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Along with the success of the digitally revived stereoscopic cinema, other events beyond 3D movies become attractive for movie theater operators, i.e. interactive 3D games. In this paper, we present a case that explores possible challenges and solutions for interactive 3D games to be played by a movie theater audience. We analyze the setting and showcase current issues related to lighting and interaction. Our second focus is to provide gameplay mechanics that make special use of stereoscopy, especially depth-based game design. Based on these results, we present YouDash3D, a game prototype that explores public stereoscopic gameplay in a reduced kiosk setup. It features live 3D HD video stream of a professional stereo camera rig rendered in a real-time game scene. We use the effect to place the stereoscopic effigies of players into the digital game. The game showcases how stereoscopic vision can provide for a novel depth-based game mechanic. Projected trigger zones and distributed clusters of the audience video allow for easy adaptation to larger audiences and 3D movie theater gaming.
In this paper, we present XPERSim, a 3D simulator built on top of open source components that enables users to quickly and easily construct an accurate and photo-realistic simulation for robots of arbitrary morphology and their environments. While many existing robot simulators provide a good dynamics simulation, they often lack the high quality visualization that is now possible with general-purpose hardware. XPERSim achieves such visualization by using the Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine 3D (Ogre) engine to render the simulation whose dynamics are calculated using the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE). Through XPERSim’s integration into a component-based software integration framework used for robotic learning by experimentation, XPERSIF, and the use of the scene-oriented nature of the Ogre engine, the simulation is distributed to numerous users that include researchers and robotic components, thus enabling simultaneous, quasi-realtime observation of the multiple-camera simulations.
XML Signature Wrapping (XSW) has been a relevant threat to web services for 15 years until today. Using the Personal Health Record (PHR), which is currently under development in Germany, we investigate a current SOAP-based web services system as a case study. In doing so, we highlight several deficiencies in defending against XSW. Using this real-world contemporary example as motivation, we introduce a guideline for more secure XML signature processing that provides practitioners with easier access to the effective countermeasures identified in the current state of research.
The paper presents a new control strategy of management of transport companies operating in completive transport environment. It is aimed to optimise the headway of transport companies to provide the balance between costs and benefits of operation under competition. The model of transport system build using AnyLogic comprises agent-based and discrete-event techniques. The model combined two transport companies was investigated under condition of the competition between them. It was demonstrated that the control strategy can ensure the balance of interests of transport companies trying to find compromise between cost of operation and quality of service.
Work in progress: Starter-project for first semester students to survey their engineering studies
(2015)
In this contribution, we describe the activities and promotion programs installed at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University as an institution and at the Department of Computer Science respectively for increasing the total number of computer science students and in particular the female rate. We report about our experiences in addressing gender aspects in education and try to evaluate the outcome of our programs with respect to our equal rights for women strategy. We propose a closer look at mental self-theories enabled by E-portfolios to address also gender issues in Computer Science. Moreover, reasons are identified and discussed which may be responsible for the reduced interest in particular of female young adults to choose a computer science study program.
Risk-based authentication (RBA) aims to strengthen password-based authentication rather than replacing it. RBA does this by monitoring and recording additional features during the login process. If feature values at login time differ significantly from those observed before, RBA requests an additional proof of identification. Although RBA is recommended in the NIST digital identity guidelines, it has so far been used almost exclusively by major online services. This is partly due to a lack of open knowledge and implementations that would allow any service provider to roll out RBA protection to its users. To close this gap, we provide a first in-depth analysis of RBA characteristics in a practical deployment. We observed N=780 users with 247 unique features on a real-world online service for over 1.8 years. Based on our collected data set, we provide (i) a behavior analysis of two RBA implementations that were apparently used by major online services in the wild, (ii) a benchmark of the features to extract a subset that is most suitable for RBA use, (iii) a new feature that has not been used in RBA before, and (iv) factors which have a significant effect on RBA performance. Our results show that RBA needs to be carefully tailored to each online service, as even small configuration adjustments can greatly impact RBA's security and usability properties. We provide insights on the selection of features, their weightings, and the risk classification in order to benefit from RBA after a minimum number of login attempts.
