Information Outlook, April 2007

Volume 11, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2007/1003/thumbnail.jp

White paper - Agricultural Robotics: The Future of Robotic Agriculture

Agri-Food is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. It supports a food chain that generates over £108bn p.a., with 3.9m employees in a truly international industry and exports £20bn of UK manufactured goods. However, the global food chain is under pressure from population growth, climate change, political pressures affecting migration, population drift from rural to urban regions and the demographics of an aging global population. These challenges are recognised in the UK Industrial Strategy white paper and backed by significant investment via a wave 2 Industrial Challenge Fund Investment (“Transforming Food Production: from Farm to Fork”). RAS and associated digital technologies are now seen as enablers of this critical food chain transformation. To meet these challenges, here we review the state of the art of the application of RAS in Agri-Food production and explore research and innovation needs to ensure novel advanced robotic and autonomous reach their full potential and deliver necessary impacts. The opportunities for RAS range from; the development of field robots that can assist workers by carrying weights and conduct agricultural operations such as crop and animal sensing, weeding and drilling; integration of autonomous system technologies into existing farm operational equipment such as tractors; robotic systems to harvest crops and conduct complex dextrous operations; the use of collaborative and “human in the loop” robotic applications to augment worker productivity and advanced robotic applications, including the use of soft robotics, to drive productivity beyond the farm gate into the factory and retail environment. RAS technology has the potential to transform food production and the UK has the potential to establish global leadership within the domain. However, there are particular barriers to overcome to secure this vision: 1.The UK RAS community with an interest in Agri-Food is small and highly dispersed. There is an urgent need to defragment and then expand the community.2.The UK RAS community has no specific training paths or Centres for Doctoral Training to provide trained human resource capacity within Agri-Food.3.While there has been substantial government investment in translational activities at high Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), there is insufficient ongoing basic research in Agri-Food RAS at low TRLs to underpin onward innovation delivery for industry.4.There is a concern that RAS for Agri-Food is not realising its full potential, as the projects being commissioned currently are too few and too small-scale. RAS challenges often involve the complex integration of multiple discrete technologies (e.g. navigation, safe operation, multimodal sensing, automated perception, grasping and manipulation, perception). There is a need to further develop these discrete technologies but also to deliver large-scale industrial applications that resolve integration and interoperability issues. The UK community needs to undertake a few well-chosen large-scale and collaborative “moon shot” projects.5.The successful delivery of RAS projects within Agri-Food requires close collaboration between the RAS community and with academic and industry practitioners. For example, the breeding of crops with novel phenotypes, such as fruits which are easy to see and pick by robots, may simplify and accelerate the application of RAS technologies. Therefore, there is an urgent need to seek new ways to create RAS and Agri-Food domain networks that can work collaboratively to address key challenges. This is especially important for Agri-Food since success in the sector requires highly complex cross-disciplinary activity. Furthermore, within UKRI most of the Research Councils (EPSRC, BBSRC, NERC, STFC, ESRC and MRC) and Innovate UK directly fund work in Agri-Food, but as yet there is no coordinated and integrated Agri-Food research policy per se. Our vision is a new generation of smart, flexible, robust, compliant, interconnected robotic systems working seamlessly alongside their human co-workers in farms and food factories. Teams of multi-modal, interoperable robotic systems will self-organise and coordinate their activities with the “human in the loop”. Electric farm and factory robots with interchangeable tools, including low-tillage solutions, novel soft robotic grasping technologies and sensors, will support the sustainable intensification of agriculture, drive manufacturing productivity and underpin future food security. To deliver this vision the research and innovation needs include the development of robust robotic platforms, suited to agricultural environments, and improved capabilities for sensing and perception, planning and coordination, manipulation and grasping, learning and adaptation, interoperability between robots and existing machinery, and human-robot collaboration, including the key issues of safety and user acceptance. Technology adoption is likely to occur in measured steps. Most farmers and food producers will need technologies that can be introduced gradually, alongside and within their existing production systems. Thus, for the foreseeable future, humans and robots will frequently operate collaboratively to perform tasks, and that collaboration must be safe. There will be a transition period in which humans and robots work together as first simple and then more complex parts of work are conducted by robots; driving productivity and enabling human jobs to move up the value chain

JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Advancing spirituality in occupational therapy: an educational program for practitioners

Spirituality, defined as the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose; and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature and to the significant or sacred (Puchalski,et al, 2009) has proven benefits to the health of people across the lifespan (Huguelet, 2011) and is supported by policy papers of the UN and the WHO. Spirituality, expressed through meaningful activity, naturally falls within the domain of all occupational therapy practice, and is described as a central occupational component in occupational performance models such as the AOTA PF (2009) and the CMOP-E.(Polatajko, Townsend, & Craik, 2007). However barriers to including spirituality into occupational therapy interventions include lack of training (Paal et al 2015; Kirsh, 2001), confidence and skills (Egan, 2003; Mthembu, 2015) and perception of ambiguity (Bennett et al 2013; Unruh et al 2002) and irrelevancy (Collins, 2009). Previous remediation to the gap between theory and practice of spirituality include utilising activity such as art, music, gardening, and many others (Ayers-Hayth, 2015) with the assumption that these activities have inherent spiritual qualities when they may not be meaningful to the individual. This doctoral project proposes an educational program to assist practitioners increase their knowledge and skills in relation to spirituality in occupational therapy. DevOTed is a self-paced multi-faceted workbook based on best practices in adult education ( Dunst,& Trivette, 2009) and spiritual education (Paal et al., 2015). DevOTed combines opportunities for building knowledge and skills and self-reflections and case studies from a wide range of practice areas to guide the development of the clinician’s clinical reasoning. Effectiveness will be evaluated using a participant-oriented model and include feedback, virtual discussion content and client satisfaction measures. Dissemination will utilise electronic media, person-to-person contact and written information. The devOTed program offers a theory and evidence-based learning opportunity and unique opportunity for the occupational therapy profession to seamlessly and simply integrate spirituality into day-to-day interventions in any area of practice and by doing so, continue to enact its commitment to client-centered care

Linking teaching and research in disciplines and departments

This paper supports the effective links between teaching and discipline-based research in disciplinary communities and in academic departments. It is authored by Alan Jenkins, Mick Healey and Roger Zetter