ScaleUp Report – January 2012
Prepared for Prof Abdulrahman Al Youbi, King Abdulaziz University
Executive Summary
The ScaleUp project is making excellent progress. The team now comprises
twelve people – four academics at each of the two universities and four PhD
students who have been working for the last 3 months. Two papers in an IEEE
published conference have been published with four more under review and
several more to be submitted in the next quarter. These are all in top journals
and conferences and ISI-indexed. The PhD students are exceeding expectations
and are producing publishable research outputs almost a year ahead of schedule.
Introduction
ScaleUp is a joint Intelligent Environments projects between the King Abdulaziz
University and the University of Essex. Its purpose is …“To investigate the
Scaling-Up of Intelligent Environments from the current small scale, beyond four
walls to the large-scale” Intelligent Environments are spaces that are deployed
with “Ubiquitous Computing” resources and “Ambient Intelligence” It is a 5-year
investigation into research areas such as: Middleware, Agents, HCI, Video
processing and applications.
Personnel
The team comprises four academics at each university and four PhD students
who began their studies in October 2011 at the University of Essex.
Major resources include three experimental laboratories at the University of
Essex and one under development at the King Abdulaziz University. There is
opportunity to develop further laboratories in the building under development
for FCIT.
Strategic Aims
1. Research - To build upon current Intelligent Environment (IE) research and
investigate the methods and models needed to realise large scale IEs.
2. Facilities - To develop experimental facilities at both KAU and UOE for use
throughout the project and in support of the other project goals.
3. Education – To provide education to students and career development to
researcher partners in support of the other project goals.
4. Dissemination - To further establish the international research reputation for
both KAU and UOE through publication (with an emphasis on ISI-ranked
conferences/journals).
Research Progress
Overall research topic split into 4 work-packages with specific focus:
WP1 : Intelligent Agents
Members: Hani Hagras, Areej Malibari, Aysenur Bilgin.
WP2 : Intelligent Video Systems
Members: Hani Hagras, Mohammed Ghanbari, Daniyal Al-Ghazzawi,
Bob Yao
WP3 : Adjustable Autonomy / HCI
Members: Vic Callaghan, Michael Gardner, Mohammed Al-Haddad,
Anasol Pena Rios.
WP4: Infrastructure & Formal Methods
Members: Martin Henson, James Dooley, Abdullah Al-Ghamdi,
Luke Whittington
All PhD Students have now established their individual areas of research and
achieved (in fact far exceeded) their 3-month objectives. Progress review boards
have been held and were attended by both Essex and King Abdulaziz
supervisors. All students now working towards their next research goals. A
regular schedule of supervisory and research meetings is established.
Presentations on progress of each work-package were given in Jeddah in January
2012. An e-repository for all project material has been setup (for all project
members to use).
Published Papers
1. J. Dooley, M. Henson, V. Callaghan, H. Hagras, D. Al-Ghazzawi, A. Malibari, M.
Al-Haddad and A. Al-Malaise Al-Ghamdi. (2011). "A Formal Model For Space
Based Ubiquitous Computing", Intelligent Environments Conference 2011
(IE'11), Nottingham, UK. Published by IEEE.
2. J. Dooley, V. Callaghan, H. Hagras, M. Gardner, M. Ghanbari and D. ALGhazzawi. (2011). "The Intelligent Classroom : Beyond Four Walls", iCampus
Workshop (IC11) held at the Intelligent Environments Conference 2011
(IE'11), Nottingham, UK. Published by IEEE.
Papers under review
1. “Scaling-Up Intelligent Environments : Past, Present & Future”, Journal of
Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments (JAISE).
2. “Towards Scaled-Up Ambient Intelligent Environments”, IEEE Intelligent
Systems magazine.
3. “Dynamic Profile-Selection for zSlices Based Type-2 Fuzzy Agents Controlling
Multi-User Ambient Intelligent Environments”, FUZZ-IEEE conference. (Best
Conference in the field)
4. “Towards A General Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Approach for Computing With Words
Using Linear Adjectives”, FUZZ-IEEE conference. (Best Conference in the field)
5. “Towards the next-generation learning environments: an intelligent learning
model”, Intelligent Environments 2012.
Papers in preparation:
1. “Towards Simple and Effective Formal Methods for Intelligent Environments”,
Intelligent Environments 2012.
2. “Macro Intelligent Environments”. Workshop on Large Scale Intelligent
Environments (WOLSIE), co-located with Intelligent Environments
Conference 2012, Mexico.
3. Several others at advanced stage of development.
Book chapter proposal:
1. “The Tailored Fabric of Intelligent Environments”, in “Internet of things and
inter-cooperative computational technologies for collective intelligence”
(part of the Springer “Studies in Computational Intelligence” Series)
Accepted Workshop Proposal:
1. “Workshop on Large Scale Intelligent Environments”
(WOLSIE) has been accepted to be co-located with the Intelligent
Environments Conference 2012. All Scale-up members will be invited to join
the international programme committee.
Research Students at KAU
Now that FCIT has both MSc and PhD programmes the group intends to
strengthen the research team in Jeddah by assigning research projects to
master’s and PhD students that lie within the scope of the ScaleUp project.
Such students may be co-supervised by members of the team from the University
of Essex. Responsibility for the selection of students, their research projects,
their supervision and progress will be a matter for KAU, and the students will fall
under KAU policies, procedures and regulations.