Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Examining the role of consumer motivations to use voice assistants for fashion shopping: The mediating role of awe experience and eWOM

Artificial intelligence-enabled voice assistant services have received notable scholarly attention. Fashion retailers offer AI-based voice assistants to facilitate online shoppers. However, the consumer motivations to use digital voice assistants and their effect on the purchase intentions of online fashion shoppers are unexplored. To bridge this literature gap, this study presents a unique theoretical model grounded in the consumer innovativeness concept, broaden-and-built theory, and stimulus-organism-response model to explore the effect of motivated consumer innovativeness to use digital voice assistants on purchase intention and awe experience of online shoppers. The study used data collected from 538 users of digital voice assistants for online shopping of fashion products. Structural equation modeling analysis revealed that the functional, hedonic, social, and cognitive motivated consumer innovativeness for using voice assistants affects purchase intention and awe experience. Further, the awe experience mediates the relationship between motivated consumer innovativeness and purchase intention; and electronic word-of-mouth mediates the relationship between awe experience and purchase intention. The study theoretically contributes to the extant literature on consumer innovativeness, AI-based voice assistants, and fashion shopping. The findings offer insights to fashion retailers for improved use of voice assistants by online shoppers

The Evolution of Technology in Call Centers

Historical research was conducted through literature. The report traces the evolution of technology in call centers (CCs) from their early inception to 2018. CCs are integrated into many facets of multidisciplinary areas of business, industry, and public and private institutions of higher education. Three research questions were addressed: What technologies enabled the start of CCs? How did the communications between customers and CSRs take place? What was the content of the earlier communications? How did services and communications evolve as technology matured? What are the current state-of-the-art technologies that exist in CCs? Which industries appear to have the best solutions? What are these solutions? Photograph Analysis Worksheets and Written Document Analysis Worksheets from the National Archives and Records Administration were used to analyze primary source materials. Also, used were Primary Source Analysis Tools from the Library of Congress. The final report offers a comprehensive history of the technology evolution within the industry. Included are a discussion of state-of-the-art technologies, the range of their applications and suggestions for staff training

Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting

This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.The year 2015-2016 marks the third year of Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting Boston, a program that enables young people from across the city to suggest ideas for capital projects that will bring long-term physical improvements to city-owned property. This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.Boston University Initiative on Citie

Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting

This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.The year 2015-2016 marks the third year of Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting Boston, a program that enables young people from across the city to suggest ideas for capital projects that will bring long-term physical improvements to city-owned property. This evaluation report examines the Youth Lead the Change process in its third year, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources. The Boston University evaluation team reports their findings and summarizes the conclusions with recommendations to further develop this innovative effort to engage youth in city government.Boston University Initiative on Citie

The Emerging Internet of Things Marketplace From an Industrial Perspective: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a dynamic global information network consisting of internet-connected objects, such as Radio-frequency identification (RFIDs), sensors, actuators, as well as other instruments and smart appliances that are becoming an integral component of the future internet. Over the last decade, we have seen a large number of the IoT solutions developed by start-ups, small and medium enterprises, large corporations, academic research institutes (such as universities), and private and public research organisations making their way into the market. In this paper, we survey over one hundred IoT smart solutions in the marketplace and examine them closely in order to identify the technologies used, functionalities, and applications. More importantly, we identify the trends, opportunities and open challenges in the industry-based the IoT solutions. Based on the application domain, we classify and discuss these solutions under five different categories: smart wearable, smart home, smart, city, smart environment, and smart enterprise. This survey is intended to serve as a guideline and conceptual framework for future research in the IoT and to motivate and inspire further developments. It also provides a systematic exploration of existing research and suggests a number of potentially significant research directions.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing 201

Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview

The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network—the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio

It's Good to Talk: A Comparison of Using Voice Versus Screen-Based Interactions for Agent-Assisted Tasks

Voice assistants have become hugely popular in the home as domestic and entertainment devices. Recently, there has been a move towards developing them for work settings. For example, Alexa for Business and IBM Watson for Business were designed to improve productivity, by assisting with various tasks, such as scheduling meetings and taking minutes. However, this kind of assistance is largely limited to planning and managing user's work. How might they be developed to do more by way of empowering people at work? Our research is concerned with achieving this by developing an agent with the role of a facilitator that assists users during an ongoing task. Specifically, we were interested in whether the modality in which the agent interacts with users makes a difference: How does a voice versus screen-based agent interaction affect user behavior? We hypothesized that voice would be more immediate and emotive, resulting in more fluid conversations and interactions. Here, we describe a user study that compared the benefits of using voice versus screen-based interactions when interacting with a system incorporating an agent, involving pairs of participants doing an exploratory data analysis task that required them to make sense of a series of data visualizations. The findings from the study show marked differences between the two conditions, with voice resulting in more turn-taking in discussions, questions asked, more interactions with the system and a tendency towards more immediate, faster-paced discussions following agent prompts. We discuss the possible reasons for why talking and being prompted by a voice assistant may be preferable and more effective at mediating human-human conversations and we translate some of the key insights of this research into design implications

Globalization, NGOs and Multi-Sectoral Relations

This paper seeks to make sense of the impact of globalization on nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations. We argue that globalization processes have contributed to the rising numbers and influence of NGOs in many countries, and particularly in the international arena. International NGOs and NGO alliances are emerging as increasingly influential players in international decision-making, and we discuss some of the roles they can be expected to play in the future. We consider whether the emergence of domestic and international NGOs as important policy makers strengthens or weakens the future of democratic accountability, and we suggest several patterns of interaction among civil society, government and business in future governance issues.This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 1. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers