Industrial robots are the most widely manufactured and utilized type of robots in industries. Improving the design process of industrial robots would lead to further developments in robotics industries. Consequently, other dependant industries would be benefited. Therefore, there is an effort to make the design process more and more efficient and reliable. The design of industrial robots requires studies in various fields. Engineering softwares are the tools which facilitate and accelerate the robot design processes such as dynamic simulation, structural analysis, optimization, control and so forth. Therefore, designing a framework to automate the robot design process such that different tools interact automatically would be beneficial. In this thesis, the goal is to investigate the feasibility of integrating tools from different domains such as geometry modeling, dynamic simulation, finite element analysis and optimization in order to obtain an industrial robot design and optimization framework. Meanwhile, Meta modeling is used to replace the time consuming design steps. In the optimization step, various optimization algorithms are compared based on their performance and the best suited algorithm is selected. As a result, it is shown that the objectives are achievable in a sense that finite element analysis can be efficiently integrated with the other tools and the results can be optimized during the design process. A holistic framework which can be used for design of robots with several degrees of freedom is introduced at the end.

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This study proposes a framework for simultaneously addressing qualitative and quantitative decision-making criteria during the early stages of the design process. It investigates the features and characteristics in an architectural tool that enable an architect to simultaneously address qualitative and quantitative criteria during the early stages of the design process and the requirements for implementing these features and characteristics inside a tool/working environment. It adopts a four-step methodology based on the qualitative methods of inquiry. These steps include logical argumentation based on the literature review, interviews, immersive case study, and Delphi method. The proposed framework provides a map of the areas and the themes that need consideration when developing an architectural tool that is expected to simultaneously address qualitative and quantitative criteria at the early stages of the design process. It categorizes the themes in three main areas: the themes concerned with qualitative studies, the themes concerned with quantitative studies, and the themes concerned with bridging the gap between qualitative and quantitative studies. The framework suggests that four major themes need consideration while developing architectural tools to support simultaneously addressing qualitative and quantitative criteria: Imagination Stimulation for qualitative studies, Knowledge Acquisition for quantitative studies, Architect as Toolmaker and Design Environment Coordinator, Hybrid Environment, and Interface for the synthesis of qualitative and quantitative studies. For practicing architects, the framework provides guidance to choose proper tools and form their design environment. Moreover, this study provides a new model of communication between the architecture community and the software developers. / Doctor of Philosophy / Any architectural project consists of numerous decisions that the architect must make. These decisions have different characteristics and can be categorized in many ways. One way to categorize them could be based on the nature of the criteria that the architects use to evaluate the results of their decision. In this manner, these criteria can be either qualitative or quantitative. Addressing these two different kinds of criteria demands entirely distinctive sets of skills. Architects are trained to address these two fundamentally different kinds of criteria, consciously or not. However, the reasoning process is much more complicated when the decision demands addressing qualitative and quantitative criteria, simultaneously. There exists the possibility that one criterion or one set of criteria may overshadow the rest if this complex task is approached without conscious planning by the architect. This study proposes a framework for simultaneously addressing qualitative and quantitative decision-making criteria during the early stages of the design process. It provides a map of the areas and the themes that need consideration when developing an architectural tool that is expected to simultaneously address qualitative and quantitative criteria at the early stages of the design process and uses several graphical representations to categorizes these themes based on the needs and objectives of the user.

