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It is the purpose of this paper to address ethical issues concerning the development and application of Assistive Technology at Workplaces (ATW). We shall give a concrete technical concept how such technology might be constructed and propose eight technical functions it should adopt in order to serve its purpose. Then, we discuss the normative questions why one should use ATW, and by what means. We argue that ATW is good to the extent that it ensures social inclusion and consider four normative domains in which its worth might consists in. In addition, we insist that ATW must satisfy two requirements of good workplaces, which we specify as (a) an exploitation restraint and (b) a duty of care.
This chapter portrays the historical and mathematical background of dynamic and procedural content generation (PCG). We portray and compare various PCG methods and analyze which mathematical approach is suited for typical applications in game design. In the next step, a structural overview of games applying PCG as well as types of PCG is presented. As abundant PCG content can be overwhelming, we discuss context-aware adaptation as a way to adapt the challenge to individual players’ requirements. Finally, we take a brief look at the future of PCG.
The use of renewable energy sources for heating and cooling in buildings today offers the best opportunities to avoid the use of fossil fuels and the associated climate-damaging emissions. However, unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy sources such as solar radiation are not available at the push of a button, but occur uncontrollably depending on weather conditions, the location of the building and the time of year. Their use is free of charge. However, complex converters and systems usually have to be installed in order to use them. These must be carefully planned and operated in order to avoid unnecessary costs and to generate the maximum possible yield. The regenerative energy systems are usually integrated into existing conventional systems. When designing the control and regulation equipment, it is crucial to design the automation of the systems in such a way that primarily renewable energy sources are used and the share of fossil energy sources is minimized.
Automation devices or automation stations (AS) take on the task of controlling, regulating, monitoring and, if necessary, optimising building systems and their system components (e.g. pumps, compressors, fans) based on recorded process variables. For this purpose, a wide range of control and regulation methods are used, starting with simple on/off controllers, through classic PID controllers, to higher-order controllers such as adaptive, model-predictive, knowledge-based or adaptive controllers.
Starting with a brief introduction to automation technology (Sect. 7.1), the chapter goes into the structure and functionality of the usual compact controllers using the application examples of solar thermal systems and heat pump systems (Sect. 7.2). Finally, the integration of system automation into a higher-level building automation system and into the building management system is described using specific application examples (Sect. 7.3).
This central book chapter now details the implementation of automation of solar domestic hot water systems, solar assisted building heating, rooms, solar cooling systems, heat pump heating systems, geothermal systems and thermally activated building component systems. Hydraulic and automation diagrams are used to explain how the automation of these systems works. A detailed insight into the engineering and technical interrelationships involved in the use of these systems, as well as the use of simulation tools, enables effective control and regulation. System characteristic curves and systematic procedures support the automation engineer in his tasks.
Renewable energy sources such as solar radiation, geothermal heat and ambient heat are available for energy conversion. With the help of special converters, these resources can be put to use. These include solar collectors, geothermal probes and chillers. They collect the energy and convert it to a temperature level high enough to be suitable for heat purposes. In the case of refrigeration machines, a distinction is made between electrically and thermally driven machines.
Marketing and sales have high expectations of new methods such as Big Data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics. But following the “garbage in—garbage out” principle, the results leave much to be desired. The reason is often insufficient quality in the underlying customer data. This article sheds light on this problem using the data quality and value pyramid as an example. The higher up the value-added pyramid the data is located, the higher its quality and the more value it generates for a company. In addition, we show how the use of monitoring systems, such as a data quality scorecard, makes data quality visible and improvements measurable. In this way, the actual value of data for companies becomes obvious and manageable.
Process engineering (PE) focuses on the design, operation, control and optimization of chemical, physical and biological processes and has applications in many industries. Process intensification (PI) is the key development approach in the modern process engineering. The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) is today considered as the most comprehensive and systematically organized invention knowledge and creative thinking methodology. This paper analyses the opportunities of TRIZ application in PE and especially in combination with PI. In this context the paper outlines the major challenges for TRIZ application in PE, conceptualizes a possible TRIZ-based approach for process intensification and problem solving in PE, and defines the corresponding research agenda. It also presents the results of the original empirical innovation research in the field of solid handling in the ceramic industry, demonstrates a method for identification and prediction of contradictions and introduces the concept of the probability of contradiction occurrence. Additionally, it describes a technique of process mapping that is based on the function and multi-screen analysis of the processes. This technique is illustrated by a case study dealing with granulation process. The research work presented in this paper is a part of the European project “Intensified by Design® platform for the intensification of processes involving solids handling”.