Smart home systems change the way we experience the home. While there are established research fields within HCI for visualizing specific use cases of a smart home, studies targeting user demands on visualizations spanning across multiple use cases are rare. Especially, individual data-related demands pose a challenge for usable visualizations. To investigate potentials of an end-user development (EUD) approach for flexibly supporting such demands, we developed a smart home system featuring both pre-defined visualizations and a visualization creation tool. To evaluate our concept, we installed our prototype in 12 households as part of a Living Lab study. Results are based on three interview studies, a design workshop and system log data. We identified eight overarching interests in home data and show how participants used pre-defined visualizations to get an overview and the creation tool to not only address specific use cases but also to answer questions by creating temporary visualizations.
Application systems are often advertised with features, and features are used heavily for requirements man- agement. However, often software manufacturers only have incomplete information about the features of their software. The information is distributed over different sources, such as requirements documents, issue trackers, user manuals, and code. In this paper, we research the occurrence of feature information in open source software engineering data. We report on a case study with three open source systems. We analyze what information about features can be found in issue trackers and user documentation. Furthermore, we study the abstraction levels on which the features are described, how feature information is related, and we discuss the possibility to discover such information semi-automatically. To mirror the diversity of software development contexts, we choose open source systems, which are quite different, e.g., in the rigor of issue tracker usage. The results differ accordingly. One main result is that the user documentation did not provide more accurate information than the issue tracker compared to a provided feature list. The results also give hints on how the management of feature relevant information can be supported.
In January 2015, German trade and industry announced to support the national animal welfare initiative "Initiative Tierwohl" (ITW) which stands for a more sustainable and animal-friendly meat production. A web content analysis shows that the ITW initiative has been widely picked up and discussed by online media and that user comments are quite heterogeneous. The current study identifies different types of consumers through factor and cluster analysis and is based on an online survey as well as face-to-face interviews. According to our results, the identified consumer groups demonstrate a rather passive comment behaviour on the internet. In fact, the internet was hardly mentioned as an information source for meat production; consumers more frequently referred to brochures, leaflets and personal contacts with sales personnel.
Web-based Editor for YAWL
(2013)
This paper presents a web-based editor that offers YAWL editing capabilities and comprehensive support for the XML format of YAWL. The open-source project Signavio Core Components is extended with a graphical user interface (GUI) for parts of the YAWL Language, and an import-/export component that converts between YAWL and the internal format of Signavio Core Components. This conversion, between the web-based editor and the offcial YAWL Editor, is lossless so both tools may be used together. Compared to the offcial YAWL Editor, the web-based editor is missing some features, but could still facilitate the usage of the YAWL system in use cases that are not supported by a desktop application.
Although much effort is made to prevent risks arising from food, food-borne diseases are an ever present-threat to the consumers’ health. The consumption of fresh food that is contaminated with pathogens like fungi, viruses or bacteria can cause food poisoning that leads to severe health damages or even death. The outbreak of Shiga Toxin-producing enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) in Germany and neighbouring countries in 2011 has shown this dramatically. Nearly 4.000 people were reported of being affected and more than 50 people died during the so called EHEC-crisis. As a result the consumers’ trust in the safety of fruits and vegetables decreased sharply.
In this contribution a machine vision inspection system is presented which is designed as a length measuring sensor. It is developed to be applied to a range of heat shrink tubes, varying in length, diameter and color. The challenges of this task were the precision and accuracy demands as well as the real-time applicability of the entire approach since it should be realized in regular industrial line production. In production, heat shrink tubes are cut to specific sizes from a continuous tube. A multi-measurement strategy has been developed, which measures each individual tube segment several times with sub pixel accuracy while being in the visual field. The developed approach allows for a contact-free and fully automatic control of 100% of produced heat shrink tubes according to the given requirements with a measuring precision of 0.1mm. Depending on the color, length and diameter of the tubes considered, a true positive rate of 99.99% to 100% has been reached at a true negative rate of > 99.7.
