AI For Business Specialization Upenn

AI For Business Specialization Upenn — independent reviews, comparisons, pricing and step-by-step guides on Aizhi.

  • Google Clips

    Google Clips

    Google Clips is a discontinued miniature clip-on camera device developed by Google. == History == It was announced on October 4, 2017 and went on sale on January 27, 2018. Google Clips automatically captured video clips (without audio) at moments its machine learning algorithms determined to be interesting or relevant. An indicator flashed when the camera was looking for scenes to capture. Google Clips' artificial intelligence (AI) could learn the faces of people to take photographs with certain people, and could automatically set lighting and framing. It had 16 GB of storage built-in storage and could record clips for up to 3 hours. This camera was originally priced at US$249 in the United States. It was withdrawn from sale on October 15, 2019, but supported until the end of December 2021. == Reception == The Independent wrote that Google Clips is "an impressive little device, but one that also has the potential to feel very creepy." According to The Verge's generally negative review, "it didn't capture anything special" over two weeks of testing.

    Read more →
  • C3D Toolkit

    C3D Toolkit

    C3D Toolkit is a proprietary cross-platform geometric modeling kit software developed by Russian C3D Labs (previously part of ASCON Group). It's written in C++ . It can be licensed by other companies for use in their 3D computer graphics software products. The most widely known software in which C3D Toolkit is typically used are computer aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), and computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems. C3D Toolkit provides routines for 3D modeling, 3D constraint solving, polygonal mesh-to-B-rep conversion, 3D visualization, and 3D file conversions etc. == History == Nikolai Golovanov is a graduate of the Mechanical Engineering department of Bauman Moscow State Technical University as a designer of space launch vehicles. Upon his graduation, he began with the Kolomna Engineering Design bureau, which at the time employed the future founders of ASCON, Alexander Golikov and Tatiana Yankina. While at the bureau, Dr Golovanov developed software for analyzing the strength and stability of shell structures. In 1989, Alexander Golikov and Tatiana Yankina left Kolomna to start up ASCON as a private company. Although they began with just an electronic drawing board, even then they were already conceiving the idea of three-dimensional parametric modeling. This radical concept eventually changed flat drawings into three-dimensional models. The ASCON founders shared their ideas with Nikolai Golovanov, and in 1996 he moved to take up his current position with ASCON. As of 2012 he was involved in developing algorithms for C3D Toolkit. In 2012 the earliest version of the C3D Modeller kernel was extracted from KOMPAS-3D CAD. It was later adopted to a range of different platforms and advertised as a separate product. == Overview == It incorporates five modules: C3D Modeler constructs geometric models, generates flat projections of models, performs triangulations, calculates the inertial characteristics of models, and determines whether collisions occur between the elements of models; C3D Modeler for ODA enables advanced 3D modeling operations through the ODA's standard "OdDb3DSolid" API from the Open Design Alliance; C3D Solver makes connections between the elements of geometric models, and considers the geometric constraints of models being edited; C3D B-Shaper converts polygonal models to boundary representation (B-rep) bodies; C3D Vision controls the quality of rendering for 3D models using mathematical apparatus and software, and the workstation hardware; C3D Converter reads and writes geometric models in a variety of standard exchange formats. == Features == == Development == == Applications == Since 2013 - the date the company started issuing a license for the toolkit -, several companies have adopted C3D software components for their products, users include: Recently, C3D Modeler has been adapted to ODA Platform. In April 2017, C3D Viewer was launched for end users. The application allows to read 3D models in common formats and write it to the C3D file format. Free version is available.

    Read more →
  • Splitwise

    Splitwise

    Splitwise is an online expense-splitting application software accessible via web browser and mobile app. The app facilitates repayments of shared bills by calculating what each person in a group owes. The primary competitor to the app is Venmo, which only operates in the U.S. Splitwise allows users to create groups with friends to determine what each person owes. All expenses and allocations are added to the app, and Splitwise simplifies the transaction history to determine exactly what payments need to be made to whom to settle outstanding balances. Splitwise stores user information via cloud storage. It was developed and is owned by Splitwise Inc., based in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. == History == The app was launched in February 2011 as SplitTheRent, intended to be used for rent splitting, by Ryan Laughlin, Jon Bittner and Marshall Weir. In September 2013, Splitwise was integrated with Venmo to allow users to settle payments via Venmo. In April 2024, Splitwise partnered with Tink, a Visa payment services company, to incorporate a bank transfer feature directly in the Splitwise app. === Financing === In December 2014, the company raised $1.4 million. In October 2016, the company raised $5 million. In April 2021, Splitwise raised $20 million in funding from series A round run by Insight Partners. == Reception == A 2022 opinion piece in The Guardian by London journalist Imogen West-Knights shared the negative effects of exactly splitting bills among friends and family members. West-Knights argued that Splitwise and similar apps can "turn people into those true enemies of all that is fun and joyful in the world: accountants." However, she said the app does work better when used by couples rather than friend groups. Other reviews noted that the app makes people petty. In contrast, an article published by Condé Nast Traveler describes how Splitwise eliminated stress caused by complicated offline bill splitting, saying it "fixed such a pervasive obstacle in group travel." Coverage by The Wall Street Journal lands somewhere in between the two contrasting views, saying Splitwise and similar apps are helpful, but users need to be prepared for difficult money-related conversations that may arise. An etiquette advisor at Debrett's, said, "The less talk you can have about money on any of these occasions, the better." An editor suggested conversations as simple as asking, "We’re splitting this evenly, right?" before a meal.

