Smart Technologies for Precision Assembly

This open access book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 9th IFIP WG 5.5 International Precision Assembly Seminar, IPAS 2020, held virtually in December 2020. The 16 revised full papers and 10 revised short papers presented together with 1 keynote paper were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers address topics such as assembly design and planning; assembly operations; assembly cells and systems; human centred assembly; and assistance methods in assembly

Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs

HIVE-MIND SPACE: A META-DESIGN APPROACH FOR CULTIVATING AND SUPPORTING COLLABORATIVE DESIGN.

The ever-growing complexity of design projects requires more knowledge than any individual can have and, therefore, needs the active engagement of all stakeholders in the design process. Collaborative design exploits synergies from multidisciplinary communities, encourages divergent thinking, and enhances social creativity. The research documented in this thesis supports and deepens the understanding of collaborative design in two dimensions: (1) It developed and evaluated socio-technical systems to support collaborative design projects; and (2) It defined and explored a meta- design framework focused on how these systems enable users, as active contributors, to modify and further develop them. The research is grounded in and simultaneously extends the following major dimensions of meta-design: (1) It exploits the contributions of social media and web 2.0 as innovative information technologies; (2) It facilitates the shift from consumer cultures to cultures of participation; (3) It fosters social creativity by harnessing contributions that occur in cultures of participation; (4) It empowers end-users to be active designers involved in creating situated solutions. In a world where change is the norm, meta-design is a necessity rather than a luxury because it is impossible to design software systems at design time for problems that occur only at use time. The co-evolution of systems and users\u2bc social practices pursued in this thesis requires a software environment that can evolve and be tailored continuously. End-user development explores tools and methods to support end users who tailor software artifacts. However, it addresses this objective primarily from a technical perspective and focuses mainly on tailorability. This thesis, centered on meta-design, extends end-user development by creating social conditions and design processes for broad participation in design activities both at design time and at use time. It builds on previous research into meta- design that has provided a strategic overview of design opportunities and principles. And it addresses some shortcomings of meta-design, such as the lack of guidelines for building concrete meta-design environments that can be assessed by empirical evaluation. Given the goal of this research, to explore meta-design approaches for cultivating and supporting collaborative design, the overarching research question guiding this work is: How do we provide a socio-technical environment to bring multidisciplinary design communities together to foster creativity, collaboration, and design evolution? 8 To answer this question, my research was carried out through four different phases: (1) synthesizing concepts, models, and theories; (2) framing conceptual models; (3) developing several systems in specific application areas; and (4) conducting empirical evaluation studies. The main contributions of this research are: \uf0a7 The Hive-Mind Space model, a meta-design framework derived from the \u201csoftware shaping workshop\u201d methodology and that integrates the \u201cseeding, evolutionary growth, reseeding\u201d model. The bottom-up approach inherent in this framework breaks down static social structures so as to support richer ecologies of participation. It provides the means for structuring communication and appropriation. The model\u2bcs open mediation mechanism tackles unanticipated communication gaps among different design communities. \uf0a7 MikiWiki, a structured programmable wiki I developed to demonstrate how the hive-mind space model can be implemented as a practical platform that benefits users and how its features and values can be specified so as to be empirically observable and assessable; \uf0a7 Empirical insights, such as those based on applying MikiWiki to different collaborative design studies, provide evidence that different phases of meta-design represent different modes rather than discrete levels

Multi-Agent Systems

A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

Ubiquitous Computing

The aim of this book is to give a treatment of the actively developed domain of Ubiquitous computing. Originally proposed by Mark D. Weiser, the concept of Ubiquitous computing enables a real-time global sensing, context-aware informational retrieval, multi-modal interaction with the user and enhanced visualization capabilities. In effect, Ubiquitous computing environments give extremely new and futuristic abilities to look at and interact with our habitat at any time and from anywhere. In that domain, researchers are confronted with many foundational, technological and engineering issues which were not known before. Detailed cross-disciplinary coverage of these issues is really needed today for further progress and widening of application range. This book collects twelve original works of researchers from eleven countries, which are clustered into four sections: Foundations, Security and Privacy, Integration and Middleware, Practical Applications