<p>Advances in microelectronics allow the integration of more andmore functionality on a single chip. Emerging system-on-a-chiparchitectures include a large amount of heterogeneous componentsand are of increasing complexity. Applications using thesearchitectures require many low-level details in order to yield anefficient implementation. On the other hand constanttime-to-market pressure on electronic systems demands a shortdesign process that allows to model a system at a highabstraction level, not taking low-level implementation detailsinto account. Clearly there is a significant abstraction gapbetween an ideal model for specification and another one forimplementation. This abstraction gap has to be addressed bymethodologies for electronic system design.</p><p>This thesis presents the ForSyDe (Formal System Design)methodology, which has been developed with the objective to movesystem design to a higher level of abstraction and to bridge theabstraction gap by transformational design refinement. ForSyDe isbased on carefully selected formal foundations. The initialspecification model uses a synchronous model of computation,which separates communication from computation and has anabstract notion of time. ForSyDe uses the concept of processconstructors to implement the synchronous model, to allow fordesign transformation and the mapping of a refined model onto thetarget architecture. The specification model is refined into adetailed implementation model by the stepwise application ofwell-defined design transformation rules. These rules are eithersemantic preserving or they inflict a design decision modifyingthe semantics. These design decisions are used to introduce thelow-level implementation details that are needed for an efficientimplementation. The implementation model is mapped onto thecomponents of the target architecture. At present ForSyDe modelscan be mapped onto VHDL or C/C++ in order to allow commercialtools to generate custom hardware or sequential software. Thethesis uses a digital equalizer to illustrate the concepts andpotential of ForSyDe.</p><p>Electronic System Design, Hardware/Software Co-Design,Electrical Engineering</p>

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Teachers, locals, a designer, communities, students, materials and co-design are the resources of this written report. These elements have tried to find a balance between each other during the process to stimulate the core of the project: a sustainable future in the local community of Älmhult. Starting of through of changing the global perspective of education to a more local sharing-learning experiences, the project made a turn to focus more on a problematic community namely that of Älmhult, Sweden. This local community has in the recent years changed dramatically because of growth in population and cultures. The community in which international and local do not mingle enough, has split. Instead of using these possibilities of learning from each other’s cultures and languages they have decided to live in mostly separate communities. Through the course of this project a network was built of people from both these communities to start building a stronger community in Älmhult. Education has been used as tool to stimulate this change, bringing the local community to the students. Teaching the students about strong communities they are the tool to develop this into the future. Thereby the student is the seed of change. The project has worked with co-design, using the tools to connect teachers and local initiators to create these meetings between student and local community. The research can be a learning tool to build communities, by using the knowledge of its inhabitants.

As the embedded devices has become more and more generalized and as their product cycles keeps shrinking the field has opened up for the Application Specific Instruction set Processor. A mix between the classic generalized microcontroller and the specialized ASIC the ASIP keeps a set of general processing instructions for executing embedded software but combines that with a set of heavily specialized instructions for speeding up the data intense application core algorithms. One important aspect of the ASIP design flow research is cutting design time and cost. One way of that is automation of the instruction set design. In order to do so a process is needed where the algorithm to be ASIPed is analyzed and critical operations are found and exposed so that they can be implemented in special hardware. This process is called profiling. This thesis describes an implementation of a fine grained source code profiler for use in an ASIP design flow. The profiler software is based on a static-dynamic workflow where data is assembled from both static analysis and dynamic execution of the program and then analyzed together in an specially made analysis software.

