Working Notes from the 1992 AAAI Spring Symposium on Practical Approaches to Scheduling and Planning

The symposium presented issues involved in the development of scheduling systems that can deal with resource and time limitations. To qualify, a system must be implemented and tested to some degree on non-trivial problems (ideally, on real-world problems). However, a system need not be fully deployed to qualify. Systems that schedule actions in terms of metric time constraints typically represent and reason about an external numeric clock or calendar and can be contrasted with those systems that represent time purely symbolically. The following topics are discussed: integrating planning and scheduling; integrating symbolic goals and numerical utilities; managing uncertainty; incremental rescheduling; managing limited computation time; anytime scheduling and planning algorithms, systems; dependency analysis and schedule reuse; management of schedule and plan execution; and incorporation of discrete event techniques

Belief-space Planning for Active Visual SLAM in Underwater Environments.

Autonomous mobile robots operating in a priori unknown environments must be able to integrate path planning with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in order to perform tasks like exploration, search and rescue, inspection, reconnaissance, target-tracking, and others. This level of autonomy is especially difficult in underwater environments, where GPS is unavailable, communication is limited, and environment features may be sparsely- distributed. In these situations, the path taken by the robot can drastically affect the performance of SLAM, so the robot must plan and act intelligently and efficiently to ensure successful task completion. This document proposes novel research in belief-space planning for active visual SLAM in underwater environments. Our motivating application is ship hull inspection with an autonomous underwater robot. We design a Gaussian belief-space planning formulation that accounts for the randomness of the loop-closure measurements in visual SLAM and serves as the mathematical foundation for the research in this thesis. Combining this planning formulation with sampling-based techniques, we efficiently search for loop-closure actions throughout the environment and present a two-step approach for selecting revisit actions that results in an opportunistic active SLAM framework. The proposed active SLAM method is tested in hybrid simulations and real-world field trials of an underwater robot performing inspections of a physical modeling basin and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. To reduce computational load, we present research into efficient planning by compressing the representation and examining the structure of the underlying SLAM system. We propose the use of graph sparsification methods online to reduce complexity by planning with an approximate distribution that represents the original, full pose graph. We also propose the use of the Bayes tree data structure—first introduced for fast inference in SLAM—to perform efficient incremental updates when evaluating candidate plans that are similar. As a final contribution, we design risk-averse objective functions that account for the randomness within our planning formulation. We show that this aversion to uncertainty in the posterior belief leads to desirable and intuitive behavior within active SLAM.PhDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133303/1/schaves_1.pd

Costs and benefits of superfast broadband in the UK

This paper was commissioned from LSE Enterprise by Convergys Smart Revenue Solutions to stimulate an open and constructive debate among the main stakeholders about the balance between the costs, the revenues, and the societal benefits of ‘superfast’ broadband. The intent has been to analyse the available facts and to propose wider perspectives on economic and social interactions. The paper has two parts: one concentrates on superfast broadband deployment and the associated economic and social implications (for the UK and its service providers), and the other considers alternative social science approaches to these implications. Both parts consider the potential contribution of smart solutions to superfast broadband provision and use. Whereas Part I takes the “national perspective” and the “service provider perspective”, which deal with the implications of superfast broadband for the UK and for service providers, Part II views matters in other ways, particularly by looking at how to realise values beyond the market economy, such as those inherent in neighbourliness, trust and democrac

Uses and applications of artificial intelligence in manufacturing

The purpose of the THESIS is to provide engineers and personnels with a overview of the concepts that underline Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. Artificial Intelligence is concerned with the developments of theories and techniques required to provide a computational engine with the abilities to perceive, think and act, in an intelligent manner in a complex environment. Expert system is branch of Artificial Intelligence where the methods of reasoning emulate those of human experts. Artificial Intelligence derives it\u27s power from its ability to represent complex forms of knowledge, some of it common sense, heuristic and symbolic, and the ability to apply the knowledge in searching for solutions. The Thesis will review : The components of an intelligent system, The basics of knowledge representation, Search based problem solving methods, Expert system technologies, Uses and applications of AI in various manufacturing areas like Design, Process Planning, Production Management, Energy Management, Quality Assurance, Manufacturing Simulation, Robotics, Machine Vision etc. Prime objectives of the Thesis are to understand the basic concepts underlying Artificial Intelligence and be able to identify where the technology may be applied in the field of Manufacturing Engineering

