Senaste publikationerna från DiVA

In order to improve the dislocation bias (DB) model of swelling under irradiation, a large scale of atomistic simulation of the interaction in face centered cubic (FCC) Cu model lattice between an edge dislocation (ED) and point defects such as a vacancy, a self-interstital atom (SIA) have been performed for various configurations. It is found dislocation core splits into partial cores after energy relaxation. Interactions with any SIA conficurations is one order of magnitute larger than with a vacancy. The reason that SIA creats a larger dilatation volumn than the vacancy is directly observed from calculation. Furthurmore, within the interaction range, an octahedron position rather than dumbbell in <100> direction is observed in the stable state after relaxation in interactions between a edge dislocation and a dumbbell SIA. Comparision of interaction energy in analytical and atomistic calculation shows that analytical one has a stronger interaction in vacancy-ED systems, suggesting that the bias factor (BF) from analytical calculation is larger than from atomistic calculation.

In this paper, we present Furhat - a back-projected human-like robot head using state-of-the art facial animation. Three experiments are presented where we investigate how the head might facilitate human - robot face-to-face interaction. First, we investigate how the animated lips increase the intelligibility of the spoken output, and compare this to an animated agent presented on a flat screen, as well as to a human face. Second, we investigate the accuracy of the perception of Furhat's gaze in a setting typical for situated interaction, where Furhat and a human are sitting around a table. The accuracy of the perception of Furhat's gaze is measured depending on eye design, head movement and viewing angle. Third, we investigate the turn-taking accuracy of Furhat in a multi-party interactive setting, as compared to an animated agent on a flat screen. We conclude with some observations from a public setting at a museum, where Furhat interacted with thousands of visitors in a multi-party interaction.

While much of the state-of-the-art research in human-robot interaction (HRI) investigates task-oriented interaction, this paper aims at exploring what people talk about to a robot if the content of the conversation is not predefined. We used the robot head Furhat to explore the conversational behavior of people who encounter a robot in the public setting of a robot exhibition in a scientific museum, but without a predefined purpose. Upon analyzing the conversations, it could be shown that a sophisticated robot provides an inviting atmosphere for people to engage in interaction and to be experimental and challenge the robot's capabilities. Many visitors to the exhibition were willing to go beyond the guiding questions that were provided as a starting point. Amongst other things, they asked Furhat questions concerning the robot itself, such as how it would define a robot, or if it plans to take over the world. People were also interested in the feelings and likes of the robot and they asked many personal questions - this is how Furhat ended up with its first marriage proposal. People who talked to Furhat were asked to complete a questionnaire on their assessment of the conversation, with which we could show that the interaction with Furhat was rated as a pleasant experience.

Optical networks based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology show many clear benefits in terms of high capacity, flexibility and low power consumption. All these benefits make WDM networks the preferred choice for today’s and future transports solutions which are strongly driven by a plethora of emerging online services.

In such a scenario, capability to provide high capacity during the service provisioning phase is of course very important, but it is not the only requirement that plays a central role. Traffic dynamicity is another essential aspect to consider because in many scenarios, e.g., in the case of real time multimedia services, the connections are expected to be provisioned and torn down quickly and relatively frequently. High traffic dynamicity may put a strain on the network control and management operations (i.e., the overhead due to control message exchange can grow rapidly) that coordinate any provisioning mechanisms. Furthermore, survivability, in the presence of new failure scenarios that goes beyond the single failure assumption, is still of the utmost importance to minimize the network disruptions and data losses. In other words, protection against any possible future failure scenario where multiple faults may struck simultaneously, asks for highly reliable provisioning solutions.

The above consideration have a general validity i.e., can be equally applied to any network segment and not just limited to the core part. So, we also address the problem of service provisioning in the access paradigm. Long reach Passive Optical Networks (PONs) are gaining popularity due to their cost, reach, and bandwidth advantages in the access region. In PON, the design of an efficient bandwidth sharing mechanism between multiple subscribers in the upstream direction is crucial. In addition, Long Reach PONs (LR-PONs) introduces additional challenges in terms of packet delay and network throughput, due to their extended reach. It becomes apparent that effective solutions to the connection provisioning problem in both the core and access optical networks with respect to the considerations made above can ensure a truly optimal end-to-end connectivity while making an efficient usage of resources.

The first part of this thesis focuses on a control and management framework specifically designed for concurrent resource optimization in WDM-based optical networks in a highly dynamic traffic scenario. The framework and the proposed provisioning strategies are specifically designed with the objective of: (i) allowing for a reduction of the blocking probability and the control overhead in a Path Computation Element (PCE)-based network architecture, (ii)  optimizing resource utilization for a traffic scenario that require services with diverse survivability requirements which are achieved by means of  dedicated and shared path-protection, and (iii) designing provisioning mechanism that guarantees high connection availability levels in Double Link Failures (DLF) scenarios. The presented results show that the proposed dynamic provisioning approach can significantly improve the network blocking performance while making an efficient use of primary/backup resources whenever protection is required by the provisioned services. Furthermore, the proposed DLF schemes show good performance in terms of minimizing disruption periods, and allowing for enhanced network robustness when specific services require high connection availability levels.

In the second part of this thesis, we propose efficient resource provisioning strategies for LR-PON. The objective is to optimize the bandwidth allocation in LR-PONs, in particular to: (i) identify the performance limitations associated with traditional (short reach) TDM-PON based Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) algorithms when employed in long reach scenarios, and (ii) devise efficient DBA algorithms that can mitigate the performance limitations imposed by an extended reach. Our proposed schemes show noticeable performance gains when compared with conventional DBA algorithms for short-reach PON as well as specifically devised approaches for long reach.