Public entities driven robotic innovation in urban areas

Cities present new challenges and needs to satisfy and improve lifestyle for their citizens under the concept “Smart City”. In order to achieve this goal in a global manner, new technologies are required as the robotic one. But Public entities unknown the possibilities offered by this technology to get solutions to their needs. In this paper the development of the Innovative Public Procurement instruments is explained, specifically the process PDTI (Public end Users Driven Technological Innovation) as a driving force of robotic research and development and offering a list of robotic urban challenges proposed by European cities that have participated in such a process. In the next phases of the procedure, this fact will provide novel robotic solutions addressed to public demand that are an example to be followed by other Smart Cities.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The ECHORD++ Project: Robotics in a public economy

The idea of the ECHORD project was born before the economic crisis had its maximum impact on the robotics industry. Therefore, the concept of a project with the clear goal to strengthen the collaboration between academia and industry was a good opportunity to support the industry by offering funding opportunities and fostering already existing networks and creating new partnerships with the academic world taking into account the circular economy in the productive cycle of the intelligent robotics solutions to solve the challenges of the modern cities. One of the most innovative part of this project is to foster the participation of public investment in new robotic projects mainly in urban robotics. At this moment, more than 40 european cities have been participating in the challenge that ECHORD++ proposed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The Politics of User-Driven Innovation: On innovative users, do-able needs, and frugal robots

Users play an increasingly important role in European innovation policy. They are commonly seen as drivers of and active co-creators within innovation processes. However, user-driven innovation remains infused with a number of assumptions about users, technology, and “successful” innovation, which (partly) undermine a more democratic, open approach to innovation. In this contribution, I investigate the interplay between broader policy assumptions in the European discourse on user-driven innovation and its practical performance within an innovation project centring on healthcare robotics. Here, I argue that the politics of user-driven innovation harbours particular assumptions that, in effect, restrict the agency of users while also engendering conflict and contradictory outcomes. Hence, user-driven innovation is not simply about users driving innovation but rather about interfacing users and their concerns with (robotics) developers and their technology. For this, I propose an analytics of interfacing, which draws together literatures on the performative dynamics of participatory processes and more recent work on the political economy of participation. Here, I contend that it is not enough to investigate the construction and performance of publics; rather, it is additionally necessary to follow the manifold practices by which those publics are rendered available for certain technological solutions – and vice versa. Such an analytical approach opens up a fruitful avenue to critically enquire into the politics of participation – sitting in between innovation policy and practice

Building a National IoT Plan: Policy Recommendations and the Case of Brazil

The Internet of Things (“IoT”) is an expression that refers to a whole set of new services and devices that includes at least three fundamental aspects: connectivity, use of sensors or actuators, and computational capacity for data processing and storage. The Internet of Things goes beyond connecting objects to each other; it also gives them the power to process data (thereby making them "smart"). For developing countries such as Brazil, the opportunities offered by the Internet of Things can compensate for shortcomings in infrastructure and services, and can improve innovation, quality of life, productivity, and even the economic complexity of our basket of export products. However, the way in which each country will seize this opportunity will depend on its specific aspirations and strategies. The broader economic, social, political, and legal context of the country should be considered, as well as the local development of information and communication technologies. For this reason, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES), in partnership with the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC), has commissioned this study, "Internet of Things: An Action Plan for Brazil." This study, mapped by a consortium comprised by McKinsey & Company, the CPqD Foundation, and Pereira Neto | Macedo Law Firm, outlines the local technological and economic challenges related to the topic, as well as well as how to address legal issues inherent to the development of IoT in Brazil

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation

The mobility and identity of a Pehuenche community as expressed through their material culture (Alto Biobío, Chile)

This research focuses on the changing role of mobility within one Pehuenche comunidad, Cauñicú, which is part one of twenty legally recognised Pehuenche comunidades in southern Chile, South America. Working within an interdisciplinary perspective, I use archaeological, ethnographic, and historical sources, adopting a diachronic view to reflect on the processes of change that this social group has gone through: from highly mobile pastoralist in the Colonial period, to becoming validated officially as ´indigenous communities´ or comunidades indígenas by the Chilean state in the current context of globalisation. A defining characteristic of the Pehuenche has been the seasonal movement of some families from their annual residence in the lower valleys in colder seasons, to the highland pastures in summer, where they take their livestock and collect pinenuts from the Araucaria trees. However, this seasonal movement is in decline, and pinenuts may never have been as important a resource as the ‘Pehuenche’ ethnonym suggests. This research includes original ethnographic fieldwork to study how the socio-political organisation, economy, and perception of the landscape and their own past, as well as state policies have influenced the material culture and settlement organisation. This generates a landscape in which present and past material culture co-exist and can be explained from, and through, their cycle of mobility, with a strong sense of identity embedded in these aspects of Pehuenche culture. This maintenance of practices such as rituals, seasonal movements, and the material expressions connect the present Pehuenches to past ways of life. This approach gives importance to the historical processes of how mobile groups interacted with colonial societies and responded to changes through their material culture. It also serves to reflect on their collective identity, which is not only sustained through their current, more limited, mobility in a context of a globalised wider society, but in certain characteristics of their daily and ritual material assemblages

Digital marketing, elements of the public sector competition value chain in Barranquilla, (Colombia)

La organización en la actualidad están obligadas a generar mayores beneficios a sus consumidores para lograr mayor posicionamiento en el mercado, eso depende del manejo de factores de competitividad internos y externos que predominan en las organizaciones medianas en el sector de la publicidad digital en Barranquilla. El objetivo de esta investigación fue describir el marketing digital del sector publicitario. La investigación es descriptiva con diseño no experimental y transversal. La muestra estuvo conformada por 15 empresas, cumpliendo los criterios: Empresa mediana, con departamento de Marketing digital, domiciliada en Barranquilla. Los resultados fueron descripción el marketing digital del sector publicitario, de acuerdo a los factores internos y externos en estas empresas presentan donde existe una consistencia moderada en la dinámica de respuesta de la empresa ante factores externos y viceversa. Se concluyó que las empresas de este sector requieren de estrategias que promuevan el desarrollo de los indicadores internos de competitividad que respondan a los factores cambiantes externo.The organization is currently forced to generate greater benefits to its consumers to achieve greater market positioning, that depends on the management of internal and external competitiveness factors that predominates in medium-sized organizations in the digital advertising sector in Barranquilla. The objective of this research was to describe the digital marketing of the advertising sector. The research is descriptive with non-experimental and transversal design. The sample was composed by 15 companies, fulfilling the criteria: Medium company, with department of Digital Marketing, placed in Barranquilla. The results were a description digital marketing of the advertising sector, according of the internal and external factors in these companies present where there is a moderate consistency in the dynamics of the company’s response to external factors and vice versa. It was concluded that companies in this sector have difficulties in strategies that promote the development of internal competitiveness indicators that respond to changing external factors