Advances in Human Robot Interaction for Cloud Robotics applications

In this thesis are analyzed different and innovative techniques for Human Robot Interaction. The focus of this thesis is on the interaction with flying robots. The first part is a preliminary description of the state of the art interactions techniques. Then the first project is Fly4SmartCity, where it is analyzed the interaction between humans (the citizen and the operator) and drones mediated by a cloud robotics platform. Then there is an application of the sliding autonomy paradigm and the analysis of different degrees of autonomy supported by a cloud robotics platform. The last part is dedicated to the most innovative technique for human-drone interaction in the User’s Flying Organizer project (UFO project). This project wants to develop a flying robot able to project information into the environment exploiting concepts of Spatial Augmented Realit

Intégration et évaluation de capacités interactives d'un robot humanoïde

Le domaine de l'Interaction Humain-Robot (HRI) est en pleine expansion. En effet, de plus en plus de plateformes robotiques sont mises en oeuvre pour faire évoluer ce domaine. Sur ces plateformes, toujours plus de modalités d'interaction sont mises en place telles que les mouvements corporels, la reconnaissance de gestes ou d'objets, la reconnaissance et la synthèse vocale ou encore la mobilité, pour pouvoir effectuer l'interaction la plus complète et la plus naturelle pour l'humain. Mais ceci amène aussi une complexité croissante de l'intégration de ces modalités sur une seule et même plateforme. Aussi, le domaine HRI étant à ses débuts, la méthodologie expérimentale des travaux se limite le plus souvent à des preuves de concept éprouvées en laboratoire ou en milieux ouverts non contrôlés. Il se trouve que peu de chercheurs présentent une démarche structurée et rigoureuse pour l'évaluation expérimentale d'interaction humain-robot en milieux ouverts, et il en résulte des recherches de types exploratoires qui examinent principalement la complexité technologique des modalités interactives à mettre en oeuvre, et non l'impact de ces modalités sur la qualité des interactions. Le but de l'étude présentée dans ce document est d'étudier l'intégration de plusieurs modalités interactives sur un robot mobile humanoïde telles que la parole, les gestes et la mobilité sur la qualité des interactions humain-robot. Plus spécifiquement, le contexte de l'étude consiste à examiner l'impact de modalités interactives sur la capacité du robot à attirer l'attention d'une personne et à engager une interaction avec elle. Le scénario expérimental consiste à permettre au robot, à partir de la parole, d'expressions faciales, de mouvement de la tête, de gestes avec son bras et de sa mobilité, de demander de l'assistance à une personne à proximité de lui remettre un objet se trouvant au sol. L'hypothèse sous-jacente est que l'intégration de l'ensemble de ces modalités devrait améliorer la capacité du robot à engager des personnes à interagir avec lui. Des expérimentations ont été faites en milieu contrôlé et non-contrôlé selon deux protocoles expérimentaux : une étude des modalités à l'intérieur d'une population, et une étude de variation entre individus. D'une manière générale, il en ressort que l'ajout de modalités améliore la qualité de l'engagement de l'interaction par le robot, mais qu'il faut porter une attention particulière à l'approche de la personne par le robot, principalement pour les personnes non familières avec ce dernier. De plus, les observations indiquent qu'il est plus facile d'obtenir des résultats significatifs en environnement contrôlé, elles permettent d'identifier des pistes d'amélioration pour éventuellement arriver à en obtenir en milieu non-contrôlé. Enfin, ce premier projet d'intégration et d'évaluation de capacités interactives d'un robot mobile servira à alimenter une prochaine itération avec un robot plus sophistiqué présentement en conception

The emergence of the fintech industry in China: An evolutionary economic geography perspective

