This study compares Desktop, Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR) versions of the “Attention Robots” game for attention assessment. It aims to determine which setting yields the most accurate measurements and which maximizes engagement. A controlled experiment with 34 university students gathered objective metrics (processing speed, error rate) and subjective data from the Game Experience Questionnaire. Results show the Desktop version produced the strongest attention scores, with faster performance and fewer errors. However, participants rated the VR version as especially engaging and immersive, producing higher flow and sensory-immersion scores. These outcomes highlight a trade-off between reliability and immersion: Desktop is preferable for precise data collection, while VR is superior for motivating users. The AR version fell between these extremes and may be useful when both accuracy and engagement are desired. The findings can inform future clinical, educational, and research tools and technology-based interventions across diverse age groups and contexts.

Abstract Bullying is a complex social issue that requires adaptive and context-aware intervention strategies. This paper presents a multi-agent model that integrates Theory of Mind (ToM), Reinforcement Learning (RL), and Continual Learning (CL) to improve the detection and intervention of bullying behaviors. ToM allows agents to infer the beliefs, intentions, and emotions of others, enabling socially aware decision-making. RL equips the observer agent with the ability to learn from past experiences, refining its intervention strategies dynamically. CL ensures long-term adaptability by allowing the system to retain learned behaviors while continuously adjusting to new bullying patterns. The proposed approach incorporates abstraction mechanisms derived from Theory-Theory (TT) and Simulation Theory (ST), enabling agents to reason about bullying interactions either through predefined rules or simulated experiences. The system has been evaluated in a simulated school environment with varying levels of bullying severity, demonstrating its effectiveness in dynamically adapting intervention strategies. The results indicate that combining ToM, RL, and CL leads to superior performance compared to standard RL-based approaches, particularly in high-risk bullying scenarios. This work provides a foundation for the development of socially intelligent AI systems capable of proactive and context-sensitive intervention in educational settings.

The Digital Twin (DT) concept has evolved into its current definition since its creation in 2003. It now comprises a physical entity and its virtual counterpart, plus their interrelated data connections and uses the virtual counterpart to monitor, simulate, control, and predict the physical entitys behaviour. Most of the proposals in this field have focused on specific use cases rather than on describing the proper guidelines for designing DTs. This paper addresses a significant research challenge by means of a domain-agnostic proposal for DT design. Our new proposal, MAS4DT, is a method for guiding stakeholders in their DT designs following the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) paradigm, so that the MAS provides the support for the development of the virtual counterpart of the DT. In this work, the application of MAS4DT is illustrated by a DT wind turbine design. We also describe MAS4DTs evaluation in a controlled experiment of its understandability with regard to the 5 dimensions model, another well-known proposal for this type of design. The evaluation was designed considering the properties that a DT should support. The results show that MAS4DT outperforms the 5 dimensions model and indicates its potential use for DT design. Finally, this controlled experiment represents the first empirical validation of proposals for developing D

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has led to an interest in applying it not only in tasks for the general public but also to stringent domains such as healthcare. However, the developers of these next-generation IoT applications must consider additional non-functional requirements related to the criticality of the processes they automate, such as low response times or low deployment costs, as well as technical constraints, which include organizational, legal and policy-related constraints on where data can be processed or stored. While the Computing Continuum paradigm emerges as a valuable alternative for placing such applications, identifying the deployments that satisfy all these requirements becomes a tough challenge. The NP-hard nature of the problem makes it impractical to manually find such a deployment, and traditional approaches fail to consider the technical constraints. In this article, we present the Genetic Algorithm for Application Placement (GAAP), an evolutionary computing-based meta-heuristic designed to help IoT application developers find deployments that satisfy their Quality of Service, business and technical constraints. Our evaluation of an Internet of Medical Things use case shows that GAAP supports larger scenarios than traditional approaches and gives IoT application developers more options while providing better scalability.

: Digital Twins (DTs) are used to augment physical entities by exploiting assorted computational approaches applied to the virtual twin counterpart. A DT is generally described as a physical entity, its virtual counterpart, and the data connections between them. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) paradigm is alike DTs in many ways. Agents of MAS are entities operating and interacting in a specific environment, while exploring and collecting data to solve some tasks. : This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review (SLR) focused on the analysis of current proposals exploiting the synergies of DTs and MAS. This research aims to synthesize studies that focus on the use of MAS to support DTs development and MAS that exploit DTs, paving the way for future research. : A SLR methodology was used to conduct a detailed study analysis of 64 primary studies out of a total of 220 studies that were initially identified. This SLR analyses three research questions related to the synergies between MAS and DT. : The most relevant findings of this SLR and their implications for further research are the following: i) most of the analyzed proposals design digital shadows rather than DT; ii) they do not fully support the properties expected from a DT; iii) most of the MAS properties have not fully exploited for the development of DT; iv) ontologies are frequently used for specifying semantic models of the physical twin. : Based on the results of this SLR, our conclusions for the community are presented in a research agenda that highlights the need of innovative theoretical proposals and design frameworks that guide the development of DT. They should be defined exploiting the properties of MAS to unleash the full potential of DT. Finally, ontologies for machine learning models should be designed for its use in DT.

