Project Type: Research Grant

Utilizing Efficient Reads for ATomic Objects in 3D Networked Virtual Environments

The advent of fast highly-available network connectivity in combination with affordable 3D hardware (GPUs, VR/AR HMDs, etc.) has enabled making Networked Virtual Environments (NVEs) possible and available to multiple simultaneous end-users beyond the confines of expensive purpose-built 3D facilities and laboratories. However, the algorithms making possible the NVEs of today are already reaching their limits, proving unreliable, suffer asynchronies and deployed over an inherently fault-prone network infrastructure. Thus, new scalable, robust, and responsive strategies that build on top of unreliable, asynchronous, and fault-prone network infrastructure, must be devised in order to support the needs of the NVEs of the future.
Current developments of distributed architectures handle concurrency by either providing weak consistency guarantees (e.g. eventual consistency), or by relying on the bounded life span of inconsistent states. However, recent scientific works are shifting the viewpoint around the practicality of strongly consistent distributed storage spaces by proposing latency-efficient algorithms of atomic read/write Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) with provable consistency guarantees.

Our approach is to combine a DSM implementation of ERATO with a hybrid approach leveraging the simplicity of the client-server architecture. This, allows us to take the best features of the Multi-Server architecture and combine them with a low-level Distributed Shared Memory algorithm offering (A) ease of integration with existing VEs and implementation of new ones, since the DSM promises to take care of synchronization and consistency across servers, without application-specific interventions at client nodes and no special hand-off mechanisms between servers for users joining and leaving; and (B) reduced system complexity, and in turn faster development time and lower deployment and maintenance costs.

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MARI-Sense

MARI-Sense employs smart management, spatial planning, and agile response measures to help preserve the natural environment, securing society, and ensuring economic growth. Its cognitive systems work in synergy with human operators to “make sense” of the maritime environment

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LightSense – Intelligent light sensing for next generation smart grids

The project’s primary objective is to respond in a holistic way to the energy efficiency, continuity, and security needs of power distribution networks within Cyprus, regarding timely fault prevention and intrusion detection.
The extensive goals are to:

Exploit the optical sensing capabilities of the existing optical fiber, on-grid network, to enable the remote and automated, continuous, and timely monitoring of the grid infrastructure integrity of the principal energy supplier within Cyprus;
Extract critical information, such as the locations of transmission inefficiencies, such as hot-spots, and provide predictive information regarding the emergence and location of possible faults, in order to ensure reliability and continuity of supply;
Address the lack of informed policy with regard to issues of security and reliability in the context of actively monitoring future smart grids at the operations level, in real-time;
Monitor unmanned or unsupervised critical infrastructure to prevent unauthorised interference and access.

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Collaborate

Distributed Storage Systems (DSS) encompass the technology powering modern cloud data storage services such as DropBox and Google Drive that are used by millions of users as networked platforms for collaborative applications and data storage. Algorithms for DSS ensure data availability and survivability by replicating data in geographically dispersed network locations. However, a major problem with data distribution is consistency, especially when the storage is accessed concurrently by multiple processes; a key to enabling collaboration. Numerous strategies have been devised to mitigate these issues, however a robust and efficient solution remains elusive.
Collaborate (https://projects.algolysis.com/collaborate/), proposes a novel atomic Distributed Storage System built on top of asynchronous message-passing, failure-prone, commodity devices, and providing tight consistency guarantees when the storage is accessed concurrnelty by different processes. Atomicity enables the most natural consistency guarantee as it provides the illusion of a centralised sequentially accessed storage. To enhance the practicality of our atomic DSS, Collaborate will develop and combine the following services: (i) Fragmentation, (ii) Reconfiguration, and (iii) Failure Prediction.

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Safeguarding the Cultural Heritage of Dance through Augmented Reality

This project’s vision is that the widespread availability of cultural content in digitized forms is a critical necessity for the preservation of the continuity of our heritage and identity as Europeans. In such a context, digitization and online availability of digitized cultural content, such as dancing, has always been a top-level priority for cultural preservation. Digital storage and manipulation of intangible forms of cultural assets, such as dance performances, offers a whole new range of opportunities in the educational context by allowing integration of our project outcomes with the large-scale online libraries (such as the EUROPEANA repository; the European digital platform for cultural heritage). This will allow not only potential storage of intangible assets, but it will also enable seamless integration with existing resources into frameworks that will be able to exploit the common knowledge representation schemes and be used to provide unprecedented amounts of digital cultural resources by means of recent and emerging technologies for new and exciting educational purposes.

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