Dementia not only affects the cognitive capabilities, especially memory and orientation, but also physical capabilities, which are associated with a decrease of physical activities. Here, ICT can play a major role to improve health, quality of life and wellbeing in older adults suffering from dementia and related stakeholders, such as relatives, professional and informal caregivers. The aim of the presented system is to increase physical and cognitive capabilities of people with dementia and their caregivers to support them in daily life activities, reduce the strain of the caregivers and improve both their wellbeing.
Media development cooperation has aimed for decades at enhancing free and independent media in developing countries as well as economies in transition. Within this field of activity, the concept of media viability has gained more and more attention in recent years. This is mainly due to a proposal of UNESCO`s intergovernmental Bureau of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC). The UNESCO, in partnership with DW Akademie, has drafted a list of indicators that delineate the influencing factors of media viability for media organizations in any given country (UNESCO 2015).
As a consequence of the novelty of the media viability concept, the state of scientific research is restricted. It is frequently focused on isolated case studies without providing a scientific basis for comparison. Empirical studies and comparative analyses are limited to certain media sectors such as the print market, as well as for journalism startups and spin-offs in developed economies.
The megatrends towards both a digital and a usership economy have changed entire markets in the past and will continue to do so over the next decades. In this work, we outline what this change means for possible futures of the mobility sector, taking the combination of trends in both economies into account. Using a sys-tematic, scenario-based trend analysis, we draft four general future scenarios and adapt the two most relevant scenarios to the automotive sector. Our findings show that combing the trends from both economies provides new insights that have often been neglected in literature because of an isolated view on digital technology only. However, service concepts such as self-driving car sharing or self-driving taxis have a great impact at various levels including microeconomic (e.g., service and product design, business models) and macroeconomic (e.g., with regard to ecological, economical, and social impacts). We give a brief outline of these issues and show which business mo dels could be successful in the most likely future scenarios, before we frame strategic implications for today’s automobile manufacturers.
Execution monitoring is essential for robots to detect and respond to failures. Since it is impossible to enumerate all failures for a given task, we learn from successful executions of the task to detect visual anomalies during runtime. Our method learns to predict the motions that occur during the nominal execution of a task, including camera and robot body motion. A probabilistic U-Net architecture is used to learn to predict optical flow, and the robot's kinematics and 3D model are used to model camera and body motion. The errors between the observed and predicted motion are used to calculate an anomaly score. We evaluate our method on a dataset of a robot placing a book on a shelf, which includes anomalies such as falling books, camera occlusions, and robot disturbances. We find that modeling camera and body motion, in addition to the learning-based optical flow prediction, results in an improvement of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve from 0.752 to 0.804, and the area under the precision-recall curve from 0.467 to 0.549.
The alternative use of travel time is one of the widely discussed benefits of driverless cars. We therefore conducted 14 co-design sessions to examine how people manage their time, to determine how they perceive the value of time in driverless cars and to derive design implications. Our findings suggest that driverless mobility will affect both people’s use of travel time as well as their time management in general. The participants repeatedly stated the desire of completing tasks while traveling to save time for activities that are normally neglected in their everyday life. Using travel time efficiently requires using car space efficiently, too. We found out that the design concept of tiny houses could serve as common design pattern to deal with the limited space within cars and support diverse needs.