    Read more →
  • Caffe (software)

    Caffe (software)

    Caffe (Convolutional Architecture for Fast Feature Embedding) is a deep learning framework, originally developed at University of California, Berkeley. It is open source, under a BSD license. It is written in C++, with a Python interface. == History == Yangqing Jia created the Caffe project during his PhD at UC Berkeley, while working the lab of Trevor Darrell. The first version, called "DeCAF", made its first appearance in Spring 2013 when it was used for the ILSVRC challenge (later called ImageNet). The library was named Caffe and released to the public in December 2013. It reached end-of-support in 2018. It is hosted on GitHub. == Features == Caffe supports many different types of deep learning architectures geared towards image classification and image segmentation. It supports CNN, RCNN, LSTM and fully-connected neural network designs. Caffe supports GPU- and CPU-based acceleration computational kernel libraries such as Nvidia cuDNN and Intel MKL. == Applications == Caffe is being used in academic research projects, startup prototypes, and even large-scale industrial applications in vision, speech, and multimedia. Yahoo! has also integrated Caffe with Apache Spark to create CaffeOnSpark, a distributed deep learning framework. == Caffe2 == In April 2017, Facebook announced Caffe2, which included new features such as recurrent neural network (RNN). At the end of March 2018, Caffe2 was merged into PyTorch.

    Read more →
  • Eugene Goostman

    Eugene Goostman

    Eugene Goostman is a chatbot that some regard as having passed the Turing test, a test of a computer's ability to communicate indistinguishably from a human. Developed in Saint Petersburg in 2001 by a group of three programmers, the Russian-born Vladimir Veselov, Ukrainian-born Eugene Demchenko, and Russian-born Sergey Ulasen, Goostman is portrayed as a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy—characteristics that are intended to induce forgiveness in those with whom it interacts for its grammatical errors and lack of general knowledge. The Goostman bot has competed in a number of Turing test contests since its creation, and finished second in the 2005 and 2008 Loebner Prize contest. In June 2012, at an event marking what would have been the 100th birthday of the test's author, Alan Turing, Goostman won a competition promoted as the largest-ever Turing test contest, in which it successfully convinced 29% of its judges that it was human. On 7 June 2014, at a contest marking the 60th anniversary of Turing's death, 33% of the event's judges thought that Goostman was human; the event's organiser Kevin Warwick considered it to have passed Turing's test as a result, per Turing's prediction in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", that by the year 2000, machines would be capable of fooling 30% of human judges after five minutes of questioning. The validity and relevance of the announcement of Goostman's pass was questioned by critics, who noted the exaggeration of the achievement by Warwick, the bot's use of personality quirks and humour in an attempt to misdirect users from its non-human tendencies and lack of real intelligence, along with "passes" achieved by other chatbots at similar events. == Personality == Eugene Goostman is portrayed as being a 13-year-old boy from Odesa, Ukraine, who has a pet guinea pig and a father who is a gynaecologist. Veselov stated that Goostman was designed to be a "character with a believable personality". The choice of age was intentional, as, in Veselov's opinion, a thirteen-year-old is "not too old to know everything and not too young to know nothing". Goostman's young age also induces people who "converse" with him to forgive minor grammatical errors in his responses. In 2014, work was made on improving the bot's "dialog controller", allowing Goostman to output more human-like dialogue. A conversation between Scott Aaronson and Eugene Goostman ran as follows: == Competitions == Eugene Goostman has competed in a number of Turing test competitions, including the Loebner Prize contest; it finished joint second in the Loebner test in 2001, and came second to Jabberwacky in 2005 and to Elbot in 2008. On 23 June 2012, Goostman won a Turing test competition at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, held to mark the centenary of its namesake, Alan Turing. The competition, which featured five bots, twenty-five hidden humans, and thirty judges, was considered to be the largest-ever Turing test contest by its organizers. After a series of five-minute-long text conversations, 29% of the judges were convinced that the bot was an actual human. === 2014 "pass" === On 7 June 2014, in a Turing test competition at the Royal Society, organised by Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading to mark the 60th anniversary of Turing's death, Goostman won after 33% of the judges were convinced that the bot was human. 30 judges took part in the event, which included Lord Sharkey, a sponsor of Turing's posthumous pardon, artificial intelligence Professor Aaron Sloman, Fellow of the Royal Society Mark Pagel and Red Dwarf actor Robert Llewellyn. Each judge partook in a textual conversation with each of the five bots; at the same time, they also conversed with a human. In all, a total of 300 conversations were conducted. In Warwick's view, this made Goostman the first machine to pass a Turing test. In a press release, he added that: Some will claim that the Test has already been passed. The words Turing Test have been applied to similar competitions around the world. However this event involved more simultaneous comparison tests than ever before, was independently verified and, crucially, the conversations were unrestricted. A true Turing Test does not set the questions or topics prior to the conversations. In his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Turing predicted that by the year 2000, computer programs would be sufficiently advanced that the average interrogator would, after five minutes of questioning, "not have more than 70 per cent chance" of correctly guessing whether they were speaking to a human or a machine. Although Turing phrased this as a prediction rather than a "threshold for intelligence", commentators believe that Warwick had chosen to interpret it as meaning that if 30% of interrogators were fooled, the software had "passed the Turing test". ==== Reactions ==== Warwick's claim that Eugene Goostman was the first ever chatbot to pass a Turing test was met with scepticism; critics acknowledged similar "passes" made in the past by other chatbots under the 30% criteria, including PC Therapist in 1991 (which tricked 5 of 10 judges, 50%), and at the Techniche festival in 2011, where a modified version of Cleverbot tricked 59.3% of 1334 votes (which included the 30 judges, along with an audience). Cleverbot's developer, Rollo Carpenter, argued that Turing tests can only prove that a machine can "imitate" intelligence rather than show actual intelligence. Gary Marcus was critical of Warwick's claims, arguing that Goostman's "success" was only the result of a "cleverly-coded piece of software", going on to say that "it's easy to see how an untrained judge might mistake wit for reality, but once you have an understanding of how this sort of system works, the constant misdirection and deflection becomes obvious, even irritating. The illusion, in other words, is fleeting." While acknowledging IBM's Deep Blue and Watson projects—single-purpose computer systems meant for playing chess and the quiz show Jeopardy! respectively—as examples of computer systems that show a degree of intelligence in their specialised field, he further argued that they were not an equivalent to a computer system that shows "broad" intelligence, and could—for example, watch a television programme and answer questions on its content. Marcus stated that "no existing combination of hardware and software can learn completely new things at will the way a clever child can." However, he still believed that there were potential uses for technology such as that of Goostman, specifically suggesting the creation of "believable", interactive video game characters. Imperial College London professor Murray Shanahan questioned the validity and scientific basis of the test, stating that it was "completely misplaced, and it devalues real AI research. It makes it seem like science fiction AI is nearly here, when in fact it's not and it's incredibly difficult." Mike Masnick, editor of the blog Techdirt, was also skeptical, questioning publicity blunders such as the five chatbots being referred to in press releases as "supercomputers", and saying that "creating a chatbot that can fool humans is not really the same thing as creating artificial intelligence."

