A proposal for a global task planning architecture using the RoboEarth cloud based framework

As robotic systems become more and more capable of assisting in human domains, methods are sought to compose robot executable plans from abstract human instructions. To cope with the semantically rich and highly expressive nature of human instructions, Hierarchical Task Network planning is often being employed along with domain knowledge to solve planning problems in a pragmatic way. Commonly, the domain knowledge is specific to the planning problem at hand, impeding re-use. Therefore this paper conceptualizes a global planning architecture, based on the worldwide accessible RoboEarth cloud framework. This architecture allows environmental state inference and plan monitoring on a global level. To enable plan re-use for future requests, the RoboEarth action language has been adapted to allow semantic matching of robot capabilities with previously composed plans

The Effects of Delay and Probabilistic Discounting on Green Consumerism

People have a tendency to discount outcomes that are delayed or probabilistic. In other words, people will sacrifice larger benefits for smaller benefits that are immediate or certain. For many environmentally-friendly (“green”) products, the financial benefits are both delayed and probabilistic. The current study examined how delay and probability, as well as frame and magnitude, influenced consumers’ decisions when comparing a conventional and green product. Participants were recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and completed one of two experiments. In each experiment participants chose between a conventional product (low initial cost, high operating cost) and green product (high initial cost, low operating cost). Magnitude was manipulated by randomly assigning participants to a light bulb (low magnitude) or water heater (high magnitude) condition. Within each magnitude condition, promotional messages highlighted the increased operating cost of the conventional product (loss frame) or decreased operating cost of the green product (gain frame). Probability was manipulated in experiment one and inferred by the participant in Experiment 2. Results supported the recent finding that delay and probability interact. When probabilities of savings were high, participants were more likely to select the green product. This finding occurred whether probabilities were manipulated (Experiment 1) or inferred (Experiment 2). Framing and magnitude effects were inconsistent across experiments. Marketers promoting green products should take steps to reduce perceived risk associated with green products

Human-Machine Collaborative Optimization via Apprenticeship Scheduling

Coordinating agents to complete a set of tasks with intercoupled temporal and resource constraints is computationally challenging, yet human domain experts can solve these difficult scheduling problems using paradigms learned through years of apprenticeship. A process for manually codifying this domain knowledge within a computational framework is necessary to scale beyond the ``single-expert, single-trainee" apprenticeship model. However, human domain experts often have difficulty describing their decision-making processes, causing the codification of this knowledge to become laborious. We propose a new approach for capturing domain-expert heuristics through a pairwise ranking formulation. Our approach is model-free and does not require enumerating or iterating through a large state space. We empirically demonstrate that this approach accurately learns multifaceted heuristics on a synthetic data set incorporating job-shop scheduling and vehicle routing problems, as well as on two real-world data sets consisting of demonstrations of experts solving a weapon-to-target assignment problem and a hospital resource allocation problem. We also demonstrate that policies learned from human scheduling demonstration via apprenticeship learning can substantially improve the efficiency of a branch-and-bound search for an optimal schedule. We employ this human-machine collaborative optimization technique on a variant of the weapon-to-target assignment problem. We demonstrate that this technique generates solutions substantially superior to those produced by human domain experts at a rate up to 9.5 times faster than an optimization approach and can be applied to optimally solve problems twice as complex as those solved by a human demonstrator.Comment: Portions of this paper were published in the Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in 2016 and in the Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) in 2016. The paper consists of 50 pages with 11 figures and 4 table

The new territorial paradigm of rural development: theoretical foundations from systems and institutional theories

