Joining the blunt and the pointy end of the spear: towards a common framework of joint action,human–machine cooperation,cooperative guidance and control,shared, traded and supervisory control

To introduce this special issue of shared and cooperative control, we will look into history of tools in cooperation between humans and aim to unify the plethora of related concepts and definitions that have been proposed in recent years, such as shared control, human–machine cooperation and cooperative guidance and control. Concretely, we provide definitions to relate these concepts and sketch a unifying framework of shared and cooperative control that sees the different concepts as different perspectives or foci on a common design space of shared intentionality, control and cooperation between humans and machines. One working hypothesis which the article explores is that shared control can be understood as cooperation at the control layer, while human–machine cooperation can include shared control, but can also extend towards cooperation at higher layers, e.g., of guidance and navigation, of maneuvers and goals. The relationship between shared control and human–machine cooperation is compared to the relationship between the sharp, pointy tip and the (blunt) shaft of a spear. Shared control is where cooperation comes sharply into effect at the control layer, but to be truly effective it should be supported by cooperation on all layers beyond the operational layer, e.g., on the tactical and strategic layer. A fourth layer addresses the meta-communication about the cooperation and supports the other three layers in a traversal way.

     

“Missing women”: Gender,ICTs, and the shaping of the global economy

In a key article (Walsham & Sahay, 2005) outlining research on information systems in developing countries and suggesting potential areas for future research, a notable omission was the issue of gender and gender relations. In this article, we draw on the substantial gender and development literature to demonstrate the centrality of gender to our understanding of information systems (IS) in developing countries. In particular, we consider the relationship among gender, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and globalization to illustrate how changes in the global economy both impact on and are influenced by changing gender identities and roles. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

On Bias, Variance, 0/1—Loss, and the Curse-of-Dimensionality

The classification problem is considered in which an outputvariable y assumes discrete values with respectiveprobabilities that depend upon the simultaneous values of a set of input variablesx = {x_1,....,x_n}. At issue is how error in the estimates of theseprobabilities affects classification error when the estimates are used ina classification rule. These effects are seen to be somewhat counterintuitive in both their strength and nature. In particular the bias andvariance components of the estimation error combine to influenceclassification in a very different way than with squared error on theprobabilities themselves. Certain types of (very high) bias can becanceled by low variance to produce accurate classification. This candramatically mitigate the effect of the bias associated with some simpleestimators like naive Bayes, and the bias induced by thecurse-of-dimensionality on nearest-neighbor procedures. This helps explainwhy such simple methods are often competitive with and sometimes superiorto more sophisticated ones for classification, and whybagging/aggregating classifiers can often improveaccuracy. These results also suggest simple modifications to theseprocedures that can (sometimes dramatically) further improve theirclassification performance.     

“Extra-Ordinary” Ergonomics: How to Accommodate Small and Big Persons,the Disabled and Elderly,Expectant Mothers,and Children

Abstract

Data from a previous study of soldier driving postures and seating positions were analysed to develop statistical models for defining accommodation of driver seating positions in military vehicles. Regression models were created for seating accommodation applicable to driver positions with a fixed heel point and a range of steering wheel locations in typical tactical vehicles. The models predict the driver-selected seat position as a function of population anthropometry and vehicle layout. These models are the first driver accommodation models considering the effects of body armor and body-borne gear. The obtained results can benefit the design of military vehicles, and the methods can also be extended to be utilised in the development of seating accommodation models for other driving environments where protective equipment affects driver seating posture, such as vehicles used by law-enforcement officers and firefighters.

Practitioner Summary: A large-scale laboratory study of soldier driving posture and seating position was designed to focus on tactical vehicle (truck) designs. Regression techniques are utilised to develop accommodation models suitable for tactical vehicles. These are the first seating accommodation models based on soldier data to consider the effects of personal protective equipment and body-borne gear.     