Over the last decade, the global economy has rapidly becoming digited. Digital technologies have transformed the economy and society, affecting all sectors of activity around the world. Among them, the financial sector is one of the most digitalized sectors, and the term ‘fintech’ is coined to describe the digitalization of the financial sector. Although the global fintech landscape is currently geographically concentrated in the United States and Europe, the pace of China’s fintech development has been dramatically accelerated. However, it is quite surprising that there is hardly any study that investigates fintech in China from a subnational scale. To fill this gap, this dissertation conducts a city-level analysis of the emergence of the fintech industry in China. Theoretically, I position this dissertation within the broad literature on evolutionary economic geography (EEG), which has emerged as one of the main paradigms in economic geography. This dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the emergence of the new industry in regions. Conventional wisdom in EEG posits that new industry in regions tends to grow out of technologically related pre-existing industries. However, this conventional understanding is somewhat technology-centric. In response, this dissertation extends the scholarly work from technology-centric to embrace the role of the demand-side market and institutional logic in the emergence of the new industry in regions. It proposes that not only supply-side technology but also demand-side market and institutional logics matter for the emergence of the new industry in regions. Moreover, this dissertation ascribes the underlying logic of how technology, market, and institutional logics matter to the agentic processes of asset modification, particularly redeploying pre-existing assets and creating new assets. In other words, the emergence of the new industry in regions results from relevant regional actors’ purposeful actions in terms of modifying technological, market, and institutional assets. Methodologically, there is a dualism in evolutionary economic geography research between qualitative and quantitative work. To seek a methodology integration, this dissertation proposes the mixed-method that is composed of four concrete approaches, namely the triangulation approach, the embedded approach, the sequential exploratory approach, and the sequential explanatory approach. Among these concrete approaches, the embedded approach is utilized in empirical work. The embedded approach in this dissertation refers to the embedding of the qualitative case study (which deals with the ‘how’ questions) into quantitative research (which deals with the ‘whether and to what extent’ questions). Empirically, this dissertation first examines the emergence of fintech industries in China’s cities based on the quantitative regression analysis (mainly dealing with the ‘whether and to what extent’ questions) and then zooms in on the city of Shenzhen, which is the largest fintech hub in southern China, based on the qualitative case study (mainly dealing with the ‘how’ questions). The findings are as follows. (1) Based on a unique dataset from 2003 – 2019, this dissertation provides a city-level analysis of the fintech industry in China. The econometric results show that fintech industries tend to emerge in cities that have more fintech-related technologies, particularly in the fields of finance, e-commerce, data sciences, and security. This confirms the principle of technological relatedness. Moreover, it finds a positive relationship between the development of the fintech industry and the demand for fintech services. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first systematic evidence of the significant positive role of the demand-side market in the emergence of the new industry in regions. (2) In order to uncover the underlying processes (the question of ‘how’) that lead to the above significantly positive effect, this dissertation resorts to the qualitative case study. The case study shows that the rise of Shenzhen’s fintech industry mainly grows out of Shenzhen’s pre-existing internet and financial industry. By systematically comparing the processes that internet and financial industry diversify into the fintech industry, it finds that the emergence of the fintech industry in Shenzhen result from internet and financial firms’ purposeful actions in terms of redeploying their pre-existing technologies, market, and institutional logics, as well as creating the new ones that are necessary for fintech but are missing for the internet or financial firms. In other words, it is the processes of asset modification, particularly redeploying pre-existing assets and creating new assets, that give rise to the birth of the fintech industry, leading to the positive relationships found in the quantitative regression analysis

Book of abstracts of the 24th Euro Working Group on Transportation Meeting

Sem resumo disponível.publishe

Impact of Technological and Structural Change on Employment: Prospective Analysis 2020. Background Report

Abstract not availableJRC.J-Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (Seville

Animating the Ethical Demand:Exploring user dispositions in industry innovation cases through animation-based sketching