In interactive graphics it is often necessary to introduce large changes in the image in response to updated information about the state of the system. Updating the local state immediately would lead to a sudden transient change in the image, which could be perceptually disruptive. However, introducing the correction gradually using smoothing operations increases latency and degrades precision. It would be beneficial to be able to introduce graphic updates immediately if they were not perceptible. In the paper the use of saccade-contingent updates is exploited to hide graphic updates during the period of visual suppression that accompanies a rapid, or saccadic, eye movement. Sensitivity to many visual stimuli is known to be reduced during a change in fixation compared to when the eye is still. For example, motion of a small object is harder to detect during a rapid eye movement (saccade) than during a fixation. To evaluate if these findings generalize to large scene changes in a virtual environment, gaze behavior in a 180 degree hemispherical display was recorded and analyzed. This data was used to develop a saccade detection algorithm adapted to virtual environments. The detectability of trans-saccadic scene changes was evaluated using images of high resolution real world scenes. The images were translated by 0.4, 0.8 or 1.2 degrees of visual angle during horizontal saccades. The scene updates were rarely noticeable for saccades with a duration greater than 58 ms. The detection rate for the smallest translation was just 6.25%. Qualitatively, even when trans-saccadic scene changes were detectible, they were much less disturbing than equivalent changes in the absence of a saccade.
Despite perfect functioning of its internal components, a robot can be unsuccessful in performing its tasks because of unforeseen situations. These situations occur when the behavior of the objects in the robot’s environment deviates from its expected values. For robots, such deviations are exhibited in the form of unknown external faults which prohibit them from performing their tasks successfully. In this work we propose to use naive physics knowledge to reason about such faults in the robotics domain. We propose an approach that uses naive physics concepts to find information about the situations which result in a detected unknown fault. The naive physics knowledge is represented by the physical properties of objects which are formalized in a logical framework. The proposed approach applies a qualitative version of physical laws to these properties for reasoning about the detected fault. By interpreting the reasoning results the robot finds the information about the situations which can cause the fault. We apply the proposed approach to the scenarios in which a robot performs manipulation tasks of picking and placing objects. Results of this application show that naive physics holds great promise for reasoning about unknown ex- ternal faults in robotics.
Trust is the lubricant of the sharing economy, especially in peer-to-peer carsharing where you leave a valuable good to a stranger in the hope of getting it backunscathed. Central mechanisms for handling this information gap nowadays are ratings and reviews of other users. The rising of connected car technology opens new possibilities to increase trust by collecting and providing e.g. driving behavior data. At the same time, this means an intrusion into the privacy of the user. Therefore, in this work we explore technological approaches that allow building trust without violating the privacy of individuals. We evaluate to what extent blockchain technology and smart contracts are suitable technologies to meet these challengesby setting upa prototype implementation of a block-chain-based carsharing approach. In this context, we present our research approachand evaluate the prototype in terms of trust and privacy.
In this paper, a set of micro-benchmarks is proposed to determine basic performance parameters of single-node mainstream hardware architectures for High Performance Computing. Performance parameters of recent processors, including those of accelerators, are determined. The investigated systems are Intel server processor architectures as well as the two accelerator lines Intel Xeon Phi and Nvidia graphic processors. Results show similarities for some parameters between all architectures, but significant differences for others.
Using an Embroidery Machine to Achieve a Deeper Understanding of Electromechanical Applications
(2013)
Efficient and comprehensive assessment of students knowledge is an imperative task in any learning process. Short answer grading is one of the most successful methods in assessing the knowledge of students. Many supervised learning and deep learning approaches have been used to automate the task of short answer grading in the past. We investigate why assistive grading with active learning would be the next logical step in this task as there is no absolute ground truth answer for any question and the task is very subjective in nature. We present a fast and easy method to harness the power of active learning and natural language processing in assisting the task of grading short answer questions. A webbased GUI is designed and implemented to incorporate an interactive short answer grading system. The experiments show that active learning saves the time and effort of graders in assessment and reaches the performance of supervised learning with less amount of graded answers for training.
