Tier Graphical Interface level General User Interface (GUI) screen designed to support data integration processes for IT and Subject Matter Experts User access and use of structured data sources. The software enables create, extract, transform, programs, processes, and load data integration application Data Integration Application (Composite Object)s through an object based software design enabling efficient and rapid retrieval, processing, and positioning of structured data directly from one or multiple data sources to the required formats, processes, and application support at the skills set levels of the user. The software is a command and processes design for Data Integration Application (Composite Object) that can be transaction oriented, recurring process, as well as periodic The software is an open, data oriented system design for rapid generation and support of Data Integration Application (Composite Object)s using a Multi-Tier three dimensional graphical interface design for cell based data applications. The Data Integration Application (Composite Object) are compiled, independent object applications residing in an object library designated by the user/user IT organization. The compiled data application object are run on the organization's existing computing systems under standard compute processing procedures as either independent applications or in support of the organizations ongoing business/operational requirements for data use requirements.

Visually localizing design problems with disharmony maps

Abstract: Assessing the quality of software design is difficult, as "design" is expressed through guidelines and heuristics, not rigorous rules. One successful approach to assess design quality is based on detection strategies, which are metrics-based composed logical conditions, by which design fragments with specific properties are detected in the source code. Such detection strategies, when executed on large software systems usually return large sets of artifacts, which potentially exhibit one or more "design disharmonies", which are then inspected manually, a cumbersome activity. In this article we present disharmony maps, a visualization-based approach to locate such flawed software artifacts in large systems. We display the whole system using a 3D visualization technique based on a city metaphor. We enrich such visualizations with the results returned by a number of detection strategies, and thus render both the static structure and the design problems that affect a subject system. We evaluate our approach on a number of open-source Java systems and report on our findings.

Method and system for generating a control system user interface

Abstract: A method for providing an improved user navigation interface (1) for an industrial control system. The system comprises at least a computer and a display device and a computer implemented workplace application. The system also comprises system with a plurality of process control interfaces displayed on the display device, the process control interfaces comprising one or more software objects for controlling and/or monitoring objects controlled by the control system. The method comprises displaying in the user interface a set of the process control interfaces V2, V2' generated by one instance of said workplace application in a designated view 5 which comprises a corresponding set of graphic user interface objects 5a-n. Each graphic user interface object identifies and, on selection, displays the corresponding said process control interface. By selecting a first or second graphic user interface object 5a, 5m, a user can switch between a display of a first process control interface V2 and a display of the second process control interface V2' provided by the same instance of the workplace application. A graphic user interface, a system and a computer program for carrying out the method are also described.

Automated modeling and robotic grasping of unknown three-dimensional objects

Abstract: This paper describes the development of a novel vision-based modeling and grasping system for three-dimensional (3D) objects whose shape and location are unknown a priori. Our approach integrates online computer vision-based 3D object modeling with online 3D grasp planning and execution. A single wrist-mounted video camera is moved around the stationary object to obtain images from multiple viewpoints. Object silhouettes are extracted from these images and used to form a 3D solid model of the object. To refine the model, the object's top surface is modeled by scanning with a wrist-mounted line laser while recording images. The laser line in each image is used to form a 3D surface model that is combined with the silhouette result. The grasp planning algorithm is designed for the parallel-jaw grippers that are commonly used in industry. The algorithm analyses the solid model, generates a robust force closure grasp, and outputs the required gripper position and orientation for grasping the object. The robot then automatically picks up the object. Experiments are performed with two real-world 3D objects, a metal bracket and a hex nut. The shape, position and orientation of the objects are not known by the system a priori. The time required to compute an object model and plan a grasp was less than 4 s for each object. The experimental results demonstrate that the automated grasping system can obtain suitable models and generate successful grasps, even when the objects are not lying parallel to the supporting table.

Informed visual search: Combining attention and object recognition

Abstract: This paper studies the sequential object recognition problem faced by a mobile robot searching for specific objects within a cluttered environment. In contrast to current state-of-the-art object recognition solutions which are evaluated on databases of static images, the system described in this paper employs an active strategy based on identifying potential objects using an attention mechanism and planning to obtain images of these objects from numerous viewpoints. We demonstrate the use of a bag-of-features technique for ranking potential objects, and show that this measure outperforms geometric matching for invariance across viewpoints. Our system implements informed visual search by prioritising map locations and re-examining promising locations first. Experimental results demonstrate that our system is a highly competent object recognition system that is capable of locating numerous challenging objects amongst distractors.