Smartphones Welcome! Preparatory Course in Mathematics using the Mobile App MassMatics. Case Study
(2015)
Critical theory and philosophy across many fields in the humanities has become awash with what has been characterised as ‘the material turn’. This material turn, which seems to involve varying combinations of what is known as Object Orientated Ontology (Harman), Actor-Network Theory (Latour), process philosophy (Whitehead), speculative realism (Bryant), or agential realism (Barad), emphasises some move toward a posthuman understanding of what the world is, and our relation to it.
DE\GLOBALIZE
(2020)
In the past decades, developments in the fields of medicine, new media, and biotechnologies challenged many representations and practices, questioning the understanding of our corporeal limits. Using concrete examples from literary fiction, media studies, philosophy, performance arts, and social sciences, this collection underlines how bodily models and transformations, thought until recently to be only fictional products, have become a part of our reality. The essays provide a spectrum of perspectives on how the body emerges as a transitional environment between fictional and factual elements, a process understood as faction.
Sustainable Production
(2023)
Robots and automata are key elements of every vision and forecast of life in the near and distant future. However, robots and automata also have a long history, which reaches back into antiquity. Today most historians think that one of the key roles of robots and automata was to amaze or even terrify the audience: They were designed to express something mythical, magical, and not explainable. Moreover, the visions of robots and their envisioned fields of application reflect the different societies. Therefore, this short history of robotics and (especially) anthropomorphic automata aims to give an overview of several historical periods and their perspective on the topic. In a second step, this work aims to encourage readers to reflect on the recent discussion about fields of application as well as the role of robotics today and in the future.
Every new technology is used by us humans almost without hesitation. Usually the military use comes first. Examples from recent history are the use of chemical weapons by Germany in the First World War and of atomic bombs in the Second World War by the US. Now, with the rapid advances in microelectronics over the past few decades, a wave of its application, called digitization, is spreading around the world with barely any control mechanisms. In many areas this has simplified and enriched our lives, but it has also encouraged abuse. The adaptation of legislation to contain the obvious excesses of “digitization” such as hate mail and anonymous threats is lagging behind massively. We hear almost nothing about technology assessment through systematic research; it is demanded at most by a few, usually small groups in civil society, which draw attention to the threats to humankind—future and present—and the Earth's ecosystem. One such group, the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) e.V., in the spirit of the responsibility of science for the peaceful and considered application of the possibilities it creates, asked three of its study groups to jointly organize its 2019 Annual Conference. The study groups “Health in Social Change,” “Education and Digitization,” and “Technology Assessment of Digitization” formulated the following position paper for the 2019 VDW Annual Conference, entitled “Ambivalences of the Digital.”
Principles of Animation Film
(2010)
Comparing anomalies and exceptions to multilateral dysfunction across a number of spheres of world politics, the book chapter explores pathways through and beyond gridlock in trade. It provides a vital new perspective on world politics as well as a practical guide for positive change in global policy.
Innovative financing schemes in public management comprise provisions of funds for public expenditure by taxation, user charges, borrowing or other fundraising in a novel way. Scholarly research regarding public finance already appeared in the 16th century, but the role of public funding schemes became much more important in the last decades. Theoretical frameworks are related to political, economic, legal and administrative aspects. Although innovation and public management might be seen as antithetical, there is an emerging practice of innovative financing tools both in highly-industrialised economies and developing countries. Examples for novel mechanisms raising money are green bonds, onshore local currency financing, public private partnerships (PPPs) and resource-financed infrastructure. Public policy tools include innovation financing for digital infrastructure or export credits for trade-driven innovation, often focusing on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including climate action.
To successfully support private sector development in Africa by the use of trade and export promotion instruments, a comprehensive policy framework is crucial. Different institutional setups for development support show different levels of resilience and effectiveness in coping with the economic conditions they are exposed to. However, there is strong evidence that managing the interplay of three fundamental building blocks – public policy, focus areas, strategic objectives and critical success factors as well as institutions, is the key to crafting sustainable and responsive economies. Export plays a significant role in the national economy, and innovative and integrated government financing instruments have to successfully support the competitiveness of national companies in the global economy. Financing and supporting foreign trade with private businesses in Africa occupies a pivotal role, impacting from new product development and job creation in developed countries through economic growth and human development in African countries.
