The computer synthesis of expressive three-dimensional facial character animation.

This present research is concerned with the design, development and implementation of three-dimensional computer-generated facial images capable of expression gesture and speech. A review of previous work in chapter one shows that to date the model of computer-generated faces has been one in which construction and animation were not separated and which therefore possessed only a limited expressive range. It is argued in chapter two that the physical description of the face cannot be seen as originating from a single generic mould. Chapter three therefore describes data acquisition techniques employed in the computer generation of free-form surfaces which are applicable to three-dimensional faces. Expressions are the result of the distortion of the surface of the skin by the complex interactions of bone, muscle and skin. Chapter four demonstrates with static images and short animation sequences in video that a muscle model process algorithm can simulate the primary characteristics of the facial muscles. Three-dimensional speech synchronization was the most complex problem to achieve effectively. Chapter five describes two successful approaches: the direct mapping of mouth shapes in two dimensions to the model in three dimensions, and geometric distortions of the mouth created by the contraction of specified muscle combinations. Chapter six describes the implementation of software for this research and argues the case for a parametric approach. Chapter seven is concerned with the control of facial articulations and discusses a more biological approach to these. Finally chapter eight draws conclusions from the present research and suggests further extensions

“Together we stand, divided we fall”: Constructivist Approach to Support Organizational Change in the Knowledge Work Context