Estimating actual distances by norm functions: a comparison between the lk,p,θ-norm and the lb1,b2,θ-norm and a study about the selection of the data set

The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, the weighted l_p-norm, which has proved to be an accurate distance predicting function and has been proposed by several authors as the most suitable predictor of distances, is compared through an empirical study with the l_2b-norm, a function with the same number of parameters as the first one. The results show that neither distance function dominates the other. On the contrary, depending on the region considered either norm may be significantly better than the other. The second aim is to investigate how the selection of the data set representing the network of the region affects the ability of the distance predicting function for predicting distances, and to try to deduce how to obtain a suitable data set which adequately represents a given geographical region. Through another empirical study it is shown that the selection of the data set dramatically affects the accuracy of the predictions. To obtain a suitable data set it is important to choose a good sample size, and more importantly, the cities should be chosen so that they are distributed all over the region and represent the density of the cities in the region.     

On the notions of normality, locality, and operational stability in ADRC

Treating plant dynamics as an ideal integrator chain disturbed by the total disturbance is the hallmark of active disturbance rejection control (ADRC). To interpret its effectiveness and success, to explain why so many vastly different dynamic systems can be treated in this manner, and to answer why a detailed, accurate, and global mathematical model is unnecessary, is the target of this paper. Driven by a motivating example, the notions of normality and locality are introduced. Normality shows that, in ADRC, the plant is normalized to an integrator chain, which is called local nominal model and locally describes the plant’s frequency response in the neighborhood of the expected gain crossover frequency. Locality interprets why ADRC can design the controller only with the local information of the plant. With normality and locality, ADRC can be effective and robust, and obtain operational stability discussed by T. S. Tsien. Then viewing proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control as a low-frequency approximation of second-order linear ADRC, the above results are extended to PID control. A controller design framework is proposed to obtain the controller in three steps: (1) choose an integrator chain as the local nominal model of the plant; (2) select a controller family corresponding to the local nominal model; and (3) tune the controller to guarantee the gain crossover frequency specification. The second-order linear ADRC and the PID control are two special cases of the framework.     

Tracking the calibration stability and consistency of the 3.7, 11.0 and 12.0 μm channels of the NOAA-KLM AVHRR with MODIS

The NOAA-KLM satellites (NOAA-15 to 18) are the current polar-orbiting operational environmental satellites (POES) that carry the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). This study examines the calibration stability and consistency of all three infrared channels (3.7, 11.0 and 12.0 μm) of AVHRR onboard NOAA-15 to 18. The short-term stability is examined from variations of the scan-by-scan gain response, while the long-term stability and calibration consistency are examined by tracking the trends of gain response and measured scene brightness temperatures. The relative differences of observed scene brightness temperatures among NOAA-15 to 18 AVHRR are determined using MODIS as a transfer radiometer based on observations from simultaneous nadir overpasses (SNO). Results show that variations of the scan-to-scan gain responses are within 0.10% under normal operational conditions, while long-term gain changes over six years from 2001 to 2006 vary from 2 to 4% depending on channel. Long-term trending results show that total six-year drifts in observed brightness temperature from NOAA-15 to 18 AVHRR are less than 0.5 K for a given scene temperature in the 250 to 270 K range for the 3.7, 11.0 and 12.0 μm channels, respectively. The calibration consistency is examined for a scene temperature range of 220 to 290 K. The temperature biases among NOAA-16 to 18 AVHRR are within ±0.5 K for the 11.0 and 12.0 μm channels. For NOAA-15 AVHRR, biases of –2.0 K at 11.0 μm and –1.5 K at 12.0 μm are found in comparison with others at the low end of the temperature range. For the 3.7 μm channel, relative biases up to a few degrees among NOAA-15 to 18 could be found at low brightness temperatures.     

Securing the Cloud—Governance,Risk, and Compliance Issues Reign Supreme

While acknowledging the many benefits that cloud computing solutions bring to the world, it is important to note that recent research and studies of these technologies have identified a myriad of potential governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) issues. While industry clearly acknowledges their existence and seeks to them as much as possible, timing-wise it is still well before the legal framework has been put in place to adequately protect and adequately respond to these new and differing global challenges.

