Tartu Ülikooli toimetised. Tööd semiootika alalt. 1964-1992. 0259-4668

http://www.ester.ee/record=b1331700*es

The emergence of self-organisation in social systems: the case of the geographic industrial clusters

The objective of this work is to use complexity theory to propose a new interpretation of industrial clusters. Industrial clusters constitute a specific type of econosphere, whose driving principles are self-organisation, economies of diversity and a configuration that optimises the exploration of diversity starting from the configuration of connectivity of the system. This work shows the centrality of diversity by linking complexity theory (intended as "a method for understanding diversity"') to different concepts such as power law distributions, self-organisation, autocatalytic cycles and connectivity.I propose a method to distinguish self-organising from non self-organising agglomerations, based on the correlation between self-organising dynamics and power law network theories. Self-organised criticality, rank-size rule and scale-free networks theories become three aspects indicating a common underlying pattern, i.e. the edge of chaos dynamic. I propose a general model of development of industrial clusters, based on the mutual interaction between social and economic autocatalytic cycle. Starting from Kauffman's idea(^2) on the autocatalytic properties of diversity, I illustrate how the loops of the economies of diversity are based on the expansion of systemic diversity (product of diversity and connectivity). My thesis provides a way to measure systemic diversity. In particular I introduce the distinction between modular innovation at the agent level and architectural innovation at the network level and show that the cluster constitutes an appropriate organisational form to manage the tension and dynamics of simultaneous modular and architectural innovation. The thesis is structured around two propositions: 1. Self-organising systems are closer to a power law than hierarchical systems or aggregates (collection of parts). For industrial agglomerations (SLLs), the closeness to a power law is related to the degree of self-organisation present in the agglomeration, and emerges in the agglomeration’s structural and/or behavioural properties subject to self-organising dynamic.2. Self-organising systems maximise the product of diversity times connectivity at a rate higher than hierarchical systems

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

De-Sign Environment Landscape City Atti

La VI Conferenza Internazionale sul Disegno, De_Sign Environment Landscape City_Genova 2020 tratta di: Rilievo e Rappresentazione dell’Architettura e dell’Ambiente; Il Disegno per il paesaggio; Disegni per il Progetto: tracce - visioni e pre-visioni; I margini i segni della memoria e la città in progress; Cultura visiva e comunicazione dall’idea al progetto; Le emergenze architettoniche; Il colore e l’ambiente; Percezione e identità territoriale; Patrimonio iconografico culturale paesaggistico: arte, letteratura e ricadute progettuali; Segni e Disegni per il Design e Rappresentazione avanzata. Federico Babina, architetto e graphic designer presenta ARCHIVISION, e Eduardo Carazo Lefort, Docente dell’Università di Valladolid e Targa d’Oro dell’Unione Italiana Disegno la Lectio Magistralis. The VI International Conference on Drawing, De_Sign Environment Landscape City_Genoa 2020, deals with: Survey and Representation of Architecture and the Environment; Drawing for the landscape; De-signs for the Project: traces-visions and previews; Margins, signs of memory and the city in progress; Visual culture and communication from idea to project; Architectural emergencies; The color and the environment; Perception and territorial identity; Landscape cultural iconographic heritage: art, literature and design implications; Signs and Drawings for Design and Advanced Representation. Federico Babina, architect and graphic designer presents ARCHIVISION, and Professor Eduardo Carazo Lefort-University of Valladolid and Gold Plate of the Italian Design Union presents his Lectio Magistralis

Drawing as thinking : an enquiry into the act of drawing as embodied extension of mind.

