A paradox of requirements specifications as dominantly practiced in the industry is that they often claim to be object-oriented (OO) but largely rely on procedural (non-OO) techniques. Use cases and user stories describe functional flows, not object types. To gain the benefits provided by object technology (such as extendibility, reusability, reliability), requirements should instead take advantage of the same data abstraction concepts - classes, inheritance, information hiding - as OO design and OO programs. Many people find use cases and user stories appealing because of the simplicity and practicality of the concepts. Can we reconcile requirements with object-oriented principles and get the best of both worlds? This article proposes a unified framework. It shows that the concept of class is general enough to describe not only "objects" in a narrow sense but also scenarios such as use cases and user stories and other important artifacts such as test cases and oracles. Having a single framework opens the way to requirements that enjoy the benefits of both approaches: like use cases and user stories, they reflect the practical views of stakeholders; like object-oriented requirements, they lend themselves to evolution and reuse.
Recent trends in deep learning (DL) imposed hardware accelerators as the most viable solution for several classes of high-performance computing (HPC) applications such as image classification, computer vision, and speech recognition. This survey summarizes and classifies the most recent advances in designing DL accelerators suitable to reach the performance requirements of HPC applications. In particular, it highlights the most advanced approaches to support deep learning accelerations including not only GPU and TPU-based accelerators but also design-specific hardware accelerators such as FPGA-based and ASIC-based accelerators, Neural Processing Units, open hardware RISC-V-based accelerators and co-processors. The survey also describes accelerators based on emerging memory technologies and computing paradigms, such as 3D-stacked Processor-In-Memory, non-volatile memories (mainly, Resistive RAM and Phase Change Memories) to implement in-memory computing, Neuromorphic Processing Units, and accelerators based on Multi-Chip Modules. The survey classifies the most influential architectures and technologies proposed in the last years, with the purpose of offering the reader a comprehensive perspective in the rapidly evolving field of deep learning. Finally, it provides some insights into future challenges in DL accelerators such as quantum accelerators and photonics.
The increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in safety-critical contexts such as air-traffic control leads to systems that are practical and efficient, and to some extent explainable to humans to be trusted and accepted. The present structured literature analysis examines n = 236 articles on the requirements for the explainability and acceptance of AI. Results include a comprehensive review of n = 48 articles on information people need to perceive an AI as explainable, the information needed to accept an AI, and representation and interaction methods promoting trust in an AI. Results indicate that the two main groups of users are developers who require information about the internal operations of the model and end users who require information about AI results or behavior. Users' information needs vary in specificity, complexity, and urgency and must consider context, domain knowledge, and the user's cognitive resources. The acceptance of AI systems depends on information about the system's functions and performance, privacy and ethical considerations, as well as goal-supporting information tailored to individual preferences and information to establish trust in the system. Information about the system's limitations and potential failures can increase acceptance and trust. Trusted interaction methods are human-like, including natural language, speech, text, and visual representations such as graphs, charts, and animations. Our results have significant implications for future human-centric AI systems being developed. Thus, they are suitable as input for further application-specific investigations of user needs.
Context. Algorithmic racism is the term used to describe the behavior of technological solutions that constrains users based on their ethnicity. Lately, various data-driven software systems have been reported to discriminate against Black people, either for the use of biased data sets or due to the prejudice propagated by software professionals in their code. As a result, Black people are experiencing disadvantages in accessing technology-based services, such as housing, banking, and law enforcement. Goal. This study aims to explore algorithmic racism from the perspective of software professionals. Method. A survey questionnaire was applied to explore the understanding of software practitioners on algorithmic racism, and data analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics and coding techniques. Results. We obtained answers from a sample of 73 software professionals discussing their understanding and perspectives on algorithmic racism in software development. Our results demonstrate that the effects of algorithmic racism are well-known among practitioners. However, there is no consensus on how the problem can be effectively addressed in software engineering. In this paper, some solutions to the problem are proposed based on the professionals' narratives. Conclusion. Combining technical and social strategies, including training on structural racism for software professionals, is the most promising way to address the algorithmic racism problem and its effects on the software solutions delivered to our society.
Knowledge engineering is the process of creating and maintaining knowledge-producing systems. Throughout the history of computer science and AI, knowledge engineering workflows have been widely used because high-quality knowledge is assumed to be crucial for reliable intelligent agents. However, the landscape of knowledge engineering has changed, presenting four challenges: unaddressed stakeholder requirements, mismatched technologies, adoption barriers for new organizations, and misalignment with software engineering practices. In this paper, we propose to address these challenges by developing a reference architecture using a mainstream software methodology. By studying the requirements of different stakeholders and eras, we identify 23 essential quality attributes for evaluating reference architectures. We assess three candidate architectures from recent literature based on these attributes. Finally, we discuss the next steps towards a comprehensive reference architecture, including prioritizing quality attributes, integrating components with complementary strengths, and supporting missing socio-technical requirements. As this endeavor requires a collaborative effort, we invite all knowledge engineering researchers and practitioners to join us.
