Brief Description of Research Projects

The project SPAN of Esprit I the UoA group was engaged in the development of a parallel query processor for relational DB systems.

In the EDS (European Declarative System) project his group has worked together with the ECRC, an industrial research centre common resource of Bull, ICL and Siemens, developing a parallel Prolog environment. In particular his group was responsible for introducing modules, abstract data types, numerical processing capabilities and real-time constructs and for developing a major application in the parallel logic programming language ElipSys, a language that supports various forms of parallelism and constraint programming. The funding for the UoA group was KECU 127 and MDRA 3,5 Matching funds.

In the PCA (Parallel Computing Action) initiative, the group has been funded and has acquired a transputer-based 16-node parallel machine, the Supercluster-16, from Parsytec / Paracom. The machine ran under the Helios operating system, and among other it included the Strand concurrent logic programming language. The machine is connected to our Ethernet LAN, and is used by several members of our department. Our group works on parallel Prolog and parallel relational database retrieval algorithms. The funding for the UoA group was KECU 15.

In the SAFE (Standard Authoring Facility Environment) project has worked on a hypertext-type and object-oriented authoring model for learning. The funding for the UoA group was ECU.

In the OSMOSE1 (Open Standard for Multimedia Optical Storage Environments) exploratory action, the group has worked on object-oriented multimedia databases requirements analysis and specification. The funding for the UoA group was ECU

The project OSMOSE (a continuation of OSMOSE-1) was concerned with Multimedia and our role was to develop a multimedia asset management system for the development platform and a query processor for semantic-based multimedia information retrieval for the delivery platform. Outside the scope of these projects, a number of internal projects, related to CAI and RDL, investigated the use of AI and VR in the development of advanced instructional environments. The funding for the UoA group was ECU.

In the project APPLAUSE, a continuation of the EDS project, his group was assessing the ECLiPSe language; a parallel logic language with constraints, by developing a multi-agent tourist advisor called MaTourA. This system has been developed in co-operation with ESI, GR, with the intention to provide tourism services via networks. A three-layered communication framework has been developed for the purpose of supporting the communication among the agents in a multi-agent system. ECRC was the prime contractor of this project. The funding for the UoA group was KECU 140,43 and MDRA 10 Matching funds.

In the context of the GP-MIMD project and in co-operation with the Technical University of Athens and the Computer Technology Institute of Patras we acquired a 512-node massively parallel machine for developing and porting various applications. The result of this co-operation has been the creation of the Athens High Performance Computing Laboratory, (AHPCL), a non-profit private company that promotes HPCN applications. The total funding was KECU 600.

In the project PARACHUTE, the UoA, in co-operation with Bull (FR), ILOG (FR) and Olympic Airways (GR), developed a crew management system (crew scheduling and follow-up system). The technology used in this project included object-oriented constraint-based parallel programming. The crew scheduling subsystem covered both the pairing construction and crew assignment (rostering) phases using a C++ constraint programming library, namely ILOG Solver. The funding for the UoA group was KECU 350,67 and MDRA 40 Matching funds.

The MEMOIR project (Managing Enterprise-scale Multimedia using an Open Framework for Information Re-use, EP 22153) demonstrated the applicability and integration of advanced distributed multimedia information systems to support the management of diverse sources of technical information in two large pan-European R&D-based corporations. The demonstration systems developed during the project showed that users could productively access the same source information with very different information requirements via a single underlying information infrastructure. The introduction of such a multimedia information infrastructure will substantially increase the productivity of researchers and other technical information users. In the context of Memoir, the UoA, in co-operation with PAC (UK), Multicosm (UK), IBEX (FR) and two end-user organisations (Glaxo UK, Unichema), has developed intelligent software agents which identify geographically isolated workers who are involved in similar activities, identify relevant information based upon statistical analysis of the content and monitor a variety of dynamic information sources in order to prompt the user with relevant information automatically. The funding for the UoA group was ECU.

PARROT (Parallel Crew Rostering), EP 24960, is the continuation of the PARACHUTE project. The UoA co-operates with ILOG (FR), Lufthansa Systems (D), Olympic Airways (GR) and the University of Paderborn (D) for the improvement of crew rostering quality and performance by applying a parallel approach and by developing on promising results in the combination of operations research techniques and constraint programming. Identification of the optimal mix of techniques and the appropriate degree of parallelization for the characteristics of different airlines will result in approaches that are adapted to small, medium and large size companies’ situations. PARROT follows a preferential bidding policy, it elaborates on a common language, usable trans-nationally, for description of legal, contractual and labour union regulations and rules and, finally, a demonstrator is being built which will be validated and evaluated appropriately. The UoA group is using a direct constraint-programming method and parallelism for solving the rostering scheduling problem. Several search tree algorithms and heuristics are being developed. The funding for the UoA group is KECU 265,50.

The Virtual Museums project concerns the development of a generic Virtual Museum kernel S/W to cover the needs of the various university museums as well as a private museum that participates in the project. More information may be found in the relevant web page. The funding for the UoA group is MDRA 192,3 out of a MDRA 350 total budget.