Open Access Published by De Gruyter Open Access

Volume 2 Issue 2

June 2012

Issue of Open Computer Science

Contents
Journal Overview

Open Access June 28, 2012

A context management architecture for m-commerce applications

Benou Poulcheria, Vassilakis Costas

Page range: 87-117

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Abstract

Mobile commerce applications operate in highly dynamic environments with diverse characteristics and interesting challenges. The characteristics and conditions of these environments -called context-, can be exploited to provide adaptive mobile services, in terms of user interface, functionality and content, in order to offer more effective m-commerce. Today, building adaptive mobile services is a complex and time-consuming task due to the lack of standardized methods, tools and architectures for the identification, representation and management of the context. Addressing some of these issues, recent works have provided formal extensions for various stages of the m-commerce application lifecycle, such as extended UML class diagrams for building design models and have used context parameters in order to offer adaptive applications. Using these works as the basis, in this paper we propose a context management architecture, which accommodates the requirements that have been identified for m-commerce applications. The proposed architecture is evaluated in terms of completeness, complexity, performance and utility, and compared against other approaches proposed in the literature regarding its suitability for supporting context-aware m-commerce applications.

Open Access June 28, 2012

Using parallelization to improve the efficiency of an automated taxi route generation algorithm

Abe Hall, Michael Gabilondo, Damian Dechev

Page range: 118-127

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Abstract

As part of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) concept, surface support tools that generate taxi routes and monitor pilot conformance against those routes have been designed and implemented by Mosaic ATM and tested in simulations conducted by The Mitre Corporation’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development(CAASD). The purpose of these tools is to increase the overall safety of the airport’s surface by detecting aircraft movement that is not in conformance with the taxi route assigned to that aircraft. Additionally, the tools aim to increase the overall efficiency of airport operations by ensuring that aircraft taxi in compliance with their assigned routes. One of the keys to providing a reliable conformance monitoring system is to produce reliable taxi routes against which to monitor compliance. The tools provided by Mosaic ATM generate these taxi routes via a set of predefined routes commonly used at an airport. In the simulations conducted by CAASD, it was found that the routes provided were found to be reliable and trustworthy. In addition to the predefined routes, Mosaic ATM provided an ad hoc route capability. This capability uses an algorithm that finds a route based on the taxiways assigned by a user through the ad hoc route tool. However, in the simulations conducted by CAASD, this tool was not used extensively by the users. In this paper, we describe our efforts to verify the correctness of the ad hoc taxi route generation algorithm as well as our efforts to increase the speed of the algorithm by implementing a lock-free parallelized version.

Open Access June 28, 2012

A new evolutionary approach for computing Nash equilibria in bimatrix games with known support

Urszula Boryczka, Przemyslaw Juszczuk

Page range: 128-142

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Abstract

In this paper, we present the application of the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm to the problem of finding approximate Nash equilibria in matrix, non-zero sum games for two players with finite number of strategies. Nash equilibrium is one of the main concepts in game theory. It may be classified as continuous problem, where two probability distributions over the set of strategies of both players should be found. Every deviation from the global optimum is interpreted as Nash approximation and called ε-Nash equilibrium. The main advantage of the proposed algorithm is self-adaptive mutation operator, which direct the search process. The approach used in this article is based on the probability of chosing single pure strategy. In optimal mixed strategy, every strategy has some probability of being chosen. Our goal is to determine this probability and maximize payoff for a single player.

Open Access June 28, 2012

Minimal number of clues for Sudokus

Christoph Lass

Page range: 143-151

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Abstract

In this article we will present a universal scheme for calculating the minimal number of clues needed for a generalized Sudoku to be uniquely solvable. By using equivalence partitioning and analyzing uniqueness properties of patterns, we will reduce the search space to a feasible size. As a result, we will present the minimal number for 2 × 4 Sudokus.

Open Access June 28, 2012

PSO based path planner of an autonomous mobile robot

B. Deepak, Dayal Parhi

Page range: 152-168

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Abstract

A novel approach based on particle swarm optimization has been presented in this paper for solving mobile robot navigation task. The proposed technique tries to optimize the path generated by an intelligent mobile robot from its source position to destination position in its work space. For solving this problem, a new fitness function has been modelled, which satisfies the obstacle avoidance and optimal path traversal conditions. From the obtained fitness values of each particle in the swarm, the robot moves towards the particle which is having optimal fitness value. Simulation results are provided to validate the feasibility of the developed methodology in various unknown environments.

About this journal

Open Computer Science is a fully peer-reviewed, open access, electronic journal devoted to computer science. The journal provides readers with free, instant, and permanent access to all content worldwide.

Aims and Scope

The potential topics include (but are not limited to):

algorithms and complexity theory

artificial intelligence

bioinformatics

networking and security systems

programming languages

system and software engineering

theoretical foundations of computer science

Open Computer Science accepts submissions of research articles, reviews, and communications. Submission of a manuscript implies that the work described is not copyrighted, published, or submitted elsewhere, except in abstract form. The corresponding author should ensure that all authors approve the manuscript before submission.