scholarly journals Transparency: Transitioning From Human–Machine Systems to Human-Swarm Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 171-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karina A. Roundtree ◽  
Michael A. Goodrich ◽  
Julie A. Adams

Swarm robotic systems are gaining in interest with the prospect of their use for various applications, including monitoring, tracking, infrastructure support, and protection. Prior human-swarm system research investigated transparency for these systems, but assumed perfect communication scenarios. Real-world human-swarm systems will not have perfect communication due to human processing limitations caused by a large number of individual entities, emergent behavior due to varying environments, and bandwidth issues. Factors that affect transparency or are influenced by transparency were identified from various human–machine system domains; however, understanding the relationship between factors can help designers identify what criteria can be implemented to achieve transparency for swarms. Challenges that may arise based on transparency criteria from human–machine systems are examined to identify improvements for spatial swarm systems.

Author(s):  
Kaori Kashimura ◽  
Takafumi Kawasaki Jr. ◽  
Nozomi Ikeya ◽  
Dave Randall

This chapter provides an ethnography of a complex scenario involving the construction of a power plant and, in so doing, tries to show the importance of a practice-based approach to the problem of technical and organizational change. The chapter reports on fieldwork conducted in a highly complex and tightly coupled environment: power plant construction. The ethnography describes work practices on three different sites and describes and analyses their interlocking dependencies, showing the difficulties encountered at each location and the way in which the delays that result cascade through the different sites. It goes on to describe some technological solutions that are associated with augmented reality and that are being designed in response to the insights gained from the fieldwork. The chapter also reflects more generally on the relationship between fieldwork and design in real-world contexts.


Author(s):  
Dane A. Morey ◽  
Jesse M. Marquisee ◽  
Ryan C. Gifford ◽  
Morgan C. Fitzgerald ◽  
Michael F. Rayo

With all of the research and investment dedicated to artificial intelligence and other automation technologies, there is a paucity of evaluation methods for how these technologies integrate into effective joint human-machine teams. Current evaluation methods, which largely were designed to measure performance of discrete representative tasks, provide little information about how the system will perform when operating outside the bounds of the evaluation. We are exploring a method of generating Extensibility Plots, which predicts the ability of the human-machine system to respond to classes of challenges at intensities both within and outside of what was tested. In this paper we test and explore the method, using performance data collected from a healthcare setting in which a machine and nurse jointly detect signs of patient decompensation. We explore the validity and usefulness of these curves to predict the graceful extensibility of the system.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (S1) ◽  
pp. 11-12
Author(s):  
Paula Corabian ◽  
Charles Yan ◽  
Susan Armijo-Olivo ◽  
Bing Guo

IntroductionThe objectives of this study were to systematically review published research on the relationship between nursing staff coverage, care hours, and quality of care (QoC) in long-term care (LTC) facilities; and to conduct a real world evidence (RWE) analysis using Alberta real world data (RWD) to inform policy makers on whether any amendments could be made to current regulations.MethodsA systematic review (SR) of research evidence published between January 2000 and May 2018 on the relationship between nursing staff coverage, care hours, and QoC in LTC facilities was conducted. Panel data regressions using available RWD from Alberta, Canada, were performed to assess associations between nursing care hours and LTC outcomes. Outcomes of interest included quality indicators related to resident outcomes, hospital admissions, emergency room visits and family satisfaction. Nursing care hours considered in SR and RWE analysis included those provided by registered nurses (RNs) and licensed practical nurses (LPNs).ResultsThe SR found inconsistent and poor quality evidence relevant to the questions of interest, indicating a great uncertainty about the association between nursing staff time and type of coverage and QoC. Although some positive indications were suggested, major weaknesses of reviewed studies limited interpretation of SR results. RWE analysis found that impact of care hours on LTC outcomes was heterogeneous, dependent on outcome measurements. There was evidence that total staff, RN, and LPN hours had positive effects on some resident outcomes and magnitude of effect differed for different nursing staff.ConclusionsNo definitive conclusion could be drawn on whether changing nursing staff time or nursing staff coverage models would affect residents’ outcomes based on the research evidence gathered in the SR. RWE analysis helped to fill a gap in the available published literature and allowed policy makers to better understand the impact of revising current regulations based on actual outcomes.


1980 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 606-607
Author(s):  
Ben B. Morgan

Vigilance is one of the most thoroughly researched areas of human performance. Volumes have been written concerning vigilance performance in both laboratory and real-world settings, and there is a clear trend in the literature toward an increasing emphasis on the study of operational task behavior under environmental conditions that are common to real world jobs. Although a great deal of this research has been designed to test various aspects of the many theories of vigilance, there is a general belief that vigilance research is relevant and applicable to the performances required in real-world monitoring and inspection tasks. Indeed, many of the reported studies are justified on the basis of their apparent relevance to vigilance requirements in modern man-machine systems, industrial inspection tasks, and military jobs. There is a growing body of literature, however, which suggests that many vigilance studies are of limited applicability to operational task performance. For example, Kibler (1965) has argued that technological changes have altered job performance requirements to the extent that laboratory vigilance studies are no longer applicable to real-world jobs. Many others have simply been unable to reproduce the typical “vigilance decrement” in field situations. This has led Teichner (1974) to conclude that “the decremental function itself is more presumed than established.”


