Managing a Fleet of Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) using Cloud Robotics Platform

In this paper, we provide details of implementing a system for managing a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) operating in a factory or a warehouse premise. While the robots are themselves autonomous in its motion and obstacle avoidance capability, the target destination for each robot is provided by a global planner. The global planner and the ground vehicles (robots) constitute a multi agent system (MAS) which communicate with each other over a wireless network. Three different approaches are explored for implementation. The first two approaches make use of the distributed computing based Networked Robotics architecture and communication framework of Robot Operating System (ROS) itself while the third approach uses Rapyuta Cloud Robotics framework for this implementation. The comparative performance of these approaches are analyzed through simulation as well as real world experiment with actual robots. These analyses provide an in-depth understanding of the inner working of the Cloud Robotics Platform in contrast to the usual ROS framework. The insight gained through this exercise will be valuable for students as well as practicing engineers interested in implementing similar systems else where. In the process, we also identify few critical limitations of the current Rapyuta platform and provide suggestions to overcome them.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figures, journal pape

Newness Against the Grain: Democratic emergence in organisational and professional practice

What is the nature of democratic innovation in a performative culture? The purpose of this chapter is to help answer this question by giving conceptual substance to the notion of democratic emergence as a specific kind of innovation in the context of contemporary governance trends. It is argued that the performative governance which is the product of these trends is not invulnerable to challenge because of deficiencies in the capacity of managerialism and performative governance to improve services, and the creative spaces for agency and initiative created by the valuing of entrepreneurialism and innovation. The chapter draws on existing conceptual work on democratic approaches to school organisation and innovation, relevant literature on entrepreneurialism, and offers a brief insight into an example of democratic innovation in practice

Operational Research in Education

Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions, how to measure it, and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings. Local governments, as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation, may also need to make decisions regarding, for example, the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones, as well as the day-to-day logistics of getting pupils to schools. Issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets, scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses. This survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government, managers and consumers of education, and the OR techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions

The Global Networked Value Circle: A new model for best-in-class manufacturing

As companies face deflation, slowing production and declining prices, they will need to assess their entire value chain as they look for ways to keep costs low and improve efficiencies while continuing to innovate. To help address this challenge, this report reflects fresh research undertaken by Capgemini in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh into the ?Best-in-Class Global Manufacturing Value Chain?