8 research outputs found
Safety assessment review of a dressing assistance robot
Hazard analysis methods such as HAZOP and STPA have proven to be effective methods for assurance of system safety for years. However, the dimensionality and human factors uncertainty of many assistive robotic applications challenges the capability of these methods to provide comprehensive coverage of safety issues from interdisciplinary perspectives in a timely and cost-effective manner. Physically assistive tasks in which a range of dynamic contexts require continuous humanârobot physical interaction such as e.g., robot-assisted dressing or sit-to-stand pose a new paradigm for safe design and safety analysis methodology. For these types of tasks, considerations have to be made for a range of dynamic contexts where the robot-assistance requires close and continuous physical contact with users. Current regulations mainly cover industrial collaborative robotics regarding physical humanârobot interaction (pHRI) but largely neglects direct and continuous physical human contact. In this paper, we explore limitations of commonly used safety analysis techniques when applied to robot-assisted dressing scenarios. We provide a detailed analysis of the system requirements from the user perspective and consider user-bounded hazards that can compromise safety of this complex pHRI
Introduction: Ways of Machine Seeing
How do machines, and, in particular, computational technologies, change the way we see the world? This special issue brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to explore the entanglement of machines and their ways of seeing from new critical perspectives.
This 'editorial' is for a special issue of AI & Society, which includes contributions from: MarĂa JesĂșs Schultz Abarca, Peter Bell, Tobias Blanke, Benjamin Bratton, Claudio Celis Bueno, Kate Crawford, Iain Emsley, Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Daniel ChĂĄvez Heras, Vladan Joler, Nicolas MalevĂ©, Lev Manovich, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Perle MĂžhl, Bruno Moreschi, Fabian Offert, Trevor Paglan, Jussi Parikka, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Gabriel Pereira, Carloalberto Treccani, Rebecca Uliasz, and Manuel van der Veen
Advances and Applications of Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) for Information Fusion (Collected Works), Vol. 4
The fourth volume on Advances and Applications of Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) for information fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics. The contributions (see List of Articles published in this book, at the end of the volume) have been published or presented after disseminating the third volume (2009, http://fs.unm.edu/DSmT-book3.pdf) in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals.
First Part of this book presents the theoretical advancement of DSmT, dealing with Belief functions, conditioning and deconditioning, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Decision Making, Multi-Criteria, evidence theory, combination rule, evidence distance, conflicting belief, sources of evidences with different importance and reliabilities, importance of sources, pignistic probability transformation, Qualitative reasoning under uncertainty, Imprecise belief
structures, 2-Tuple linguistic label, Electre Tri Method, hierarchical proportional redistribution, basic belief assignment, subjective probability measure, Smarandache codification, neutrosophic logic, Evidence theory, outranking methods, Dempster-Shafer Theory, Bayes fusion rule, frequentist probability, mean square error, controlling factor, optimal assignment solution, data association, Transferable Belief Model, and others.
More applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the third book of DSmT 2009. Subsequently, the second part of this volume is about applications of DSmT in correlation with Electronic Support Measures, belief function, sensor networks, Ground Moving Target and Multiple target tracking, Vehicle-Born Improvised Explosive Device, Belief Interacting Multiple Model filter, seismic and acoustic sensor, Support Vector Machines, Alarm
classification, ability of human visual system, Uncertainty Representation and Reasoning Evaluation Framework, Threat Assessment, Handwritten Signature Verification, Automatic Aircraft Recognition, Dynamic Data-Driven Application System, adjustment of secure communication trust analysis, and so on.
Finally, the third part presents a List of References related with DSmT published or presented along the years since its inception in 2004, chronologically ordered
On politics and social science â the subject-object problem in social science and Foucaultâs engaged epistemology
The epistemological problem of the relationship between the subject of knowledge and
the object being known has itâs form in social science as a problem of the relationship between a
social scientist as a researcher and society and itâs phenomena as an object of this inquiry. As
Berger and Kellner note in their book âSociology Reinterpretedâ a social scientist is necessarily a
part of the object he studies, being embedded in a position in society from which he studies it.
Hence social sciences as scientific endeavors face a problem of the inseperability of their
researchers from object they study. Two main solutions two this problem have arisen: positivism
and interpretivism. Positivism postulates that rigorous methods for research will insure that
objective knowledge will be produced while interpretivism sees society only as an aggregate of
individuals whose interactions should be interpreted. A third epistemological framework has
arisen in the first half of the twentieth century usually called âcritical theoryâ. Critical theory
states that researchers should aim their research towards changing the object they are
researching, therefore their scientific practice should have extra-scientific effects, namely
political effects. This perspective violates Webers postulate of value neutrality which claims that
social sciences can only study the state of affairs but canât subscribe desirable ways of action. As
we will see the main topic of our paper is the epistemological framework of the work of Michel
Foucault and his contribution to the resolution of the problematic relation between a researcher
and his research object in social science. We will claim that Foucault broadly falls into the
critical theory paradigm but manages to solve itâs conflict with the value neutrality postulate.
Foucault envisions society as an amalgam of discursive and non-discursive practices that
interconnect in a way that gives them regularity and coherence through time. As Gayatri Spivak
notices for Foucault discursive practices create meaning and in doing so chart a way for nondiscursive
practices and therefore for action. This can be seen as an explanation for Foucaultâs
well known postulate of the relationship between power and knowledge, discursive practices
create knowledge that makes visible certain paths for action. Both of these types of practices
intertwine to create what Foucault calls âdispositifsâ that can be seen as mechanisms that bind discursive and non-discursive practices in a coherent manner and enable their regular repetition
through time. Foucault calls his methodology âgenealogyâ and sees it as a historical research of
the emergence of dipositifs. Genealogy is a historical research of the contingent ways in which
practices got interconnected in the past to create dispositifs we see today. As Foucault claims
genealogy begins with a âquestion posed in the presentâ about a certain dispositive and then
charts historical events and processes that led to its current form. The main aim of genealogy is
to show that there is no transcendental necessity for a certain dispositif to exist in itâs current
form by exposing the historical contingency that led to itâs current state. Foucault claimed that
his intent was to show that there is no metaphysical necessity that grounds the existences of
dispositifs and hence that their current form is arbitrary. As we can see Foucault follows his
postulate on the relationship between knowledge and power and formulates his scientific practice
as an opening of possibilities for different forms of action. This is way he calls his books
âexperimentsâ and claims that they are to be used for readers to re-examine their own links to the
currently existing dispositifs and possibilities of their alternative arrangements. But as Foucault
claims the genealogical method doesnât include normative prescriptions and can be seen only as
a form of an anti-metaphysical âunmaskingâ of current dispositifs. This unmasking doesnât
prescribe a desirable form to any dispositive but only shows that it can be arranged in different
ways. Hence we can say that Foucault sees the relationship between a researcher and his object
of study as a form of an intervention of the subject that aims at showing that the object is an
arbitrary construction. In that regard Foucault falls into the critical theory paradigm. Where he
differs from critical theory is his anti-normative stance that refuses to prescribe any desirable
form of action unlike for example Horkheimer who in his essay on critical theory claims that
âthe task of the theorist is to push society towards justiceâ. Foucault claims that his research
results should be used as âinstrumentsâ in political struggles but he himself doesnât ever
proclaim a desirable political goal. So we can conclude that Foucault solves the problem of the
subject-object relation in social science by envisioning the research process as a practice of
production of tools for social change. Therefore he connects social science to extra-scientific
political goals but doesnât violate the value neutrality postulate because his research doesnât
prescribe any concrete political goals but only shows the possibility for social change