2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Smalko

Relations Between Safety and Security in Technical Systems The subject of this paper deals with the relationship between safety and security of the man - machine system. In the above system a man can act both as a decision - maker and operator. His desired psychophysical efficiency lies in the undertaking the correct decisions as well as in the skilful machine control and operating.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-55
Author(s):  
Ailbhe Warde-Brown

The relationship between music, sound, space, and time plays a crucial role in attempts to define the concept of “immersion” in video games. Isabella van Elferen’s ALI (affect-literacy-interaction) model for video game musical immersion offers one of the most integrated approaches to reading connections between sonic cues and the “magic circle” of gameplay. There are challenges, however, in systematically applying this primarily event-focused model to particular aspects of the “open-world” genre. Most notable is the dampening of narrative and ludic restrictions afforded by more intricately layered textual elements, alongside open-ended in-game environments that allow for instances of more nonlinear, exploratory gameplay. This article addresses these challenges through synthesizing the ALI model with more spatially focused elements of Gordon Calleja’s player involvement model, exploring sonic immersion in greater depth via the notion of spatiotemporal involvement. This presents a theoretical framework that broadens analysis beyond a simple focus on the immediate narrative or ludic sequence. Ubisoft’s open-world action-adventure franchise Assassin’s Creed is a particularly useful case study for the application of this concept. This is primarily because of its characteristic focus on blending elements of the historical game and the open-world game through its use of real-world history and geography. Together, the series’s various diegetic and nondiegetic sonic elements invite variable degrees of participation in “historical experiences of virtual space.” The outcome of this research intends to put such intermingled expressions of space, place, and time at the forefront of a ludomusicological approach to immersion in the open-world genre.


Author(s):  
Irene Zempi ◽  
Imran Awan

This chapter examines the implications of online/offline Islamophobia for victims including increased feelings of vulnerability, fear and insecurity. Participants also suffered a range of psychological and emotional responses such as low confidence, depression and anxiety. Additionally, participants highlighted the relationship between online and offline Islamophobia, and described living in fear because of the possibility of online threats materialising in the ‘real world’. Many participants reported taking steps to become less ‘visible’ for example by taking the headscarf or face veil off for women and shaving their beards for men.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Regan Wills

Fandoms can constitute discourse communities, where fans make claims about issues of real-world political importance, such as the relationship between gender, power, and autonomy, and where other fans engage with and evaluate those claims. In fan works and fan analyses of Dana Scully in the television show The X-Files, fans pose claims both in discussion spaces and in the creation of fan fiction, and these fannish evaluations and discussions of these fictions analyze those claims.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Tang

Agent-based models are a powerful tool for studying the behaviour of complex systems that can be described in terms of multiple, interacting ``agents''. However, because of their inherently discrete and often highly non-linear nature, it is very difficult to reason about the relationship between the state of the model, on the one hand, and our observations of the real world on the other. In this paper we consider agents that have a discrete set of states that, at any instant, act with a probability that may depend on the environment or the state of other agents. Given this, we show how the mathematical apparatus of quantum field theory can be used to reason probabilistically about the state and dynamics the model, and describe an algorithm to update our belief in the state of the model in the light of new, real-world observations. Using a simple predator-prey model on a 2-dimensional spatial grid as an example, we demonstrate the assimilation of incomplete, noisy observations and show that this leads to an increase in the mutual information between the actual state of the observed system and the posterior distribution given the observations, when compared to a null model.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-264
Author(s):  
Nicholas Ross Smith ◽  
Ruairidh J. Brown

There is much pessimism as to the current state of Sino-American relations, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020. Such pessimism has led to some scholars and commentators asserting that the Sino-American relationship is on the cusp of either a new Cold War or, even more alarmingly, something akin to the Peloponnesian War (via a Thucydides Trap) whereby the United States might take pre-emptive measures against China. This article rejects such analogizing and argues that, due to important technological advancements found at the intersection of the digital and fourth industrial revolutions, most of the real competition in the relationship is now occurring in cyberspace, especially with regards to the aim of asserting narratives of truth. Two key narrative battlegrounds that have raged since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic are examined: where was the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic? and who has had the most successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic?. This article shows that Sino-American competition in cyberspace over asserting their narratives of truth (related to the COVID-19 pandemic) is fierce and unhinged. Part of what is driving this competition is the challenging domestic settings politicians and officials find themselves in both China and the United States, thus, the competing narratives being asserted by both sides are predominately for domestic audiences. However, given that cyberspace connects states with foreign publics more intimately, the international aspect of this competition is also important and could result in further damage to the already fragile Sino-American relationship. Yet, whether this competition will bleed into the real world is far from certain and, because of this, doomsaying via historical analogies should be avoided.


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