The Art Traveler: Building a user experience system to discover art

With the increasing popularity of mobile devices and their apps, mobile technologies have changed the nature of travel significantly. With numerous travel apps available today, many tourists can become confused with which one to select and use. Another important factor is that a majority of travel applications are designed for everyone traveling everywhere, not specifically for one kind of tourist and one subject matter. The goal of this thesis is to create an effective and efficient user experience system. The project is a travel planner for people to pursue an art tour of their own interest. It focuses on designing an effective user navigation system to guide tourists making their travel plans, and provides comprehensive tours to help people appreciate and learn more about art. To achieve this project, this thesis focuses on interaction design, information design, multimedia technology, as well as user experience design. Considering the independent choice of different tourists, this design provides various ways for them to make their own travel plans and discover art they are interested in. The final design is presented as an interactive prototype which demonstrates the functionality of the user interface and experience and is used for usability testing

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Researching into Teaching Methods in Colleges and Universities by Clinton Bennett, Lorraine Foreman‐Peck and Chris Higgins, London: Kogan Page, 1996. ISBN: 0–7494–1768–4, 136 (+ vii) pages, paperback. £14.99

Mind the Gap – Passenger Arrival Patterns in Multi-agent Simulations

In most studies mathematical models are developed finding the expected waiting time to be a function of the headway. These models have in common that the proportion of passengers that arrive randomly at a public transport stop is less as headway in-creases. Since there are several factors of influence, such as social demographic or regional aspects, the reliability of public transport service and the level of passenger information, the threshold headway for the transition from random to coordinated passenger arrivals vary from study to study. This study's objective is to investigate if an agent-based model exhibits realistic passenger arrival behavior at transit stops. This objective is approached by exploring the sensitivity of the agents' arrival behavior towards (1) the degree of learning, (2) the reliability of the experienced transit service, and (3) the service headway. The simulation experiments for a simple transit corridor indicate that the applied model is capable of representing the complex passenger arrival behavior observed in reality. (1) For higher degrees of learning, the agents tend to over-optimize, i.e. they try to obtain the latest possible departure time exact to the second. An approach is presented which increases the diversity in the agents' travel alternatives and results in a more realistic behavior. (2) For a less reliable service the agents' time adaptation changes in that a buffer time is added between their arrival at the stop and the actual departure of the vehicle. (3) For the modification of the headway the simulation outcome is consistent with the literature on arrival patterns. Smaller headways yield a more equally distributed arrival pattern whereas larger headways result in more coordinated arrival patterns

Curated routes: the project of developing experiential tracks in sub-urban landscape

The Curated Routes project reflects on the visiting routes’ ability to make apparent the internal characteristics of urban environments. The project’s name allude to the intellectual function of curation and the materiality of routes. Curate deals with the practice of arranging material –tangible or intangible- in a way that a new understanding of an area is revealed. The word routes refers to the linear associations that link places and guide movement. The Curated Routes aim to reinforce the development of bonding ties between people and urban environments by re-constructing the way we visit and explore a place. The overall goal of the project is to outline the conceptual guidelines of a visitors’ guide that could later be used for the development of the informatics model. The project follows the methodology that the context-aware routes apply, though particular attention is paid to the second phase of the process where an innovative approach is applied. The introduction of the “chronotope” filters enables us to “knit” the terrestrial route to a range of informative storylines, and hence to develop different interpretations of an urban environment

Towards more sustainable cities: tools and policies for urban goods movements

Although urban freight transportation is crucial to address societal demands, it also has a major negative impact on the environment, the economy, and society. Then, the growing interest in promoting more sustainable and liveable cities is pushing to point out more in depth the role of urban goods movements within the planning process, as well as city administrators to implement new sustainable city logistics actions/policies/measures. Therefore, after a brief overview, the study presents more advanced techniques (models and methodologies) to help in the assessment of planning scenario. This paper concentrates on the importance of urban freight transport and logistics. Then, technical and logistics actions are outlined, and future last-mile delivery challenges are discussed. The main objective is to support urban planners, on a strategic and tactical scale, in obtaining an overview of urban freight transport systems that point out the challenges for implementing sustainable city logistics scenarios. It is also of interest to technicians because they can identify the most suitable methodologies, as well as the features that they need for selecting and assessing ex ante the effects of city logistics measures. This work is useful for researchers in various sectors because it allows them to formalise and then to solve the problems for simulating the complex system of urban goods movements where there are different actors with own interests that are conflicting

Европейский и национальный контексты в научных исследованиях - 2020 : Экономические науки

В настоящем электронном сборнике «Европейский и национальный контексты в научных исследованиях. Экономика» представлены работы молодых ученых по экономическим наукам. Предназначены для работников образования, науки и производства. Будут полезны студентам, магистрантам и аспирантам университетов.=In this Electronic collected materials “National and European dimension in research. Economics” works in the fields of economics are presented. It is intended for trainers, researchers and professionals. It can be useful for university graduate and post-graduate students

Autonomous Recharging and Flight Mission Planning for Battery-operated Autonomous Drones

Autonomous drones (also known as unmanned aerial vehicles) are increasingly popular for diverse applications of light-weight delivery and as substitutions of manned operations in remote locations. The computing systems for drones are becoming a new venue for research in cyber-physical systems. Autonomous drones require integrated intelligent decision systems to control and manage their flight missions in the absence of human operators. One of the most crucial aspects of drone mission control and management is related to the optimization of battery lifetime. Typical drones are powered by on-board batteries, with limited capacity. But drones are expected to carry out long missions. Thus, a fully automated management system that can optimize the operations of battery-operated autonomous drones to extend their operation time is highly desirable. This paper presents several contributions to automated management systems for battery-operated drones: (1) We conduct empirical studies to model the battery performance of drones, considering various flight scenarios. (2) We study a joint problem of flight mission planning and recharging optimization for drones with an objective to complete a tour mission for a set of sites of interest in the shortest time. This problem captures diverse applications of delivery and remote operations by drones. (3) We present algorithms for solving the problem of flight mission planning and recharging optimization. We implemented our algorithms in a drone management system, which supports real-time flight path tracking and re-computation in dynamic environments. We evaluated the results of our algorithms using data from empirical studies. (4) To allow fully autonomous recharging of drones, we also develop a robotic charging system prototype that can recharge drones autonomously by our drone management system