When dialogues with voice assistants (VAs) fall apart, users often become confused or even frustrated. To address these issues and related privacy concerns, Amazon recently introduced a feature allowing Alexa users to inquire about why it behaved in a certain way. But how do users perceive this new feature? In this paper, we present preliminary results from research conducted as part of a three-year project involving 33 German households. This project utilized interviews, fieldwork, and co-design workshops to identify common unexpected behaviors of VAs, as well as users’ needs and expectations for explanations. Our findings show that, contrary to its intended purpose, the new feature actually exacerbates user confusion and frustration instead of clarifying Alexa's behavior. We argue that such voice interactions should be characterized as explanatory dialogs that account for VA’s unexpected behavior by providing interpretable information and prompting users to take action to improve their current and future interactions.
The development of fully automated vehicles is becoming more and more present in the social discussion. The image of fully automated cars is determined by automobile manufacturers and placed in the context of individual traffic. In contrast to fully autonomous private cars, fully automated public transport is already operating in some cities and is to be expanded in the future. Autonomous public transport offers great potential for the development and promotion of sustainable mobility concepts. However, the user acceptance is important for the enforcement and widespread use of these technical innovations. An online study on the acceptance of fully automated public transport based on quantitative data of a sample of N = 201 is presented. The results show a high level of familiarity with the topic and a very high level of overall intention to use fully automated public transport in the future.
Agricultural activities within the city boundaries have a long history in both developed and developing countries. Especially in developing countries these activities contribute to food security and the mitigation of malnutrition (food grown for home consumption). They generate additional income and contribute to recreation, environmental health as well as social interaction. In this paper, a broad approach of Urban AgriCulture is used, which includes the production of crops in urban and peri-urban areas and ranges in developed countries from allotment gardens (Schrebergarten) over community gardens (Urban Gardening) to semi-entrepreneurial self-harvest farms and fully commercialized agriculture (Urban Farming). Citizens seek to make a shift from traditional to new (sustainable) forms of food supply. From this evolves a demand for urban spaces that can be used agriculturally. The way how these citizens’ initiatives can be supported and their contribution to a resilient and sustainable urban food system increasingly attracts attention. This paper presents an empirical case study on Urban AgriCulture initiatives in the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg region (Germany). Urban AgriCulture is still a niche movement with the potential to contribute more significantly to urban development and constitute a pillar of urban quality of life.
The study of locomotion in virtual environments is a diverse and rewarding research area. Yet, creating effective and intuitive locomotion techniques is challenging, especially when users cannot move around freely. While using handheld input devices for navigation may often be good enough, it does not match our natural experience of motion in the real world. Frequently, there are strong arguments for supporting body-centered self-motion cues as they may improve orientation and spatial judgments, and reduce motion sickness. Yet, how these cues can be introduced while the user is not moving around physically is not well understood. Actuated solutions such as motion platforms can be an option, but they are expensive and difficult to maintain. Alternatively, within this article we focus on the effect of upper-body tilt while users are seated, as previous work has indicated positive effects on self-motion perception. We report on two studies that investigated the effects of static and dynamic upper body leaning on perceived distances traveled and self-motion perception (vection). Static leaning (i.e., keeping a constant forward torso inclination) had a positive effect on self-motion, while dynamic torso leaning showed mixed results. We discuss these results and identify further steps necessary to design improved embodied locomotion control techniques that do not require actuated motion platforms.
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) should, on the one hand, provide theoretical and practical knowledge to students and, on the other hand, make valuable contributions to theoretical knowledge and provide new insights by means of research. However, HEIs have to face changing and increasing demands with respect to what they are expected to achieve. Education and research issues are no longer enough, what matters today is the so called “third mission”. A specific example for implementing a third mission is the cooperation between HEIs and business incubators. With this in mind, a local consortium consisting of regional HEIs, e.g. Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences, as well as public and private institutions and partners initiated and established an incubator hub for the region Bonn/Rhein-Sieg in 2016, called “Digital Hub Region Bonn”. This conference contribution reports on our experience with regards to this cooperation approach resulting from the above- mentioned case. Furthermore the pros and cons as well as some issues of this kind of cooperation will be discussed. Last but not least this paper initiates the opportunity to share and compare the experiences of other university business incubators in Africa as well as in Germany. As we will describe, the financial investment of HEIs in a joint-incubator with other public as well as private partners offers substantial benefits, such as mutual know-how transfer from HEIs to the economy and vice versa. This strengthens entrepreneurial mindsets and activities and contributes to the development and growth of the local economy. Consequently, this cooperation sometimes creates challenges at various levels, for example due to differing interests between HEIs and business partners. This conference contribution offers approaches to solve these issues and to support private public partnership in business incubation.