In recent decades, a new paradigm for public policies in rural areas has made headway. This new approach aims to support economic and institutional transformation processes designed and implemented by local rural actors themselves. It argues for the building of local partnerships as atoolfor the governance of rural change. This paper reflects about the governance of development and change in rural areas. It builds a conceptual framework from two complementary theoretical sources: (a) complexity theory views on the governance of resilience and (b) institutional theories. Given the impossibility to predict and plan social change in a top-down fashion, it stresses that change requires that actors of a social system construct a sufficiently shared vision of a desired future state and manage to act together in order to ‘navigate’ the pathway towards that aim. Capacity for territorial governance is also critical in rural governance of resilience. System resilience refers to the capacity of actors to adjust the desired pathway whenever external shocks threaten its viability, or in certain cases, impose the need for a more fundamental change in the prevailing system and the desired pathways of change. We argue that these theoretical inspirations provide a useful substantiated underpinning for the territorial paradigm of rural development and allow us to show why and how the local partnership has the potential to improve the governance and the resilience of rural territories. We also develop a number of further reflections about the challenges of such partnerships, in particular the difficulties emerging from heterogeneous interest and power of local actors.

Perceived organisational support: A prospective proxy of the individual manager’s commitment to strategic decision-making in organisational context

The purpose of this research project was the design of a model, which provides possible explanations of the behaviour of individual managers in organisational contexts when involved in strategic decision-making, but also some prospective level of prediction. The model proposed integrates variables that are related to each individual manager, such as the experiences with decision-making outcomes and the illusions of control that individual managers have, variables which derive from the perceptions that individual managers have of some components of their organisational contexts and perceptions of the risks intrinsic to each topic, which is subjected to decision-making processes. The organisational support for risk-taking, which is perceived by each individual manager, is considered as a proxy of the perception that that manager has of the risks for him or herself, and as a proxy of his or her behaviour, that is, is seen as a predictor of the willingness of the individual manager to engage in strategic decision-making activities on the behalf of his or her organisation. The data gathered by the questionnaire, and the hypotheses defined in accordance with the model proposed, were treated within the structural equation modelling framework. The results provide support for the model proposed and suggest that the perceived organisational support has antecedents, which had neither been proposed nor tested thus far. The findings of this study provide individual managers and their organisations with a better understanding of the variables involved in risk perception and risk behaviour, thus providing additional tools for risk management.O objectivo deste projecto foi a concepção de um modelo que fornecesse possíveis explicações para o comportamento individual de gerentes e gestores em contexto organizacional, quando envolvidos na tomada de decisões estratégicas, mas também que previsse esse mesmo comportamento. O modelo proposto considera variáveis que estão relacionadas com cada indivíduo, tais como a experiência com resultados de tomadas de decisão e com o controlo que pensam exercer sobre os assuntos a decidir e sobre as variáveis relacionadas com fatores que resultam dos contextos organizacionais. O apoio da organização para a assunção de riscos que é percebido por cada indivíduo é considerado neste estudo como um indicador da percepção que cada um dos indivíduos tem dos riscos em que pode incorrer ele próprio, e, consequentemente, como um indicador do respetivo comportamento e da vontade desse indivíduo participar na tomada de decisões estratégicas organizacionais. Os dados obtidos através do questionário final, e as hipóteses definidas de acordo com o modelo proposto, foram analisados com recurso a modelos de equações estruturais. Os resultados sugerem que o modelo proposto é fundamentado e que o apoio organizacional à assunção de riscos dependerá também de outros determinantes que não tinham sido anteriormente considerados nem testados. Os resultados deste estudo permitirão aos gerentes e gestores a título individual e ainda às respectivas organizações, uma compreensão mais aprofundada das variáveis envolvidas na percepção dos riscos e nos comportamentos face aos riscos, proporcionando medidas adicionais de gestão de risco