    Read more →
  • Software component

    Software component

    A software component is a modular unit of software that encapsulates specific functionality. The desired characteristics of a component are reusability and maintainability. == Value == Components allow software developers to assemble software with reliable parts rather than writing code for every aspect. It makes implementation more like factory assembly than custom building. == Attributes == Desirable attributes of a component include but are not limited to: Cohesive – encapsulates related functionality Reusable Robust Substitutable – can be replaced by another component with the same interface Documented Tested == Third-party == Some components are built in-house by the same organization or team building the software system. Some are third-party, developed elsewhere and assembled into the software system. == Component-based software engineering == For large-scale systems, component-based development encourages a disciplined process to manage complexity. == Framework == Some components conform to a framework technology that allows them to be consumed in a well-known way. Examples include: CORBA, COM, Enterprise JavaBeans, and the .NET Framework. == Modeling == Component design is often modeled visually. In Unified Modeling Language (UML) 2.0 a component is shown as a rectangle, and an interface is shown as a lollipop to indicate a provided interface and as a socket to indicate consumption of an interface. == History == The idea of reusable software components was promoted by Douglas McIlroy in his presentation at the NATO Software Engineering Conference of 1968. (One goal of that conference was to resolve the so-called software crisis of the time.) In the 1970s, McIlroy put this idea into practice with the addition of the pipeline feature to the Unix operating system. Brad Cox refined the concept of a software component in the 1980s. He attempted to create an infrastructure and market for reusable third-party components by inventing the Objective-C programming language. IBM introduced System Object Model (SOM) in the early 1990s. Microsoft introduced Component Object Model (COM) in the early 1990s. Microsoft built many domain-specific component technologies on COM, including Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), and ActiveX.

    Read more →
  • Human visual system model

    Human visual system model

    A human visual system model (HVS model) is used by image processing, video processing and computer vision experts to deal with biological and psychological processes that are not yet fully understood. Such a model is used to simplify the behaviors of what is a very complex system. As our knowledge of the true visual system improves, the model is updated. Psychovisual study is the study of the psychology of vision. The human visual system model can produce desired effects in perception and vision. Examples of using an HVS model include color television, lossy compression, and Cathode-ray tube (CRT) television. Originally, it was thought that color television required too high a bandwidth for the then available technology. Then it was noticed that the color resolution of the HVS was much lower than the brightness resolution; this allowed color to be squeezed into the signal by chroma subsampling. Another example is lossy image compression, like JPEG. Our HVS model says we cannot see high frequency detail, so in JPEG we can quantize these components without a perceptible loss of quality. Similar concepts are applied in audio compression, where sound frequencies inaudible to humans are band-stop filtered. Several HVS features are derived from evolution when we needed to defend ourselves or hunt for food. We often see demonstrations of HVS features when we are looking at optical illusions. == Block diagram of HVS == == Assumptions about the HVS == Low-pass filter characteristic (limited number of rods in human eye): see Mach bands Lack of color resolution (fewer cones in human eye than rods) Motion sensitivity More sensitive in peripheral vision Stronger than texture sensitivity, e.g. viewing a camouflaged animal Texture stronger than disparity – 3D depth resolution does not need to be so accurate Integral Face recognition (babies smile at faces) Depth inverted face looks normal (facial features overrule depth information) Upside down face with inverted mouth and eyes looks normal == Examples of taking advantage of an HVS model == Flicker frequency of film and television using persistence of vision to fool viewer into seeing a continuous image Interlaced television painting half images to give the impression of a higher flicker frequency Color television (chrominance at half resolution of luminance corresponding to proportions of rods and cones in eye) Image compression (difficult to see higher frequencies more harshly quantized) Motion estimation (use luminance and ignore color) Watermarking and Steganography

    Read more →
  • Service-oriented software engineering

    Service-oriented software engineering

    Service-oriented software engineering (SOSE), also referred to as service engineering, is a software engineering methodology focused on the development of software systems by composition of reusable services (service-orientation) often provided by other service providers. Since it involves composition, it shares many characteristics of component-based software engineering, the composition of software systems from reusable components, but it adds the ability to dynamically locate necessary services at run-time. These services may be provided by others as web services, but the essential element is the dynamic nature of the connection between the service users and the service providers. == Service-oriented interaction pattern == There are three types of actors in a service-oriented interaction: service providers, service users and service registries. They participate in a dynamic collaboration which can vary from time to time. Service providers are software services that publish their capabilities and availability with service registries. Service users are software systems (which may be services themselves) that accomplish some task through the use of services provided by service providers. Service users use service registries to discover and locate the service providers they can use. This discovery and location occurs dynamically when the service user requests them from a service registry.