Unexpected Situations in Service Robot Environment: Classification and Reasoning Using Naive Physics
(2014)
Understanding the Internet of Things: A Conceptualisation of Business-to-Thing (B2T) Interactions
(2015)
TSEM: Temporally-Weighted Spatiotemporal Explainable Neural Network for Multivariate Time Series
(2023)
Trust is the lubricant of the sharing economy. This is true especially in peer-to-peer carsharing, in which one leaves a highly valuable good to a stranger in the hope of getting it back unscathed. Nowadays, ratings of other users are major mechanisms for establishing trust. To foster uptake of peer-to-peer carsharing, connected car technology opens new possibilities to support trust-building, e.g., by adding driving behavior statistics to users' profiles. However, collecting such data intrudes into rentees' privacy. To explore the tension between the need for trust and privacy demands, we conducted three focus group and eight individual interviews. Our results show that connected car technologies can increase trust for car owners and rentees not only before but also during and after rentals. The design of such systems must allow a differentiation between information in terms of type, the context, and the negotiability of information disclosure.
Over the past two decades many low and middle income countries worldwide have started to extend the coverage and improve the functioning of public social protection systems. The research program on international policy diffusion provides empirical evidence that apart from domestic factors international interdependencies matter as well for national policy change in social protection. However, little is known about the governance structures mediating international policy diffusion in social protection.
Analyzing training performance in sport is usually based on standardized test protocols and needs laboratory equipment, e.g., for measuring blood lactate concentration or other physiological body parameters. Avoiding special equipment and standardized test protocols, we show that it is possible to reach a quality of performance simulation comparable to the results of laboratory studies using training models with nothing but training data. For this purpose, we introduce a fitting concept for a performance model that takes the peculiarities of using training data for the task of performance diagnostics into account. With a specific way of data preprocessing, accuracy of laboratory studies can be achieved for about 50% of the tested subjects, while lower correlation of the other 50% can be explained.
Updating a shared data structure in a parallel program is usually done with some sort of high-level synchronization operation to ensure correctness and consistency. However, underlying synchronization instructions in a processor architecture are costly and rather limited in their scalability on larger multi-core/multi-processors systems. In this paper, we examine work queue operations where such costly atomic update operations are replaced with non-atomic modifiers (simple read+write). In this approach, we trade the exact amount of work with atomic operations against doing more and redundant work but without atomic operations and without violating the correctness of the algorithm. We show results for the application of this idea to the concrete scenario of parallel Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithms for undirected graphs on two large NUMA shared memory system with up to 64 cores.
In the field of domestic service robots, recovery from faults is crucial to promote user acceptance. In this context we focus in particular on some specific faults, which arise from the interaction of a robot with its real world environment. Even a well-modelled robot may fail to perform its tasks successfully due to unexpected situations, which occur while interacting. These situations occur as deviations of properties of the objects (manipulated by the robot) from their expected values. Hence, they are experienced by the robot as external faults.
