Previous events at School of Information Science, Computer and Electrical Engineering

Abstract:
ZL is a C compatible and C++ like programming language that focuses on extensibility and giving the programmer control over how high-level constructs (such as classes) are implemented. ZL achieves the first goal by means of a customizable grammar and a powerful Scheme-like macro system. ZL achieves the second goal by using the macro system to define high-level constructs from a C-like core language in a similar spirit to Scheme.

One target application for ZL, which was the topic of my PhD dissertation, is to to use the the control ZL provides to mitigate certain problems in software evolution such as fragile ABIs (Application Binary Interfaces) due to software changes and incompatible ABIs due to compiler changes.

Yet, ZL can be used for much more than that.  In this informal talk I will give a condensed version of my defense and outline where I would like to see ZL go in the future.  If there is interest I can also give parts of my Scheme'11 talk which go into more detail of how ZL macro system work.

You can find the current version of ZL at www.zl-lang.org.

Bio:
Kevin Atkinson completed his PhD at the University of Utah in 2011. Over the years he has also written many Open Source projects.  He is visiting our group to interview for a research programmer position.  

More information about Kevin can be found at his home page 
at http://www.cs.utah.edu/~kevina/.

Abstract

Opponent:
Professor Kamiar Aminian, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Grading committee:
Docent Lanie Gutierrez-Farewik, KTH - Royal institute of technology, Stockholm
Professor Lars Niklasson, Skövde university
Professor Leif Sörnmo, LTH, Lunds university, Lund
Chairman:
Professor Bertil Svensson, Halmstad university
Main supervisor:
Professor Thorsteinn Rögnvaldsson, Halmstad university
Assistant supervisor:
Assistant professor Nicholas Wickström, Halmstad university

With the progress of technologies in the last decades, methods have become available that use body worn sensors to monitor locomotion. These methods are based on the use of new technologies integrating motion sensors (e.g. accelerometers, gyroscope, force sensors) in combination with lightweight electronics that can be fixed or worn on the body without interfering with normal behavior. New algorithms have been devised for signal analyzing and feature extraction. Many diseases affecting human locomotion can be evaluated by gait analysis.

This talk provides some solutions based on body worn sensors to estimate spatio-temporal parameters, kinematics and kinetics features of gait. Examples in objective clinimetry involving patient with Parkinson disease, frail elderly subject, patient with osteoarthritis are given to emphasize the impact of wearable technology for diagnosis and outcome evaluation of treatments. Finally, long-term monitoring of locomotion in real word conditions can also provide new insights on locomotion pattern and its change with disease such as chronic pain.

He is currently Professor of medical instrumentation and the director of the Laboratory of Movement Analysis and Measurement in the Institute of Bioengineering of EPFL. His research interests include methodologies for human movement monitoring and analysis in real world conditions mainly based on wearable technologies and inertial sensors with emphasis on gait, physical activity and sport. His research aims to perform outcome evaluation in orthopaedics, to improve motor function and intervention programs in aging and patients with movement disorders and pain, and to identify metrics of performance in sport science.

Kamiar Aminian is a member of the International Society of Posture and Gait Research, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the European Society of Movement Analysis in Adults and Children, the Prevention of fall Network Europe, the Intentional Society of Biomechanics and the future president of the 3D analysis of the human movement group.

He is author or co-author of more than 350 scientific papers published in reviewed journals and presented at international conferences and holds 8 patents related to medical devices.

Abstract

With the rapid growth of multimedia services, future generations of wireless communications require higher data rates and a more reliable transmission link while keeping satisfactory quality of service (QoS). In this respect, cooperative communications, cross-layer design, and cooperative cognitive radio networks have aroused much interest in the research community as new transmission technologies for wireless communications and networks of the next generation.  

The talk aims at general concepts of these three technologies and a description of what have been done during my PhD study related to cooperative communications, cross-layer design, cooperative cognitive radio networks. Then we will discuss some new open research problems and discuss some potential for research collaborations.

