User-task co-adaptation for effective interactive simulation environments. This project aims to deliver smart interactive simulation environments in which users and simulation tasks work together. This project aims to create novel adaptive algorithms to automatically discover those user and task features that vary together to smartly adapt users and simulation tasks to work together harmoniously, seamlessly and effectively. Interactive simulation environments are the backbone for evaluating conc ....User-task co-adaptation for effective interactive simulation environments. This project aims to deliver smart interactive simulation environments in which users and simulation tasks work together. This project aims to create novel adaptive algorithms to automatically discover those user and task features that vary together to smartly adapt users and simulation tasks to work together harmoniously, seamlessly and effectively. Interactive simulation environments are the backbone for evaluating concepts, designs, products and advanced training systems in industry and government organisations. By bringing the user naturally inside the simulation as a task's component, users can improve their experience while task performance is simultaneously optimised. Intended outcomes include novel dynamic user-task profiling algorithms and new adaptive algorithms for user-task co-adaptation. Practical outcomes may include robust and highly effective simulation environments.Read moreRead less
Cybersecurity ethics training simulations for values-based decision-making. This Project will investigate ways to train reflective ethical decision making in cybersecurity management through the design of interactive social simulations. The Project will advance understanding and management of human factors in cybersecurity breaches and the field of serious game design for cybersecurity training by using new techniques for building artificially intelligent virtual agents, drawing on interdiscipli ....Cybersecurity ethics training simulations for values-based decision-making. This Project will investigate ways to train reflective ethical decision making in cybersecurity management through the design of interactive social simulations. The Project will advance understanding and management of human factors in cybersecurity breaches and the field of serious game design for cybersecurity training by using new techniques for building artificially intelligent virtual agents, drawing on interdisciplinary expertise in ethics, artificial intelligence and serious game design. Expected outcomes of the Project include a new framework and technologies for cybersecurity training. This should provide significant benefits through deeper understanding of the ethical impact of new cybertechnologies and training solutions.Read moreRead less
Unleashing the potential of VR: reducing sickness in head-mounted displays. Virtual reality (VR) is a breakthrough technology with a host of applied uses. Unfortunately, many people become sick when using head-mounted displays (HMDs). Our project proposes, and aims to test, a new theory of this cybersickness. We intend to quantify the sensory conflicts produced by HMD VR for the first time and measure their effects on perception, eye-movements, balance and well-being. The project will 1) determi ....Unleashing the potential of VR: reducing sickness in head-mounted displays. Virtual reality (VR) is a breakthrough technology with a host of applied uses. Unfortunately, many people become sick when using head-mounted displays (HMDs). Our project proposes, and aims to test, a new theory of this cybersickness. We intend to quantify the sensory conflicts produced by HMD VR for the first time and measure their effects on perception, eye-movements, balance and well-being. The project will 1) determine the causes of, and conditions responsible for, cybersickness; and 2) offer practical information on how to prevent it. These outcomes are expected to directly benefit, and greatly improve HMD use in, fields ranging from defence, education, entertainment, gaming, medicine, real estate, simulation training and tourism.Read moreRead less
Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and ....Viewable Measures for Component-Based Software Engineering. Software costs over US$300 billion per year worldwide with around 70% of large projects failing to complete in time. Reliable estimation of development effort is a great challenge in Software Engineering. This project aims to develop a reliable multi-dimensional software size measure and an effort estimation model for a new method of development called component based software engineering. We will validate our results theoretically and test it against empirical data from software industry. We will provide novel visualization techniques to comprehend measurements of large systems. The outcomes will help software projects better estimate deadlines and budgets thus reducing costs significantly.Read moreRead less
Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools ....Achieving Tailored Industrial Software Process Improvement with Experience Repositories and Electronic Process Guides. There is a well-recognised need for organisations to improve their software development processes in order to achieve higher software quality and greater efficiencies in development. The use of electronic process guides and experience repositories have been two technologies independently proposed to achieve these aims. This research will develop a framework, methods and tools to allow integration of experience repositories and electronic process guides to facilitate process tailoring, process improvement, and project management. The result will be significant improvements in software development productivity and quality.Read moreRead less
