New cognitive info-communication channels for human-machine interaction

The main goal of this paper is to discuss a new paradigm for robot teaching and supervising which is based on cognitive info-communication channels for human-machine interaction. According to the studied concept the robot is considered as an unskilled worker “who” (which) is strong and capable for precise manufacturing. “He” (it) has a special kind of intelligence, but “he” is handicapped in some senses, that is why “he” needs special treatment. We must command “him” clearly in a special way and we must supervise “his” work. If we can elaborate a proper way for communicating with this “new worker”, as an additional dimension of robotization, we can get a capable new “colleague”. The ultimate goal is to help the boss to be able to give the daily task to a robot in a similar way as he/she able to give the jobs to the human workers. For example, by providing the CAD documentation with some additional verbal explanation

A Linear General Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Based Computing With Words Approach for Realising an Ambient Intelligent Platform for Cooking Recipes Recommendation

This paper addresses the need to enhance transparency in ambient intelligent environments by developing more natural ways of interaction, which allow the users to communicate easily with the hidden networked devices rather than embedding obtrusive tablets and computing equipment throughout their surroundings. Ambient intelligence vision aims to realize digital environments that adapt to users in a responsive, transparent, and context-aware manner in order to enhance users' comfort. It is, therefore, appropriate to employ the paradigm of “computing with words” (CWWs), which aims to mimic the ability of humans to communicate transparently and manipulate perceptions via words. One of the daily activities that would increase the comfort levels of the users (especially people with disabilities) is cooking and performing tasks in the kitchen. Existing approaches on food preparation, cooking, and recipe recommendation stress on healthy eating and balanced meal choices while providing limited personalization features through the use of intrusive user interfaces. Herein, we present an application, which transparently interacts with users based on a novel CWWs approach in order to predict the recipe's difficulty level and to recommend an appropriate recipe depending on the user's mood, appetite, and spare time. The proposed CWWs framework is based on linear general type-2 (LGT2) fuzzy sets, which linearly quantify the linguistic modifiers in the third dimension in order to better represent the user perceptions while avoiding the drawbacks of type-1 and interval type-2 fuzzy sets. The LGT2-based CWWs framework can learn from user experiences and adapt to them in order to establish more natural human-machine interaction. We have carried numerous real-world experiments with various users in the University of Essex intelligent flat. The comparison analysis between interval type-2 fuzzy sets and LGT2 fuzzy sets demonstrates up to 55.43% improvement when general type-2 fuzzy sets are used than when interval type-2 fuzzy sets are used instead. The quantitative and qualitative analysis both show the success of the system in providing a natural interaction with the users for recommending food recipes where the quantitative analysis shows the high statistical correlation between the system output and the users' feedback; the qualitative analysis presents social scienc

iSpace: Printed English After Joyce, Shannon, and Derrida

To begin my essay with a nonword or borderline word is to relive the consequence of manifest entanglements between the literary imagination and technoscience. iSpace is one of many graphic aberrations introduced into English by James Joyce. There are others, of course—printed signs on paper as well as electronic pulses on the computer screen—that can go anywhere from exuberant nonsense to promised logographical embodiment: “alaphbedic,” “televisible,” “verbivocovisual,” and so on. Joyce scholars have rightly pointed out that literary theory is still catching up with the author of Finnegans Wake, that modernist engineer of a cyberspace avant la lettre of outrageous signs and letter sequences. Joyce conjured up the printed sign iSpace long before the internet or the iPod. The novelty of his vision and technē of writing never ceases to surprise the generations of readers who have since grown up and experienced the dramatic unfolding of biocybernetic events in their own lives.I am interested in exploring whether the perceived entanglements between literature and technoscience can promise a new understanding of the nature and function of the phonetic alphabet and alphabetical writing. What insights or implications, if any, can we glean from contemporary biocybernetic developments that may help us rethink literary theory and make it truly relevant to the task of interpreting social life, text, and machine from the ground up, which is to say, from the basic building blocks of literacy