    Read more →
  • VOCEDplus

    VOCEDplus

    VOCEDplus is a free international research database about tertiary education, maintained and developed by staff at the c (NCVER) in Adelaide, South Australia. The focus of the database content is the relation of post-compulsory education and training to workforce needs, skills development, and social inclusion. == Structure == The content of the VOCEDplus database encompasses vocational education and training (VET), higher education, lifelong learning, informal learning, VET in schools, adult and community education, apprenticeships/traineeships, international education, providers of education and training, and workforce development. It is international in scope and contains over 84,000 English language records, many with links to full text documents. VOCEDplus contains extensive Australian materials and includes a wide range of international information, covering outcomes of tertiary education in the shape of published research, practice, policy, and statistics. Entries are included for the following types of publications: reports; annual reports; papers; discussion papers; occasional papers; working papers; books; book chapters; conference papers; conference proceedings; journals; journal articles; policy documents; published statistics; theses; podcasts; and teaching and training materials. Each database entry contains standard bibliographic information and an abstract. Many entries include full text access via the publisher's website or a digitised copy. == History == === 1989-1997 === In the early years VOCEDplus was known as VOCED. The original database was produced by a network of clearinghouses across Australia with the aim of sharing activities in the technical and further education (TAFE) sector. VOCED was produced in hardcopy and an electronic version was distributed on diskette. === 1997-2001 === 1997 - the first web version of VOCED was made available from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) organisational website 1998 - a major project to upgrade the database and expand its international coverage commenced 2001 - creation of VOCED's own website 2001 - VOCED endorsed as the UNESCO international database for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) research information === 2001-2009 === Many changes to the database and website occurred during this period with a focus on continuous improvement to meet the needs of users and utilise emerging technologies. 2006 - materials produced for two adult literacy and learning programs funded by the Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) - the Workplace English Language and Learning (WELL) Programme and the Adult Literacy National Project (ALNP) included in VOCED 2007 - the Australian clearinghouse network transferred most of the hardcopy collections to NCVER, to form a centralised repository of resources 2009 - materials produced by Reframing the Future (RTF) a vocational education and training workforce development initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments included in VOCED === 2009-2014 === A major rebuild of the database and website was undertaken during this period to take advantage of the potential of new technologies to provide improved services and incorporate Web 2.0 technologies (RSS feeds, and share and bookmark tools). 2009 - scope expanded to more fully encompass the higher education sector 2011 - launch of VOCEDplus with the name change representing the enhanced features and extended focus 2012 - a major retrospective digitisation project commenced and by the end of the 2012-2013 financial year a total of 9,328 publications (593,534 pages/microfiche frames) had been digitised, ensuring these publications are available electronically for free === 2014-2019 === A number of significant curated content products were released during this period. 2015 - release of a refreshed look to adopt the new NCVER branding plus a number of search enhancements (Guided search, Expert search, and Glossary search) were added 2015 - first in the series of 'Focus on...' pages released 2016 - launch of the 'Pod Network', a convenient and efficient platform that allows instant access to research and a multitude of resources on a range of subjects 2017 - completion of the 'Pod Network', consisting of 20 Pods (on broad subjects including Apprenticeships and traineeships, Foundation skills, Teaching and learning, Career development, and Students) and 74 Podlets (on narrow topics including Online learning, Social media, VET in schools, STEM skills, and Adult literacy) 2018 - launch of the 'Timeline of Australian VET Policy Initiatives' and the 'VET Knowledge Bank' which contains a suite of products capturing Australia's diverse, complex and ever-changing VET system 2019 - after an internal review, a refreshed, streamlined version of the 'Pod Network' was released, consisting of 13 Pods and 20 Podlets 2019 - launch of the 'VET Practitioner Resource' which contains a range of information to support VET practitioners in their work and is organised into three sections: (1) Teaching, training and assessment: standards, guidance, research and good practice resources to inform daily work; (2) Practitioners as researchers: information for undertaking practitioner-led research; and (3) The VET workforce: information about VET teachers and trainers, and the professional development needs of the VET workforce 2019 - VOCEDplus celebrated 30 years of providing information to the tertiary education sector and the homepage was refreshed to make it more modern and easier to use === 2020- === VOCEDplus continued to be accessible throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 2020-2021 - the VET Knowledge Bank added a dedicated page, 'COVID-19 announcements', that showcases the measures introduced by the Australian, state and territory governments to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and promote economic recovery 2020-2024 - published research about the effects of the pandemic on education and training, providers, students, labour markets, employment and employees was collected and made permanently available in the database 2024 - VOCEDplus celebrated 35 years of providing information to the tertiary education sector. The homepage was refreshed and a number of enhancements and new features were implemented including a new My Profile feature, improvements to My Selection, accessible search history and saved searches, enhanced search functionality, and improved navigation.