This paper addresses the challenge of attaining ethical user stances during the design process of products and services and proposes animation-based sketching as a design method, which supports elaborating and examining different ethical stances towards the user. The discussion is qualified by an empirical study of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in a Triple Helix constellation. Using a three-week long innovation workshop, UCrAc, involving 16 Danish companies and organisations and 142 students as empirical data, we discuss how animation-based sketching can explore not yet existing user dispositions, as well as create an incentive for ethical conduct in development and innovation processes. The ethical fulcrum evolves around Løgstrup's Ethical Demand and his notion of spontaneous life manifestations. From this, three ethical stances are developed; apathy, sympathy and empathy. By exploring both apathetic and sympathetic views, the ethical reflections are more nuanced as a result of actually seeing the user experience simulated through different user dispositions. Exploring the three ethical stances by visualising real use cases with the technologies simulated as already being implemented makes the life manifestations of the users in context visible. We present and discuss how animation-based sketching can support the elaboration and examination of different ethical stances towards the user in the product and service development process. Finally we present a framework for creating narrative representations of emerging technology use cases, which invite to reflection upon the ethics of the user experience.</jats:p

Automation, Work, and Ideology: The Next Industrial Revolution and the Transformation of Labor

Over the last several decades, scholars and commentators from a variety of different fields, expertise, and ideological positions have written on automation technologies and their potential to cause technological unemployment. As a sociological analysis and critical examination of how experts ideologically frame these issues, this thesis demonstrates that ideology plays a crucial role in the revived debate over automation and technological displacement. Weberian ideal types are developed to demonstrate how three major ideological positions—liberal, conservative, and radical—approach and frame the link between automation, technological displacement, and the potential for technological unemployment. The qualitative tools of ideal type construction and theme analysis facilitate synthesis and reconstruction as ideal types the most salient aspects of each ideological perspective on the link between automation and technological displacement. The liberal ideal type focuses on how liberal concerns that the present circumstances (“this time”) may be different, that predicted technological displacement will greatly exacerbate economic inequality, and that technological unemployment could undermine social stability. By contrast, conservative commentators contend that technological displacement will not cause structural technological unemployment, and that disruptions will most likely follow the same patterns of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter) observed throughout the history of capitalism. Finally, radical commentators typically regard the continuation of automation as an opportunity to think of new ways to organize society beyond wage labor, and endeavor to develop a political program designed to transcend the current problems plaguing capitalism. The final sections critically analyzes all three ideological positions and shows how, ultimately, current arguments and debates are structurally flawed. The tool of ideology critique is used to explain how the mainstream debate between conservatives, liberals, and radicals is devoid of systematic critical understanding of the dynamics of modern society. Relying on the works of the critical Marxian school of value-critique, a critique of current debates is formulated to explain how the historical dynamics of capital continuously transform labor in modern society in ways that will likely subvert the expectations of all three ideologies. The critical concept of a “logic of capital” must be central to any understanding of the processes of automation and technological displacement

Understanding the Agency of Diversity Managers: A Relational and Multilevel Investigation.

PhDThis thesis aims to provide a critical realist account of diversity managers' agency, incorporating a critique of the existing diversity management research. A multilevel and relational analytical framework is offered in order to understand diversity managers' agency. The framework interpreted and operationalised Bourdieu's key concepts, `field', `habitus', `capitals' and `strategies' in the organisational context, for exploring and explaining macro, meso and micro level influences on the agency of diversity managers. The macro-social field of diversity management is mapped out by analysing data from an online national survey completed by diversity managers in the UK, and in-depth interviews with diversity managers of large public and private sector organisations. Then, findings of an extensive case study of Ford Motor Company, which includes company documentation and interviews with the company's diversity managers, are introduced to examine meso-organisational and micro-individual dynamics of diversity managers' agency. The analysis of the findings revealed that the agency of diversity managers is multilayered and complex. Whilst the boundaries of this agency are drawn by the deeply seated structures and mechanisms which are embedded in the fabric of social and organisational lives, diversity managers own varying degrees of social, cultural and symbolic capitals which are potential sources of power and influence, and they utilise strategies in order to activate this potential and widen the scope of their agency. The thesis addresses the limitations in diversity management literature, which are associated with dualisms of agency and structure, and qualitative and quantitative methods. It makes theoretical and methodological contribution by offering original empirical evidence generated through a multi-method strategy and analysing diversity managers' agency at the interplay of agentic and structural dynamics. It also offers policy makers at organisational and national levels a realistic understanding of diversity management processes that may inform design of more effective and progressive policies and initiatives.School of Business and Management Queen Mary University