Cognitive assisted living ambient system: a survey

The demographic change towards an aging population is creating a significant impact and introducing drastic challenges to our society. We therefore need to find ways to assist older people to stay independently and prevent social isolation of these population. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide various solutions to help older adults to improve their quality of life, stay healthier, and live independently for a time. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is a field to investigate innovative technologies to provide assistance as well as healthcare and rehabilitation to impaired seniors. The paper provides a review of research background and technologies of AAL

Scientific, Technological and Gendered Relations: An Ethnographic Study of Women Scientists, Engineers and Factory Workers

The thesis draws from a year and a half long multi-sited ethnographic study of three empirically situated sites—1) a government space scientific research organization assembling satellites for the Indian State since the 1970s (which I will call iSpace), 2) a workplace in Whitefield, Bengaluru which is part of the largest Indian multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company founded in 1968 that I refer to as iTech and finally 3) an Industrial Modern Township, commonly called IMT Manesar, 60 km from Delhi and 21.4 km from Gurgaon, which is a planned cluster for automobile manufacturing. Borrowing from Stengers’ (2009) notion of the figure of a scientist "where the scientist submits to a becoming that cannot be reduced to the simple possession of a knowledge" and Weeks’ appeal to envision an immanent political intervention within post-Fordist regimes of work, one that is "no longer about a self to save or to recover but one to invent" (Weeks, 2007, p. 248), the thesis weaves an affective relationship between different situations encountered at each field-site. At iSpace, I locate an articulation of exhaustion that informs the figure of a woman scientist and use this articulation to locate the limits of women in science discourse in India. At iTech, I identify a desire for im/mobility that informs the figure of the IT worker. This desire, the thesis contends, makes visible a horizontal relation between work/labour, life and urban, a relation that is obfuscated within the existing literature on IT work and Bengaluru. At IMT Manesar, where I collaborated with Faridabad Majdoor Samachar—a collective that has been documenting the lives of workers through its monthly newspaper in the industrial belt in and around Delhi for the last 30 years—I locate a horizontality of relations and how it influences the form and content of the newspaper, as opposed to a vertical relation between workers, unions, management and state. By engaging with the form and content of the Newspaper, I identify a crucial need to map the situatedness of situated knowledge. An affective, ethnographic map of exhaustion, im/mobility and horizontality weaved together in the thesis offers an illustrative critique of existing debates within women/gender studies in India on intersectionality while also locating the limits of existing debate on situated knowledges that is central to feminist (techno) science studies

Mechatronic Systems

Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools

Advances in Human-Robot Interaction

Rapid advances in the field of robotics have made it possible to use robots not just in industrial automation but also in entertainment, rehabilitation, and home service. Since robots will likely affect many aspects of human existence, fundamental questions of human-robot interaction must be formulated and, if at all possible, resolved. Some of these questions are addressed in this collection of papers by leading HRI researchers

Object Tracking

Object tracking consists in estimation of trajectory of moving objects in the sequence of images. Automation of the computer object tracking is a difficult task. Dynamics of multiple parameters changes representing features and motion of the objects, and temporary partial or full occlusion of the tracked objects have to be considered. This monograph presents the development of object tracking algorithms, methods and systems. Both, state of the art of object tracking methods and also the new trends in research are described in this book. Fourteen chapters are split into two sections. Section 1 presents new theoretical ideas whereas Section 2 presents real-life applications. Despite the variety of topics contained in this monograph it constitutes a consisted knowledge in the field of computer object tracking. The intention of editor was to follow up the very quick progress in the developing of methods as well as extension of the application

A Novel Algorithm for Global Optimization: Rat Swarm Optimizer

This paper presents a novel bio-inspired optimization algorithm called Rat Swarm Optimizer (RSO) for solving the challenging optimization problems. The main inspiration of this optimizer is the chasing and attacking behaviors of rats in nature. This paper mathematically models these behaviors and benchmarks on a set of 38 test problems to ensure its applicability on different regions of search space. The RSO algorithm is compared with eight well-known optimization algorithms to validate its performance. It is then employed on six real-life constrained engineering design problems. The convergence and computational analysis are also investigated to test exploration, exploitation, and local optima avoidance of proposed algorithm. The experimental results reveal that the proposed RSO algorithm is highly effective in solving real world optimization problems as compared to other well-known optimization algorithms. Note that the source codes of the proposed technique are available at: http://www.dhimangaurav.co