Goal of the work is to improve the SPOSH planner and its developement tools. SPOSH is a reactive planner of virtual agents similar to behavior trees that is used in the Pogamut platform, which is used to develop virtual agents. SPOSH itself suffers from several problems, especially excessive duplication of primitives (actions and senses) in different agents and unnatural execution of primitives. This work aims to remove these problems. Nearly all behavior tree planners are not public and developement tools are not usually available. Absence of such tools, especially of debugger, is major problem for users. Part of this work are tools for easy creation and debugging of SPOSH plans. Improved planner and created tools are demonstrated using an agent in game Unreal Tournament 2004.

A realidade virtual (RV) tem como principal área de aplicação o entretenimento. Porém, nos últimos anos, devido ao desenvolvimento acelerado do hardware de computadores, a RV se tornou mais acessível, sendo amplamente utilizada, também, nas áreas acadêmica e industrial. Uma parte da RV que, a cada dia, se torna mais importante para as áreas da engenharia é a prototipação virtual (PV). Normalmente, a prototipação física de um produto pode ser dispendiosa e inviável para determinados projetos. Nesses casos, a PV pode ser utilizada para evitar gastos desnecessários, alcançando resultados satisfatórios. Neste trabalho são descritos os passos referentes à implementação de um protótipo virtual, baseado no anteprojeto em desenvolvimento do projeto de pesquisa do Laboratório de Simulação e Controle de Sistemas Discretos do SEM-EESC, com auxílio pesquisa FAPESP processo: 2003/06582-0 \"Veículo agrícola autônomo (VAA): uma plataforma para desenvolvimento de tecnologias de navegação autônoma e para aquisição de dados em agricultura de precisão\". Além da descrição da implementação do protótipo virtual, neste trabalho são analisadas cinco ferramentas de desenvolvimento virtual disponíveis para testes no laboratório de simulação: 3Dcanvas Freeware, WorldUp, EON Studio 4.0, WEBOTS e EON Professional. Os critérios de avaliação das ferramentas foram baseados nas necessidades principais do projeto em questão, como implementação de centros de massa distribuídos, criação de terrenos não-estruturados (constituídos por morros, buracos etc.), controles de tração, torque, além de outras características físicas essenciais. A fase inicial da implementação foi desenvolvida em EON Studio 4.0. Devido à falta de recursos disponíveis nessa ferramenta, a fase final da implementação foi desenvolvida no software EON Professional. A análise do comportamento da plataforma em terrenos não-estruturados, a verificação dos ângulos de inclinação suportados e a análise da reconfiguração das laterais da plataforma são alguns dos resultados obtidos. / Virtual reality (VR) has entertainment as its main area of application. However, over the last few years, due to a fast-paced development of computers hardware, VR has become more accessible, being widely used both in the academic and industrial areas. A part of VR that is becoming more important for the engineering areas is virtual protoyping (VP). Normally, the physical prototyping of a product can be expensive and impracticable for some projects. In such cases, VP can be used to prevent unnecessary operating costs, reaching satisfactory results. In this paper, the steps of the implementation of a virtual prototype are described, based on the first draft in development of the research project of the Laboratory of Simulation and Control of Discrete Systems of SEM-EESC, with FAPESP support process: 2003/06582-0 \"Autonomous agricultural vehicle (AAV): a platform for development of technologies for independent navigation and for data acquisition in precision agriculture\". Besides the description of the virtual prototype implementation, in this paper five tools for virtual development, available for tests in the laboratory of simulation, are analyzed: 3Dcanvas Freeware, WorldUp, EON Studio 4.0, WEBOTS and EON Professional. The criteria of evaluation of the tools were based on the main necessities of the project, such as the implementation of distributed centers of mass, not-structuralized land creation (made up of hills, holes etc.), traction controls,torque, besides other essential physical characteristics. The initial stage of the implementation was developed at EON Studio 4.0. Due to the lack of available resources in this tool, the final stage of the implementation was developed in EON Professional software. The behavior analysis of the platform at non-structuralized lands, the verification of the supported inclination angles and the analysis of the platform laterals reconfiguration are some of the achieved results.