Diante do crescente desenvolvimento da tecnologia da informação e da comunicação, o sistema educacional vem gradualmente modificando as estratégias de ensino-aprendizagem, adaptando para tanto, os tradicionais procedimentos e técnicas didáticas aos instrumentos tecnológicos fornecidos pelos ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem. O processo de avaliação e acompanhamento da aprendizagem nestes ambientes requer o uso de novas estratégias de ensino que congregue os recursos tecnológicos e a intervenção positiva do professor/tutor. Propõe-se um modelo de design instrucional estendido do \"Integrative Learning Design Framework On-line\" (ILDF) sob o enfoque da taxonomia dos objetivos educacionais de Bloom e do ciclo de aprendizagem vivencial de Kolb adaptado por Belhot para uma disciplina de pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção. Este modelo foi implementado e avaliado na disciplina \"Metodologia de Pesquisa para Engenharia\" oferecida no primeiro semestre de 2008 para 14 alunos de pós-graduação de Engenharia de Produção e envolveu o planejamento, elaboração e disposição do material didático e de atividades orientadas no ambiente virtual de aprendizagem - Moodle. Sugere-se um protocolo de organização de estratégias dialógicas como os fóruns de discussões on-line e uma rubrica avaliativa sobre a qualidade, quantidade, relevância, forma das mensagens e dos níveis de conhecimento cognitivo dos alunos para a construção do conhecimento colaborativo. Os resultados revelam que, as estratégias dialógicas e exploratórias adotadas, promoveram a evolução dos alunos com relação aos níveis de desenvolvimento cognitivo e da aprendizagem vivencial e contribuíram para a construção do conhecimento de forma colaborativa e significativa. / Faced with increasing development of information technology and communication, the educational system is gradually changing the teaching-learning strategies, adapting to both the traditional procedures and techniques for teaching technologica tools provided by the virtual environment of learning. The evaluation process and monitoring of learning in this environment require the use of new teaching strategies for bringing together the technological resources and positive intervention of the teacher/tutor. The present work proposes a model of instructional design extended from the \"Integrative Learning Design Framework On-line\" (ILDF) under the focus of the taxonomy of educational objectives of Bloom and the Kolb´s cycle of experiential learning adapted by Belhot to a discipline of Production Engineering postgraduate program. This model was implemented and assessed during the course \"Research Methodology for Engineering\" offered in the first half of 2008 to 14 postgraduate students of Production Engineering and it involved the planning, preparation and disposal of teaching material and activities geared to virtual environment of learning - Moodle. It is suggested a protocol for organizing dialogical strategies as forums for discussions on-line and a evaluative rubric about quality, quantity, relevance, and the message structures, and the levels of cognitive knowledge of the students for the construction of collaborative knowledge. The results show that the dialogical and exploratory strategies adopted, have contributed to the progress of students with respect to the levels of cognitive development and the experiential learning and they have also contributed to the construction of knowledge in a collaborative and significant way.

Diante do crescente desenvolvimento da tecnologia da informação e da comunicação, o sistema educacional vem gradualmente modificando as estratégias de ensino-aprendizagem, adaptando para tanto, os tradicionais procedimentos e técnicas didáticas aos instrumentos tecnológicos fornecidos pelos ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem. O processo de avaliação e acompanhamento da aprendizagem nestes ambientes requer o uso de novas estratégias de ensino que congregue os recursos tecnológicos e a intervenção positiva do professor/tutor. Propõe-se um modelo de design instrucional estendido do \"Integrative Learning Design Framework On-line\" (ILDF) sob o enfoque da taxonomia dos objetivos educacionais de Bloom e do ciclo de aprendizagem vivencial de Kolb adaptado por Belhot para uma disciplina de pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção. Este modelo foi implementado e avaliado na disciplina \"Metodologia de Pesquisa para Engenharia\" oferecida no primeiro semestre de 2008 para 14 alunos de pós-graduação de Engenharia de Produção e envolveu o planejamento, elaboração e disposição do material didático e de atividades orientadas no ambiente virtual de aprendizagem - Moodle. Sugere-se um protocolo de organização de estratégias dialógicas como os fóruns de discussões on-line e uma rubrica avaliativa sobre a qualidade, quantidade, relevância, forma das mensagens e dos níveis de conhecimento cognitivo dos alunos para a construção do conhecimento colaborativo. Os resultados revelam que, as estratégias dialógicas e exploratórias adotadas, promoveram a evolução dos alunos com relação aos níveis de desenvolvimento cognitivo e da aprendizagem vivencial e contribuíram para a construção do conhecimento de forma colaborativa e significativa. / Faced with increasing development of information technology and communication, the educational system is gradually changing the teaching-learning strategies, adapting to both the traditional procedures and techniques for teaching technologica tools provided by the virtual environment of learning. The evaluation process and monitoring of learning in this environment require the use of new teaching strategies for bringing together the technological resources and positive intervention of the teacher/tutor. The present work proposes a model of instructional design extended from the \"Integrative Learning Design Framework On-line\" (ILDF) under the focus of the taxonomy of educational objectives of Bloom and the Kolb´s cycle of experiential learning adapted by Belhot to a discipline of Production Engineering postgraduate program. This model was implemented and assessed during the course \"Research Methodology for Engineering\" offered in the first half of 2008 to 14 postgraduate students of Production Engineering and it involved the planning, preparation and disposal of teaching material and activities geared to virtual environment of learning - Moodle. It is suggested a protocol for organizing dialogical strategies as forums for discussions on-line and a evaluative rubric about quality, quantity, relevance, and the message structures, and the levels of cognitive knowledge of the students for the construction of collaborative knowledge. The results show that the dialogical and exploratory strategies adopted, have contributed to the progress of students with respect to the levels of cognitive development and the experiential learning and they have also contributed to the construction of knowledge in a collaborative and significant way.

