Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (WSNs) are distributed sensor and actuator networks that monitor and control real-world phenomena, enabling the integration of the physical with the virtual world. They are used in domains like building automation, control systems, remote healthcare, etc., which are all highly process-driven. Today, tools and insights of Business Process Modeling (BPM) are not used to model WSN logic, as BPM focuses mostly on the coordination of people and IT systems and neglects the integration of embedded IT. WSN development still requires significant special-purpose, low-level, and manual coding of process logic. By exploiting similarities between WSN applications and business processes, this work aims to create a holistic system enabling the modeling and execution of executable processes that integrate, coordinate, and control WSNs. Concretely, we present a WSNspecific extension for Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and a compiler that transforms the extended BPMN models into WSN-specific code to distribute process execution over both a WSN and a standard business process engine. The developed tool-chain allows modeling of an independent control loop for the WSN.
Crowdsourcing (CS) is the outsourcing of a unit of work to a crowd of people via an open call for contributions. Thanks to the availability of online CS platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk or CrowdFlower, the practice has experienced a tremendous growth over the past few years and demonstrated its viability in a variety of fields, such as data collection and analysis or human computation. Yet it is also increasingly struggling with the inherent limitations of these platforms: each platform has its own logic of how to crowdsource work (e.g., marketplace or contest), there is only very little support for structured work (work that requires the coordination of multiple tasks), and it is hard to integrate crowdsourced tasks into stateof-the-art business process management (BPM) or information systems. We attack these three shortcomings by (1) developing a flexible CS platform (we call it Crowd Computer, or CC) that allows one to program custom CS logics for individual and structured tasks, (2) devising a BPMN-based modeling language that allows one to program CC intuitively, (3) equipping the language with a dedicated visual editor, and (4) implementing CC on top of standard BPM technology that can easily be integrated into existing software and processes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach with a case study on the crowd-based mining of mashup model patterns.
Background. Regular physical activity can substantially improve the physical wellbeing of older adults, preventing several chronic diseases and increasing cognitive performance and mood. However, research has shown that older adults are the most sedentary segment of society, spending much of their time seated or inactive. A variety of barriers make it difficult for older adults to maintain an active lifestyle, including logistical difficulties in going to a gym (for some adults, leaving home can be challenging), reduced functional abilities, and lack of motivation. In this paper, we report on the design and evaluation of Gymcentral. A training application running on tablet was designed to allow older adults to follow a personalized home-based exercise program while being remotely assisted by a coach. The objective of the study was to assess if a virtual gym that enables virtual presence and social interaction is more motivating for training than the same virtual gym without social interaction. Methods. A total of 37 adults aged between 65 and 87 years old (28 females and 9 males, mean age = 71, sd = 5.8) followed a personalized home-based strength and balance training plan for eight weeks. The participants performed the exercises autonomously at home using the Gymcentral application. Participants were assigned to two training groups: the Social group used an application with persuasive and social functionalities, while the Control group used a basic version of the service with no persuasive and social features. We further explored the effects of social facilitation, and in particular of virtual social presence, in user participation to training sessions. Outcome measures were adherence, persistence and co-presence rate. Results. Participants in the Social group attended significantly more exercise sessions than the Control group, providing evidence of a better engagement in the training program. Besides the focus on social persuasion measures, the study also confirms that a virtual gym service is effective for supporting individually tailored home-based physical training for older adults. The study also confirms that social facilitation tools motivate users to train together in a virtual fitness environment. Discussion. The study confirms that Gymcentral increases the participation of older adults in physical training compare to a similar version of the application without
This article makes a case for crowdsourcing approaches that are able to manage crowdsourcing processes, that is, crowdsourcing scenarios that go beyond the mere outsourcing of multiple instances of a micro-task and instead require the coordination of multiple different crowd and machine tasks. It introduces the necessary background and terminology, identifies a set of analysis dimensions, and surveys state-of-the-art tools, highlighting strong and weak aspects and promising future research and development directions.
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