Welcome to the web page of:

Konrad Borowiecki

Home

Welcome to my web page. I am a PhD student at the Computer Science Department of the Cardiff University.

Here you might find information about my research interests, a list of publications in which I was involved, description of the SAM application I developed and use in my research, some useful Java codes and my contact details.

Research Section

My research interest considers the problem of tasking of a sensor in a sensor network. It involves effective ways of describing a user’s task in a form that is machine processable (we call it Task Representation or TR), so a system operating on a sensor network is able to interpret a user’s task and provide sensor instances that satisfy it.

This approach enables to maximise use of a networked sensors while minimising need for a user’s intervention. It is especially important in dynamic domains (e.g. firefighting or the military), where the state of sensors and tasks might change many times (e.g. due to a sensor malfunction, or a change in task requirements or priorities). In such domains we want to minimise the time spent manually configuring the sensor network, as any delay dramatically endangers the outcome of a task or a delay's effects might be unacceptable, e.g. the loss of a human life.

Publications Section

Refereed Conference Papers

A Preece, D Pizzocaro, K Borowiecki, G de Mel, W Vasconcelos, A Bar-Noy, M P Johnson, T La Porta, & H Rowaihy, Knowledge-Driven Agile Sensor-Mission Assignment, Proc 3rd Annual Conference of the International Technology Alliance (ACITA 2009), 8 pages, 2009. [pdf]

A Preece, D Pizzocaro, K Borowiecki, G de Mel, M Gomez, W Vasconcelos, A Bar-Noy, M P Johnson, T La Porta, H Rowaihy, G Pearson, & T Pham, Reasoning and Resource Allocation for Sensor-Mission Assignment in a Coalition Context, Proc MILCOM 2008, 7 pages, 2008. [pdf]

M Gomez, A Preece, M P Johnson, G de Mel, W Vasconcelos, C Gibson, A Bar-Noy, K Borowiecki, T La Porta, D Pizzocaro, H Rowaihy, G Pearson, & T Pham, An Ontology-Centric Approach to Sensor-Mission Assignment, Proc 16th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2008), Springer, pages 347-363, 2008. [pdf]

Refereed Conference Demo Papers

A. Preece, D. Pizzocaro, K. Borowiecki, G. de Mel, M. Gomez, W. Vasconcelos, A. Bar-Noy, M. P. Johnson, T. La Porta, H. Rowaihy, G. Pearson & T. Pham Sensor Assignment to Missions in a Coalition Context: The SAM Tool, Adjunct Proceedings of INFOCOM 2009 demo session, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, April 2009. [pdf] Download the video [zip] or go to SAM application section of the page.

Refereed Conference Poster Papers

K. Borowiecki & A. Preece, An Ontological Approach to Integrating Task Representations in Sensor Networks Proc 17th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2010), Lisbon. Portugal, October 2010. [pdf]

SAM application Section

The SAM application was originally developed as my MSc project. Since then it had many improvements (e.g. bundling of assets, simple fusion of acoustic data, various output introduction to a user, etc.). Its intention is to serve as a testbed for testing of approaches to sensor tasking. For this reason it shows a functionality that any system utilising a sensor network would have, e.g. task description by a user, discovery of sensors, processing of sensor data, and delivery of information satisfying the user’s task.

The movie visible below [download zip] shows the running SAM application. It presents the whole loop (from user specification of a task to presentation of sensors' readings) of an application operating in the Sensor-Mission Assignment domain.

You could notice the following actions:
• [00:00:01] login as MikeOfUK,
• [00:00:08] loading mission - Protect the Main Supply Road (ProtectMSR),
• [00:00:14] selecting task region,
• [00:00:18] selecting requirements from Task tab - Detect Vehicle,
• [in the background system does] querying Sensing Resource Registry of US-UK coalition, subscription to a bundle (a bundle consists of platforms with sensors mounted on them) - Bundle No.3 P1:Reaper,
• [00:00:21] video sensor readings presentation to a user - showing images arriving from the patrolling platform,
• [00:00:40] unexpected stop of 'video streaming' - the platform has been destroyed,
• [in the background system does] selection and subscription to an alternative bundle with acoustic intelligence (ACINT) capability - Bundle No.1 P2:I_Robot_Packbot,
• [00:00:43] vehicle detection and tracking (red jeep icon) presented on the map.

Java Section

Components

Here will appear Java components I have developed or which I find useful and use in my development.

Borders

Smoothed Border [DOWNLOAD]
This border has a smoothing effect on inside and outside of a component. You can control the following values of the border, for example:
+Have the effect on both sides (inside and outside) or only on a single side of a border.
+Inverse the smoothing effect towards the inside of the border (outside is default).
+Show/hide the center line (inverse border looks nicer without the center line).
+Round edges of your border.
Example of use is in the code, see main method.

Dashed Border [DOWNLOAD]
This border consists of dashed lines where you can specify their thickness, length and colors. You can swap the specified colors at any time programmatically.
Example of use is in the code, see main method.

Txt2PDFConverter

This code (available under the link github) allows a user to convert a 'txt' file to a 'pdf' file. It has some useful functions which I found missing in free software, e.g. auto fitting of text without requiring from user needing to guess appropriate font width.

Printing Utility

Here are classes allowing you to print a Container object. The role of this classes is to enable 'nice & easy' printing of any container not worrying about its content. NOTICE: The current implementation has one important assumption that the container to print if it has a JTable and user wants it to have header it is added to the container above its table; also all components are added without scroll pane.

ContainerPageRenderer [DOWNLOAD]
Takes care of rendering of the container for printing. It shows a container preview presenting how it will look on paper after printing. This is the main class which has the necessary logic for proper printing of a container, e.g. splitting of a JTable component for rows while moving a copy of header to the next page, making sure that if possible subcomponents of the printed container will not be cut in an ugly fashion etc.

ContainerPrinter [DOWNLOAD]
This is a class presenting how the ContainerPageRenderer can be used in your code. It also allows to browse the previewed container and print it.

IZoomableComponent [DOWNLOAD]
Interface representing a component that can be zoomed in or out.

ContainerOps [DOWNLOAD]
Some useful operations on a container object. For example, finding the highest child components (useful for building printout form).

Fonts [DOWNLOAD]
This class has few predefined fonts that I tend to use in my applications.

Contact Section

Contact Address:
Computer Science,
Cardiff University,
Queen's Buildings,
5 The Parade, Roath,
Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK