Multiple Model Bayesian Estimation for BLE-based Localization and RL-based Decision Support of Autonomous Agents

With the rapid emergence of Internet of Things (IoT), we are more and more surrounded by smart connected devices (agents) with integrated sensing, processing, and communication capabilities. In particular, IoT-based positioning has become of primary importance for providing advanced Location-based Services (LBSs) in indoor environments. Several LBSs have been developed recently such as navigation assistance in hospitals, localization/tracking in smart buildings, and providing assistive services via autonomous agents collectively act as an Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT). The focus of the thesis is on the following two research topics when it comes to autonomous agents providing LBSs in indoor environments: (i) Self-Localization, which is the autonomous agent’s ability to obtain knowledge of its own location, and; (ii) Localized Decision Support System, which refers to an autonomous agent’s ability to perform optimal actions towards achieving pre-defined objectives. With regards to Item (i), the thesis develops innovative localization solutions based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), referred to Bluetooth Smart. Given unavailability of Global Positioning System (GPS) in indoor environments, BLE has attracted considerable attention due to its low cost, low energy consumption, and widespread availability in smart hand-held devices. Because of multipath fading and fluctuations in the indoor environment, however, BLE-based localization approaches fail to achieve high accuracies. To address these challenges, different linear and non-linear Bayesian-based estimation frameworks are proposed in this thesis. Among which, the thesis proposes a novel Multiple-Model and BLE-based tracking framework, referred to as the STUPEFY. The proposed STUPEFY framework uses set-valued information and is designed by coupling a non-linear Bayesian-based estimation model (Box Particle Filter) with fingerprinting-based methodologies to improve the overall localization accuracy. With regards to the Item (ii), there has been an increasing surge of interest on development of advanced Reinforcement Learning (RL) systems. The objective is development of intelligent approaches to learn optimal control policies directly from smart agents’ interactions with the environment. In this regard, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) provide an attractive modeling mechanism to approximate the value function using sample transitions. DNN-based solutions, however, suffer from high sensitivity to parameter selection, are prone to overfitting, and are not very sample efficient. As a remedy to the aforementioned problems, the thesis proposes an innovative Multiple-Model Kalman Temporal Difference (MM-KTD) framework, which adapts the parameters of the filter using the observed states and rewards. Moreover, an active learning method is proposed to enhance the sampling efficiency of the overall system. The proposed MM-KTD framework can learn the optimal policy with significantly reduced number of samples as compared to its DNN-based counterparts

Choreographing and Reinventing Chinese Diasporic Identities - An East-West Collaboration

In demonstrating Eastern- and Western-based Chinese diasporic dances as equally critical and question-provoking in Chinese identity reconstructions, this research compares choreographic implications in the Hong Kong-Taiwan and Toronto-Vancouver dance milieus of recent decades (1990s 2010s). An auto-ethnographic study of Yuri Ngs (Hong Kong) and Lin Hwai-mins (Taiwan) works versus my own (Toronto) and Wen Wei Wangs (Vancouver), it probes identities choreographed in place-constituted third spaces between Chinese selves and Euro-American Others. I suggest that these identities perpetrate hybrid movements and aesthetics of geo-cultural-political distinctness from the Chinese ancestral land ones manifesting ultimate glocalization intersecting global political economies and local cultural-creative experiences. Echoing the diasporic habitats cultural and socio-historical specificities, they are constantly (re) appropriated and reinvented via translation, interpretation, negotiation, and integration of East-West cultural-artistic and socio-political ingredients. The event unfolds such identities placial uniqueness that indicates the same Chinese roots yet divergent diasporic routes. In reviewing Ngs balletic and contemporary photo-choreographic productions of post-British colonial Hong Kong-ness alongside Lins repertories of Chinese traditional, Taiwan indigenous, American modern and Other artistic impacts noting Taiwanese-ness, the study unearths cultural roots as the core source of Chinese identity rebuilding from East Asian displacements. It traces an ingrained third space between Chinese historic-social values, Western cultural elements, and Other performing artistries of Hong Kong and Taiwanese belongings. Juxtaposing my Chinese traditional-based and transcultural Toronto dance projects with Wangs Vancouver balletic-contemporary fusions of Chinese iconicity, Chinese-Canadian identities marked by a hyphenated (third/in-between) space are associated as varying North American self-generated routes of social and artistic possibilities in a Canadian mosaic-cosmopolitical setting the persistent state of Canadian becoming. My conclusion resolves the examined choreographic cases as continually developed through third-space instigated East-West cultural-political crossings plus interpenetrative local creativities and global receptivity. Of gains or losses, struggles or rebirths, the cases of placial-temporal significations elicit multiple questions on Chinese diasporic cultural infusions, social sustenance, artistic integrity, and identity representations amid East-West negotiations my experiential reflection on the dance role and potency in the reimagining and remaking of Chinese diasporic identities