The entrepreneur's social self and its impact on the entrepreneurial process

Economic action is embedded into social systems. Prior research in entrepreneurship research has made substantial progress in delineating the impact of entrepreneurial activity on societal progress. The early agentic view on entrepreneurship relies on perceiving individual entrepreneurs as actors who shape their economic and social environments. However, entrepreneurs and their organizations are, at the same time, embedded in and driven by their social environments. Positions in social systems, in particular, might inform how individuals discover, evaluate, and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. This doctoral thesis aims to shed light on how individuals feelings of belonging and status in social environments influence key mechanisms in the entrepreneurial process. More specifically, the thesis builds and tests a theory on how the social class origins of individuals influence their beliefs in entrepreneurial feasibility and alter their entrepreneurial career intentions. Furthermore, it addresses how the perceived belonging to a social groupnamely, the social identity of foundersinfluences the strategic orientations of new ventures and ultimately impacts the entrepreneurship outcomes for the organization, the community, and the society. By drawing on the extant literature and collecting new data, this thesis analyzes the interplay between individuals feelings of social belonging, their status, and the key mechanisms of the entrepreneurial process over the course of four quantitative studies. In building on the existing discussions about the compatibility of structural and agentic views, it develops a theoretical model of the entrepreneurs social self, functioning as intermediary between social systems and an entrepreneurs behavior. For instance, the first study of this dissertation asks how social class origins affect entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Based on a sample of 700 individuals that are largely representative of the German student population, the findings show that early social environments imprint cognitive tendencies toward entrepreneurship such as an individuals perceived entrepreneurial self- efficacy. However, in line with the studys hypotheses, individuals can alter these cognitive imprints through selecting and creating more favorable environments at later points in time. Specifically, education and perceptions of social mobility alter initial cognitive imprints toward individuals belief of adequately responding to relevant entrepreneurial tasks. Whereas the first study of this dissertation enhances the understanding of the role of individuals perceived positions in social systems over time on their perceived feasibility of the entrepreneurial process, the second study sheds light on how such perceptions of feasibility and social position affect entrepreneurial career entries. Based on a survey among 1,003 young adults in a critical career phase, the studys findings indicate that social class origins influence how rather than if individuals intend to enter an entrepreneurial career. That is, the higher the individuals social class origins, the more likely their intention to combine paid employment with self-employment activities as entrepreneurial career path. While the first two studies highlight the role of positions in social systems for the entrepreneurial process, the remaining two studies in this dissertation turn toward how perceptions of belonging to social systems drive individual entrepreneurial cognition, firm-level strategic decision making and performance. Hence, one study asks how entrepreneurs social identities affect their entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Since social identities represent individual feelings of belonging to groups in social systems, the study hypothesizes how belonging to particular founder groups alters individuals beliefs in their entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Drawing on a survey among 753 nascent entrepreneurs, the study finds that feelings of belonging generally increase entrepreneurial self-efficacy beliefs. Furthermore, nascent entrepreneurs identifying with a group of self-oriented entrepreneurs (driven by economic self-interest) more likely experience entrepreneurial self-efficacy compared to those entrepreneurs