This DoKu-Wiki is an extension of the official website of the interdisciplinary master program(Barrier Free Systems (BaSys)), of the University of Applied Science of Frankfurt am Main.

We interpret the term in BaSys Barrier Free Systems in a very broad sense: The removal of barriers of any kind is understood as to provide better access to that what for individuals or entire groups of people is important, meaningful, or helpful. Improving access can also be understood as an increase of inclusion, the inclusion of more important conditions for the needs of the dayly life. To achieve this ambitious goal BaSys provides a collaborative environment of various disciplines to allow truly interdisciplinary projects for teaching and research.Participating disciplines are e.g. nursing and social work, health care, social sciences (PS), architecture, city planning (A), as well as disciplines related to computer science and engineering (II). The main goal is the improvement of the knowledge of the different kinds of users (children, families, elderly, disabled persons, work places…) and –based on this knowledge– the improvement of the surrounding spaces (flats, buildings,…) as well as the usage of appropriate technologies to create a new, intelligent assistiv space that offers fewer barriers , for more inclusion.

Some ideas related to this concept of barrier free systems enabling more inclusion can be found here (still only in German) basysphil1_17aug2010.pdf

The research of BaSys is defined by specific projects, which ideally are closely linked with the teaching of BaSys. Thus, for example Students in the specialized modules take up issues from research and investigate these in the light of the relevant subjects (such as speech recognition, image recognition or learning agents) and develop during a semester their own solutions. Accordingly, the interdisciplinary AIIPS projects can work out themes from research (e.g. help, to design an intelligent assistant to support the design process in architecture).

The research projects of BaSys are naturally not limited to BaSys. Both students and professors from other programs and other universities are able to take action and contribute too. Professors and students from BaSys are e.g. actively involved in special tracks within the bi-annual international IEEE Africon conferences. For this they collaborate with colleagues at the Goethe University (Frankfurt), the Technical University of Vienna, the University of Pretoria, and others.

In addition, in recent years we can observe the development of a network of experts from industry, local government and other universities, to be installed officially in SS2011 as BaSys Experts. These Experts are a valuable source for ideas and projects.

Part of the research focuses on the development of self-learning systems to be used in different contexts. Therefore modeling and simulation expertise is built up, which is necessary for the operation of appropriate simulation rooms. This work joins mainly computer science and architecture. But it includes too social work and nursing as well as the economics (eg in the project of a virtual exhibition space for housing advice).

In addition to new developing technologies for architects, in a first milestone, a virtual learning environment (KnowledgeCity1 ') will be developed so that schools can use it for their courses in computer science and robotics together with the students and professors from BaSys. The next step would be to use KnowledgeCity1 for continuing education. With regard to the increasing network of BaSys with communities and companies, it seems likely also to begin the establishment of a competence center, which allows to provide services. This, too, induces valuable ideas for teaching and research.

The BaSys research will be realized by defined Projects. The following pages present these projects, once on the basis of their subject matters (left margin), then by means of objective criteria (upper margin). So if you e.g. click on he left margin the term Simulator it 'will appear a home page for this project. Then one can click on top the various sub-themes which start various partial aspects of the simulator.

The projects are embedded in an engineering process model, as indicated in the diagram below.

The process model provides for a minimum of four phases (P, R, M, I). The model includes besides the usual project dimension an additional dimension for the theory dimension (TH) as well as a software dimension (SW).

The project dimension is formed by at least four phases P (problem introduction), R (requirements engineering), M (modeling a system function) and I (implementation). The bigger those projects are the sooner will these four phases iteratively/ cyclic be repeated several times. The whole process includes additionally meta dimension like verification (review of the formal correctness and plausibility of the formal system model according to specified requirements), validation (review of the correctness and plausibility of the final system, using the previously created specifications and feedback from the client (stakeholder).

Whatever will be designed by an engineering process, it must be described adequately by appropriate theoretical (formal / mathematical) models. This theoretical account must allow predictions and formal proofs.

What ever will be presented at the end as a result, every type of system can be differentiated with regard to software and those components that are controlled by the software. Here, all these components are considered as 'interface' between the user and the software. Therefore, the software is logically considered the most crucial component (even if in individual cases may be very high practical knowledge about materials, material processing, material behavior, etc., can be necessary to enable the working of the system). The methodical development of software based on a suitable theory plays therefore a central role.

From the students it is expected that they 'move' for a project in all the mentioned three dimensions. At the end of the third semester, therefore, the students have to provide an appropriate theory paper, the documentation of the working software as well as the working software as such. Furthermore must the the entire course of the project be documented. This means that the students choose during the project an appropriate process model and an appropriate software tool (e.g. SCRUM) to provide such a documentation.

For students who are not from the area of intelligent systems, but from care / social work and health, or from architecture / urban planning or civil engineering the software dimension is not valid, but the requirement of a theoretical presentation and a suitable project dimension remains.