Large, high-resolution displays are highly suitable for creation of digital environments for co-located collaborative task solving. Yet, placing multiple users in a shared environment may increase the risk of interferences, thus causing mental discomfort and decreasing efficiency of the team. To mitigate interferences coordination strategies and techniques were introduced. However, in a mixed-focus collaboration scenarios users switch now and again between loosely and tightly collaboration, therefore different coordination techniques might be required depending on the current collaboration state of team members. For that, systems have to be able to recognize collaboration states as well as transitions between them to ensure a proper adjustment of the coordination strategy. Previous studies on group behavior during collaboration in front of large displays investigated solely collaborative coupling states, not transitions between them though. To address this gap, we conducted a study with 12 participant dyads in front of a tiled display and let them solve two tasks in two different conditions (focus and overview). We looked into group dynamics and categorized transitions by means of changes in proximity, verbal communication, visual attention, visual interface, and gestures. The findings can be valuable for user interface design and development of group behavior models.
Trojanized software packages used in software supply chain attacks constitute an emerging threat. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of scalable approaches that allow automated and timely detection of malicious software packages and thus most detections are based on manual labor and expertise. However, it has been observed that most attack campaigns comprise multiple packages that share the same or similar malicious code. We leverage that fact to automatically reproduce manually identified clusters of known malicious packages that have been used in real world attacks, thus, reducing the need for expert knowledge and manual inspection. Our approach, AST Clustering using MCL to mimic Expertise (ACME), yields promising results with a 𝐹1 score of 0.99. Signatures are automatically generated based on characteristic code fragments from clusters and are subsequently used to scan the whole npm registry for unreported malicious packages. We are able to identify and report six malicious packages that have been removed from npm consequentially. Therefore, our approach can support the detection by reducing manual labor and hence may be employed by maintainers of package repositories to detect possible software supply chain attacks through trojanized software packages.
This paper describes the work done at our Lab to improve visual and other quality of Virtual Environments. To be able to achieve better quality we built a new Virtual Environments framework called basho. basho is a renderer independent VE framework. Although renderers are not limited to graphics renderers we first concentrated on improving visual quality. Independence is gained from designing basho to have a small kernel and several plug-ins.
Wireless sensor networks are widely used in a variety of fields including industrial environments. In case of a clustered network the location of cluster head affects the reliability of the network operation. Finding of the optimum location of the cluster head, therefore, is critical for the design of a network. This paper discusses the optimisation approach, based on the brute force algorithm, in the context of topology optimisation of a cluster structure centralised wireless sensor network. Two examples are given to verify the approach that demonstrate the implementation of the brute force algorithm to find an optimum location of the cluster head.
The paper presents the topological reduction method applied to gas transport networks, using contraction of series, parallel and tree-like subgraphs. The contraction operations are implemented for pipe elements, described by quadratic friction law. This allows significant reduction of the graphs and acceleration of solution procedure for stationary network problems. The algorithm has been tested on several realistic network examples. The possible extensions of the method to different friction laws and other elements are discussed.
There & Back again: Developing a tool for testing of antimicrobial surfaces for space habitat design
(2023)
Digitisation has brought a major upheaval to the mobility sector, and in the future, self-driving cars will probably be one of the transport modes. This study extends transport and user acceptance research by analysing in greater depth how the new modes of autonomous private cars, autonomous carsharing and autonomous taxis fit into the existing traffic mix from today's perspective. It focuses on accounting for relative added value. For this purpose, user preference theory was used as a base for an online survey (n=172) on the relative added value of the new autonomous traffic modes. Results show that users see advantages in the autonomous modes for driving comfort and time utilization whereas, in comparison to conventional cars, in many other areas – especially in terms of driving pleasure and control – they see no advantages or even relative disadvantages. Compared to public transport, the autonomous modes offer added values in almost all characteristics. This analysis at the partwor th level provides a more detailed explanation for user acceptance of automated driving.
The corporate landscape is experiencing an increasing change in business models due to digitization. An increasing availability of data along the business processes enhance the opportunities for process automation. Technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are widely used for business process optimization, but as a side effect an increase in stand-alone solutions and a lack of holistic approaches can be observed. Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) is said to support more complex processes and enable automated decision-making, but due to the lack of connectors makes the implementation difficult. RPA marketplaces can be a bridging technology to help companies implement Intelligent Process Automation. This paper explores the drivers and challenges for the adoption of RPA marketplaces to realize IPA. For this purpose, we conducted ten expert interviews with decision makers and IT staff from the process automation sector.