View Synthesis for Recognizing Unseen Poses of Object Classes

Abstract: An important task in object recognition is to enable algorithms to categorize objects under arbitrary poses in a cluttered 3D world. A recent paper by Savarese & Fei-Fei [1] has proposed a novel representation to model 3D object classes. In this representation stable parts of objects from one class are linked together to capture both the appearance and shape properties of the object class. We propose to extend this framework and improve the ability of the model to recognize poses that have not been seen in training. Inspired by works in single object view synthesis (e.g., Seitz & Dyer [2]), our new representation allows the model to synthesize novel views of an object class at recognition time. This mechanism is incorporated in a novel two-step algorithm that is able to classify objects under arbitrary and/or unseen poses. We compare our results on pose categorization with the model and dataset presented in [1]. In a second experiment, we collect a new, more challenging dataset of 8 object classes from crawling the web. In both experiments, our model shows competitive performances compared to [1] for classifying objects in unseen poses.

An Empirical Validation of Object-Oriented Design Metrics for Fault Prediction

Abstract: Problem Statement: Object-oriented design has become a dominant method in software industry and many design metrics of object-oriented programs have been proposed for quality prediction, but there is no well-accepted statement on how significant those metrics are. In this study, empirical analysis is carried out to validate object-oriented design metrics for defects estimation. Approach: The Chidamber and Kemerer metrics suite is adopted to estimate the number of defects in the programs, which are extracted from a public NASA data set. The techniques involved are statistical analysis and neuro-fuzzy approach. Results: The results indicate that SLOC, WMC, CBO and RFC are reliable metrics for defect estimation. Overall, SLOC imposes most significant impact on the number of defects. Conclusions/Recommendations: The design metrics are closely related to the number of defects in OO classes, but we can not jump to a conclusion by using one analysis technique. We recommend using neuro-fuzzy approach together with statistical techniques to reveal the relationship between metrics and dependent variables, and the correlations among those metrics also have to be considered.

System and method for managing object to relational one-to-many mapping

Abstract: Instructions are generated to manipulate target objects and relationships in a relational database when a source object having a one-to-many relationship of privately owned type with the target objects is manipulated. To generate instructions, mapping meta-data is used which contains information as to how object classes of the object model map to tables in the database and how relationships map to foreign keys.

A framework of region-based spatial relations for non-overlapping features and its application in object based image analysis

Abstract: Object based image analysis (OBIA) is an approach increasingly used in classifying high spatial resolution remote sensing images. Object based image classifiersfirst segment an image into objects (or image segments), and then classify these objects based on their attributes and spatial relations. Numerous algorithms exist for the first step of the OBIA process, i.e. image segmentation. However, less research has been conducted on the object classification part of OBIA, in particular the spatial relations between objects that are commonly used to construct rules for classifying image objects and refining classification results. In this paper, we establish a context where objects are areal (not points or lines) and non-overlapping (we call this “single-valued” space), and propose a framework of binary spatial relations between segmented objects to aid in object classification. In this framework, scaledependent “line-like objects” and “point-like objects” are identified from areal objects based on their shapes. Generally, disjoint and meet are the only two possible topological relations between two non-overlapping areal objects. However, a number of quasitopological relations can be defined when the shapes of the objects involved are considered. Some of these relations are fuzzy and thus quantitatively defined. In addition, we define the concepts of line-like objects (e.g. roads) and point-like objects (e.g. wells), and develop the relations between two line-like objects or two point-like objects. For completeness, cardinal direction relations and distance relations are also introduced in the proposed context. Finally, we implement the framework to extract roads and moving vehicles from an aerial photo. The promising results suggest that our methods can be a valuable tool in defining rules for object based image analysis. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Inc. (ISPRS).

Making object learning and recognition an active process

Abstract: The exploration and learning of new objects is an essential capability of a cognitive robot. In this paper we focus on making use of the robot's manipulation abilities to learn complete object representations suitable for 3D object recognition. Taking control of the object allows the robot to focus on relevant parts of the images, thus bypassing potential pitfalls of purely bottom-up attention and segmentation. The main contribution of the paper consists in integrated visuomotor processes that allow the robot to learn object representations by manipulation without having any prior knowledge about the objects. Our experimental results show that the acquired data is of sufficient quality to train a classifier that can recognize 3D objects independently of the viewpoint.

Detecting Bad Smells in Object Oriented Design Using Design Change Propagation Probability Matrix

Abstract: Object oriented software systems are subject to frequent modifications either during development (iterative, agile software development) or software evolution. For such systems which have large number of classes, detection of design defects is a complex task. Bad smells are used to identify design defects in object oriented software design. Identification of bad smells allows us to apply appropriate refactorings to improve the quality of design. In existing bad smell detection systems, bad smells are generally detected using human intuition, and recently, people started developing quantitative methods. As human intuition is subjective, the quantitative methods to detect bad smells are effective as they do not include subjectivity (bias) and allows for automation. This paper proposes a quantitative method. The proposed quantitative method makes use of the concept design change propagation probability matrix (DCPP matrix) to detect two important bad smells. The first one is shotgun surgery bad smell and the other one is divergent change bad smell. Two of the advantages of the proposed quantitative method are: Detecting shotgun surgery and divergent change bad smells require that the design change propagation between artifacts that are connected directly and indirectly should be considered quantitatively. The proposed method considers this aspect quantitatively. The second advantage is, the method is amicable for automation. Using this proposed method, with typical example designs, the bad smells shotgun surgery and divergent change are detected. Appropriate refactorings are suggested for the detected bad smells. Different advantages of the proposed quantitative method are presented. A broader framework in which this quantitative method is applied is given.

