Invited Speech

Title: “VANET Support to Multimedia and Games: Designing and Running Road Experiments”
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are an emerging area of communication that offer a wide variety of possible applications, ranging from safety to multimedia and games. In a near future, in fact, we may easily envision safety and gaming applications where the real-time video captured from a vehicle is streamed to all connected ones, within some given range. We can therefore expect that the standardization of inter-vehicular communication protocols will support the emergence of such type of new applications and that multimedia and gaming, putting to good use such technologies, will rapidly grow. However, one of the obstacles to the exploitation of such applications in the context of VANETs is given by the practical impossibility to test those solutions in real life conditions, as a great number of vehicles are required to gather any significant amount of relevant experimental data. Hence, we here present an approach that makes the practicality of field tests come true, applying a novel methodology apt to experiment with multimedia applications and games in vehicular environments, as it can cope with a very limited amount of resources. The results gained by applying this approach represent a solid leapfrog in the study of such systems. We here discuss in detail the experiments that were run on the road with such methodology and the positive implications that such results reveal for the context of VANET-based multimedia and gaming.

Bio
Alessandro Amoroso is Associate Professor in computer science at the the University of Bologna. He is member of the Department of Computer Science since 1994, and he got his laurea degree in physics at the same university in 1987. The main research areas of Prof. Amoroso are: mobile devices, multimedia systems, and distributed systems. In the last years Prof. Amoroso focussed his researches on VANETs. In this scenario he proposed, with some colleagues, a novel and optimal alert system. He participated to several scientific projects of National Research Council (CNR), National Energy Board (ENEA) and University of California at San Diego (UCSD - NSF).

Program

09:00 - 10:15 Multimedia Networking I - Chair: Prof. Marco Roccetti (University of Bologna, Italy)
- Keynote Speech: “VANET Support to Multimedia and Games: Designing and Running Road Experiments"
Professor Alessandro Amoroso (University of Bologna, Italy)

10:15 - 10:45 BREAK

10:45 - 12:15 Multimedia Networking II - Chair: Prof. A. El Rhalibi (Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
- “Mercator Atlas Robot: Bridging the Gap between Ancient Maps and Modern Travelers with Gestural Mixed Reality”,
Gustavo Marfia (Università di Bologna, Italy); Marco Roccetti (University of Bologna, Italy); Angelo Varni (University of Bologna, USA); Marco Zanichelli (Onde Comunicazione, Italy)
- “On the Feasibility of Opportunistic Collaborative Mixed Reality Games in a Real Urban Scenario”,
Dario Maggiorini (University of Milano, Italy); Christian Quadri (University of Milano, Italy); Laura Anna Ripamonti (University of Milano, Italy)
- “A Serious Game for Predicting the Risk of Developing Dyslexia in Preschool Children”,
Ombretta Gaggi (University of Padua, Italy); Giorgia Galiazzo (University of Padua, Italy); Claudio E. Palazzi (University of Padua, Italy); Andrea Facoetti (University of Padua, Italy); Sandro Franceschini (University of Padua, Italy)
- “xTrack: A Flexible Real-time 3D Scanner for Home Computing Applications”,
Matteo Cocon (University of Bologna, Italy); Gustavo Marfia (Università di Bologna, Italy); Marco Roccetti (University of Bologna, Italy)

12:15 - 13:30 LUNCH

13:30 - 15:30 Multimedia Networking III - Chair: Prof. Claudio Palazzi (University of Padua, Italy)
- “The Effect of TCP Variants on the Coexistence of MMORPG and Best-Effort Traffic”,
Jose Saldana (University of Zaragoza, Spain); Mirko Suznjevic (University of Zagreb, Croatia); Luis Sequeira (University of Zaragoza, Spain); Julián Fernández-Navajas (University of Zaragoza, Spain); Maja Matijasevic (University of Zagreb, Croatia); José Ruiz-Mas (University of Zaragoza, Spain)
- “A Survey of AoIM, Distribution and Communication in Peer-to-Peer Online Games”,
Christopher Carter (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom); Abdennour El Rhalibi (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom); Madjid Merabti (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
- “Loot Distribution in Massive Online Games: foreseeing Impacts on the Players Base”,
Dario Maggiorini (University of Milano, Italy); Antonio Nigro (University of Milano, Italy); Laura Anna Ripamonti (University of Milano, Italy); Marco Trubian (University of Milan, Italy)
- “A Survey of Opportunistic Data Gathering and Dissemination Techniques”,
Armir Bujari (University of Padua, Italy)

15:30 - 16:00 BREAK

16:00 - 18:00 Multimedia Networking IV - Chair: Dr Gustavo Marfia (University of Bologna, Italy)
- “Delayed Chaining: A Practical P2P Solution for Video-on-Demand”,
Jehan-Francois Pâris (University of Houston, USA); Ahmed Amer (Santa Clara University, USA)
- “K-hop Packet Forwarding Schemes for Cooperative Video Streaming over Vehicular Networks”,
Chao-Hsien Lee (Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan); Chung-Ming Huang (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan); Chia-Ching Yang (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan); Hsiao-Yu Lin (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan)
- “Ubiquitous Social Cams”,
Ombretta Gaggi (University of Padua, Italy); Nicola Moretti (University of Padova, Italy); Claudio E. Palazzi (University of Padua, Italy)
- “Measuring the Availability of Images Posted on Social Media Sites”,
Arash Nourian (McGill University, Canada); Muthucumaru Maheswaran (McGill University, Canada)

18:00 Best Paper Award Ceremony