This paper seeks to inform the potential cloud adopter, not only of the perceived great technological benefit, but to also bring to light the potential security, privacy, and related GRC issues which will need to be prioritized, managed, and mitigated before full implementation occurs.     

Who plays,how much,and why? Debunking the stereotypical gamer profile

Online games have exploded in popularity, but for many researchers access to players has been difficult. The study reported here is the first to collect a combination of survey and behavioral data with the cooperation of a major virtual world operator. In the current study, 7,000 players of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) EverQuest 2 were surveyed about their offline characteristics, their motivations and their physical and mental health. These self‐report data were then combined with data on participants’ actual in‐game play behaviors, as collected by the game operator. Most of the results defy common stereotypes in surprising and interesting ways and have implications for communication theory and for future investigations of games.     

IT Challenges for the New Millennium – Research, Development, and Deployment Issues

Introduction

IT Challenges for the New Millennium – Research, Development, and Deployment Issues     

On the Numerical Controllability of the Two-Dimensional Heat,Stokes and Navier–Stokes Equations

The aim of this work is to present some strategies to solve numerically controllability problems for the two-dimensional heat equation, the Stokes equations and the Navier–Stokes equations with Dirichlet boundary conditions. The main idea is to adapt the Fursikov–Imanuvilov formulation, see Fursikov and Imanuvilov (Controllability of Evolutions Equations, Lectures Notes Series, vol 34, Seoul National University, 1996); this approach has been followed recently for the one-dimensional heat equation by the first two authors. More precisely, we minimize over the class of admissible null controls a functional that involves weighted integrals of the state and the control, with weights that blow up near the final time. The associated optimality conditions can be viewed as a differential system in the three variables \(x_1\), \(x_2\) and t that is second-order in time and fourth-order in space, completed with appropriate boundary conditions. We present several mixed formulations of the problems and, then, associated mixed finite element Lagrangian approximations that are relatively easy to handle. Finally, we exhibit some numerical experiments.     

Design,control, and performance of the ‘weed’ 6 wheel robot in the UK MOD grand challenge

A new locomotion method for unmanned (autonomous) ground vehicles (UGV) is proposed based around six independently driven wheels mounted on three separate modules. Each module is attached to the overall robot via a pivot point and capable of independently controlling its orientation and velocity. This configuration allows the UGV to perform maneuvers conventional vehicles cannot perform, and in particular to control the body orientation separately from the movement direction. The locomotion method is mathematically analyzed to develop appropriate control algorithms and to demonstrate the vehicle performance criteria. A vehicle was constructed according to the proposed configuration and experimentally tested in the UK Ministry Of Defense grand challenge. The performance of the developed locomotion schemes helped the robot make it to the finale of the competition.     

Modeling and measuring the spatial relation “along”: Regions,contours and fuzzy sets

The analysis of spatial relations among objects in an image is an important vision problem that involves both shape analysis and structural pattern recognition. In this paper, we propose a new approach to characterize the spatial relation along, an important feature of spatial configurations in space that has been overlooked in the literature up to now. We propose a mathematical definition of the degree to which an object A is along an object B, based on the region between A and B and a degree of elongatedness of this region. In order to better fit the perceptual meaning of the relation, distance information is included as well. In order to cover a more wide range of potential applications, both the crisp and fuzzy cases are considered. In the crisp case, the objects are represented in terms of 2D regions or 1D contours, and the definition of the alongness between them is derived from a visibility notion and from the region between the objects. However, the computational complexity of this approach leads us to the proposition of a new model to calculate the between region using the convex hull of the contours. On the fuzzy side, the region-based approach is extended. Experimental results obtained using synthetic shapes and brain structures in medical imaging corroborate the proposed model and the derived measures of alongness, thus showing that they agree with the common sense.     

Occupational slip, trip, and fall-related injuries--can the contribution of slipperiness be isolated?