Gamification in Industrial Production: An Overview, Best Practices, and Design Recommendations
(2023)
This work describes gamification as a path to increase both productivity and motivation of persons working in industrial production. While gamification has been established in pedagogy or health more than two decades ago, its transgression to the industrial domain started around the year 2010. A discussion of production-specific requirements and the psychological background provide an overview on production-oriented gamified solutions in recent years. We look at how gamification designs evolved to minimize distraction while maximizing acceptance. Based on three best practices, we describe ways to neatly integrate gamification into workflows, use context-awareness to augment work and adapt the challenge-level to keep users in a state of flow. Furthermore, we investigate ways to further increase acceptance by creating user-specific “bottom-up” gamification designs, like custom agents and branded gamification. The overview concludes with design recommendations tailored for the production domain.
Defining Recrutainment: A Model and a Survey on the Gamification of Recruiting and Human Resources
(2017)
Recrutainment, is a hybrid word combining recruiting and entertainment. It describes the combination of activities in human resources and gamification. Concepts and methods from game design are now used to assess and select future employees. Beyond this area, recrutainment is also applied for internal processes like professional development or even marketing campaigns. This paper’s contribution has four components: (1) we provide a conceptual background, leading to a more precise definition of recrutainment; (2) we develop a new model for analyzing solutions in recrutainment; (3) we present a corpus of 42 applications and use the new model to assess their strengths and potentials; (4) we provide a bird’s eye view on the state of the art in recrutainment and show the current weighting of gamification and recruiting aspects.
Recent advances in motion recognition allow the development of Context-Aware Assistive Systems (CAAS) for industrial workplaces that go far beyond the state of the art: they can capture a user's movement in real-time and provide adequate feedback. Thus, CAAS can address important questions, like Which part is assembled next? Where do I fasten it? Did an error occur? Did I process the part in time? These new CAAS can also make use of projectors to display the feedback within the corresponding area on the workspace (in-situ). Furthermore, the real-time analysis of work processes allows the implementation of motivating elements (gamification) into the repetitive work routines that are common in manual production. In this chapter, the authors first describe the relevant backgrounds from industry, computer science, and psychology. They then briefly introduce a precedent implementation of CAAS and its inherent problems. The authors then provide a generic model of CAAS and finally present a revised and improved implementation.
The modern TRIZ is today considered as the most organized and comprehensive methodology for knowledge-driven invention and innovation. When applying TRIZ for inventive problem solving, the quality of obtained solutions strongly depends on the level of completeness of the problem analysis and the abilities of designers to identify the main technical and physical contradictions in the inventive situation. These tasks are more complex and hence more time consuming in the case of interdisciplinary systems. Considering a mechatronic product as a system resulting from the integration of different technologies, the problem definition reveals two kinds of contradictions: 1) the mono-disciplinary contradictions within a homogenous sub-system, e.g., only mechanical or only electrical; 2) the interdisciplinary contradictions resulting from the interaction of the mechatronic sub-systems (mechanics, electrics, control and software). This paper presents a TRIZ-based approach for a fast and systematic problem definition and contradiction identification, which could be useful both for engineers and students facing mechatronic problems. It also proposes some useful problem formulation tech-niques such as the System Circle Diagram, the enhancement of System Operator with the Evolution Patterns, the extension of MATChEM-IB operator with Infor-mation field and Human Interactions, as well as the Cause-Effect-Matrix.
The research work analyses the relationship of 155 Process Intensification (PI) technologies to the components of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ). It outlines TRIZ inventive principles frequently used in PI, and identifies opportunities for enhancing systematic innovation in process engineering by applying complementary TRIZ and PI. The study also proposes 70 additional inventive TRIZ sub-principles for the problems frequently encountered in process engineering, resulting in the advanced set of 160 inventive operators, assigned to the 40 TRIZ inventive principles. Finally, we analyse and discuss inventive principles used in 150 patent documents published in the last decade in the field of solid handling in the ceramic and pharmaceutical industries.
