243 research outputs found
Frankenstein's Toolkit: Prototyping Electronics Using Consumer Products
In our practice as educators, researchers and designers we have found that
centering reverse engineering and reuse has pedagogical, environmental, and
economic benefits. Design decisions in the development of new hardware
tool-kits should consider how we can use e-waste at hand as integral components
of electronics prototyping. Dissection, extraction and modification can give
insights into how things are made at scale. Simultaneously, it can enable
prototypes that have greater fidelity or functionality than would otherwise be
cost-effective to produce
TINKERING WITH VALUATION ESTIMATES: IS THERE A FUTURE FOR WILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT MEASURES?
This paper examines various methods proposed in the literature to calibrate welfare measures, especially willingness to accept and willingness to pay, derived from contingent valuation surveys. Through simulation and a case study, we hope to provide guidance for empirical welfare measurement in response to the theoretical dispute regarding WTA/WTP disparities.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Initiative and Materiality: Exploring Mixed-Initiative Calculators with the Tangible Human-A.I. Interaction Framework
How can interactions with A.I. systems be designed? This paper explores the
design space for A.I. interaction to develop tools for designers to think about
tangible and physical A.I. interactions. Our proposed framework consists of two
dimensions: initiative (human, mixed, or machine) and materiality (physical,
combined, or digital form). A particularly interesting area of interactions we
identify is the quadrant of physical, machine-initiated interactions. With our
framework, we examine calculator interactions and attempt to expand these to
the tangible, mixed-initiative space. We illustrate each area in our proposed
framework with one representative example of a calculator -- a common and
well-known example of a computing device. We discuss existing examples of
calculators and speculative future interactions with mixed-initiative and
physical calculator systems. We reflect on the implications of our framework
for the larger task of designing human-A.I. collaborative systems. Designers
can also apply this framework as a guideline for analogous solutions to
problems in the same domain.Comment: 5 page
Towards Prototyping Driverless Vehicle Behaviors, City Design, and Policies Simultaneously
Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) can potentially improve urban living by reducing
accidents, increasing transportation accessibility and equity, and decreasing
emissions. Realizing these promises requires the innovations of AV driving
behaviors, city plans and infrastructure, and traffic and transportation
policies to join forces. However, the complex interdependencies among AV, city,
and policy design issues can hinder their innovation. We argue the path towards
better AV cities is not a process of matching city designs and policies with
AVs' technological innovations, but a process of iterative prototyping of all
three simultaneously: Innovations can happen step-wise as the knot of AV, city,
and policy design loosens and tightens, unwinds and reties. In this paper, we
ask: How can innovators innovate AVs, city environments, and policies
simultaneously and productively toward better AV cities? The paper has two
parts. First, we map out the interconnections among the many AV, city, and
policy design decisions, based on a literature review spanning HCI/HRI,
transportation science, urban studies, law and policy, operations research,
economy, and philosophy. This map can help innovators identify design
constraints and opportunities across the traditional AV/city/policy design
disciplinary bounds. Second, we review the respective methods for AV, city, and
policy design, and identify key barriers in combining them: (1) Organizational
barriers to AV-city-policy design collaboration, (2) computational barriers to
multi-granularity AV-city-policy simulation, and (3) different assumptions and
goals in joint AV-city-policy optimization. We discuss two broad approaches
that can potentially address these challenges, namely, "low-fidelity
integrative City-AV-Policy Simulation (iCAPS)" and "participatory design
optimization".Comment: Published to the CHI '23 Workshop: Designing Technology and Policy
Simultaneousl
Touching a mechanical body: tactile contact with body parts of a humanoid robot is physiologically arousing
A large literature describes the use of robots’ physical bodies to support communication with people. Touch is a natural channel for physical interaction, yet it is not understood how principles of interpersonal touch might carry over to human-robot interaction. Ten students participated in an interactive anatomy lesson with a small, humanoid robot. Participants either touched or pointed to an anatomical region of the robot in each of 26 trials while their skin conductance response was measured. Touching less accessible regions of the robot (e.g., buttocks and genitals) was more physiologically arousing than touching more accessible regions (e.g., hands and feet). No differences in physiological arousal were found when just pointing to those same anatomical regions. Social robots can elicit tactile responses in human physiology, a result that signals the power of robots, and should caution mechanical and interaction designers about positive and negative effects of human-robot interactions
Satellite CCRMA: A Musical Interaction and Sound Synthesis Platform