A realidade virtual (RV) tem como principal área de aplicação o entretenimento. Porém, nos últimos anos, devido ao desenvolvimento acelerado do hardware de computadores, a RV se tornou mais acessível, sendo amplamente utilizada, também, nas áreas acadêmica e industrial. Uma parte da RV que, a cada dia, se torna mais importante para as áreas da engenharia é a prototipação virtual (PV). Normalmente, a prototipação física de um produto pode ser dispendiosa e inviável para determinados projetos. Nesses casos, a PV pode ser utilizada para evitar gastos desnecessários, alcançando resultados satisfatórios. Neste trabalho são descritos os passos referentes à implementação de um protótipo virtual, baseado no anteprojeto em desenvolvimento do projeto de pesquisa do Laboratório de Simulação e Controle de Sistemas Discretos do SEM-EESC, com auxílio pesquisa FAPESP processo: 2003/06582-0 \"Veículo agrícola autônomo (VAA): uma plataforma para desenvolvimento de tecnologias de navegação autônoma e para aquisição de dados em agricultura de precisão\". Além da descrição da implementação do protótipo virtual, neste trabalho são analisadas cinco ferramentas de desenvolvimento virtual disponíveis para testes no laboratório de simulação: 3Dcanvas Freeware, WorldUp, EON Studio 4.0, WEBOTS e EON Professional. Os critérios de avaliação das ferramentas foram baseados nas necessidades principais do projeto em questão, como implementação de centros de massa distribuídos, criação de terrenos não-estruturados (constituídos por morros, buracos etc.), controles de tração, torque, além de outras características físicas essenciais. A fase inicial da implementação foi desenvolvida em EON Studio 4.0. Devido à falta de recursos disponíveis nessa ferramenta, a fase final da implementação foi desenvolvida no software EON Professional. A análise do comportamento da plataforma em terrenos não-estruturados, a verificação dos ângulos de inclinação suportados e a análise da reconfiguração das laterais da plataforma são alguns dos resultados obtidos. / Virtual reality (VR) has entertainment as its main area of application. However, over the last few years, due to a fast-paced development of computers hardware, VR has become more accessible, being widely used both in the academic and industrial areas. A part of VR that is becoming more important for the engineering areas is virtual protoyping (VP). Normally, the physical prototyping of a product can be expensive and impracticable for some projects. In such cases, VP can be used to prevent unnecessary operating costs, reaching satisfactory results. In this paper, the steps of the implementation of a virtual prototype are described, based on the first draft in development of the research project of the Laboratory of Simulation and Control of Discrete Systems of SEM-EESC, with FAPESP support process: 2003/06582-0 \"Autonomous agricultural vehicle (AAV): a platform for development of technologies for independent navigation and for data acquisition in precision agriculture\". Besides the description of the virtual prototype implementation, in this paper five tools for virtual development, available for tests in the laboratory of simulation, are analyzed: 3Dcanvas Freeware, WorldUp, EON Studio 4.0, WEBOTS and EON Professional. The criteria of evaluation of the tools were based on the main necessities of the project, such as the implementation of distributed centers of mass, not-structuralized land creation (made up of hills, holes etc.), traction controls,torque, besides other essential physical characteristics. The initial stage of the implementation was developed at EON Studio 4.0. Due to the lack of available resources in this tool, the final stage of the implementation was developed in EON Professional software. The behavior analysis of the platform at non-structuralized lands, the verification of the supported inclination angles and the analysis of the platform laterals reconfiguration are some of the achieved results.

<p>China’s economy is experiencing the most tremendous growth in the world. Many MNCs come to China mainly expecting cost-reduction and new market.  But these MNCs face a shortage of talents in China. Thus, the MNCs search the ways to develop the talents by themselves and retain qualified talents. But not all Western retention and development tools can be applied to Chinese employees.</p><p>Thus the main question company has to answer in China is “How to retain and develop Chinese talents?” So in our study we intend to answer on this question and realize which tools MNC can use for retention and development of Chinese employees, and in what way it should adjust them with the cultural characteristics of Chinese employees.</p><p>In order to achieve it, we conducted our research using different methodologies (literatures, case studies, interviews) to find the answer about effective retention and development of Chinese employees.</p>

With the increased use of Electronic Control Units (ECUs) in the automotive industry, the system creation and integration becomes progressively more complex. In order to manage this issue, the AUTomotive Open System Architecture (AUTOSAR) was initiated by several of the larger automotive companies and suppliers. Their goal was to create an architecture which will increase the reusability of software, integration of solutions from multiple suppliers and improve scalability. This thesis is made in collaboration with the company CrossControl and covers questions which are specific to their interests, features the AUTOSAR standard has to offer, evaluation of the use of development tools from different vendors, how migration is supported and how the standard affects the required hardware. Among our conclusions is that the AUTOSAR goals of decoupling software application components from the hardware is met to a high degree. Secondly even though file formats are standardized it is not a seamless integration between development tools. Finally, the choice of hardware is not only affected by properties of the standard, but the current versions of tools also limit the choices.