I vår moderna tid har lättillgänglig och billig konsumtion bidragit till färre reparationer av defekta ting i hushållen. Det nuvarande förhållningssättet till materialitet orsakar avfall och missbruk av naturresurser som leder till förändringar i det biologiska systemet. Studien undersöker därför möjligheter i att minska på konsumtion och avfall genom ett designförslag som kan bidra till att skapa sunda förhållningsätt gentemot defekta ting. Uppsatsen består av teorier som lyfter olika perspektiv angående materialitet och miljö, samt vilka emotionella värden som kan uppstå ur vårdandet av tingen. För att kunna bistå med en designlösning som bidrar till sundare förhållningssätt angående materialitet, har undersökningar och experiment utförts både på egen hand men också tillsammans med en fokusgrupp om fem personer i åldern 26 - 45 där varje individs förhållningssätt till defekta ting varierat.Utifrån studiens empiri kan en se att det finns utrymme för utveckling av diverse lösningsansatser. Något som dock framkom mer tydligt var avsaknaden på kunskap och tillgång till hjälpmedel för reparation av defekta ting i hemmet. Designlösningen som togs fram resulterade i ett reparationskit med verktyg för övergripande ändamål som kan lånas på bibliotek, samt tillgång till en öppen webplattform innehållande diverse möjligheter för reparation. / In our modern times, easily accessible and cheap consumption has contributed to fewer repairs on flawed aesthetics in households. The current approach to materiality causes waste and misuse of natural resources that leads to changes in the biological system. The study therefore examines possibilities to reduce consumption and waste through a design proposal that can contribute in creating healthy attitudes towards flawed things.The essay consists of theories that highlight different perspectives on materiality and the environment, and which emotional values can arise from the care of things. In order to access a design solution that contributes to a healthier approach on materiality, studies and experiments have been carried out both on my own and together with a focus group consisting of five people aged 26 to 45, whose approach on flawed things varied.Based on the study's empirical information, one can see that there is room for the development of various solution approaches to the problem of over-consumption. However, something that emerged more clearly was the lack of knowledge and access to tools for repairing flawed things in households. The design solution that was developed resulted in a repair kit with tools for various purposes that can be borrowed from libraries, as well as access to an open web platform containing various possibilities for reparation.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / E-government should be at the heart of service delivery in developing countries if the life of citizens, especially the socially and economically marginalised, is to be improved. Often in developing contexts, citizens have been treated as recipients of such interventions, in a top-down approach from central governments, resulting in the non-use of such interventions. A situation of non-use of e-services results in wastage of the public fiscus. The extant literature points to a number of underlying causes of the problem. One such problem is the “Design-Reality Gap."

As progress pushes the boundaries of both the performance of new hardware components and the computational capacity of modern computers, the requirements on the performance of robotic systems are becoming more and more demanding. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate that concurrent design (Co-Design) is the approach to follow to design hardware and control for such high-performance robots. In particular, this work proposes a co-design framework and an algorithm to tackle two main issues: i) how to use Co-Design to benchmark different robotic systems, and ii) how to effectively warm-start the trajectory optimization (TO) problem underlying the co-design problem aiming at global optimality. The first contribution of this thesis is a co-design framework for the energy efficiency analysis of a redundant actuation architecture combining Quasi-Direct Drive (QDD) motors and Series Elastic Actuators (SEAs). The energy consumption of the redundant actuation system is compared to that of Geared Motors (GMs) and SEAs alone. This comparison is made considering two robotic systems performing different tasks. The results show that, using the redundant actuation, one can save up to 99% of energy with respect to SEA for sinusoidal movements. This efficiency is achieved by exploiting the coupled dynamics of the two actuators, resulting in a latching-like control strategy. The analysis also shows that these large energy savings are not straightforwardly extendable to non-sinusoidal movements, but smaller savings (e.g., 7%) are nonetheless possible. The results highlight that the combination of complex hardware morphologies and advanced numerical Co-Design can lead to peak hardware performance that would be unattainable by human intuition alone. Moreover, it is also shown how to leverage Stochastic Programming (SP) to extend a similar co-design framework to design robots that are robust to disturbances by combining TO, morphology and feedback control optimization. The second contribution is a first step towards addressing the non-convexity of complex co-design optimization problems. To this aim, an algorithm for the optimal control of dynamical systems is designed that combines TO and Reinforcement Learning (RL) in a single framework. This algorithm tackles the two main limitations of TO and RL when applied to continuous-space non-linear systems to minimize a non-convex cost function: TO can get stuck in poor local minima when the search is not initialized close to a “good” minimum, whereas the RL training process may be excessively long and strongly dependent on the exploration strategy. Thus, the proposed algorithm learns a “good” control policy via TO-guided RL policy search. Using this policy to compute an initial guess for TO, makes the trajectory optimization process less prone to converge to poor local optima. The method is validated on several reaching problems featuring non-convex obstacle avoidance with different dynamical systems. The results show the great capabilities of the algorithm in escaping local minima, while being more computationally efficient than the state-of-the-art RL algorithms Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient and Proximal Policy Optimization. The current algorithm deals only with the control side of a co-design problem, but future work will extend it to include also hardware optimization. All things considered, this work advanced the state of the art on Co-Design, providing a framework and an algorithm to design both hardware and control for high-performance robots and aiming to the global optimality.