ABSTRACT This paper describes a new Beagle Board-based platform for teaching and practicing interaction design for musical applications. The migration from desktop and laptop computerbased sound synthesis to a compact and integrated control, computation and sound generation platform has enormous potential to widen the range of computer music instruments and installations that can be designed, and improves the portability, autonomy, extensibility and longevity of designed systems. We describe the technical features of the Satellite CCRMA platform and contrast it with personal computer-based systems used in the past as well as emerging smart phone-based platforms. The advantages and tradeoffs of the new platform are considered, and some project work is described
The stochastic lot-sizing problem with quantity discounts
This paper addresses the stochastic lot-sizing problem with quantity discounts. In particular, we examine the uncapacitated finite-period economic lot-sizing problem in which the parameters in each period are random and discrete. When an order is placed, a fixed cost is incurred and an all-unit quantity discount is awarded based on the quantity ordered. The lead time is zero and the order is delivered immediately. First we study the case with overstocks by which the excess inventory incurs a holding cost. The objective in this case is to minimize the expected total cost including ordering and holding costs. The stochastic dynamics is modeled with a scenario tree. We characterize properties of the optimal policy and propose a polynomial time algorithm with complexity O ( n 3 ) for single discount level, where n is the number of nodes in the scenario tree. We extend the results to cases allowing stockout and multi-discount levels. Numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the algorithm and to gain the man- agement insights
Detecting disparities in police deployments using dashcam data
Large-scale policing data is vital for detecting inequity in police behavior
and policing algorithms. However, one important type of policing data remains
largely unavailable within the United States: aggregated police deployment data
capturing which neighborhoods have the heaviest police presences. Here we show
that disparities in police deployment levels can be quantified by detecting
police vehicles in dashcam images of public street scenes. Using a dataset of
24,803,854 dashcam images from rideshare drivers in New York City, we find that
police vehicles can be detected with high accuracy (average precision 0.82, AUC
0.99) and identify 233,596 images which contain police vehicles. There is
substantial inequality across neighborhoods in police vehicle deployment
levels. The neighborhood with the highest deployment levels has almost 20 times
higher levels than the neighborhood with the lowest. Two strikingly different
types of areas experience high police vehicle deployments - 1) dense,
higher-income, commercial areas and 2) lower-income neighborhoods with higher
proportions of Black and Hispanic residents. We discuss the implications of
these disparities for policing equity and for algorithms trained on policing
data.Comment: To appear in ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and
Transparency (FAccT) '2
Oxytocin is an age-specific circulating hormone that is necessary for muscle maintenance and regeneration.
The regenerative capacity of skeletal muscle declines with age. Previous studies suggest that this process can be reversed by exposure to young circulation; however, systemic age-specific factors responsible for this phenomenon are largely unknown. Here we report that oxytocin--a hormone best known for its role in lactation, parturition and social behaviours--is required for proper muscle tissue regeneration and homeostasis, and that plasma levels of oxytocin decline with age. Inhibition of oxytocin signalling in young animals reduces muscle regeneration, whereas systemic administration of oxytocin rapidly improves muscle regeneration by enhancing aged muscle stem cell activation/proliferation through activation of the MAPK/ERK signalling pathway. We further show that the genetic lack of oxytocin does not cause a developmental defect in muscle but instead leads to premature sarcopenia. Considering that oxytocin is an FDA-approved drug, this work reveals a potential novel and safe way to combat or prevent skeletal muscle ageing
The design of active workspaces
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-93).This thesis investigates the creation of context-specific environments designed to assist people engaged in productive tasks. These Active Workspaces are an emerging class of applications that combine interaction design, innovative input and output techniques and multi-media coaching methodologies to teach people to create things in the physical domain. The design and implementation of two systems that exemplify the features, process and goals of Active Workspace design are detailed and evaluated. CounterActive is an interactive kitchen counter that guides users of varying age and skill level through the preparation of several recipes. CounterActive enlivens the experience of cooking with instructional videos, illustrative photos, entertaining music and sounds. Origami Desk is an exhibit that teaches people how to fold paper into beautiful boxes and cranes. The desk not only projects animations and videos for the user to mimic, but also monitors the folding of the paper to enable performance feedback. These project descriptions are accompanied by generalized principles for the design of Active Workspaces, process guidelines, and as well as analysis of relevant technologies and ruminations on possible future applications in this arena.by Wendy Guang-wen Ju.S.M
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