    Read more →
  • Cloud robotics

    Cloud robotics

    Cloud robotics is a field of robotics that attempts to invoke cloud technologies such as cloud computing, cloud storage, and other Internet technologies centered on the benefits of converged infrastructure and shared services for robotics. When connected to the cloud, robots can benefit from the powerful computation, storage, and communication resources of a modern data center in the cloud, which can process and share information from various robots or agents (other machines, smart objects, humans, etc.). Humans can also delegate tasks to robots remotely through networks. Cloud computing technologies enable robot systems to be gain capability whilst reducing costs through cloud technologies. Thus, it is possible to build lightweight, low-cost, smarter robots with an intelligent "brain" in the cloud. The "brain" consists of data center, knowledge base, task planners, deep learning, information processing, environment models, communication support, etc. == Components == A cloud for robots potentially has at least six significant components: Building a "cloud brain" for robots, the main object of cloud robotics; Offering a global library of images, maps, and object data, often with geometry and mechanical properties, expert system, knowledge base (i.e. semantic web, data centres); Massively-parallel computation on demand for sample-based statistical modelling and motion planning, task planning, multi-robot collaboration, scheduling and coordination of system; Robot sharing of outcomes, trajectories, and dynamic control policies and robot learning support; Human sharing of open-source code, data, and designs for programming, experimentation, and hardware construction; On-demand human guidance and assistance for evaluation, learning, and error recovery; Augmented human–robot interaction through various ways (semantics knowledge base, Apple SIRI like service, etc.). == Applications == Autonomous mobile robots Google's self-driving cars are cloud robots. The cars use the network to access Google's enormous database of maps and satellite and environment model (like Streetview) and combines it with streaming data from GPS, cameras, and 3D sensors to monitor its own position within centimetres, and with past and current traffic patterns to avoid collisions. Each car can learn something about environments, roads, or driving, or conditions, and it sends the information to the Google cloud, where it can be used to improve the performance of other cars. Cloud medical robots a medical cloud (also called a healthcare cluster) consists of various services such as a disease archive, electronic medical records, a patient health management system, practice services, analytics services, clinic solutions, expert systems, etc. A robot can connect to the cloud to provide clinical service to patients, as well as deliver assistance to doctors (e.g. a co-surgery robot). Moreover, it also provides a collaboration service by sharing information between doctors and care givers about clinical treatment. Assistive robots A domestic robot can be employed for healthcare and life monitoring for elderly people. The system collects the health status of users and exchange information with cloud expert system or doctors to facilitate elderly peoples life, especially for those with chronic diseases. For example, the robots are able to provide support to prevent the elderly from falling down, emergency healthy support such as heart disease, blooding disease. Care givers of elderly people can also get notification when in emergency from the robot through network. Industrial robots As highlighted by the German government's Industry 4.0 Plan, "Industry is on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution. Driven by the Internet, the real and virtual worlds are growing closer and closer together to form the Internet of Things. Industrial production of the future will be characterised by the strong individualisation of products under the conditions of highly flexible (large series) production, the extensive integration of customers and business partners in business and value-added processes, and the linking of production and high-quality services leading to so-called hybrid products." In manufacturing, such cloud based robot systems could learn to handle tasks such as threading wires or cables, or aligning gaskets from a professional knowledge base. A group of robots can share information for some collaborative tasks. Even more, a consumer is able to place customised product orders to manufacturing robots directly with online ordering systems. Another potential paradigm is shopping-delivery robot systems. Once an order is placed, a warehouse robot dispatches the item to an autonomous car or autonomous drone to deliver it to its recipient. == Research == RoboEarth was funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development projects, specifically to explore the field of cloud robotics. The goal of RoboEarth is to allow robotic systems to benefit from the experience of other robots, paving the way for rapid advances in machine cognition and behaviour, and ultimately, for more subtle and sophisticated human-machine interaction. RoboEarth offers a Cloud Robotics infrastructure. RoboEarth's World-Wide-Web style database stores knowledge generated by humans – and robots – in a machine-readable format. Data stored in the RoboEarth knowledge base include software components, maps for navigation (e.g., object locations, world models), task knowledge (e.g., action recipes, manipulation strategies), and object recognition models (e.g., images, object models). The RoboEarth Cloud Engine includes support for mobile robots, autonomous vehicles, and drones, which require much computation for navigation. Rapyuta is an open source cloud robotics framework based on RoboEarth Engine developed by the robotics researcher at ETHZ. Within the framework, each robot connected to Rapyuta can have a secured computing environment (rectangular boxes) giving them the ability to move their heavy computation into the cloud. In addition, the computing environments are tightly interconnected with each other and have a high bandwidth connection to the RoboEarth knowledge repository. FogROS2 is an open-source extension to the Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) developed by researchers at UC Berkeley. It enables robots to offload computationally intensive tasks—such as SLAM, grasp planning, and motion planning—to cloud resources, thereby enhancing performance and reducing onboard computational requirements. FogROS2 automates the provisioning of cloud instances, deployment of ROS 2 nodes, and secure communication between robots and cloud services. The platform is designed to be compatible with existing ROS 2 applications without requiring code modifications. Further advancements include FogROS2-SGC, which facilitates secure global connectivity across different networks and locations, and FogROS2-FT, which introduces fault tolerance by replicating services across multiple cloud providers to ensure robustness against failures. KnowRob is an extensional project of RoboEarth. It is a knowledge processing system that combines knowledge representation and reasoning methods with techniques for acquiring knowledge and for grounding the knowledge in a physical system and can serve as a common semantic framework for integrating information from different sources. RoboBrain is a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available Internet resources, computer simulations, and real-life robot trials. It accumulates everything robotics into a comprehensive and interconnected knowledge base. Applications include prototyping for robotics research, household robots, and self-driving cars. The goal is as direct as the project's name—to create a centralised, always-online brain for robots to tap into. The project is dominated by Stanford University and Cornell University. And the project is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office, Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Robotics Initiative, whose goal is to advance robotics to help make the United States more competitive in the world economy. MyRobots is a service for connecting robots and intelligent devices to the Internet. It can be regarded as a social network for robots and smart objects (i.e. Facebook for robots). With socialising, collaborating and sharing, robots can benefit from those interactions too by sharing their sensor information giving insight on their perspective of their current state. COALAS is funded by the INTERREG IVA France (Channel) – England European cross-border co-operation programme. The project aims to develop new technologies for disabled people through social and technological innovation and through the users' social and psychological integrity. The objective is to produce a cognitive ambient