The RoCKIn@Work Challenge
(2014)
The RoCKIn@Home Challenge
(2014)
The perceived distance of self motion induced in a stationary observer by optic flow is overestimated (Redlick et al., Vis Res. 2001 41: 213). Here we assessed how different components of translational optic flow contribute to perceived distance traveled. Subjects sat on a stationary bicycle in front of a virtual reality display that extended beyond 90deg on each side. They monocularly viewed a target presented in a virtual hallway wallpapered with stripes that changed colour to prevent tracking individual stripes. Subjects then looked centrally or 30, 60 or 90° eccentrically while their view was restricted to an ellipse with faded edges (25 x 42deg) centered on their fixation. Subjects judged when they had reached the target’s remembered position. Perceptual gain (perceived/actual distance traveled) was highest when subjects were looking in a direction that depended on the simulated speed of motion. Results were modeled as the sum of separate mechanisms sensitive to radial and laminar optic flow. In our display distances were perceived as compressed. However, there was no correlation between perceptual compression and perceived speed of motion. These results suggest that visually induced self motion in virtual displays can be subject to large but predictable error.
New communication technologies are changing the way we work and communicate with people around the world. Given this reality, students in Higher Education (HE) worldwide need to develop knowledge in their area of study as well as attitudes and values that will enable them to be responsible and ethical global citizens in the workforce they will soon enter, regardless of the degree. Different institutional and country-specific requirements are important factors when developing an international Virtual Exchange (VE) program. Digital learning environments such as ProGlobe – Promoting the Global Exchange of Ideas on Sustainable Goals, Practices, and Cultural Diversity – offer a platform for collaborating with diverse students around the world to share and reflect on ideas on sustainable practices. Students work together virtually on a joint interdisciplinary project that aims to create knowledge and foster cultural diversity. This project was successfully integrated into each country’s course syllabus through a common global theme; sustainability. The focus of this paper is to present multi-disciplinary perspectives on the opportunities and challenges in implementing a VE project in HE. Furthermore, it will present the challenges that country coordinators dealt with when planning and implementing their project. Given the disparity found in each course syllabus, project coordinators uniquely handled the project goal, approach, and assessment for their specific course and program. Not only did the students and faculty gain valuable insight into different aspects of collaboration when working in interdisciplinary HE projects, they also reflected on their own impact on the environment and learned to listen to how people in different countries deal with environmental issues. This approach provided students with meaningful intercultural experiences that helped them link ideas and concepts about a global issue through the lens of their own discipline as well as other disciplines worldwide.
The Learning Culture Survey (LCS) is a questionnaire-based research, investigating students’ perceptions of and expectations towards Higher Education (HE). The aim of this survey is to improve our understanding about the sources of cultural conflicts in educational scenarios. This understanding, shell help us to predict potential conflict situations and develop supportive measures.
After three years of development, the LCS was initialized in 2010 in South Korea and Germany. During the following years, the investigations were extended to further countries. The results, on the one hand, provided insights about the cultural context of HE in general and on the other hand, about specific (national / regional) characteristics of learners in HE. Most issues targeted with the questionnaire were directly linked to value systems. Thus, we expected from the beginning that the collected data would keep valid over longer periods of time. However, we had no evidence regarding the actual persistence of learning culture. For a study, designed to being implemented on a global scope and providing input for further applications, persistence is a basic condition to justify related investigations.
To answer the question on persistence, we repeated the LCS in our university every four years, between 2010 to 2018/19. Besides a small number of slight changes, explainable out of their situational context, the overall results kept consistent over the investigated years. In this paper, after an introduction of the LCS’ concept, setting and its general results from the past years, we present the insights from our most recently finalized longitudinal study on learning culture.