An investigation into the responses of the construction industry to preferential procurement in South Africa

Includes bibliographical references.The aim of this research is to establish a base level understanding of the influence of preferential procurement policies on construction firms with a view to contributing to theory development. The fundamental premise of this thesis is that preferential procurement polices are not neutral, but have distributed consequences

Lost in Translation: Why Organizations Should Facilitate Knowledge Transfer

Even if knowledge transfer has been extensively studied both in theory and in practice in the last few years, little analysis has been made regarding rhetoric. With very few exceptions (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996; Gherardi and Nicolini, 2000) organizational knowledge transfer - defined as the process through which one unit (eg. group, department or division) is affected by the experience of another (Argote and Ingram, 2000: 151) - has been mainly represented as a communication process. Complementary to this view, I propose to interpret the circulation of knowledge in organizations as a process of translation: knowledge is not only transferred between two entities but is transformed during that process.To support my view, I look at the different theoretical views on knowledge transfer in the organizational context. Four pieces of analysis can be found: the cognitive approach, the economic approach, the situated approach and the translation approach. First, knowledge transfer can be seen as a dyadic process between a sender and a receiver. In this cognitive approach, knowledge transfer is seen as a way to change the knowing activity. In the second analysis, knowledge is considered as a commodity built on routines. Transferring knowledge means choosing and re-using the right routines to ensure the evolution of the organization. The situated approach tries to make a synthesis of both of the previous approaches by analysing knowledge in the context in which it is created, used and transferred. Finally, the translation approach focuses on the modifications of knowledge that take place when it is translated. It involves creating convergences and homologies by relating things that were previously different (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2000). Because the process involves very different communities and social actors, both geographically and functionally it is one of the most frequent ways in which knowledge crosses organisational and geographical boundaries to move into other areas (Czarniawska and Joerges, 1996).To illustrate my view, I examine a story of knowledge transfer in a multinational company. The story is about the re-use of a new device called the “lump-breaker” which improves the manufacture in a gypsum plant. I examine the story before and after the implementation of a knowledge management structure. Before, the knowledge is “lost in translation” because of lack of support from the central organization (ie. knowledge management) that creates confusion of different meanings: when the sender has made little effort to translate the best practice into simple terms, the receiver has more difficulty to re-use the device. After having put in place a knowledge management structure, the device is subsequently adopted by different factory managers who have read the database which contains the best practice. At this point, the role of the knowledge management team (ie. the “translator”) is to ease the re-use of the knowledge by “packaging” the best practice. If the effort is not made by the sender, the knowledge management team acts as a “translator” for the receiver. One implication is to minimize the role of technological mechanisms (databases and information portals) if the sender does not play his role: the practice has to be described in such a way that others can implement it. If not, the practice is lost.Knowledge Management, Best Practice Transfer, Translation

Political strategies of external support for democratization

Political strategies of external support to democratization are contrasted and critically examined in respect of the United States and European Union. The analysis begins by defining its terms of reference and addresses the question of what it means to have a strategy. The account briefly notes the goals lying behind democratization support and their relationship with the wider foreign policy process, before considering what a successful strategy would look like and how that relates to the selection of candidates. The literature's attempts to identify strategy and its recommendations for better strategies are compared and assessed. Overall, the article argues that the question of political strategies of external support for democratization raises several distinct but related issues including the who?, what?, why?, and how? On one level, strategic choices can be expected to echo the comparative advantage of the "supporter." On a different level, the strategies cannot be divorced from the larger foreign policy framework. While it is correct to say that any sound strategy for support should be grounded in a theoretical understanding of democratization, the literature on strategies reveals something even more fundamental: divergent views about the nature of politics itself. The recommendations there certainly pinpoint weaknesses in the actual strategies of the United States and Europe but they have their own limitations too. In particular, in a world of increasing multi-level governance strategies for supporting democratization should go beyond preoccupation with just an "outside-in" approach

SMT goes ABMS: Developing Strategic Management Theory using Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation.