Contemporary organizations have a relation to information systems and information technologies (IS/IT). IS/IT sometimes forms the backbone of the operation or it may have a support function. Simultaneously this means that at some point the systems must be updated and renewed. The renewal brings along changes. Always. The disturbance and disruption caused by the change manifests itself in different ways in different parts of the organization. It is an individual trait, how an employee responds to change, and yet changes need to be managed on organizational levels too. The management of the change is important to secure the implementation of the change and to enable the swift recovery from the change so that the prospective benefits may start to realize.Literature distinguishes levels to be noted in managing organizations operation: organizational, team, and individual levels. Similarly, the literature on change offers multiple types of change to be considered. The features distinguishing the different types of change comprise e.g. whether there is a clear, decided future solution to be (teleological change) or whether there is merely an unrefined state of the future to be (life cycle type of change). The meaning of the types of change for managing the change are elaborated in order to recognize the characteristic effects each change entails.IS/IT literature covers various topics in this vast field. Managing IS/IT related change seems a bit neglected, especially when it comes to managing the operation with individual human aspect considered. This thesis is about managing IS/IT-related change in team-based organization by using a constructivist approach. Constructivism is a theory related to learning. Constructivist approach entails the coach-like approach of presenting subordinates with a cognitive incongruity, a challenge that makes them wanting to solve the issue building on their existing knowledge. The challenge is tackled by applying new knowledge together with the existing with feedback from more knowledgeable peers. An important feature is that the employee in midst of the change is able to reflect on her/his actions and thus acknowledging the learning. There are few examples of it being applied to professional context. This thesis studies ultimately the intersection of the three mentioned areas; IS/IT, change and constructivism. It deepens the understanding of the relationship these themes have and illuminates the suitability of the constructivist approach to managing IS/IT-related change in various contexts.Seems that the IS/IT has its features of not being entirely about technologies nor the management being entirely about humans. An understanding of these features is required to address the issues in an orderly fashion. The organizational structure sometimes dictates the operation and culture, i. e. management. The daily routines of each member of the organization leaves little opportunities for individuals to be aware of the whole operation, save but the top management. Normally there is little need for this. This means that the ‘big picture’ that people have, varies. It is plausible to assume that each division, team, and individual observes the proceedings from their own perspective. However, the motivation of change usually stems from origins not familiar to all thus presenting the change with challenges. The thesis contributes to the increasing understanding of the phenomena related to IS/ITrelated change by studying multiple cases, changes.The research behind this thesis consists of seven major changes from six different organizations. People involved in the changes were interviewed to form the empirical material for the research. Semi-structured interviews were used to gain depth as well as quality. The objective was to understand the dynamics that are affecting and included in the process when the working practices in an organization change. The objective entails the will to illuminate the change and to gain understanding on how a change may be addressed with better expectations for the outcome. Further, to meet the objective it means that various aspects are to be recognized and acknowledged as being significant for the change to happen.Constructivist approach emerged as way to offer a solution on how to address such a change. The studied cases were contemplated through the ‘constructivist lens’ to study the phenomena and even though not intended to offer some nigh on normative suggestions on how to approach future issues of this kind.Kaikilla tämän päivän organisaatioilla on tietotekniikkaa (IS/IT), toisinaan tietotekniikka on näiden organisaatioiden ydintoimintaa, toisinaan tietotekniikka on ’vain’ tukevassa roolissa. Tämä tarkoittaa sitä, että jossakin vaiheessa järjestelmiä pitää päivittää ja uusia. Uudistukset tuovat mukanaan muutoksen. Aina. Muutoksen mukanaan tuomat häiriöt ja keskeytykset näkyvät organisaatioissa eri tavoin. suhtautumisessa muutoksen on yksilökohtaisia eroja, tämän kanssa on hieman ristiriitaista, että muutosta kuitenkin johdetaan organisaatiotasolla. Muutoksen johtaminen on tärkeätä, jotta muutos saadaan implementoitua ja nopea toipuminen muutoksesta mahdollistetaan, jotta muutoksen aiotut edut voivat alkaa realisoitua.Kirjallisuuden perusteella voidaan todeta eri tasoja, joilla organisaation toimintaa tulee johtaa: koko organisaatio, tiimitaso, yksilötaso. Samoin kirjallisuudessa tunnistetaan useampia muutoksen tyyppejä. Muutoksen eri tyypit erottaa toisistaan esimerkiksi se, onko muutokselle ennakkoon päätetty jokin tietty ratkaisu (teleologinen muutos) vai onko muutoksen tarve tiedostettu ja tulevaan ratkaisuun suhtaudutaan avoimin silmin (life cycle -tyyppinen muutos). Näiden eri muutostyyppien ominaisuuksia tarkastellaan, jotta saadaan kunkin tyypin luonteenomaiset piirteet ja vaatimukset selville.IS/IT-kirjallisuudessa käsitellään useita teemoja tästä laajasta kentästä. Muutos, joka liittyy IS/ITympäristöön vaikuttaa jääneen hieman paitsioon. Erityisesti sellainen lähestyminen, jossa myös yksittäisen henkilön näkökulma tulee huomioitua. Tässä väitöskirjassa käsitellään IS/IT-liitännäisen muutoksen johtamista tiimipohjaisessa organisaatiossa konstruktivistista lähestymistapaa käyttäen. Konstruktivismi on teoria oppimiseen. Konstruktivistinen lähestymistapa tarkoittaa valmentajamaista lähestymistapaa, jossa muutokseen liittyvä kognitiivinen haaste esitellään johdettaville siten, että heissä on sisäsyntyinen halu vastata haasteeseen olemassa olevan tietämyksensä pohjalta. Haasteeseen vastataan yhdistelemällä uutta tietämystä olemassa olevaan saaden samalla jatkuvaa palautetta toiminnan etenemisestä kokeneemmilta kollegoilta. Tärkeätä on myös se, että muutoksessa toimiva henkilö voi reflektoida toimintaansa ja siten tunnistaa oppimisen. On esimerkkejä tämän lähestymistavan soveltamisesta organisaatiokonteksissa. Tässä väitöskirjassa selvitetään kolmen esitellyn alueen leikkauskohtaa: IS/IT, muutos ja konstruktivismi. Näiden osien välisten suhteiden ymmärrystä syvennetään sekä annetaan lisävalaistusta konstruktivistisen lähestymistavan soveltuvuudelle muutostilanteiden hallintaan erilaisissa konteksteissa.IS/IT toimintana ei käsittele ainoastaan teknisiä asioita eikä sen johtamisessakaan ole kysymys ainoastaan inhimillisistä tekijöistä. Tämän kokonaisuuden ymmärtäminen on välttämätöntä, jotta tätä teemaa voidaan lähestyä. Organisaation rakenne sanelee joskus toiminnan ja sen johtamisen, kulttuurin. Organisaation päivittäiset rutiinit mahdollistavat vain harvoin jäsentensä olla selvillä kokonaiskuvasta, paitsi ylimmän johdon. Yleensä tähän ei juuri ole tarvettakaan. tämä tarkoittaa samalla sitä, että kuva joka ihmisillä on toiminnasta, vaihtelee. On uskottavaa, että jokainen osasto, tiimi ja yksilö, tarkastelee toimintaa omasta näkökulmastaan. Kuitenkin muutos ja sen tarve lähtee usein jostakin muualta, joka puolestaan tekee muutoksen läpiviennistä haasteellista. Tämän väitöskirjan antia on lisätä ymmärrystä IS/IT-liitännäisestä muutoksesta tutkimalla useita sellaisia muutostilanteita.Taustalla oleva tutkimustyö käsittää seitsemän suurta muutosta kuudessa eri organisaatiossa. Pääasiallinen empiirinen materiaali on näissä muutostilanteissa mukana olleiden henkilöiden haastatteluja. Puolirakenteellisia haastatteluja käytettiin, jotta varmistettiin materiaalin syvyys ja laatu koskien kutakin muutostapausta. Tavoitteena oli ymmärtää kunkin prosessin muutosdynamiikkaa ja muutokseen vaikuttavia tekijöitä, kun työskentelytavat muuttuvat. Tavoitteessa on mukana myös halu selventää muutostilannetta ja ymmärtää, miten muutosta voisi lähestyä, jotta lopputulos olisi paras mahdollinen. Näin ollen tavoitteen saavuttaminen tarkoittaa, että muutokseen ja sen aikaansaamiseen vaikuttavat eri tekijät tunnistetaan ja tunnustetaan.Konstruktivistinen lähestymistapa nousi esiin ratkaisuna, joka voi sopia tällaiseen tarpeeseen. Tutkittuja muutostapauksia arvioitiin ’konstruktivistisen linssin’ kautta, jotta ilmiötä voitiin tutkia tarkoituksenmukaisesti. Vaikka näin ei alun perin ollut tarkoitus, työn yhteenvedossa otetaan lähes normatiivisesti kantaa miten kuvatun kaltaisia muutostilanteita voisi lähestyä.<br/