    Read more →
  • List of Ruby software and tools

    List of Ruby software and tools

    This is a list of software and programming tools for the Ruby programming language, which includes libraries, web frameworks, implementations, tools, and related projects. == Web tools == Capistrano (software) – remote server automation tool Mongrel – Ruby web server Rack – interface between web servers and web applications Ruby on Rails – full-stack web application framework Sinatra – lightweight Ruby web application framework Spree Commerce – e-commerce platform WEBrick – Ruby HTTP server toolkit == Libraries == BioRuby – bioinformatics and computational biology library for Ruby Bogus – Ruby library for creating reliable test doubles with contract verification ERuby – embedded Ruby templating EventMachine – event-driven I/O library Factory Bot – test fixtures library Fat comma – Ruby library for JSON-like hash syntax Geocoder – Ruby library for geocoding and reverse geocoding addresses Haml – HTML templating engine Markaby – HTML generation via Ruby Nokogiri – XML/HTML parsing library RSpec – behavior-driven testing framework for Ruby RubyGems – package manager for Ruby libraries and applications Sass – CSS preprocessor Sidekiq – background job framework for Ruby, used to handle asynchronous tasks. Uconv – Unicode text conversion library Watir – web application testing framework == Ruby implementations == HotRuby – Ruby interpreter implemented in JavaScript, enabling Ruby code to run in web browsers. IronRuby – Ruby for .NET platform JRuby – Ruby on the Java Virtual Machine MacRuby – Ruby implementation for macOS Mod ruby – Apache module that embeds the Ruby interpreter to improve performance of Ruby web applications Mruby – lightweight Ruby interpreter Rubinius – alternative Ruby implementation, based loosely on the Smalltalk-80 Blue Book design. Ruby MRI – the standard Ruby interpreter YARV – "Yet Another Ruby VM," the bytecode interpreter used in modern Ruby implementations == Tools == Homebrew – package manager for macOS and Linux written in Ruby Pry – interactive Ruby shell Rake – build and task management Ruby Version Manager – environment manager RubyCocoa – bridge between Ruby and Cocoa RubyForge – project hosting site RubyMotion – for iOS/macOS development RubySpec – language specification tests == Integrated Development Environments == Aptana Studio — integrated RadRails plugin for Ruby on Rails development Eclipse DLTK Ruby Plugin — Ruby development plugin for Eclipse Eric — open-source Python-based IDE with Ruby support Komodo IDE — commercial cross-platform IDE with Ruby support RubyMine — commercial IDE for Ruby and Rails by JetBrains SlickEdit — commercial cross-platform IDE with Ruby support == List of websites using Ruby on Rails == Airbnb Basecamp Diaspora – decentralized social network application built with Ruby on Rails Discourse – open-source discussion platform built with Ruby on Rails Fiverr GitHub Hulu Shopify SoundCloud Twitch Zendesk

    Read more →
  • Telligent Community

    Telligent Community

    Telligent Community is a community and collaboration software platform developed by Telligent Systems and was first released in 2004. Telligent Community is built on the Telligent Evolution platform, with a variety of core applications running on top of it such as blogs, forums, media galleries, and wikis. Additional applications from third parties using the API's and REST stack can be installed or integrated with the platform. Telligent Community is built with ASP.NET, C#, and Microsoft SQL Server. It is available as downloadable software that can be installed on a web server or via hosting providers. The current version is Verint Community 12.0 which was released February 2012. The product used to be named Community Server before being rebranded as part of the 5.0 release. == History == Telligent Systems was founded by Rob Howard in 2004, who was previously part of Microsoft's ASP.NET team. Telligent introduced its first product, Community Server, in the fall of 2004. Community Server was one of the first integrated community platforms that brought together blogs, photo galleries, wikis, forums, user profiles and more. Community Server was based on the merger of three then-widely used open source ASP.NET projects: the ASP.NET Forums, nGallery photo gallery, and .Text blog engine. The people behind those projects (Scott Watermasysk, Jason Alexander, and Rob Howard) joined together as Telligent Systems and along with several other software developers created Community Server 1.0. Between 2004 and 2009 Community Server steadily grew in scope, features, and capabilities. In 2008 Telligent Systems released a second version of Community Server that targeted as an Enterprise Social Software platform used to create and manage internal employee communities and intranets. Originally branded as Community Server Evolution this was later renamed Telligent Enterprise. Telligent also announced a new Enterprise Reporting platform at its first Community Server Developers Conference in 2008, which was later renamed Harvest. It was one of the first analytics suites for enterprise collaboration software, and provides social analytics including sentiment analysis, social fingerprints, and buzz analysis on social networking sites such as Twitter. Telligent rebranded all of its products on June 23, 2009 at the Enterprise 2.0 conference when it launched its new Evolution platform product suite. Community Server became known as Telligent Community, Community Server Evolution became known as Telligent Enterprise and the underlying platform that both run on is now referred to as Telligent Evolution. The Social Analytics suite was renamed Telligent Analytics.

