Real-time Motion Control of Robot Using Kinect

The goal of Industry 4.0 is to maximize efficiency and reduce human efforts. Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Robotics, Mobile Technologies and many other technological advances generate Industry 4.0. Humanoid robots resemble humans and their primary goal is to perform any task programmed by the user. Our goal is to create a portable and safer system that can be used in any dynamic environment to control the robot and avoid any sort of complexity. With the rapid technological advances, there is no need to worry about unemployment since it requires a technical expert in the field to control the robot. This paper discusses how this control system processes gesture data along with a brief discussion of certain useful applications.

Productivity Curve and Social Network Analysis in Science Megaproject Management

Megaprojects aimed at delivering next-generation, multi-billion euro scientific research facilities are complex and high-risk endeavours, requiring expert knowledge spanning a wide spectrum of technical and administrative fields. Such organisations tend to evolve organically, responding to technical and political challenges. They are almost certain to fail to meet expectations on schedule, budget, and deliverables. Whilst there have been illuminating “top-down” phenomenological megaproject studies recently, this article reports a “bottom-up” perspective on the emergence of these issues. Firstly, the staff productivity distribution curves are analysed at a European science megaproject, and a stratified culture is identified with a small, high productivity “clique”, and a vast, low-productivity group of “outsiders” operating at only 50% of their potential. The social network is then analysed, revealing a dense decision-making group that is only tenuously connected to technical expert teams via hierarchy. Staff inefficiency is linked to superfluous roles in middle management, carrying increased bureaucratic burdens and a financial loss ∼10% of the annual salary budget. Corrective suggestions are given, for the current megaproject and future activities to mitigate these causes. This should help to reduce some of the overspend, schedule overrun, and reductions in ambition and scope that have become megaproject norms.

Smart Urban Governance for Climate Change Adaptation

Climate change will affect the way cities work substantially. Flooding and urban heating are among the most tangible consequences in cities around the globe. Extreme hydro-meteorological events will likely increase in the future due to climate change. Making cities climate-resilient is therefore an urgent challenge to sustain urban living. To adapt cities to the consequences of climate change, new ideas and concepts need to be adopted. This oftentimes requires action from different stakeholder groups and citizens. In other words, climate adaptation of cities needs governance. Facilitating such urban governance for climate adaptation is thus a big and increasing challenge of urban planning. Smart tools and its embedding in smart urban governance is promising to help in this respect. To what extent can the use of digital knowledge technologies in a collaborative planning setting be instrumental in facilitating climate adaptation? This question entails visualising effects of climate adaptation interventions and facilitating dialogue between governments, businesses such as engineering companies, and citizens. The aim of this thematic issue is to explore how the application of technologies in urban planning, embedded in smart urban governance, can contribute to provide climate change adaptation. We understand smart urban governance in this context both in terms of disclosing technical expert information to the wider public, and in terms of supporting with the help of technologies the wider governance debates between the stakeholders involved. The contributions reflect this dual focus on socio-technical innovations and planning support, and therefore include various dimensions, from modelling and interacting to new modes of urban governance and political dimensions of using technologies in climate change adaptation in urban areas.

Can We Improve the Rate of Entrepreneurial Success? Introducing the “TEAM” Framework

Business ventures have experienced environments pertaining to rapid morphological changes that have led to the adoption of entrepreneurial teams as opposed to singular individuals. With such a high potential for failure, startups must revert into the foundation of their organization to ensure success and longevity through the formation of an entrepreneurial team. The formation of the entrepreneurial team leads itself to debate due to its diverse linkage with surrounding contexts and the endless combinations of team characteristics. This paper will start by exploring surrounding contexts that affect the performance of entrepreneurship, providing a landscape to the approach of “individual versus team entrepreneur”. The study will shift into venture capitalists and their startup selection criteria lending way to the assumption that entrepreneurial teams are more likely to receive investor funding due to possible parallels in expertise and personalities between the team and the venture capitalist. Afterwards, previous literature will be explored on the components of the entrepreneurial team, creating a structure for the ideal way of composing a team based on the heterogeneous skills and homogenous personalities. The John Holland (IESC Theory) and the Theory of Predicted Behavior will provide evidence towards the efficiency and applicability of the TEAM framework, establishing that a structure including 4 main individual types is required for synergy within a new venture; The Entrepreneur, The Manager, The Technical Expert, and the Assisting Functions. By implementing the TEAM framework, startup success rates can increase and provide substantial benefits for both the entrepreneur and the fund investor.

Biometric statehood, transnational solutionism and security devices: The performative dimensions of the IOM’s MIDAS

This article contributes to border criminology and transnational criminal justice research into the role of transnational actors in shaping practices of global justice, punishment and control, as well as to the criminological analysis of penal technologies. I examine the performative effects of the Migration Information and Data Analysis System (MIDAS) developed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and I argue that these effects are multidimensional. For beneficiary states, the deployment of MIDAS constitutes a performance of sovereign territorial power, affirming membership in the international society of (biometrically capable) states. For the IOM, the development and deployment of MIDAS and carrying out training sessions operate as pedagogical interventions legitimizing the organization as a neutral, technical expert of migration management. Finally, MIDAS itself performatively acts upon its targets, constituting ‘the migrant’ as a governable, potentially risky subject and constituting ‘migration’ as a problem amenable to depoliticized techno-solutionist interventions.