Eat and Dream: effective automatic testing and debugging for real-life embedded wireless communications software. Embedded software is a key enabling technology for the majority of Australian manufacturing industries, including strategically important sectors such as the automotive industry. Embedded wireless communication technologies are playing an increasingly significant role in Australia with a wide range of critical applications ranging from natural disaster early warning to personal healt ....Eat and Dream: effective automatic testing and debugging for real-life embedded wireless communications software. Embedded software is a key enabling technology for the majority of Australian manufacturing industries, including strategically important sectors such as the automotive industry. Embedded wireless communication technologies are playing an increasingly significant role in Australia with a wide range of critical applications ranging from natural disaster early warning to personal health monitoring. Embedded wireless communications software, however, is difficult to test and debug owing to the complexity of the operational environment and complications arising from the interplay between software and hardware. This project will develop an effective and automatic technology to alleviate these difficulties and achieve higher quality software.Read moreRead less
A Generic Software Architecture for Web-Based Applications on Micro-Mobile Systems. The next generation of computers that will capture the imagination of the society are likely to be micro-mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, mobile phones, smartcards and chips embedded in home and office items. Developing applications for information processing using a wireless network of such devices is an emerging challenge. This project will develop and evaluate a generic architecture for web- ....A Generic Software Architecture for Web-Based Applications on Micro-Mobile Systems. The next generation of computers that will capture the imagination of the society are likely to be micro-mobile devices such as personal digital assistants, mobile phones, smartcards and chips embedded in home and office items. Developing applications for information processing using a wireless network of such devices is an emerging challenge. This project will develop and evaluate a generic architecture for web-based applications on micro-mobile devices. This will make it easy to design applications that can seamlessly interact with different kinds of devices. The project will be carried out in partnership with Total Internet Centre, a Newcastle based regional enterprise.Read moreRead less
Agent-based virtual learning environments for understanding science. It is vital that students understand science given its relevance in important economic and professional areas as well as for an informed democratic citizenry. This project aims to conduct classroom-based research in which students learn content in the Australian Curriculum - Science through the use of an innovative agent-based virtual learning environment that supports authentic science inquiry activities to enhance learning o ....Agent-based virtual learning environments for understanding science. It is vital that students understand science given its relevance in important economic and professional areas as well as for an informed democratic citizenry. This project aims to conduct classroom-based research in which students learn content in the Australian Curriculum - Science through the use of an innovative agent-based virtual learning environment that supports authentic science inquiry activities to enhance learning of difficult scientific knowledge and skills. The project also aims to develop teacher professional development materials for teachers to enhance teacher capacity to use innovative pedagogies and learning technologies in Australian schools.Read moreRead less
Effective software vulnerability detection for web services. This project aims to design and implement new and better methods to find vulnerabilities in software services delivered over the web or through the cloud, as well as methods for proving the absence of certain types of vulnerability. So-called injection attacks are pervasive and generally considered the most important security threat on today's Internet. The programming languages used for software services tend to use strings as a unive ....Effective software vulnerability detection for web services. This project aims to design and implement new and better methods to find vulnerabilities in software services delivered over the web or through the cloud, as well as methods for proving the absence of certain types of vulnerability. So-called injection attacks are pervasive and generally considered the most important security threat on today's Internet. The programming languages used for software services tend to use strings as a universal data structure, which unfortunately makes it hard to separate trusted code from untrusted user-provided data. This project intends to develop novel program analysis tools and string constraint solvers, and employ these tools to support sophisticated automated reasoning about string manipulating software.Read moreRead less
Processing large data sets on commodity data-parallel hardware. The project aims to reduce the costs of software development by improving the accessibility of massively data-parallel processors, termed graphics processing units (GPUs). The project seeks to develop a high-level programming system with data streaming support targeting GPUs and multi-GPU architectures. This would facilitate the difficult task of developing parallel applications for high-performance computing architectures. The comb ....Processing large data sets on commodity data-parallel hardware. The project aims to reduce the costs of software development by improving the accessibility of massively data-parallel processors, termed graphics processing units (GPUs). The project seeks to develop a high-level programming system with data streaming support targeting GPUs and multi-GPU architectures. This would facilitate the difficult task of developing parallel applications for high-performance computing architectures. The combination of parallelism and data streaming is designed to enable efficient processing of data too big to be held in device memory, which is a common problem in scientific computing, data analysis and machine learning. The project plans to integrate data streaming into an existing system, currently targeting single GPU architectures and which is successfully used in both industry and research.Read moreRead less