M.A. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2013.This thesis opposes the theory of ‘drawing as expression’ - the idea that a drawing is nothing but a post hoc exteriorisation of a prior mental process. A counter-hypothesis is investigated instead - that the physical act of sketching is itself a thought process and that the new thought processes which it facilitates would be impossible or severely impaired if it were absent. The conceptual framework for this investigation and the evidence for its hypothesis derive from three fields: firstly theories of the extended mind and embodied thinking from philosophy and cognitive science, secondly theories of drawing practice, and thirdly practitioners’ critical reflection on the significance of drawing in their own practice. The fluidity, multidimensionality and indeterminacy of the cognitive processes typical for openended domains like planning, design and the arts tend to flummox the dominant – computational – approach in cognitive science. Theories of the extended mind and embodied thinking present an alternative which can handle these features comfortably. Theories of embodied thinking, which hail from diverse disciplines – including philosophy, cognitive science and artificial intelligence – argue that cognition is not independent of the body, but enabled by embodied activity embedded in the environment. Extended mind theory suggests that certain active features of the environment actually constitute integral parts of human cognition. In such cases, the human organism is inextricably linked with an external entity in a two way interaction, creating a coupled system of which each part counts as fully cognitive. Clark uses the term ‘scaffolding’ to denote a broad class of cases in which such external structure is co-opted, annexed and exploited, thereby allowing us to achieve some goal which would otherwise be beyond us. This leads to the central question of this thesis: can the act of drawing be understood with the help of theories of embodied thinking and the extended mind, and if so, how? A second, related question is how the example of drawing helps extend these theories. From this perspective design thinking and reasoning is to a large extent embedded in the act of drawing. Drawing, as a form of scaffolding, filters or guides perceptual, affective and cognitive attention and behaviour in ways only available to brains coupled with pencils and other drawing materials. (External representations can for instance be extended in space, rotated, manipulated, rearranged and interacted with in ways that internal representations cannot). The theories of drawing practice studied for this research came mainly from art theory, design theory and empirical studies of how drawing contributes to the cognitive process. Clark and Karmiloff- Smith suggest that knowledge stored in some proprietary representational format often needs to be redescribed in some other, more suitable format to become accessible to other types of representations and processes. A key role that drawing is found to play in multiple contexts (design, fine art, mathematics, etc.) is to draw to the surface implicit, previously unarticulated information for use by other procedures and the whole cognitive system. Sketching plays many other roles in promoting the cognitive operations needed to tackle design problems, which are often so complex that individual reason would quickly be overwhelmed in the absence of environmental offloading. Sketching can compensate for limitations in human memory and information processing capacity, can help identify aspects of concern, relationships and patterns, as well as help maintain focus and generate new knowledge. The South African artist William Kentridge’s critical reflections on the significance of drawing in his own practice support extended mind theory. His reflections alert us to the materiality of the creative process and dovetail with recent attempts by philosophers and other theorists to explain creativity. In drawing cognition appears as a dynamic, multidimensional phenomenon in which explicit, implicit and tacit information all work together in an ensemble distributed across brain, body and world while utilising variable physical, technological and social resources. Because drawing is an activity which emphasises ‘generic’ aspects of creativity, studying it sheds light on many other forms of problem solving by humans. This echoes Kentridge’s suggestion that drawing, as a slow motion form of thinking, offers a paradigm for illuminating thinking in general. Drawing proves to be a good context for exploring questions about where cognitive processes reside. By extending cognition beyond the brain and into the world, we come to appreciate that external drawing processes in a cognitive system are at least as important as ‘internal’ ones, and that the marks on paper form an integral part of the apparatus responsible for the shape and flow of thoughts and ideas

Prediction of Robot Execution Failures Using Neural Networks

In recent years, the industrial robotic systems are designed with abilities to adapt and to learn in a structured or unstructured environment. They are able to predict and to react to the undesirable and uncontrollable disturbances which frequently interfere in mission accomplishment. In order to prevent system failure and/or unwanted robot behaviour, various techniques have been addressed. In this study, a novel approach based on the neural networks (NNs) is employed for prediction of robot execution failures. The training and testing dataset used in the experiment consists of forces and torques memorized immediately after the real robot failed in assignment execution. Two types of networks are utilized in order to find best prediction method - recurrent NNs and feedforward NNs. Moreover, we investigated 24 neural architectures implemented in Matlab software package. The experimental results confirm that this approach can be successfully applied to the failures prediction problem, and that the NNs outperform other artificial intelligence techniques in this domain. To further validate a novel method, real world experiments are conducted on a Khepera II mobile robot in an indoor structured environment. The obtained results for trajectory tracking problem proved usefulness and the applicability of the proposed solution

Neural Extended Kalman Filter for State Estimation of Automated Guided Vehicle in Manufacturing Environment

To navigate autonomously in a manufacturing environment Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) needs the ability to infer its pose. This paper presents the implementation of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) coupled with a feedforward neural network for the Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VSLAM). The neural extended Kalman filter (NEKF) is applied on-line to model error between real and estimated robot motion. Implementation of the NEKF is achieved by using mobile robot, an experimental environment and a simple camera. By introducing neural network into the EKF estimation procedure, the quality of performance can be improved