Highlights of the Year

Awards

• The paper “Designing Parallel Data Processing for Large-Scale Sensor Orchestration” by Milan Kabac and Charles Consel received a Best Paper award at UIC 2016, the 13th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, held in July 2016 in Toulouse, France.

• The web application “It's my life. I choose it!”, developed by the Phoenix team in collaboration with the University of Bordeaux (Laboratoire handicap action cognition santé), the University of Mons (Service d’ortho-pédagogie clinique), and the association Trisomie 21 France, received the Universal Accessibility Prize at APAJH 2016, held on November 14th, 2016, in Paris. The web application is available at http://www.monprojetdevie.trisomie21-france.org/.

• The pitch for a startup based on technology from the HomeAssist project received a prize at the “Journée Horizon Startup”, held on December, 1st, 2016, in Paris.

Abstract : Masses of sensors are being deployed at the scale of cities to manage parking spaces, transportation infrastructures to monitor traffic, and campuses of buildings to reduce energy consumption. These large-scale infrastructures become a reality for citizens via applications that orchestrate sensors to deliver high-value, innovative services. These applications critically rely on the processing of large amounts of data to analyze situations, inform users, and control devices. This paper proposes a design-driven approach to developing orchestrating applications for masses of sensors that integrates parallel processing of large amounts of data. Specifically, an application design exposes declarations that are used to generate a programming framework based on the MapReduce programming model. We have developed a prototype of our approach, using Apache Hadoop. We applied it to a case study and obtained significant speedups by parallelizing computations over twelve nodes. In doing so, we demonstrate that our design-driven approach allows to abstract over implementation details, while exposing architectural properties used to generate high-performance code for processing large datasets. Furthermore, we show that this high-performance support enables new, personalized services in a smart city. Finally, we discuss the expressiveness of our design language, identify some limitations, and present language extensions.

This distiction was awarded to only two papers out of the 45 papers presented at UIC this year (top 5%). See the official UIC 2016 Best Papers page for details.

Self Determination-Based Design To Achieve Acceptance of Assisted Living Technologies For Older Adults

Dupuy, L., Consel, C., Sauzéon, H., Computers in Human Behavior

Abstract: Providing technological support to assist older adults in their daily activities is a promising approach to aging in place. However, acceptance is critical when technologies are embedded in the user's life. Recently, Lee et al. established a connection between acceptance and motivation. They approached motivation via the Self-Determination Theory (SDT): the capacity to make choices and to take decisions.

This paper leverages SDT to promote a new design style for gerontechnologies that consists of principles and requirements. We applied our approach to develop an assisted living platform, which was used to conduct a six-month field study with 34 older adults. We show that self-determination is a determining factor of technology acceptance. Furthermore, our platform improved the self-determination of equipped participants, compared to the control group, suggesting that our approach is effective. As such, SDT opens up new opportunities for improving the design process of gerontechnologies.

The following paper journal has been accepted for publication:

Frameworks compiled from declarations: a language-independent approach

Paul van der Walt, Charles Consel, and Emilie Balland

Software Practice and Experience· January 2016

Abstract : Programming frameworks are an accepted fixture in the object-oriented world, motivated by the need for code reuse, developer guidance, and restriction. A new trend is emerging where frameworks require domain experts to provide declarations using a domain-specific language (DSL), influencing the structure and behaviour of the resulting application. These mechanisms address concerns such as user privacy. Although many popular open platforms such as Android are based on declaration-driven frameworks, current implementations provide ad hoc and narrow solutions to concerns raised by their openness to non-certified developers. Most widely used frameworks fail to address serious privacy leaks, and provide the user with little insight into application behaviour. To address these shortcomings, we show that declaration-driven frameworks can limit privacy leaks, as well as guide developers, independently from the underlying programming paradigm. To do so, we identify concepts that underlie declaration-driven frameworks, and apply them systematically to both an object-oriented language, Java, and a dynamic functional language, Racket. The resulting programming framework generators are used to develop a prototype mobile application, illustrating how we mitigate a common class of privacy leaks. Finally, we explore the possible design choices and propose development principles for developing domain-specific language compilers to produce frameworks, applicable across a spectrum of programming paradigms.

During the month of may 2016, 4 new papers in the Ubiquitous Computing domain were accepted for publication, as follows:

• 3 papers at The 13th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2016)

• 1 paper at the Workshop on Smart and Sustainable City (WSSC'16) associated to the 13th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2016)

The UIC conference and its workshops will be held on July 18 - 21, 2016 in Toulouse, France.

Here are the details of the papers:

Designing Parallel Data Processing for Large-Scale Sensor Orchestration

Milan Kabáč, Charles Consel

13th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2016), Jul 2016, Toulouse, France. <http://uic2016.sciencesconf.org>

Leveraging Declarations over the Lifecycle of Large-Scale Sensor Applications

Milan Kabáč, Charles Consel, Nic Volanschi

13th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2016), Jul 2016, Toulouse, France. <http://uic2016.sciencesconf.org>

Improving the Reliability of Pervasive Computing Applications By Continuous Checking of Sensor Readings

Adrien Carteron, Charles Consel, Nic Volanschi

13th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2016), Jul 2016, Toulouse, France. <http://uic2016.sciencesconf.org>

Towards Smart and Sustainable Multimodal Public Transports Based on a Participatory Ecosystem

Nic Volanschi

Workshop on Smart and Sustainable City (WSSC'16), Jul 2016, Toulouse, France. <https://www.irit.fr/~Georges.Da-Costa/wssc/>

Title: Design and Experimental Validation of a Technological Support for School Inclusion of Children with Autismem Spectrum Disorders in Mainstream Classrooms

Supervisors: Charles Consel and Hélène Sauzéon

President : PU-PH Manuel Bouvard --- CNRS UMR 5287 - INCIA, CH Charles Perrens

External examiners : Pr. Luc Vandromme --- Université de Picardie Jules Verne
Assistant-Professor Matthew Goodwin --- Northeastern University

Examiners : Pr. Christelle Maillart --- Université de Liège
Pr. Lyda Lannegrand --- Université de Bordeaux
MCU Ouriel Grynzspan --- Université Pierre et Marie Curie

Abstract:

School inclusion of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in mainstream classrooms remains dramatically limited in France, even though it has been recognized as critical for socio- professional perspectives. In fact, the atypical cognitive functioning, associated with socio-adaptive behavior difficulties (communication, social skills, autonomy, etc.), are usually confronted to nor- malized expectations in these mainstream environments, such as schools. New technologies can be seen as promising levers to overcome the barriers of school inclusion. However, despite a plethoric offer of technologies for children with ASD, scientific studies are lacking to establish their efficacy, as well as the relevance of their design. This work presents the design and validation of mobile applications to support school inclusion of children with ASD in mainstream classrooms through three studies, that allowed improvements in socio-adaptive behaviors and socio-cognitive functioning, crucial forthe success of mainstream school inclusion.

The article is accessible here (in french).

Thesis defense: Paul van der Walt

Date: 14th of December 2015, at 13:00
Location: Ada Lovelace (A303), INRIA Bordeaux–Sud Ouest, Talence, France