Engineered products can impact the day-to-day life of their users and other stakeholders. These impacts are often referred to as the product's social impacts. Products have been known to impact the people who use them, design them, manufacture them, distribute them, and the communities where they exist. Currently, there are few methods that can help an engineer identify, quantify, predict, or improve a product's social impact. Some companies and organizations have tried to identify their impacts and, for example, set goals for achieving more sustainable business practices. However, engineers, in large part, do not have methods that can help improve the sustainability and social impacts of their products. Without new methods to help engineers make better product decisions, products will continue to have unanticipated negative impacts and will likely not reach their true social impact potential. Engineers working in the field of Engineering for Global Development (EGD) are especially in need of methods that can help improve the social impacts of their products. One of the purposes of creating products in EGD is to help solve problems that lead to improved quality of life for people and communities in developing countries. The research in this dissertation presents new methods developed to help engineers understand, predict, and improve the social impact of their products. Chapter 2 introduces the Product Impact Metric, a simple metric engineers can use to quantify their products impact on improving the quality of life of impoverished individuals in developing countries. Chapter 3 introduces a method that engineers can use to create product-specific social impact metrics and models. These models are used to predict the social impacts of an expanded US-Mexico border wall on immigrants, border patrol officers, and local communities. Chapter 4 shows a method that allows engineers to create social impact models for individuals within a population. Using data available through online databanks and census reports, the author predicts the social impact of a new semi-automated cassava peeler on farmers in the Brazilian Amazon. In Chapter 5, the author presents a method for engineers to optimize a product according to its social impact on multiple stakeholders. Inspired by existing literature on multi-stakeholder decision making, eight different optimization problem formulations are presented and demonstrated in an example with the cassava peeler. Chapter 6 presents the author's experience in co-designing a semi-automated cassava with the Itacoatiara Rural Farming Cooperative. The peeler was designed and built by the author and is used as the example in Chapters 4 and 5. Finally, Chapter 7 shows the conclusions the author has in completing this research. Comments are made as to the difficulties encountered in this research (specifically data quality and validation), and the author makes suggestions of possible future work.

Due to various societal changes such as globalization, urbanization and connectivity, new lifestyles, such as that of urban nomads, are becoming more common and relevant. Therefore, this study observes and analyzes this target group from a critical and multidisciplinary perspective. Urban nomads can be defined as a collective group of people who live and work in urban areas. They do not reside permanently in one place but move frequently within urban locations. Minimalism as part of low-consumption lifestyles and the concept of mobility, which form the core of the urban nomads‘ mindset, are examined in detail.The focus of the research is the relationship of urban nomads to material possessions and their meaning. Based on this, the thesis aims to generate criteria and requirements for a product design from the perspective of design, which meets the needs of urban nomads and simplifies their everyday life. Through a people-centered approach and the collaborative application of different methods, the urban nomads are placed in the focus of the innovation process and are actively involved in the process.The thesis results in the development of a transportable and multifunctional lamp (Mobilamp), which is realized in the form of a prototype based on the generated criteria from the research. The product design is considered as an example and analyzes in which way needs can be satisfied and through which usage situations the daily life of urban nomads can be facilitated. The aspect of sustainability in the consumption behavior of the target group is also critically analyzed and evaluated through the product.

Appealing participants' engagement drives collaborative systems to enhance it through system's use or through system's design. However, engaging participants in collaborative systems to create digital resources is not trivial to achieve as the majority of contributions are provided by a very small percentage of engaged participants. In the literature, different approaches, such as human-in-the-loop and co-design, investigate engagement in these lines. This thesis aims to study how reflexivity can help designers to investigate participants' engagement in co-design of collaborative systems. Based on a qualitative approach, the thesis is positioned in the field of Human Computer Interaction and grounded on two studies. The retrospective analysis of the two studies was guided through a framework composed of three phases. In the first phase, supported by the literature review, several qualitative methods were investigated to identify the communities to be involved in the research; in the second phase, different co-design sessions were conducted with participants; and in the third phase, participants evaluated the solutions co-designed. The two studies followed different but intertwined approaches. Study 1 followed a user-centric approach and supported the identification and consolidation of a set of factors that hindered or facilitated engagement. The factors were articulated as barriers, drivers, and workarounds, and were validated in Study 2, which followed a participative approach. These factors constitute the first contribution of this thesis. Moreover, the literature review and the empirical data supported the identification of three dimensions to facilitate the adoption of a reflexive approach in co-design. These dimensions correspond to the second contribution of this thesis. Finally, the set of barriers, drivers, and workarounds was merged with the dimensions to propose a framework to investigate engagement in co-design of collaborative systems, constituting the third contribution of this thesis.