Semantic Modeling of Places using Objects

Abstract: While robot mapping has seen massive strides recently, higher level abstractions in map representation are still not widespread Maps containing semantic concepts such as objects and labels are essential for many tasks in manmade environments as well as for human-robot interaction and map communication In keeping with this aim, we present a model for places using objects as the basic unit of representation Our model is a 3D extension of the constellation object model, popular in computer vision, in which the objects are modeled by their appearance and shape The 3D location of each object is maintained in a coordinate frame local to the place The individual object models are learned in a supervised manner using roughly segmented and labeled training images Stereo range data is used to compute 3D locations of the objects We use the Swendsen-Wang algorithm, a cluster MCMC method, to solve the correspondence problem between image features and objects during inference We provide a technique for building panoramic place models from multiple views of a location An algorithm for place recognition by comparing models is also provided Results are presented in the form of place models inferred in an indoor environmentWe envision the use of our place model as a building block towards a complete object-based semantic mapping system

Key Object Driven Multi-category Object Recognition, Localization and Tracking Using Spatio-temporal Context

Abstract: In this paper we address the problem of recognizing, localizing and tracking multiple objects of different categories in meeting room videos. Difficulties such as lack of detail and multi-object co-occurrence make it hard to directly apply traditional object recognition methods. Under such circumstances, we show that incorporating object-level spatio-temporal relationships can lead to significant improvements in inference of object category and state. Contextual relationships are modeled by a dynamic Markov random field, in which recognition, localization and tracking are done simultaneously. Further, we define human as the key object of the scene, which can be detected relatively robustly and therefore is used to guide the inference of other objects. Experiments are done on the CHIL meeting video corpus. Performance is evaluated in terms of object detection and false alarm rates, object recognition confusion matrix and pixel-level accuracy of object segmentation.

A pattern-driven security process for SOA applications

Abstract: SOA enables the design of flexible and modular software applications that can be used in a cross-organization context. Unfortunately, those qualities have a negative impact on the security of the software application. In this paper, we provide an approach to build secure SOA applications that takes into account the new security issues introduced by the complexity of SOA-based applications. We build upon two different approaches to secure SOA applications: model-driven development and the use of security patterns.

An overview of the STEAMiE Educational game Engine

Abstract: Today, there exists a significant disparity in the degree of technological development between commercial and educational games. The STEAMiE educational engine is a cutting-edge system used to create advanced, realistic, immersive learning environments. These environments have been shown to influence comprehension and retention of hard-to-teach science concepts. This paper will present an overview of the features of our STEAMiE educational engine and how to use it to create games/simulations capable of enhancing a userpsilas learning experience. The STEAMiE educational engine contains a rich feature set allowing for development of powerful modules within a short period of time. From a development point of view, the STEAMiE educational enginepsilas object oriented design is modular and can be easily extended to support new functionality in a timely manner. This significantly shortens development time and abstracts complexities from the developer allowing for clean and efficient implementations of games and simulations.

Simulating Complex Adaptive Geographic Systems: A Geographically Aware Intelligent Agent Approach

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to present a spatially explicit agent-based simulation framework with a supporting software package to explore complex adaptive geographic systems. This framework is ...

A Pattern-Driven Security Process for SOA Applications

Abstract: SOA enables the design of flexible and modular software applications that can be used in a cross- organization context. Unfortunately, those qualities have a negative impact on the security of the software application. In this paper, we investigate the production of secure SOA applications. In particular, we provide an approach to build secure SOA applications that takes into account the new security issues introduced by the complexity of SOA-based applications. We build upon two different approaches to secure SOA applications: model-driven development and the use of security patterns.

LePUS3: An Object-Oriented Design Description Language

Abstract: LePUS3 [1] (lepus.org.uk) is a logic, visual, object-oriented Design Description Language: a formal specification language designed to capture and convey the building-blocks of object-oriented design. LePUS3 minimal vocabulary constitutes of abstraction mechanisms that can specify effectively and precisely design patterns and the design of JavaTM(C++, Smalltalk, etc.) programs at any level of abstraction.