identifying with a group of others-oriented entrepreneurs (driven by interests in communitarian and societal value generation). The final study of this dissertation takes up the difference between self- and other oriented founder identities in order to examine its impact on new ventures strategic decision making and performance. Based on a sample of 318 active founders, the studys findings delineate how founders social identities influence the innovativeness, risk-taking and proactiveness of their newly found ventures. Furthermore, the findings indicate that these strategic orientations only partially succeed in translating founders social identities into performance. Whereas founder social identities that focus on creating value for others trigger more innovative ventures, self-oriented social identities are related to more risk-taking at an organizational level, which leads to higher performance outcomes at the enterprise, community, and societal levels. Overall, the results of this dissertation contribute to research on how individuals interpret their social environments and accordingly form decisions in the entrepreneurial process. Particularly, the findings speak to the emerging field of research on the interplay between social inequality and entrepreneurial organizations. However, this doctoral thesis can only be an intermediate step of understanding the inclusiveness of the entrepreneurial process. Hence, it formulates a call and outlines a future research agenda on how social status influences the ways in which individuals identify, evaluate, and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. This might lay the ground for further research on the role of the entrepreneurs social self in the entrepreneurial process.Wirtschaftliches Handeln ist in soziale Systeme eingebettet. Die bisherige Forschung im Bereich des Unternehmertums erzielte wesentliche Fortschritte bei der Beschreibung der Auswirkungen unternehmerischen Handelns auf den gesellschaftlichen Fortschritt. Die in früher Literatur grundlegende Sichtweise auf das Unternehmertum beruht darauf, einzelne Unternehmer als Akteure wahrzunehmen, die ihr wirtschaftliches und soziales Umfeld gestalten. Unternehmer und ihre Organisationen sind jedoch gleichzeitig in ihr soziales Umfeld eingebettet und werden von diesem angetrieben. Insbesondere Positionen in sozialen Systemen können darüber Aufschluss geben, wie Individuen unternehmerische Gelegenheiten entdecken, bewerten und nutzen. Diese Dissertation soll beleuchten, wie das Zugehörigkeits- und Statusgefühl von Individuen in sozialen Kontexten Schlüsselmechanismen im unternehmerischen Prozess beeinflussen. Zu diesem Zweck, entwickelt und validiert diese Dissertation eine Theorie zum Einfluss der sozialen Herkunft auf unternehmerische Karriereabsichten und unternehmerische Selbstwirksamkeit. Darüber hinaus befasst sie sich mit der Frage, wie die wahrgenommene Zugehörigkeit zu einer sozialen Gruppe - namentlich die soziale Identität der Gründerinnen und Gründer - die strategischen Ausrichtungen neuer Unternehmen beeinflusst und sich letztlich auf die Ergebnisse des Unternehmertums für die Organisation, die Gemeinschaft und die Gesellschaft auswirkt. Auf der Grundlage der vorhandenen Literatur und der Erhebung neuer Daten analysiert diese Thesis das Zusammenspiel zwischen der wahrgenommenen sozialen Zugehörigkeit von Individuen, ihrem Status und den Schlüsselmechanismen des unternehmerischen Prozesses im Verlauf von vier quantitativen Studien. Aufbauend auf den in der Literatur bestehenden Diskussionen über die Vereinbarkeit von strukturellen und personenbezogenen Wirkungsperspektiven entwickelt sie ein theoretisches Modell des sozialen Selbst eines Unternehmers, das als Vermittler zwischen sozialen Kontexten und dem Verhalten eines Unternehmers fungiert. In der ersten Studie dieser Dissertation wird zum Beispiel gefragt, wie sich die Herkunft aus einer sozialen Schicht auf die unternehmerische Selbstwirksamkeit auswirkt. Auf der Grundlage einer Stichprobe von 700 Individuen, die weitgehend repräsentativ für die deutsche Studentenpopulation sind, zeigen die Ergebnisse, dass frühe soziale Umgebungen unternehmerische Kognitionen wie die unternehmerische Selbstwirksamkeit eines Individuums prägen. In Übereinstimmung mit den Hypothesen der Studie können die Individuen diese kognitiven Prägungen jedoch verändern, indem sie zu späteren