To determine if the contribution of slipperiness to occupational slip, trip and fall (STF)-related injuries could be isolated from injury surveillance systems in the USA, the UK and Sweden, six governmental systems and one industrial system were consulted. The systems varied in their capture approaches and the degree of documentation of exposure to slipping. The burden of STF-related occupational injury ranged from 20 to 40% of disabling occupational injuries in the developed countries studied. The annual direct cost of fall-related occupational injuries in the USA alone was estimated to be approximately US$6 billion. Slipperiness or slipping were found to contribute to between 40 and 50% of fall-related injuries. Slipperiness was more often a factor in same level falls than in falls to lower levels. The evaluation of the burden of slipperiness was hampered by design limitations in many of the data systems utilized. The resolution of large-scale injury registries should be improved by collecting more detailed incident sequence information to better define the full scope and contribution of slipperiness to occupational STF-related injuries. Such improvements would facilitate the allocation of prevention resources towards reduction of first-event risk factors such as slipping.     

Datification,Organizational Strategy,and IS Research: What’s the Score?

This commentary on the JSIS Special Issue on datification focuses on two key themes selected from among the many topics discussed by Special Issue authors: 1) the debate over algorithmic intelligence versus human intelligence, and 2) the consequences of strategic performance systems.The current algorithmic versus human intelligence debate echoes earlier discussions in our field about whether expert systems should replace or support human experts. As appealing as it is to assume that algorithms support expert workers, research suggests that people are not very effective at monitoring and overriding automation. In addition, post-automation work tends to evolve toward lower human knowledge and skill. These observations should caution datification researchers against simplistic theories and should guide researchers to study the multilevel sociotechnical conditions and stakeholders involved in the design, use, and consequences of algorithms in organizations.Strategic performance measurement and ranking systems are also not new, but what is new is the belief that they will not just inform, but also transform, human behavior. In this respect, performance systems resemble the career tournaments that promote intense competition and create great inequality in executive pay and promotion. In addition, performance systems increasing serve as infrastructures, operating at multiple levels of analysis simultaneously. These observations imply that designing and studying such systems involve ethical choices, intensifying the demands on datification researchers.     

The renormalization group,the ɛ-expansion and derivation of turbulence models

We reformulate the renormalization group (RNG) and the-expansion for derivation of turbulence models. The procedure is developed for the Navier-Stokes equations and the transport equations for the kinetic energyK and energy dissipation rate . The derivation draws on the works of Yakhot and Orszag (1986) and Smith and Reynolds (1992), and all results are found at low order in the underlying perturbation expansion in powers of. The sum of the source terms in the -equation is known to beO(1) due to the balance at leading order ofO(R _T ^1/2 ) terms. Smith and Reynolds (1992) showed the cancellation of some of theO(R _T ^1/2 ) terms generated by the RNG procedure. Here we show that including the random-force contribution to -production results in the cancellation ofall theO(R _T ^1/2 ) terms. We find that two of theO(1) terms in the RNG equation for the mean dissipation rate have the same form as those in the widely used model-equation. The values of the coefficients of the familiar terms are close to those used in practice. An extra production term is predicted which is small for slow distortions, but important for rapid distortions. Hence, it may be a term that should be added to the model equation. We believe that the present derivation places the model equation on a more solid theoretical basis.     

Naturality of the conditional and the recursion ∗

In a class of categories, including E. Manes's assertional ones, the control structures if-then-else and repeat-until are modeled as natural transformations of suitable functors. This context show how the three basic pieces of any structured programming language (concatenation, conditional and recursion) share naturality.     

A Frequency Condition for the Generalized Recurrent Difference in the Synthesis of H∞-Suboptimal, Decentralized, and Robust Regulators

A new approach to designing control laws under uncertainty produces easily verifiable tests for their generalized recurrent differences and does not require the solution of matrix equations or inequalities. This test is expressed as a frequency inequality, which is verified by verifying whether a polynomial has a real positive root of odd multiplicity. The underlying principles of the method are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a given stabilizing linear feedback to be the local minimax control satisfying the Bellman–Isaac inequality in a differential game with a general quadratic functional. The design of controls for Lur'e systems and systems with uncertain bounded parameters as well as the design of H -suboptimal regulators and decentralized controls for multiconnected systems with unknown cross-coupling are shown to involve a local minimax control problem.