In recent years, the application of TRIZ methodology in the process engineering has been found promising to develop comprehensive inventive solution concepts for process intensification (PI). However, the effectiveness of TRIZ for PI is not measured or estimated. The paper describes an approach to evaluate the efficiency of TRIZ application in process intensification by comparing six case studies in the field of chemical, pharmaceutical, ceramic, and mineral industries. In each case study, TRIZ workshops with the teams of researchers and engineers has been performed to analyze initial complex problem situation, to identify problems, to generate new ideas, and to create solution concepts. The analysis of the workshop outcomes estimates fulfilment of the PI-goals, impact of secondary problems, variety and efficiency of ideas and solution concepts. In addition to the observed positive effect of TRIZ application, the most effective inventive principles for process engineering have been identified.
Identification of Secondary Problems of New Technologies in Process Engineering by Patent Analysis
(2018)
The implementation of new technologies in production plants often causes negative side effects and drawbacks. In this context, the prediction of the secondary problems and risks can be used advantageously for selecting best solutions for intensification of the processes. The proposed method puts primary emphasis on systematic and fast anticipation of secondary problems using patent documents, and on extraction and prediction of possible engineering contradictions within novel technical systems. The approach comprises three ways to find secondary problems: (a) direct knowledge-based identification of secondary problems in new technologies or equipment; (b) identification of secondary problems of prototypes mentioned in patent citation trees; and (c) prediction of negative side effects using the correlation matrix for invention goals and secondary problems in a specific engineering domain.
Bank and trust – two words but one meaning in customers’ minds. When interacting with financial service providers, customers are consistently looking for “trust signals” that comfort their decisions and “distrust signals” which create doubt. Therefore, service providers need a deep understanding of the customers’ requirements and wishes. To identify trust and distrust signals, we combine established user experience research methods with a new testing procedure to gain helpful recommendations for optimizing the online appearance of banks. The contribution is divided into three parts: Firstly, we investigate current approaches in the financial service industry. Secondly, we provide a corpus describing the relationship between the customers’ perception of a bank’s website and trust. Thirdly, an empirical study based on qualitative user experience testing with banking website customers shows the value gained by optimizing the banks’ virtual interface by enhancing “trust signals” and avoiding “distrust signals”.
Among the various types of guided acoustic waves, acoustic wedge waves are non-diffractive and non-dispersive. Both properties make them susceptible to nonlinear effects. Investigations have recently been focused on effects of second-order nonlinearity in connection with anisotropy. The current status of these investigations is reviewed in the context of earlier work on nonlinear properties of two-dimensional guided acoustic waves, in particular surface waves. The role of weak dispersion, leading to solitary waves, is also discussed. For anti-symmetric flexural wedge waves propagating in isotropic media or in anisotropic media with reflection symmetry with respect to the wedge’s mid-plane, an evolution equation is derived that accounts for an effective third-order nonlinearity of acoustic wedge waves. For the kernel functions occurring in the nonlinear terms of this equation, expressions in terms of overlap integrals with Laguerre functions are provided, which allow for their quantitative numerical evaluation. First numerical results for the efficiency of third-harmonic generation of flexural wedge waves are presented.
One of the most important questions about smart metering systems for the end users is their data privacy and security. Indeed, smart metering systems provide a lot of advantages for distribution system operators (DSO), but functionalities offered to users of existing smart meters are still limited and society is becoming increasingly critical. Smart metering systems are accused of interfering with personal rights and privacy, providing unclear tariff regulations which not sufficiently encourage households to manage their electricity consumption in advance. In the specific field of smart grids, data security appears to be a necessary condition for consumer confidence without which they will not be able to give their consent to the collection and use of personal data concerning them.
Digital transformation strengthens the interconnection of companies in order to develop optimized and better customized, cross-company business models. These models require secure, reliable, and traceable evidence and monitoring of contractually agreed information to gain trust between stakeholders. Blockchain technology using smart contracts allows the industry to establish trust and automate cross-company business processes without the risk of losing data control. A typical cross-company industry use case is equipment maintenance. Machine manufacturers and service providers offer maintenance for their machines and tools in order to achieve high availability at low costs. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how maintenance use cases are attempted by utilizing hyperledger fabric for building a chain of trust by hardened evidence logging of the maintenance process to achieve legal certainty. Contracts are digitized into smart contracts automating business that increase the security and mitigate the error-proneness of the business processes.