Zeitpunkten günstigere Umgebung auswählen oder entwickeln. Insbesondere Trainings und eine wahrgenommene soziale Mobilität verändern die anfänglichen kognitiven Prägungen hin zu einer unternehmerischen Selbstwirksamkeit. Während die erste Studie dieser Dissertation das Verständnis der Rolle von wahrgenommenen Positionen in sozialen Systemen über die Zeit auf die unternehmerische Selbstwirksamkeit analysiert, beleuchtet die zweite Studie, wie solche Wahrnehmungen den Eintritt in eine unternehmerische Karriere beeinflussen. Auf der Grundlage einer Umfrage unter 1.003 jungen Erwachsenen in einer kritischen Karrierephase deuten die Ergebnisse der Studie darauf hin, dass die Herkunft aus einer sozialen Schicht eher einen Einfluss darauf hat, wie und nicht ob Individuen beabsichtigen, eine unternehmerische Laufbahn einzuschlagen. Das heißt, je höher die soziale Herkunft der Individuen ist, desto wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass sie beabsichtigen, eine bezahlte Beschäftigung mit einer selbständigen Tätigkeit als unternehmerischen Karriereweg zu kombinieren. Während die ersten beiden Studien die Rolle von Positionen in sozialen Systemen für den unternehmerischen Prozess hervorheben, wenden sich die beiden anderen Studien in dieser Dissertation der Frage zu, wie die Wahrnehmung der Zugehörigkeit in sozialen Systemen die individuelle unternehmerische Kognition, die strategische Entscheidungsfindung auf Unternehmensebene und den Unternehmenserfolg beeinflusst. Daher wendet sich eine Studie der Frage zu, wie soziale Identitäten von Unternehmern ihre unternehmerische Selbstwirksamkeit beeinflussen. Da soziale Identitäten individuelle Zugehörigkeitsgefühle zu Gruppen in sozialen Systemen repräsentieren, stellt die Studie die Hypothese auf, dass die Zugehörigkeit zu bestimmten Gründergruppen den Glauben der Individuen an ihre unternehmerische Selbstwirksamkeit verändert. Auf der Grundlage einer Umfrage unter 753 angehenden Unternehmern kommt die Studie zu dem Ergebnis, dass Zugehörigkeitsgefühle im Allgemeinen den Glauben an die unternehmerische Selbstwirksamkeit verstärken. Darüber hinaus erleben angehende Unternehmer, die sich mehr mit einer Gruppe von selbstorientierten Unternehmern identifizieren (angetrieben durch wirtschaftliches Eigeninteresse), eine höhere Selbstwirksamkeit als Unternehmer, die sich verstärkt mit einer Gruppe von sozial-orientierten Unternehmern identifizieren (angetrieben durch Interessen an kommunitärer und gesellschaftlicher Wertschöpfung). Die Abschlussstudie dieser Dissertation greift den Unterschied zwischen selbst- und sozialorientierten Gründeridentitäten auf, um Auswirkungen auf die strategische Entscheidungsfindung und Leistung neuer Unternehmen zu untersuchen. Auf der Grundlage einer Stichprobe von 318 aktiven Gründerinnen beschreiben die Ergebnisse der Studie, wie die sozialen Identitäten von Gründern die Innovationsfähigkeit, Risikobereitschaft und Proaktivität ihrer neu gegründeten Unternehmen beeinflussen. Darüber hinaus deuten die Ergebnisse darauf hin, dass es den strategischen Orientierungen nur teilweise gelingt, die sozialen Identitäten der Gründerinnen in den gewünschten Unternehmenserfolg umzusetzen. Während soziale Identitäten von Gründern, die sich auf die Wertschöpfung für andere konzentrieren, innovativere Unternehmungen hervorbringen, sind selbstorientierte soziale Identitäten mit mehr Risikobereitschaft auf organisatorischer Ebene verbunden, was zu höheren Unternehmenserfolgen auf Unternehmens-, Gemeinschafts- und gesellschaftlicher Ebene führt. Insgesamt tragen die Ergebnisse dieser Dissertation zu der Frage, wie die Interpretation sozialer Umgebungen individuelle Entscheidungen im unternehmerischen Prozess prägen, bei. Vor allem betten sich die Ergebnisse dabei in das aufstrebende Forschungsfeld der Wechselwirkung zwischen sozialer Ungleichheit und unternehmerischer Organisationen ein. Dennoch kann diese Doktorarbeit nur ein Zwischenschritt hin zu einem V erständnis der sozialen Zugänglichkeit des unternehmerischen Prozesses sein. Daher formuliert und skizziert die Dissertation eine Forschungsagenda zu der Frage, wie und warum sozialer Status die Identifikation, das Bewerten und das Nutzen unternehmerischer Gelegenheiten beeinflusst. Damit bietet die Doktorarbeit einen Ausgangspunkt für zukünftige Forschung zur Rolle des sozialen Selbst im unternehmerischen Prozess

