The demand for embedded software is growing, and the number of development steps tends to increase with shorter period for development. It becomes inevitable to re-use existing software resources. However, if the configuration management of the existing software for reuse is not sufficient, it becomes hard to predict which modules in a system would be affected by the reused software modules. This may result in generating new bugs in the system. In this paper, we propose a method to accomplish the effective reuse of software modules by managing dependency information among modules. The method analyzes mutual relations among existing modules and visually presents not only inter-module dependency but also a list of reusable modules based on the developer's demand. We evaluated the method by applying it to some actual developments.

In recent years, business modeling has attracted attention in the development of information systems for analyzing and designing the working procedures of the system under development. The paper concentrates upon the use of business modeling in the process of analysis from the point of view of early identification of procedural bottlenecks. It goes on to propose and evaluate a method of configuring information systems that links business modeling with UML. The proposed method builds a business process model from the requirement specifications and translates the model into UML. The proposed method was applied to the prototyping of a bus booking and control system, comparing the results obtained using the proposed method with those using only UML for the configuration. The proposed method proved effective in the early detection and removal of bottlenecks, in coping with changes in the specifications, and in accurate modeling.

The research and development results of agent technology are awaited as the software solution with autonomy and social ability, which can provide the way to realize social activities on the Internet. However, the current status of the agent research is that many researches are for a specific application domain and are lacking in generality, and it is hard to apply the framework of the existing research to other fields. Moreover, it is thought that practical usage of agent is in immature state that there are few practical application examples and the system development methodology is not sufficient. In this research, the cooperative problem solving system by the multi-agent is first shown as an application development framework by the agents. Then, we present usage of templates of the agent model and the task model as the development support technique. And the evaluation according to an application construction experiment in a planning problem or the field of network community support is discussed.

Web-based distance education has attracted attention as what can replace partially, even extensively, conventional methods in university education. When distance education in engineering includes remote experiments, it can provide opportunities to study engineering anywhere and at any time. Scheduling the remote classes that feature remote experiments should solve students' preferences for taking classes, contentions such as experiment equipment and teaching staff resources, and prerequisite conditions of various subjects and lessons. This paper describes a scheduling method of distance learning classes including remote experiment, which can coordinate those conditions mentioned above.

Advances in information technology are changing the social environment, and have brought about the so-called information-oriented network society. One of the major issues in the network society is how to bring people together, that is how to form the communities that share similar interests. The formation of communities brings a great deal of benefits to the members such as social collaboration on the Internet, recommendations from people who are interested in similar topics, etc. However, acquiring information about communities and selecting appropriate communities to join is a burden for most of the people and the burden restricts their lives in the network society. We propose a model of community formation with multi-agents with consideration of the cognitive balance model of the user. Personal agents can help the users by gathering and exchanging information, and recommending or assisting the users in making choices. The proposed model is evaluated through experiments.

In conventional university education, lecture classes have been restricted within the university campus. However, with the progress of Internet technologies, university education is expanding beyond the campus in the form of remote classes via the Internet to give students and adults the chances to acquire higher educations. University education in science and engineering requires laboratory experiments allowing the student to get extensive and practical knowledge, so the methods for performing experiments remotely have been researched. When the students conduct remote experiments with no teachers beside, a function to provide teaching assistance and a function to provide report preparation support are very useful, we consider. In this paper we propose an experiment system for performing remote student experiments that provides a teaching assistance function and a report preparation support function and also the prototype of the remote experiment system we developed and its evaluation are described.

Information-oriented network society is advancing far beyond our speculation based on the rapid innovations of information and network technologies. Large amount of people become suffering from so-called information barrier When we consider people with informational handicaps, a large gap is opening up between those who can use computers effectively to process information and those who cannot. People interact in the network society through network communities and one of the major issues in the network society is how to bring people together, that is how to form the communities that share similar interests. Active usage of information with the help of personal agents that interact with each other, gather information, and assist the user seems inevitable. Although, users interact through explicit communities, it is more natural and with fewer barriers to form communities as implicit communities using user's profiles and then to introduce users to explicit communities. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent supporting system for implicit community formation and discuss methods to encourage effective information exchanges between community members and to improve the quality of their lives.

No abstract available.

We propose a top-down hardware/software co-simulation method for embedded systems and introduce a component logical bus architecture as an interface between software components and hardware components. Co-simulation using a component logical bus architecture is possible in the same environment from the stage at which the processor is not yet determined to the stage at which the processor is modeled in register transfer language. A model whose design is based on a component logical bus architecture is replaceable and reusable. By combining such replaceable models, it is possible to quickly realize seamless co-simulation. We further describe experimental results of our approach.

As corporations continue to introduce workflow systems, different systems have appeared for processing of core-business tasks for information processing and clerical work. A number of different models for coordination of different workflow systems have been proposed; but workflows for core-business tasks constitute the central business processes of the company, and certain aspects of coordination of such workflows differ from other kinds of coordination. This paper clarifies these differences, and proposes a model for coordination, which takes these differences into consideration. In addition the application of this model to an actual system and confirmation of its effectiveness are also reported.

Entire systems embedded in a chip and consistingof a processor, memory, and system-specific peripheral hardwareare now commonly contained in commodity electronicdevices. Cost minimization of these systems is of paramounteconomic importance to manufactures of these devices. Byemploying a variable configuration processor in conjunctionwith a multi-precision compiler generator there are situationsin which considerable system cost reduction can be obtainedby synthesizing a CPU that is narrower than the largest variablein the application program.

This paper presents a concept of multimedia railway information and communication system for train operation and passengers, which is intra-network system for railway information connected to public network. And this paper proposes a new train radio communication system between trains and ground facilities which adopts subcarrier multiplexed (SCM) lightwave system in feeder links and 45 GHz band millimeter wave radio communication system in radio links, for aiming high-speed and large-capacity communication such as multi-channel quasi-videos. Also this paper describes performance estimation of this proposed system obtained by computer simulation. Results of estimation show a high degree of feasibility in all cases.

In this paper, we propose a practical method for solving the delivery scheduling problem with multiple agents and discuss its implementation. The method is based on the distributed cooperative problem solving. In the delivery scheduling system, the covered region is partitioned into multiple subregions and each subregion is assigned a subproblem solving agent which solves the problem of scheduling of drivers and trucks in the subregion. Integrating those subproblem solving agents, an integration-and-evaluation agent solves the total problem. By employing the distributed cooperative problem solving framework for the delivery scheduling problem, we achieved an easy incorporation of various evaluation parameters in the process of scheduling, efficient use and management of scheduling knowledge of various levels, and reduction of computer processing by division of the problem into subproblems.