Thailand has been extremely successful in promoting itself as a cultural country, with tourism being the country's primary source of income. However, cultural tourism for Thai people is considered to be a niche market, and little attention has been paid to the topic, compared to mass tourism. Moreover, Thai visitors have little motivation to visit actual historical sites and read the story displayed as part of exhibitions. This research aims to create, detail and evaluate a framework for inclusive digital storytelling to increase diversity and motivation for cultural tourism in Thailand. To broaden and increase the potential tourism market, this PhD research applies inclusive design principles as 'understanding and designing for diversity' by identifying potential Thai customers into five diverse groups (youth, older adults, disabled people, non-cultural tourists, and cultural tourists), and presents reports regarding the barriers and drivers for achieving this. To increase the motivation of Thai tourists, this PhD research adopts digital storytelling as 'the guideline for creating storytelling' to increase motivation among the five diverse groups, and illustrates how this was done in the second study. However, an issue arises if Thai people (particularly older adults and disabled people) cannot access or understand how to use this type of digital technology. These problems can in turn create opportunities for applying inclusive designs to digital technology in an effort to understand users' behavioural needs; this is presented in the third study. Finally, the fourth study evaluates the framework detailed from the previous three studies in order to answer the primary research question: "How could inclusive design and digital storytelling principles be applied to facilitate cultural tourism in Thailand?" This PhD research can suggest and establish links between three key areas and devise and detail a new framework to increase diversity and motivation for cultural tourism for Thai visitors in Thailand which is original and interdisciplinary.

This thesis presents a review of educational-escape-room literature followed by a design-oriented framework (the Snyder Escape Room Framework or SERF) and demonstrates the potential efficacy of escape-rooms in cybersecurity education. Several authors have proposed frameworks and guidelines for game and educational design regarding escape rooms. This work coalesces some of those ideas into a more substantial and comprehensive framework (SERF) that designers can use when developing educational escape rooms. The Snyder Escape Room Framework provides heuristics for goals and objectives, players, activities, context, trajectory design, and evaluation. Additionally, this work describes and analyzes the novel prototyped BYU GCC escape room experience and delves into some of what was successful and what could be improved. The first sessions of the experience were observed and documented, and an expert review was performed. Participants did not gain much confidence in learning new technology; however, they did increase their confidence in using new technology through the experience. Participants did indeed learn from the experience, however, participants focused more on team-related concepts gained from the experience rather than the cybersecurity concepts introduced through the escape-room activities. Based on overwhelming positive responses, participants seemed to enjoy performing the experience. The BYU experience is evaluated against the Snyder Framework as an example of how to use the framework while designing or as a tool for evaluating. Using this framework systemizes and catalogues design choices and implications on the room and provides an informed approach for refinement. Applying the Snyder Escape Room Framework to the BYU experience provides further insight beyond just an expert review, and the BYU experience is a novel example to use with SERF. SERF gives a vocabulary and set of heuristics that help designers zero in on important design decisions. Using the framework provides a well-defined set of attributes for discussing the BYU experience and helps clarify what went well with the room and what could be improved upon. This is especially helpful when iterating on room design. The nature of Snyder Framework and this work is that it is multidisciplinary and touches a wide array of related fields and topics. Of note, are the implications of this work on educational games. The SERF can be used as a resource when designing similar experiences while the analysis of the BYU experience based on the SERF provides an example of how the framework can be used for evaluation and iteration.