Generic data object mapping agent

Abstract: This disclosure relates to computer implemented methods, systems, and software for automatically preparing data from a data object used in an enterprise software application. Updates can be received for first and second data objects, the data objects each including hierarchical data with at least one node. The data objects can be associated with a service-oriented enterprise software application. A mapping, from the first data object to a first structured data element, can be identified using a first mapping agent. A mapping, from the second data object to a second structured data element, can be identified using a first mapping agent. In some instances, data can be loaded from at least one of the first or second data objects using the first mapping agent. Loading data from the data object can be based on the mapping from the data object to the respective structured data element.

How intuitive is object-oriented design?

Abstract: Intuition is a powerful tool that helps us navigate through life, but it can get in the way of more formal processes.

On the design of interfaces to sparse direct solvers

Abstract: We discuss the design of general, flexible, consistent, reusable, and efficient interfaces to software libraries for the direct solution of systems of linear equations on both serial and distributed memory architectures. We introduce a set of abstract classes to access the linear system matrix elements and their distribution, access vector elements, and control the solution of the linear system. We describe a concrete implementation of the proposed interfaces, and report examples of applications and numerical results showing that the overhead induced by the object-oriented design is negligible under typical conditions of usage. We include examples of applications, and we comment on the advantages and limitations of the design.

Database driven relational object modeling and design system, method and software

Abstract: The systems, methods, and software of the present invention relate to a database drive relational object modeling and design platform, which addresses the need for a system that allows the design and modification of complex three dimensional objects while doing so in a manner that reduces the requirements for computing power, user training, and man-hours input for design completion. In preferred embodiments, the systems, methods, and software of the present invention provide for a complete end-to-end package that can be used from design initiation to final production, fabrication, and assembly of the designed object.

The architecture and design of a malleable object-oriented prolog engine

Abstract: The implementation of Prolog systems has a long history, from the first interpreter written in 1972 to de facto standard model of the Warren Abstract Machine. Although many architectural variations have been proposed, object-oriented design was left mostly unexplored, favoring other factors such as execution time and memory storage optimizations. However, today complex software systems are typically built as aggregates of heterogeneous components, where logic programming may effectively help facing key issues such as intelligence of components and management of interaction. In this scenario, implementation of logic languages could just aim at reasonable - rather than maximum - efficiency, requiring instead configurable and flexible architectures to allow for extensions and tailoring for different application domains. tuProlog is an object-oriented Prolog engine which has been designed to feature a malleable architecture at its core, and to exhibit the typical properties of basic components for complex dynamic systems and intelligent infrastructures---such as easy deployability, lightness, and configurability. In this paper, we first describe tuProlog's malleable architecture, composed by a set of managers controlling sensible parts of the system, and operating around a minimal interpreter shaped as a Finite State Machine. Then, we support the malleability claim by discussing two possible architectural extension of the engine.

Systems and methods for building and using social networks in image analysis

Abstract: Computer-implemented systems and methods for identifying an object in an image are provided. In one example, the method includes identifying a first object related to an electronic image. The image includes at least a second object. Based at least in part on the identity of the first object, social networking information related to the first object is used to programmatically identify the second object. The first object and/or the second object may be a person. In some embodiments, metadata associated with the image may be used to identify the second object. Based at least in part on the identifications, social networking information may be associated between the first object and the second object.

Object based modeling for software application query generation

Abstract: This disclosure relates to computer implemented methods, systems, and software for querying data associated with a service-oriented enterprise software application. A query request is received, for data associated with a service-oriented enterprise software application. A business information view object can be identified based on the query request. Using a query embodied in the business information view object, business objects can be queried that are decoupled from the enterprise software application. In another instance, a business object associated with a service-oriented enterprise software application can be identified and metadata extracted, relating to the identified business object. Business information view objects can be automatically generated based on the business object and the extracted metadata.

Analysis Software with an Object-Oriented Petri Net Model

Abstract: Petri net is used widely to analyze and model various systems formally. Recently, Many Petri nets mania devote their efforts to enhancing and extending the expressive Power of Petri nets. One such effort is to extend Petri nets with object-oriented concepts. An object-oriented paradigm provides excellent concepts to model real-world problems. Object-oriented concepts allow us to build software systems easily, intuitively and Naturally. Although several high-level Petri nets with the concept of objects are suggested, These nets do not fully support the object-oriented concepts. Object Oriented Methodology lacks the rigor to verify formal validate the designed system. Petri Nets provide formal graphical representation, incorporate concurrency and parallelism. In Colored Petri Nets (CPNs), Objects and object attributes can be modeled with data structures. The hierarchical structure of (CPNs) is useful in representing Class Inheritance and to describe dynamics of objects. To check the correctness of the designed system, there is a need to integrate Object Oriented techniques at design level and use of (CPNs) at the Verification and Validation level in software system development. This paper presents a technique to transform an Object Oriented Design (OOD) into Hierarchical (CPNs) model with Object Oriented Petri Nets Model (OOPNM) approach.