Framework-level resource awareness in robotics and intelligent systems. Improving dependability by exploiting knowledge about system resources

Wienke J. Framework-level resource awareness in robotics and intelligent systems. Improving dependability by exploiting knowledge about system resources. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2018.Modern robots have evolved to complex hardware and software systems. As such, their construction and maintenance have become more challenging and the potential for failures has increased. These failures and the resulting reduction of dependability have a considerable effect on the acceptance and usefulness of robotics systems in their intended applications. Even though different software engineering techniques have been developed to control dependability-critical aspects of such complex systems, the state of the art for experimental robotics and intelligent systems is that – if at all – functional properties are systematically controlled though techniques such as unit testing and simulation runs. Yet, system dependability can also be impaired if nonfunctional properties behave unexpectedly. This thesis focuses on the utilization of system resources such as CPU, memory, or network bandwidth as an important nonfunctional aspect, which has not received much systematic treatment in robotics and intelligent systems so far. Unexpected utilizations of system resources can have effects ranging from merely wasting energy and reducing a robot’s operational time to a degradation in its function due to processing delays. Even safety-critical situations can arise, for instance, if a motion planner or obstacle avoidance component cannot react before a collision. Therefore, the systematic analysis of a system’s resource utilization, a guidance of developers regarding these aspects, and testing and fault detection for unexpected resource utilization patterns are an effective contribution of this thesis towards more reliable robots. In this work I describe a concept for integrating resource awareness into component-based robotics and intelligent systems. This concept specifically addresses the often loosely controlled development process predominant in experimental research. As such, the presented methods have to be applicable without a high overhead or large changes to the evolved development methods and system structures. Within this concept, which I termed framework-level resource awareness, I have explored methods in two directions: On the one hand, a set of tools helps developers to understand and systematically control the resource utilization while developing and testing systems. On the other hand, I have applied machine learning techniques to enable autonomous reactions at runtime based on predictions about the resource utilization of system components. With the two views, this work explores novel directions for implementing resource awareness in research systems and the conducted evaluations underline the suitability of the framework-level resource awareness concept