This thesis seeks to extend the PDG methodology by developing a generalized formal method for nesting PDGs in an interconnected system. A procedure for decomposing an individual PDG into reusable modules will be defined and a software architecture will be presented which takes advantage of these reusable modules. This method breaks the PDG structure into discrete elements known as PDG objects, PDG modules and PDG services. Each of these elements forms a distinct unit of reuse and each can be seen as a "little" PDG. Two different industrial implementations of this method are presented. These examples show that it is possible to share PDG services amongst multiple PDGs and provide a mechanism to create a PDG for a complicated system.

In the context of Service-Oriented Systems (SOS), services represent loosely coupled discrete units that can be created, invoked, composed and decomposed upon a client request. In such a setting, where complex systems are composed out of services based on the client request, ensuring the expected level of Quality-of-Service (QoS) becomes a difficult task. In systems built on service-oriented principles, the formal specification of both functional and extra-functional system behavior, service availability, compatibility and interoperability between different services and systems have become important issues. To be compliant with the new features, the REMES language has been extended towards SOS with new constructs that have been given formal semantics. In this thesis, we propose transformation rules, definitions and techniques for transforming these new constructs into Timed Automata (TA) counterparts to facilitate the formal analysis. Also, we present an extension to an existing REMES SOS IDE toolset for performing an automated transformation of the REMES SOS models into the TA framework suitable for the formal analysis with the UPPAAL model-checker. The contribution from our work is on two fronts: a) define transformation rules for all of the constructs specific for the REMES SOS modeling and b) prototype implementation of the transformation rules as an extension add-on to the already existing IDE for modeling SOS to perform the automated transformation. The benefit of performing an automated transformation of the REMES SOS models in TA is twofold. First, by automating the transformation process, the process of validation of the models becomes faster. Second, we considerably reduce the influence from the human factor in the entire process, and at the same time lower the risks of introducing errors into the systems in the phase of creating the formal model. Additional benefit from the automated process is that the SOS designer does not have to be a verification expert in order to be able to verify the modeled system.

The use of mobile devices and social media has been increasing dramatically and becoming critical for B2C businesses. Such businesses need to consider implementing e-commerce services in the mobile environment with social integration to satisfy their customers’ needs. Concepts like mobile commerce and social commerce are already being used extensively by many businesses. However, there are no clear guidelines in the literature on how to use mobile and social characteristics together for B2C e-commerce. Fusing these two concepts is what we call mobile social commerce (ms-commerce). In this thesis, we performed a thorough literature review to identify the characteristics of ms-commerce. The findings enabled us to first devise a proper definition for ms-commerce as the concept of performing online commercial activities in a mobile environment with the help of contributions from customers. Second, elements of the building blocks of ms-commerce, namely business models, m-commerce and s-commerce were identified based on commonly accepted fundamentals of the related concepts. Each building block has a critical role in increasing the value and efficiency of the product/service being delivered online by B2C businesses. We propose a mobile social commerce design framework along with a modular design model consisting of a generic class diagram that can be used for designing and developing ms-commerce applications that fit the specific needs of businesses. Businesses can choose the right elements to integrate in their ms-commerce application with the purpose of increasing the efficiency and integrating the social participation of customers. Three different scenarios were devised, and three mobile app prototypes were developed to support them, using the design model of our proposed framework. Finally, in light of our experience in developing ms-commerce applications, we discussed and contrasted the three different mobile development strategies, namely native, hybrid and web-based.