While we can see robots in more areas of our lives, they still make errors. One common cause of failure stems from the robot perception module when detecting objects. Allowing users to correct such errors can help improve the interaction and prevent the same errors in the future. Consequently, we investigate the effectiveness of a virtual reality (VR) framework for correcting perception errors of a Franka Panda robot. We conducted a user study with 56 participants who interacted with the robot using both VR and screen interfaces. Participants learned to collaborate with the robot faster in the VR interface compared to the screen interface. Additionally, participants found the VR interface more immersive, enjoyable, and expressed a preference for using it again. These findings suggest that VR interfaces may offer advantages over screen interfaces for human-robot interaction in erroneous environments.
Despite recent efforts by the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community to move towards standardised procedures for documenting models, methods, systems or datasets, there is currently no methodology focused on use cases aligned with the risk-based approach of the European AI Act (AI Act). In this paper, we propose a new framework for the documentation of use cases, that we call "use case cards", based on the use case modelling included in the Unified Markup Language (UML) standard. Unlike other documentation methodologies, we focus on the intended purpose and operational use of an AI system. It consists of two main parts. Firstly, a UML-based template, tailored to allow implicitly assessing the risk level of the AI system and defining relevant requirements. Secondly, a supporting UML diagram designed to provide information about the system-user interactions and relationships. The proposed framework is the result of a co-design process involving a relevant team of EU policy experts and scientists. We have validated our proposal with 11 experts with different backgrounds and a reasonable knowledge of the AI Act as a prerequisite. We provide the 5 "use case cards" used in the co-design and validation process. "Use case cards" allows framing and contextualising use cases in an effective way, and we hope this methodology can be a useful tool for policy makers and providers for documenting use cases, assessing the risk level, adapting the different requirements and building a catalogue of existing usages of AI.
With the standardization and commercialization completed at an unforeseen pace for the 5th generation (5G) wireless networks, researchers, engineers and executives from the academia and industry have turned their attention to new candidate technologies that can support the next generation wireless networks enabling more advanced capabilities in sophisticated scenarios. Explicitly, the 6th generation (6G) terrestrial wireless network aims to providing seamless connectivity not only to users but also to machine type devices for the next decade and beyond. This paper describes the progresses moving towards 6G, which is officially termed as ``international mobile telecommunications (IMT) for 2030 and beyond'' in the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). Specifically, the usage scenarios, their representative capabilities and the supporting technologies are discussed, and the future opportunities and challenges are highlighted.
While automotive radar sensors are widely adopted and have been used for automatic cruise control and collision avoidance tasks, their application outside of vehicles is still limited. As they have the ability to resolve multiple targets in 3D space, radars can also be used for improving environment perception. This application, however, requires a precise calibration, which is usually a time-consuming and labor-intensive task. We, therefore, present an approach for automated and geo-referenced extrinsic calibration of automotive radar sensors that is based on a novel hypothesis filtering scheme. Our method does not require external modifications of a vehicle and instead uses the location data obtained from automated vehicles. This location data is then combined with filtered sensor data to create calibration hypotheses. Subsequent filtering and optimization recovers the correct calibration. Our evaluation on data from a real testing site shows that our method can correctly calibrate infrastructure sensors in an automated manner, thus enabling cooperative driving scenarios.
Large language models (LLMs) have significantly advanced the field of natural language processing (NLP), providing a highly useful, task-agnostic foundation for a wide range of applications. The great promise of LLMs as general task solvers motivated people to extend their functionality largely beyond just a ``chatbot'', and use it as an assistant or even replacement for domain experts and tools in specific domains such as healthcare, finance, and education. However, directly applying LLMs to solve sophisticated problems in specific domains meets many hurdles, caused by the heterogeneity of domain data, the sophistication of domain knowledge, the uniqueness of domain objectives, and the diversity of the constraints (e.g., various social norms, cultural conformity, religious beliefs, and ethical standards in the domain applications). To fill such a gap, explosively-increase research, and practices have been conducted in very recent years on the domain specialization of LLMs, which, however, calls for a comprehensive and systematic review to better summarizes and guide this promising domain. In this survey paper, first, we propose a systematic taxonomy that categorizes the LLM domain-specialization techniques based on the accessibility to LLMs and summarizes the framework for all the subcategories as well as their relations and differences to each other. We also present a comprehensive taxonomy of critical application domains that can benefit from specialized LLMs, discussing their practical significance and open challenges. Furthermore, we offer insights into the current research status and future trends in this area.
Deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and Data Fusion techniques have gained popularity in public and government domains. This usually requires capturing and consolidating data from multiple sources. As datasets do not necessarily originate from identical sensors, fused data typically results in a complex data problem. Because military is investigating how heterogeneous IoT devices can aid processes and tasks, we investigate a multi-sensor approach. Moreover, we propose a signal to image encoding approach to transform information (signal) to integrate (fuse) data from IoT wearable devices to an image which is invertible and easier to visualize supporting decision making. Furthermore, we investigate the challenge of enabling an intelligent identification and detection operation and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed Deep Learning and Anomaly Detection models that can support future application that utilizes hand gesture data from wearable devices.