Evaluating the impact of adopting a component-based approach within the automotive domain

Component-based technology applied to the control system of production machinery is one of the new research developments in the automotive sector. Although it is important to evaluate the technical aspects of this new paradigm, an appreciation of the impact from the business and human aspects is equally important to the stakeholders in the industry. However, the current evaluation approaches do not offer a method to capture and analyse the component-based technology that is simple to use and produces results that are readily understood by the stakeholders involved in the process. This study is based upon a research project at Loughborough University to look into the effect of the implementation of a component-based control system for production machinery in the automotive sector (referred to as the component-based approach) and is focused on the business and the human aspects of the approach. [Continues.

Mobile Robots

The objective of this book is to cover advances of mobile robotics and related technologies applied for multi robot systems' design and development. Design of control system is a complex issue, requiring the application of information technologies to link the robots into a single network. Human robot interface becomes a demanding task, especially when we try to use sophisticated methods for brain signal processing. Generated electrophysiological signals can be used to command different devices, such as cars, wheelchair or even video games. A number of developments in navigation and path planning, including parallel programming, can be observed. Cooperative path planning, formation control of multi robotic agents, communication and distance measurement between agents are shown. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task also because of several factors related to different task execution. The presented improvement is related to environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations

Complexity, Emergent Systems and Complex Biological Systems:\ud Complex Systems Theory and Biodynamics. [Edited book by I.C. Baianu, with listed contributors (2011)]

An overview is presented of System dynamics, the study of the behaviour of complex systems, Dynamical system in mathematics Dynamic programming in computer science and control theory, Complex systems biology, Neurodynamics and Psychodynamics.\u

Foundations of systems and properties:methodological support for modeling properties of software-intensive systems

Engineering of software-intensive systems is concerned with the creation and evolution of systems that shall exhibit desired properties in their execution as well as development environment. In this context, the motivation of this thesis, derived from current development practice, was twofold. Firstly, software development methods are increasingly required to extend their scope of applicability towards systems engineering. As a consequence, their modeling approaches must be able to cope with a larger diversity of systems and consequently a larger diversity of properties. But these approaches still need to provide a smooth transition to software modeling. Secondly, non-functional properties, which are largely a result of this implicit systems scope, play a major role in the way we design our software-intensive systems. The conceptual aids of current development methods, however, are still less mature in their explicit support for non-functional properties compared with their ability to support functional ones. The principal objective of this thesis is to contribute toward an improved model-based treatment of non-functional properties in development methods. Because we cannot discuss properties independently of the objects they are ascribed to, this objective amounts to a progression from modeling of software and its properties to modeling of interrelated systems and their properties. To address this aim a philosophy of properties and systems is proposed. The philosophy is expressed as a holistic conceptual model of properties and/of systems. It is complemented with some basic rules, which we call tenets. Tenets formulate how we use the philosophical knowledge. The conceptual model offers the foundations for a more generalized understanding of those fundamentally different types of systems and different types of properties that are relevant in software-intensive systems engineering. The generality of our holistic model draws the benefits from our investigations in the areas of systems science, cognitive science, and basic philosophy. The model helps to scrutinize and make sense of the large amount of data in the literature about "non-functional" issues in software engineering. The model is applicable in the derivation of methodological building blocks that can be incorporated into development methods. The building blocks include (a) a general model to discover stakeholders and properties for a given system, (b) a principled manner to trace the fundamentally different types of properties through hierarchies of systems, and (c) a proposal for the representation of systems, their properties and property traces in the UML. The concrete application of the gained knowledge to software engineering results in a proposal for a context-sensitive, customizable quality attribute model. It also results in a proposal on how to structure quality descriptions of software components. In order for such descriptions to be standardized and possibly tool-automated, this thesis proposes to utilize the Reusable Asset Specification and suggests alternatives for its XML-based representation