The Digital Twin (DT) concept has overcome its initial definition based on a purely descriptive approach focusing on modelling physical objects, often using CAD. Today DT often describes a behavioural approach that can simulate an object’s dynamics, monitor its state, and control or predict its behaviour. Although DTs are attracting significant attention and offer many advantages in the design of especially cyber-physical systems, most proposals have focused on developing DTs for a specific use case or need without providing a more holistic approach to its design. We aim to propose a domain-agnostic approach for architecting DTs. Here, DTs are directly supported by Domain-Driven Design’s notion of Bounded Contexts (BCs), hiding all the domain-inherent specifications behind BC boundaries. These BCs are also the central abstraction in many microservice architectures and can be used to describe DTs. A Wind Turbine DT architecture is used as a running example to describe how every relevant DT property can be satisfied following our proposal for architecting digital twins. A qualitative evaluation of this case by five external practitioners shows that our DDD-based proposal consistently outperforms the 5-dimension model used as the reference approach.

Abstract DevOps has been identified by industry as one of the cornerstones of their development process. It is not just a set of tools but a set of principles and practices to build an efficient team improving the communication and collaboration. Its importance has greatly impacted even hiring processes being DevOps Engineer among the most recruited jobs according to LinkedIn. But it is not clear whether universities have noticed the magnitude this movement has attained in industry, despite the need of higher education and industry building up advances together. This led us to determine whether there is a gap between the training provided by higher education and the one expected from industry. For this aim, a questionnaire, defined after a careful review of the literature, has been run worldwide to answer the four research questions. The analysis arose several conclusions, such as higher prevalence of use than of training for most of the analyzed technological practices, except for those related to architecture, probably due to the migration cost these require. It was also found that the two practices with higher prevalence in industry, feedback and limit‐WIP, are scarcely trained in higher education. These conclusions provide interesting advice for future adaptations of computer science degrees.

Abstract According to the latest statistics, the proportion of the elderly (+65) is increasing and is expected to double within the European Union in a period of 50 years. This ageing is due to the improvement of quality of life and advances in medicine in the last decades. Gerontechnology is receiving a great deal of attention as a way of providing the elderly with sustainable products, environments, and services combining gerontology and technology. One of the most important aspects to consider by gerontechnology is the mobility/rehabilitation technologies, because there is an important relationship between mobility and the elderly's quality of life. Telerehabilitation systems have emerged to allow the elderly to perform their rehabilitation exercises remotely. However, in many cases, the proposed systems assist neither the patients nor the experts about the progress of the rehabilitation. To address this problem, we propose in this paper, a fuzzy‐semantic system for evaluating patient's physical state during the rehabilitation process based on well‐known standard for patients' evaluation. Moreover, a tool called FINE has been developed that facilitates the evaluation be accomplished in a semi‐automatic way first asking patients to carry out a set of standard tests and then inferencing their state by means of a fuzzy‐semantic approach using the data captured during the rehabilitation tasks.

Abstract As in any other system, an accurate requirements specification is essential to developing a collaborative system, which has special kinds of requirements that are hard to specify by means of current Requirements Engineering techniques. The Collaborative Systems Requirement Modeling Framework (CSRMF) was developed to address this problem; the original Collaborative Systems Requirement Modeling Language was extended and modeled to properly deal with collaboration and awareness requirements. The developed CSRMF framework consists of 3 components: an Requirements Engineering modeling language able to represent collaboration among users as well as awareness needs, a set of design guidelines that drive Computer Supported Cooperative Work system specification by means of 5 different types of diagrams, and a supporting computer‐aided software engineering tool to specify and validate Computer Supported Cooperative Work system requirements. CSRMF provides Requirements Engineers with a complete solution to the specification of awareness‐demanding collaborative systems, as they can now take advantage of a language and a set of guidelines supported by a tool to guide them in specifying system requirements.

Similarly to what happens when designing a single-user system, designers and developers will probably have to address some design problems that have often appeared previously in some other developments. This kind of recurrent problem can be identified, documented and captured in a design pattern that provides a reusable solution to a common problem. The main aim of this work is to provide a design pattern that can be applied to the design of CSCW applications supporting Workspace Awareness (WA). The object-oriented pattern presented answers all WA questions by means of a class structure representing the typical entities and behaviors available in collaborative applications (e.g. users, artifacts, collaborative actions). Moreover, a proof of concept is presented, thus assessing the feasibility of this pattern for a concrete technology, namely C# and Visual Studio 2012.

Abstract VigilAgent is a methodology for the development of agent‐oriented monitoring applications that uses agents as the key abstraction elements of the involved models. It has not been developed from scratch, but it reuses fragments from Prometheus and INGENIAS methodologies for modelling tasks and the ICARO framework for implementation purposes. As VigilAgent intends to automate as much as possible the development process, it exploits. Model transformation techniques are one of the key aspects of the model‐driven development approach. A model‐to‐model transformation is used to facilitate the interoperability between Prometheus and INGENIAS methodologies. Also, a model‐to‐text transformation is performed to generate ICARO code from the INGENIAS model. A case study based on access control is used to illustrate the fundamentals of the model‐to‐model and model‐to‐text transformations implemented in VigilAgent.

