Sensory information processing is an important feature of robotic agents that must interact with humans or the environment. For example, numerous attempts have been made to develop robots that have the capability of performing interactive communication. In most cases, individual sensory information is processed and based on this, an output action is performed. In many robotic applications, visual and audio sensors are used to emulate human-like communication. The Superior Colliculus, located in the mid-brain region of the nervous system, carries out similar functionality of audio and visual stimuli integration in both humans and animals. In recent years numerous researchers have attempted integration of sensory information using biological inspiration. A common focus lies in generating a single output state (i.e. a multimodal output) that can localize the source of the audio and visual stimuli. This research addresses the problem and attempts to find an effective solution by investigating various computational and biological mechanisms involved in the generation of multimodal output. A primary goal is to develop a biologically inspired computational architecture using artificial neural networks. The advantage of this approach is that it mimics the behaviour of the Superior Colliculus, which has the potential of enabling more effective human-like communication with robotic agents. The thesis describes the design and development of the architecture, which is constructed from artificial neural networks using radial basis functions. The primary inspiration for the architecture came from emulating the function top and deep layers of the Superior Colliculus, due to their visual and audio stimuli localization mechanisms, respectively. The integration experimental results have successfully demonstrated the key issues, including low-level multimodal stimuli localization, dimensionality reduction of audio and visual input-space without affecting stimuli strength, and stimuli localization with enhancement and depression phenomena. Comparisons have been made between computational and neural network based methods, and unimodal verses multimodal integrated outputs in order to determine the effectiveness of the approach.

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The intensity of negotiations, including war and Peace Talks, are driven by the threat of identity disintegration. Sri Lanka negotiates to preserve territorial integrity. Tamils argue for secession to preserve their identity. How is each to adapt their identity so that they can peacefully co-exist within the island? The current peace process began in 2002. The principles of Organizational Cybernetics show distinction is warranted between External Self-Determination (secession) and Internal Self-Determination (a single sovereignty recognised by the international community) as the negotiating systems occupy different recursive positions relative to each other. In each context, the systems gravitate differently towards cohesion and autonomy. Equally vital is to distinguish between systems, their embedments and their representatives. Diagnosis of the peace process seeking an internal self-determination solution does not display these distinctions. At the 2002 Peace Talks the only system permitted to negotiate with Sri Lanka (the encompassing system) was confined to one of the embedded systems (the Tamils as represented by the LTTE). Structurally this risked the encompassing system collapsing to represent its missing embedded systems. To rectify this Team Syntegrity is proposed, whose sequence of design in its multiple cascades enables representation issues to be resolved without it being confined to political parties. Content solutions are matters for Sri Lankans to design. However, they are considered in order to design and propose a ‘process’ solution. The journey this thesis takes is to arrive at designing the ‘how’ of negotiations so that it can accommodate the myriad of ‘what’ needs to be negotiated. A meta-level logic is required to resolve the undecidable proposition of preserving territorial integrity or secession. Working with the levels of recursion - the UN, the State and its embedded systems, this thesis proposes a way to absorb residual variety to gain agreement to negotiate internal self-determination based on interlocking negotiations involving those seeking cohesion and those seeking autonomy. This process also opens the way to address the solution design of the other interacting crises afflicting Sri Lanka. The uniqueness and contribution of this research is that it is the first time Organizational Cybernetics has been conceptually applied to diagnose and design a peace process involving a sovereign State.

Culture shapes most human behaviour, including interaction with computers. In much Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, culture is assumed to impact design preferences. However, many cultural variables identified in the general literature have no clear link to design preferences. In this thesis, we develop a new model, the Diamond Model, to structure a wide range of cultural variables. This is used to organise a literature review of cultural variables and their impact in HCI, as well as to identify instances of Jordanian cultural variables, which is the focus of field studies in this thesis. The balance and range of cultural variables in the Diamond Model suggests that culture should have impact beyond design preferences, and should also influence how users react to, explain and evaluate difficulties when using computers. To investigate whether this was the case, a series of field studies was carried out to explore the balance between the impact of culture on design preferences and on reactions to usage difficulties. Each field study found Jordanian instances for cultural variables in the Diamond Model, but also added further cultural variables that had not been identified in either the general or the HCI literature. In the process, we identified more cultural variables that influenced reactions to usage difficulties in Jordan than influenced design preferences. This thesis presents the Diamond Model, applies it to existing literature on culture and HCI, and uses it to structure analysis of results from three field studies. The result is an extended Diamond Model with specific Jordanian instances of cultural variables. However, this alone may not help software developers to understand how culture impacts HCI in Jordan. To complement the Diamond Model, we developed a novel approach called “Dramatic Sketches” to communicate impact of cultural variables on HCI. We present example Dramatic sketches and conclude with guidance on developing software for Jordanian contexts.