Restaging Place: Performativity and the camera. Parliament Square recast through social media photography

This practice-related study of a politically charged public place, Parliament Square, London is led by an examination of social media photographs that have been taken there and posted online. The photographs have been removed from the fast flow of social media, transposed to analogue film, slowed and analyzed. During this physical process four social activities emerge: tourism, protest, state occasion and the everyday. An investigation into each of these areas is instigated by a close examination of one related photograph. This investigation occurs theoretically and in the realm of performative sculptural, photographic and film practice. As well as being a study of the actual place, the Square offers a public location from which to reflexively examine its virtual equivalents online. Through performative practice, my study highlights commonalities between the role of photographs, monuments and public places as methods of representing historical understandings and their democratic potential: the ‘everyday’ of the Square and photography. The study investigates the role of photography in the construction of place – deconstructing how tourists pose and gaze into the camera to return to the singularity of the individual experience. The enquiry continues to look at Parliament Square as a place of political protest counter to the dominant state narrative of the past and the present. It is a place where particular narratives are embodied and celebrated, often misrepresenting the complexity of the past. The four photographs are restaged in the studio. Here they become a distorting mirror of both actual and virtual places revealing an absence that arguably occurs within all photographs. This absence might allow the viewer to relate to the subject depicted, find common ground, as well as develop a critical self-awareness and openness to the views of others

Unauthorised disclosures: US national security whistleblowers and leakers, 1970-2017

In the last decade, individuals such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden have arguably dominated public debate on leaked information. The terms ‘whistleblower’ and ‘leaker’ are often used interchangeably in the media to describe such individuals. Broadly, they have made an unauthorised disclosure of classified information. However, this does not represent a full picture of the enormous complexity that past cases have constituted. Utilising the dominant cases in the US that have been reported in the media between 1970 and 2017, this thesis aims to explore the impact of whistleblowers and leakers, both on the changes in legislation or policy they may have affected and also on their own lives. In order to achieve this objective, the terms whistleblower and leaker in the context of revealing classified information will be examined. Accordingly, the main body of this thesis analyses how legal definitions have been distorted in the public narrative, both by the state and the media and resulted in a variety of interpretations with potentially life altering consequences. In exploring the path taken by a whistleblower or leaker, the thesis deploys a new agency-structure model that offers a linear typology of the three stages potential whistleblowers will pass through when exposing wrongdoing. I have termed these three stages – (1) potential whistleblower, (2) the disclosure and (3) the aftermath. This framework has been adopted in order to illuminate the moral and practical issues that are faced by potential whistleblower, as well as the potential consequences that they face. Drawing on different disciplines to gain an insight into the personal burden and choices made in each case, this thesis investigates the possibility that western governments have sought to securitise the leaker. By portraying them as the enemy of the state, the integrity of the disclosure is more readily questioned. Finally, the thesis seeks to provide normative conclusions with suggestions for an improved approach to national security whistleblowers and leakers

URI Undergraduate Course Catalog 1978-1979

This is a digitized, downloadable version of the University of Rhode Island course catalog.https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/course-catalogs/1014/thumbnail.jp

URI Undergraduate Course Catalog 1971-1972

This is a digitized, downloadable version of the University of Rhode Island course catalog.https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/course-catalogs/1000/thumbnail.jp

URI Undergraduate Course Catalog 1983-1984

This is a digitized, downloadable version of the University of Rhode Island Undergraduate Course Catalog.https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/course-catalogs/1024/thumbnail.jp

Thinking the Interior: Atmospheric Envelopes and Entangled Objects

This paper presented at SITUATION Symposium will focus on two works by the British artist Martin Creed: Work No.227, The lights going on and off (2000) and Work No.200, Half the air in a given space (1998). I will consider the artist's deployment of air in these works as both a material and a metaphor that might enable a productive engagement with thinking about interior spaces in relation to broader questions concerning ecology and the environment. Creed's works will be situated in relation to Peter Sloterdijk's writings on air and atmosphere. SITUATION is an event – symposium, exhibition and a series of city occupations – initiated and arranged by the RMIT Interior Design program. SITUATION brings attention to the designing of interiors as a practice engaged in spatial and temporal production; a practice that works in the midst of social, cultural, historical and political forces; a practice open to contingency, chance and change; a practice engaged with singularity and specificity. SITUATION highlights ideas of ‘event’ and the eventful nature of interiors, lived space-time compositions in constant change; atmospheric compositions as distinct from artefacts; ephemerality; uniqueness; one-offs; a multiplicity of experience. The event aims to contribute to the discipline of interior design at an international level by focusing on these key characteristics of practice, the kinds of research this produces and through this articulates, fosters and advocates opportunities for future practice