The Structure of Cluster Knowledge Networks Uneven, not Pervasive and Collective

This study focuses on the relationship between industrial clustering and innovation. It contributes to this literature by showing two empirical properties of the cluster learning process: first, that the structure of the knowledge network in a cluster is related with the heterogeneous distribution of firm knowledge bases and, second, that business interactions and inter-firm knowledge flows are not highly co-occurring phenomena. In particular, this paper highlights how the heterogeneity of firms’ knowledge bases generates uneven distribution of knowledge and selective inter-firm learning. This study has been based on empirical evidence collected at firm level in three wine clusters in Italy and Chile. Methods of social network analysis have been applied to process the data.Industrial clusters, knowledge flows, business interactions, networks.

Autonomous Capabilities for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems Conducting Radiological Response: Findings from a High-fidelity Discovery Experiment

This article presents a preliminary work domain theory and identifies autonomous vehicle, navigational, and mission capabilities and challenges for small unmanned aerial systems (SUASs) responding to a radiological disaster. Radiological events are representative of applications that involve flying at low altitudes and close proximities to structures. To more formally understand the guidance and control demands, the environment in which the SUAS has to function, and the expected missions, tasks, and strategies to respond to an incident, a discovery experiment was performed in 2013. The experiment placed a radiological source emitting at 10 times background radiation in the simulated collapse of a multistory hospital. Two SUASs, an AirRobot 100B and a Leptron Avenger, were inserted with subject matter experts into the response, providing high operational fidelity. The SUASs were expected by the responders to fly at altitudes between 0.3 and 30 m, and hover at 1.5 m from urban structures. The proximity to a building introduced a decrease in GPS satellite coverage, challenging existing vehicle autonomy. Five new navigational capabilities were identified: scan, obstacle avoidance, contour following, environment-aware return to home, andreturn to highest reading. Furthermore, the data-to-decision process could be improved with autonomous data digestion and visualization capabilities. This article is expected to contribute to a better understanding of autonomy in a SUAS, serve as a requirement document for advanced autonomy, and illustrate how discovery experimentation serves as a design tool for autonomous vehicles

Socio-psychological aspects of grassroots participation in the Transition Movement: An Italian case study

In this article, we present a case study investigating the socio-psychological aspects of grassroots participation in a Transition Town Movement (TTM) community initiative. We analyzed the first Italian Transition initiative: Monteveglio (Bologna), the central hub of the Italian TTM and a key link with the global Transition Network. A qualitative methodology was used to collect and analyze the data consisting of interviews with key informants and ethnographic notes. The results provide further evidence supporting the role of social representations, shared social identities, and collective efficacy beliefs in promoting, sustaining, and shaping activists\u2019 commitment. The movement seems to have great potential to inspire and engage citizens to tackle climate change at a community level. Grassroots engagement of local communities working together provides the vision and the material starting point for a viable pathway for the changes required. Attempting to ensure their future political relevance, the TTM adherents are striving to disseminate and materially consolidate inherently political and prefigurative movement frames \u2013 primarily community resilience and re-localization \u2013 within community socio-economic and political frameworks. However, cooperation with politics is perceived by most adherents as a frustrating and dissatisfying experience, and an attempted co-optation of the Transition initiative by institutions. It highlights a tension between the open and non-confrontational approach of the movement towards institutions and their practical experience. Corresponding to this tension, activists have to cope with conflicts, contradictions, and ambivalence of social representations about community action for sustainability, which threaten the sense of collective purpose, group cohesion and ultimately its survival

Fundamental Limits of Wideband Localization - Part II: Cooperative Networks

The availability of positional information is of great importance in many commercial, governmental, and military applications. Localization is commonly accomplished through the use of radio communication between mobile devices (agents) and fixed infrastructure (anchors). However, precise determination of agent positions is a challenging task, especially in harsh environments due to radio blockage or limited anchor deployment. In these situations, cooperation among agents can significantly improve localization accuracy and reduce localization outage probabilities. A general framework of analyzing the fundamental limits of wideband localization has been developed in Part I of the paper. Here, we build on this framework and establish the fundamental limits of wideband cooperative location-aware networks. Our analysis is based on the waveforms received at the nodes, in conjunction with Fisher information inequality. We provide a geometrical interpretation of equivalent Fisher information for cooperative networks. This approach allows us to succinctly derive fundamental performance limits and their scaling behaviors, and to treat anchors and agents in a unified way from the perspective of localization accuracy. Our results yield important insights into how and when cooperation is beneficial.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Cooperative Simultaneous Localization and Synchronization in Mobile Agent Networks

Cooperative localization in agent networks based on interagent time-of-flight measurements is closely related to synchronization. To leverage this relation, we propose a Bayesian factor graph framework for cooperative simultaneous localization and synchronization (CoSLAS). This framework is suited to mobile agents and time-varying local clock parameters. Building on the CoSLAS factor graph, we develop a distributed (decentralized) belief propagation algorithm for CoSLAS in the practically important case of an affine clock model and asymmetric time stamping. Our algorithm allows for real-time operation and is suitable for a time-varying network connectivity. To achieve high accuracy at reduced complexity and communication cost, the algorithm combines particle implementations with parametric message representations and takes advantage of a conditional independence property. Simulation results demonstrate the good performance of the proposed algorithm in a challenging scenario with time-varying network connectivity.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables; manuscript submitted to IEEE Transaction on Signal Processin

Design Criteria to Architect Continuous Experimentation for Self-Driving Vehicles

The software powering today's vehicles surpasses mechatronics as the dominating engineering challenge due to its fast evolving and innovative nature. In addition, the software and system architecture for upcoming vehicles with automated driving functionality is already processing ~750MB/s - corresponding to over 180 simultaneous 4K-video streams from popular video-on-demand services. Hence, self-driving cars will run so much software to resemble "small data centers on wheels" rather than just transportation vehicles. Continuous Integration, Deployment, and Experimentation have been successfully adopted for software-only products as enabling methodology for feedback-based software development. For example, a popular search engine conducts ~250 experiments each day to improve the software based on its users' behavior. This work investigates design criteria for the software architecture and the corresponding software development and deployment process for complex cyber-physical systems, with the goal of enabling Continuous Experimentation as a way to achieve continuous software evolution. Our research involved reviewing related literature on the topic to extract relevant design requirements. The study is concluded by describing the software development and deployment process and software architecture adopted by our self-driving vehicle laboratory, both based on the extracted criteria.Comment: Copyright 2017 IEEE. Paper submitted and accepted at the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture. 8 pages, 2 figures. Published in IEEE Xplore Digital Library, URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7930218