To Draw or Not to Draw: Recognizing Stroke-Hover Intent in Gesture-Free Bare-Hand Mid-Air Drawing Tasks

Over the past several decades, technological advancements have introduced new modes of communication with the computers, introducing a shift from traditional mouse and keyboard interfaces. While touch based interactions are abundantly being used today, latest developments in computer vision, body tracking stereo cameras, and augmented and virtual reality have now enabled communicating with the computers using spatial input in the physical 3D space. These techniques are now being integrated into several design critical tasks like sketching, modeling, etc. through sophisticated methodologies and use of specialized instrumented devices. One of the prime challenges in design research is to make this spatial interaction with the computer as intuitive as possible for the users. Drawing curves in mid-air with fingers, is a fundamental task with applications to 3D sketching, geometric modeling, handwriting recognition, and authentication. Sketching in general, is a crucial mode for effective idea communication between designers. Mid-air curve input is typically accomplished through instrumented controllers, specific hand postures, or pre-defined hand gestures, in presence of depth and motion sensing cameras. The user may use any of these modalities to express the intention to start or stop sketching. However, apart from suffering with issues like lack of robustness, the use of such gestures, specific postures, or the necessity of instrumented controllers for design specific tasks further result in an additional cognitive load on the user. To address the problems associated with different mid-air curve input modalities, the presented research discusses the design, development, and evaluation of data driven models for intent recognition in non-instrumented, gesture-free, bare-hand mid-air drawing tasks. The research is motivated by a behavioral study that demonstrates the need for such an approach due to the lack of robustness and intuitiveness while using hand postures and instrumented devices. The main objective is to study how users move during mid-air sketching, develop qualitative insights regarding such movements, and consequently implement a computational approach to determine when the user intends to draw in mid-air without the use of an explicit mechanism (such as an instrumented controller or a specified hand-posture). By recording the user’s hand trajectory, the idea is to simply classify this point as either hover or stroke. The resulting model allows for the classification of points on the user’s spatial trajectory. Drawing inspiration from the way users sketch in mid-air, this research first specifies the necessity for an alternate approach for processing bare hand mid-air curves in a continuous fashion. Further, this research presents a novel drawing intent recognition work flow for every recorded drawing point, using three different approaches. We begin with recording mid-air drawing data and developing a classification model based on the extracted geometric properties of the recorded data. The main goal behind developing this model is to identify drawing intent from critical geometric and temporal features. In the second approach, we explore the variations in prediction quality of the model by improving the dimensionality of data used as mid-air curve input. Finally, in the third approach, we seek to understand the drawing intention from mid-air curves using sophisticated dimensionality reduction neural networks such as autoencoders. Finally, the broad level implications of this research are discussed, with potential development areas in the design and research of mid-air interactions

Psychological team diversity and strategy implementation

The overwhelming majority of team or group composition studies are restricted to analyzing the link between team demographics and the content of specific strategic choices. We argue that in order to make progress in this domain it is now time to broaden the approach by focusing on psychological team composition and issues of effective implementation. In addition, we propose a more sophisticated theoretical and methodological approach to the use of specific team composition measures. We conducted an experimental study in order to explore the potential of addressing these major limitations of past research. Specifically, we hypothesize on and analyze the relationship between the psychological composition of management teams (in terms of their members'' control perceptions) and two aspects of effective strategy implementation: meticulous planning and the configuration of consistent action patterns. We find that homogeneous ''internal'' teams adapt their strategy-making behavior to the requirements of the environment, whereas homogeneous ''external'' teams do not. As expected, mixed (i.e., heterogeneous) teams experienced most problems in effectively implementing their strategies. The findings provide support for the potential value of analyzing both psychological composition of decision making teams and strategy implementation issues. Furthermore, it underscores the importance of properly matching theoretical expectations and measurement methodology in multi-level research.management and organization theory ;