For the emerging complexity theory of strategy (CTS), organizations are complex adaptive systems able to co-evolve with their dynamic environments through interaction and response, rather than purely analysis and planning. A promising approach within the CTS context, is to focus on a strategic logic of opportunity pursuit, one in which the distributed decision-makers behave audaciously despite unpredictable, unstable environments. Although there is only emergent support for it, intriguingly organizations can perform better when these decision-makers ‘throw caution to the wind’ even at their own possible expense. Since traditional research methods have had difficulty showing how this can work over time, this research adopts a complementary method, agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS), to examine this phenomenon. The simulation model developed here, CTS-SIM, is based on quite simple constructs, but it introduces a rich and novel externally driven environment and represents individual decision-makers as having autonomous perceptions but constrainable decision-making freedom. Its primary contribution is the illumination of core dynamics and causal mechanisms in the opportunity-transitioning process. During model construction the apparently simple concept of opportunity-transitioning turns out to be complex, and the apparently complex integration of exogenous and endogenous environments with all three views of opportunity pursuit in the entrepreneurship literature, turns out to be relatively simple. Simulation outcomes using NetLogo contribute to CTS by confirming the positive effects on agent performance of opportunistic transitioning among opportunities in highly dynamic environments. The simulations also reveal tensions among some of the chosen variables and tipping points in emergent behaviours, point to areas where theoretical clarity is currently lacking, provoke some interesting questions and open up useful avenues for future research and data collection using other methods and models. Guidance through numerous stylized facts, flexible methods, careful documentation and description are all intended to inspire interest and facilitate critical discussion and ongoing scientific work

An examination of strategy development and strategic management processes within growth-seeking small businesses

This doctoral thesis responds to the need for greater understanding of what constitutes effective strategic management practice in successfully developing small firms. And an associate need to enhance the strategic management capability of small business owner managers and ability of support providers to deliver sound, pragmatic strategy development assistance. The study in its action research mode of investigation recognises and attempts to address the numerous shortcomings and pitfalls associated with small business management. Integral to this approach is a longitudinal business development project-orientation to facilitate the fulfilling of parallel academic and small business development practice objectives. The research approach is based upon the premise that there is a glove-tight relationship between advances in knowledge and the research methodology which facilitate those knowledge advances. An overarching aim of this study is thus the development of a creative and innovative research approach to enable production not only of advances in small business strategic management knowledge and practical small business development, but also a base research methodology capable of ongoing refinement and use by others in the future. The origins of the methodology lay in the non-acceptance of traditional philosophical positions in epistemology and ontology, with a philosophical standpoint of constructive alternativism underpinning the research and the use of a drive theory which builds out of that standpoint. As part response to that philosophical positioning, the concept of epistemological bootstrapping is used to develop a ‘partial research framework’ to foothold and inform the qualitative action research process. The key insights highlighted by the ‘bootstrap’ facilitate design and development of the innovative methodology, integral to which is a close ‘rich’ working partnership interface with the participant small business owner managers. A novel attempt at linked multi-level and processual (contextualist) analysis was attempted within an action research approach which is underpinned and driven by personal construct theory. Both researcher and the researched are thus treated as ‘man the scientist’ who is progressively seeking to refine and enhance his own personal constructions of phenomenon, issues and circumstances facing him throughout his life. Such conceptualisation facilitates the build up of dual working partner investigation using live, longitudinal practical business development projects to produce tangible outputs for both parties - academic small business management knowledge for the researcher and world of academia and practical strategic development and associate knowledge and enhanced abilities for the owner manager