Abstract Software evolution is an increasingly challenging and compelling concern for every developed software system because of the changes in the requirements, the technology, etc. When software evolution is carried out, software architecture emerges as one of the cornerstones that should be considered from two different points of view: as an artifact for the evolution, as it helps the architect plan and restructure the system, and as an artifact of the evolution, because it has to be modified as well. This paper focuses on the second point of view—that is, on the evolution of the software architecture, but taking into account architectural knowledge as a key driver of the process. Given that architecture rationale and design intent are critical in evolving software systems, it is imperative that they be captured in some useful form to aid that evolution process. We present a new approach for evolution styles that extends them by considering in their description the architectural knowledge as a valuable asset of the evolution process. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A collaborative system is a distributed software which allows several users to work together and carry out collaboration, communication and coordination tasks. To perform these tasks, the users have to be aware of other user's actions, usually by means of a set of awareness techniques. When we are defining a collaborative system, the awareness techniques can be considered as non-functional requirements bounded to some quality factors, such as usability. However, serious flaws can be found during the specification of these systems if we use the usual Requirement Engineering techniques available, because their expressiveness limitations when dealing with non-functional requirements. In this paper an empirical evaluation is introduced to determine if these techniques are really appropriate to model groupware requirements and which is the best approach to specify this kind of systems. With this aim, a collaborative text editor is used to evaluate whether the current techniques for Requirement Engineering are appropriated or not, exploiting the relation between awareness capabilities and standard quality factors.

Interactive systems development is a complex process, because many requirements must be considered. Traditionally, functional requirements capture the intended behavior of the system which may be expressed as tasks or functions the system is required to perform. On the other hand, non-functional requirements are concerned with how the application provides the required functionality rather than defining what the application does. Both kinds of requirements are equally important for the final product, but designers try to achieve them by using different mechanisms. This paper introduces ATRIUM, a methodology for developing interactive systems where functional and not functional requirements are considered in a unified and systematically manner by using documented experience in different level of abstraction: interaction, design and architecture. This methodology is standard compliance as the ISO/IEC 25010 is one of the inputs for the process.

The rehabilitation of a patient with acquired brain injury begins during the acute treatment phase. It is important to focus on maximizing the patient's capabilities at home and in the community. Positive reinforcement helps recovery by improving self-esteem and promoting independence. In this context, user interface design is very important for several reasons. First of all the more intuitive the user interface the easier it is to use. The better the user interface is the easier it is to train people to use it, reducing training costs. The better your user interface is the more your users will like to use it, increasing their satisfaction with their work. In this paper a Web-based system, namely HABITAT, for the treatment of acquired brain injured is presented, which has been design by means of model-based user interface design techniques to maximize the effectiveness of the treatment activities.

The intertwining of Requirements and Software Architectures must be based on solid traceability mechanisms in order to effectively maintain the consistency between the two specifications. A new issue has come to the fore in this area: Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD). Achieving the separation of concerns from the very beginning of software development along with their proper traceability throughout the lifecycle is mandatory in terms of quality and maintainability. ATRIUM is a methodology that is defined to guide the development of architectures from requirements and using AOSD techniques as its cornerstone. In this work, we present how ATRIUM uses a scenario technique that provides traceability support. ATRIUM pays special attention to non-functional requirements, their crosscutting relationships, and how they can derive aspects in the software architecture.

There are many Requirements Engineering approaches and techniques that help to specify, analyze and validate requirements. However, they are neither widely accepted nor widely used by the industrial software community. One of the main problems faced when applying them is to what extent they can be easily adapted to the specific needs of the project. This has often led to unsatisfactory requirements management in industrial software development. In this work, a proposal for requirements modeling is presented that allows the integration of the expressiveness of some of the more relevant Requirements Engineering techniques by taking advantage of metamodeling. This proposal focuses on scalability with respect to expressiveness and adaptability to the application domain to establish some basic guidelines and extension mechanisms that lend coherence and semantic precision. A case study and 4 tool support are presented to describe the application of this proposal in a real-life project.

Uses cases are the most widely accepted notation despite their restricted expressiveness and overloaded semantic. Other more sophisticated modeling techniques have been developed independently of any other ones and/or for specific application domains. These techniques often provide broad expressiveness but do not include any scalability or any integration with other approaches. In this work, we present a proposal for requirements modeling that allows the integration of the expressiveness of some of the most relevant approaches in the requirements engineering arena. By focusing on the scalability with respect to expressiveness and adaptability to the application domain, we have established some basic guidelines and extension mechanisms that give coherence and semantic precision to our approach.

Recently, increased attention has been paid to how to establish and strengthen the relationships between requirements and architectural design. In particular, how the process must encompass changes to requirements over time and their effects upon a system's architecture. We sketch our work-in-progress in this field, which we concern about a methodology to guide the architecture development from the inception.