Abstract:
Foundational calculi play an important role in the study of programming languages, but the gap towards real languages is usually too wide to allow practical use of theoretical properties on real programs. Modern programming languages, on the other hand, offer a wealth of advanced features for the programmer's convenience, but these are rarely characterized by the clarity and robustness that goes into the design of foundational calculi. An interesting question is if this language-calculus division is fundamental necessity.

In this talk I will present recent work by Viktor Leijon and myself, in which we have redesigned the full-featured programming language Timber with the aim of making it simultaneously qualify as a calculus for theoretical exploration. Two particular problems have had to be overcome: how to represent the full state of a running program using only program syntax, and how to retain formal tractability in a calculus that does not strive to be minimal.  The talk will give an overview of the resulting design, and also show how it may shed some light on issues like the coexistence of purely functional computation and concurrent communication, and the separation of timing correctness from platform dependencies.

Bio:
Johan Nordlander is an assistant professor in Computer Science at Lulea University of Technology and holds a Ph.D. in Computing Science from Chalmers University of Technology.  As a post-doc at Oregon Graduate Institute he was central in the development of Timber, a concurrent functional language with platform-independent timing.  His current research interests focus on programming language design and semantics, compilers, real-time systems, and practically applied program analysis and verification.

The Epiphany technology was presented by Adapteva´s founder and chief designer Andreas Olofsson. CERES researchers also gave brief presentations of their research on programming methods and tools for embedded manycore and reconfigurable processors.

Link to programme

Opponent:
Dr. Steven Shladover, PATH Project, Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS Berkeley), University of California at Berkeley 
Grading committee:
Professor Claes Beckman, Center for Wireless Systems, Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Kista, Stockholm              
Professor Simin Nadjm-Tehrani, Real-Time Systems lab, Cepartment of Computer and Information Science, Linköping University                            
Docent Paolo Falcone, Signals and Systems, Chalmers Institute of Technology, Göteborg
Chairman:
Professor Ivan Kalaykov, Inst. för naturvetenskap och teknik, Örebro Universitet
Main supervisor:
Professor Tony Larsson, School of Information Science, Computer and Electrical Engineering, Halmstad university

abstract

Abstract on Halmstad Colloquium blog

See Edward A. Lee on YouTube

Kenneth Rovers gave a talk on Functional model-based design of embedded systems with UniTi.

Abstract:
When designing complex systems, it is important to be able to accurately and efficiently simulate the design early on for verification. Professional software tools, such as Simulink and Ptolemy, are typically used. However, these tools have problems when simulating the interaction of a system with the physical environment, for example in wireless and mobile communication, radio astronomy or radar systems using antenna arrays. The simulation is either inaccurate or so time consuming it becomes impractical. The fundamental problem is that these tools do not differentiate different notions of time, but use a single global time step for simulation.

UniTi is a design flow and a modelling framework that supports these different notions of time, as well as the modelling of multiple domains,  mathematical definitions and model transformations. UniTi is based on some powerful abstraction mechanisms that are typical for functional languages; in particular higher order functions are used. The result is a novel and surprising approach to simulating multi-domain systems, notably with respect to relative time and local solvers. As a case study to verify UniTi, an array antenna system is modelled and simulated. 

Jan Kuper gave a talk on System development with CLaSH

Abstract:
CLaSH is a recently developed design environment in which a high level specifications of an application, such as one defined and modelled in UniTi, can be mapped to various architectures in a direct way. Primarily meant as a concise formalism to specify hardware architectures, it now opens possibilities to aim for different platforms varying from desktop pc´s to FPGA´s and multi-core systems. CLaSH offers full polymorphism, higher order functions, type derivation, and various abstraction mechanisms such as pattern matching, lambda abstraction, embedded languages, and parameterized definitions. It comes with a simulation environment based on the functional programming language Haskell, that remains the same on all levels, from the initial design until the actual implementation.

Jan presented some examples of architecture specifications such as matrix multiplication and a simple instruction set architecture, and discussed the rewrite mechanism that forms the inner mechanism of CLaSH.