    Read more →
  • POP-11

    POP-11

    POP-11 is a reflective, incrementally compiled programming language with many of the features of an interpreted language. It is the core language of the Poplog programming environment developed originally by the University of Sussex, and recently in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, which hosts the main Poplog website. POP-11 is an evolution of the language POP-2, developed in Edinburgh University, and features an open stack model (like Forth, among others). It is mainly procedural, but supports declarative language constructs, including a pattern matcher, and is mostly used for research and teaching in artificial intelligence, although it has features sufficient for many other classes of problems. It is often used to introduce symbolic programming techniques to programmers of more conventional languages like Pascal, who find POP syntax more familiar than that of Lisp. One of POP-11's features is that it supports first-class functions. POP-11 is the core language of the Poplog system. The availability of the compiler and compiler subroutines at run-time (a requirement for incremental compiling) gives it the ability to support a far wider range of extensions (including run-time extensions, such as adding new data-types) than would be possible using only a macro facility. This made it possible for (optional) incremental compilers to be added for Prolog, Common Lisp and Standard ML, which could be added as required to support either mixed language development or development in the second language without using any POP-11 constructs. This made it possible for Poplog to be used by teachers, researchers, and developers who were interested in only one of the languages. The most successful product developed in POP-11 was the Clementine data mining system, developed by ISL. After SPSS bought ISL, they renamed Clementine to SPSS Modeler and decided to port it to C++ and Java, and eventually succeeded with great effort, and perhaps some loss of the flexibility provided by the use of an AI language. POP-11 was for a time available only as part of an expensive commercial package (Poplog), but since about 1999 it has been freely available as part of the open-source software version of Poplog, including various added packages and teaching libraries. An online version of ELIZA using POP-11 is available at Birmingham. At the University of Sussex, David Young used POP-11 in combination with C and Fortran to develop a suite of teaching and interactive development tools for image processing and vision, and has made them available in the Popvision extension to Poplog. == Simple code examples == Here is an example of a simple POP-11 program: define Double(Source) -> Result; Source2 -> Result; enddefine; Double(123) => That prints out: 246 This one includes some list processing: define RemoveElementsMatching(Element, Source) -> Result; lvars Index; [[% for Index in Source do unless Index = Element or Index matches Element then Index; endunless; endfor; %]] -> Result; enddefine; RemoveElementsMatching("the", [[the cat sat on the mat]]) => ;;; outputs [[cat sat on mat]] RemoveElementsMatching("the", [[the cat] [sat on] the mat]) => ;;; outputs [[the cat] [sat on] mat] RemoveElementsMatching([[= cat]], [[the cat]] is a [[big cat]]) => ;;; outputs [[is a]] Examples using the POP-11 pattern matcher, which makes it relatively easy for students to learn to develop sophisticated list-processing programs without having to treat patterns as tree structures accessed by 'head' and 'tail' functions (CAR and CDR in Lisp), can be found in the online introductory tutorial. The matcher is at the heart of the SimAgent (sim_agent) toolkit. Some of the powerful features of the toolkit, such as linking pattern variables to inline code variables, would have been very difficult to implement without the incremental compiler facilities.

    Read more →
  • Software design

    Software design

    Software design is the process of conceptualizing how a software system will work before it is implemented or modified. Software design also refers to the direct result of the design process – the concepts of how the software will work which may be formally documented or may be maintained less formally, including via oral tradition. The design process enables a designer to model aspects of a software system before it exists with the intent of making the effort of writing the code more efficiently. Creativity, past experience, a sense of what makes "good" software, and a commitment to quality are success factors for a competent design. A software design can be compared to an architected plan for a house. High-level plans represent the totality of the house (e.g., a three-dimensional rendering of the house). Lower-level plans provide guidance for constructing each detail (e.g., the plumbing lay). Similarly, the software design model provides a variety of views of the proposed software solution. == Part of the overall process == In terms of the waterfall development process, software design is the activity that occurs after requirements analysis and before coding. Requirements analysis determines what the system needs to do without determining how it will do it, and thus, multiple designs can be imagined that satisfy the requirements. The design can be created while coding, without a plan or requirements analysis, but for more complex projects this is less feasible. Completing a design prior to coding allows for multidisciplinary designers and subject-matter experts to collaborate with programmers to produce software that is useful and technically sound. Sometimes, a simulation or prototype is created to model the system in an effort to determine a valid and good design. == Code as design == A common point of confusion with the term design in software is that the process applies at multiple levels of abstraction such as a high-level software architecture and lower-level components, functions and algorithms. A relatively formal process may occur at high levels of abstraction but at lower levels, the design process is almost always less formal where the only artifact of design may be the code itself. To the extent that this is true, software design refers to the design of the design. Edsger W. Dijkstra referred to this layering of semantic levels as the "radical novelty" of computer programming, and Donald Knuth used his experience writing TeX to describe the futility of attempting to design a program prior to implementing it: TEX would have been a complete failure if I had merely specified it and not participated fully in its initial implementation. The process of implementation constantly led me to unanticipated questions and to new insights about how the original specifications could be improved. == Artifacts == A design process may include the production of art Software design documentation such as flow chart, use case, Pseudocode, Unified Modeling Language model and other Fundamental modeling concepts. For user centered software, design may involve user experience design yielding a storyboard to help determine those specifications. Documentation may be reviewed to allow constraints, specifications and even requirements to be adjusted prior to coding. == Iterative design == Software systems inherently deal with uncertainties, and the size of software components can significantly influence a system's outcomes, both positively and negatively. Neal Ford and Mark Richards propose an iterative approach to address the challenge of identifying and right-sizing components. This method emphasizes continuous refinement as teams develop a more nuanced understanding of system behavior and requirements. The approach typically involves a cycle with several stages: A high-level partitioning strategy is established, often categorized as technical or domain-based. Guidelines for the smallest meaningful deployable unit, referred to as "quanta," are defined. While these foundational decisions are made early, they may be revisited later in the cycle if necessary. Initial components are identified based on the established strategy. Requirements are assigned to the identified components. The roles and responsibilities of each component are analyzed to ensure clarity and minimize overlap. Architectural characteristics, such as scalability, fault tolerance, and maintainability, are evaluated. Components may be restructured based on feedback from development teams. This cycle serves as a general framework and can be adapted to different domains. == Design principles == Design principles enable a software engineer to navigate the design process. Davis suggested principles which have been refined over time as: The design process should not suffer from "tunnel vision" A good designer should consider alternative approaches, judging each based on the requirements of the problem, the resources available to do the job. The design should be traceable to the analysis model Because a single element of the design model can often be traced back to multiple requirements, it is necessary to have a means for tracking how requirements have been satisfied by the design model. The design should not reinvent the wheel Systems are constructed using a set of design patterns, many of which have likely been encountered before. These patterns should always be chosen as an alternative to reinvention. Time is short and resources are limited; design time should be invested in representing (truly new) ideas by integrating patterns that already exist (when applicable). The design should "minimize the intellectual distance" between the software and the problem as it exists in the real world That is, the structure of the software design should, whenever possible, mimic the structure of the problem domain. The design should exhibit uniformity and integration A design is uniform if it appears fully coherent. In order to achieve this outcome, rules of style and format should be defined for a design team before design work begins. A design is integrated if care is taken in defining interfaces between design components. The design should be structured to accommodate change The design concepts discussed in the next section enable a design to achieve this principle. The design should be structured to degrade gently, even when aberrant data, events, or operating conditions are encountered Well-designed software should never "bomb"; it should be designed to accommodate unusual circumstances, and if it must terminate processing, it should do so in a graceful manner. Design is not coding, coding is not design Even when detailed procedural designs are created for program components, the level of abstraction of the design model is higher than the source code. The only design decisions made at the coding level should address the small implementation details that enable the procedural design to be coded. The design should be assessed for quality as it is being created, not after the fact A variety of design concepts and design measures are available to assist the designer in assessing quality throughout the development process. The design should be reviewed to minimize conceptual (semantic) errors There is sometimes a tendency to focus on minutiae when the design is reviewed, missing the forest for the trees. A design team should ensure that major conceptual elements of the design (omissions, ambiguity, inconsistency) have been addressed before worrying about the syntax of the design model. == Design concepts == Design concepts provide a designer with a foundation from which more sophisticated methods can be applied. Design concepts include: Abstraction Reducing the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, typically to retain only information that is relevant for a particular purpose. It is an act of Representing essential features without including the background details or explanations. Architecture The overall structure of the software and the ways in which that structure provides conceptual integrity for a system. Good software architecture will yield a good return on investment with respect to the desired outcome of the project, e.g. in terms of performance, quality, schedule and cost. Control hierarchy A program structure that represents the organization of a program component and implies a hierarchy of control. Data structure Representing the logical relationship between elements of data. Design pattern A designer may identify a design aspect of the system that has solved in the past. The reuse of such patterns can increase software development velocity. Information hiding Modules should be specified and designed so that information contained within a module is inaccessible to other modules that have no need for such information. Modularity Dividing the solution into parts (modules). Refinement The process of elaboration. A hierarchy is developed by decomposing a macrosco

    Read more →
  • List of JavaScript libraries

    List of JavaScript libraries

    This is a list of notable JavaScript libraries. == Constraint programming == Cassowary (software) CHR.js == DOM (manipulation) oriented == Google Polymer Dojo Toolkit jQuery MooTools Prototype JavaScript Framework == Graphical/visualization (canvas, SVG, or WebGL related) == AnyChart Apache ECharts Babylon.js Chart.js Cytoscape D3.js Dojo Toolkit FusionCharts Google Charts JointJS p5.js Plotly.js Processing.js Raphaël RGraph SWFObject Teechart Three.js Velocity.js Verge3D Webix == GUI (Graphical user interface) and widget related == Angular (application platform) by Google AngularJS by Google Bootstrap Dojo Widgets Ext JS by Sencha Foundation by ZURB jQuery UI jQWidgets OpenUI5 by SAP Polymer (library) by Google qooxdoo React.js by Meta/Facebook Vue.js Webix WinJS Svelte === No longer actively developed === Glow Lively Kernel Script.aculo.us YUI Library == Pure JavaScript/Ajax == Google Closure Library JsPHP Microsoft's Ajax library MochiKit PDF.js Socket.IO Spry framework Underscore.js == Template systems == jQuery Mobile Mustache Jinja-JS Twig.js == Unit testing == Jasmine Mocha QUnit == Test automation == Playwright Cypress == Web-application related (MVC, MVVM) == Angular (application platform) by Google AngularJS by Google Backbone.js Echo Ember.js Enyo Express.js Ext JS Google Web Toolkit JsRender/JsViews Knockout Meteor Mojito MooTools Next.js Nuxt.js OpenUI5 by SAP Polymer (library) by Google Prototype JavaScript Framework qooxdoo React.js SproutCore svelte Vue.js == Other == Blockly Cannon.js MathJax Modernizr TensorFlow Brain.js

    Read more →