China’s economy is experiencing the most tremendous growth in the world. Many MNCs come to China mainly expecting cost-reduction and new market.  But these MNCs face a shortage of talents in China. Thus, the MNCs search the ways to develop the talents by themselves and retain qualified talents. But not all Western retention and development tools can be applied to Chinese employees. Thus the main question company has to answer in China is “How to retain and develop Chinese talents?” So in our study we intend to answer on this question and realize which tools MNC can use for retention and development of Chinese employees, and in what way it should adjust them with the cultural characteristics of Chinese employees. In order to achieve it, we conducted our research using different methodologies (literatures, case studies, interviews) to find the answer about effective retention and development of Chinese employees.

Software development is highly dependent on the use of tools. These tools support and automate activities performed in different sub-domains of software development. However, they don&lsquo / t adequately provide or support integration facilities, and act as &amp / #8213 / islands of automation&amp / #8214 / . This restricts their benefits to only specific parts of the process. To reap the benefits of integration, this thesis provides a process modeling based method named PLETIN to identify and implement software development tool integration-tuples. The method aims to present solutions for issues observed in tool integration for software development organizations by delivering an integrated tool set. The proposed solution approach is based on the idea that if there were no integrations between tools at all, users would perform the necessary actions to cooperate different tools. PLETIN is a method for the identification of the candidate integration situations (integration-tuples) from the interactions of users with the tools. These tuples constitute the requirements used to develop integration facilities. The software development process definitions are used as inputs to create process models and provide actual implementations. The research is supported with case-study work to identify the significance of the problems and the applicability of the method as a solution to issues in tool integration.

The mobile application market is becoming increasingly fragmented with the availability of multiple mobile platforms that differ in development procedures. Developers are forced to choose to support only some platforms and specific devices due to limited development resources. To address these challenges, numerous tools have been created to aid developers in building cross-platform applications, however, there is no metric to evaluate the quality of these tools. This thesis introduces a framework for evaluating the features, performance and discuss development experience of existing and future cross-platform development tools. The framework is implemented by benchmarking several tools and the results identify a disparity in the features and performance. This research is carried out in collaboration with industrial partner Desire2Learn, through an NSERC Engage Grant. / NSERC, Desire2Learn

This work introduces concepts and corresponding tool support to enable a complementary approach in dealing with recovery. Programmers need to recover a development state, or a part thereof, when previously made changes reveal undesired implications. However, when the need arises suddenly and unexpectedly, recovery often involves expensive and tedious work. To avoid tedious work, literature recommends keeping away from unexpected recovery demands by following a structured and disciplined approach, which consists of the application of various best practices including working only on one thing at a time, performing small steps, as well as making proper use of versioning and testing tools. However, the attempt to avoid unexpected recovery is both time-consuming and error-prone. On the one hand, it requires disproportionate effort to minimize the risk of unexpected situations. On the other hand, applying recommended practices selectively, which saves time, can hardly avoid recovery. In addition, the constant need for foresight and self-control has unfavorable implications. It is exhaustive and impedes creative problem solving. This work proposes to make recovery fast and easy and introduces corresponding support called CoExist. Such dedicated support turns situations of unanticipated recovery from tedious experiences into pleasant ones. It makes recovery fast and easy to accomplish, even if explicit commits are unavailable or tests have been ignored for some time. When mistakes and unexpected insights are no longer associated with tedious corrective actions, programmers are encouraged to change source code as a means to reason about it, as opposed to making changes only after structuring and evaluating them mentally. This work further reports on an implementation of the proposed tool support in the Squeak/Smalltalk development environment. The development of the tools has been accompanied by regular performance and usability tests. In addition, this work investigates whether the proposed tools affect programmers’ performance. In a controlled lab study, 22 participants improved the design of two different applications. Using a repeated measurement setup, the study examined the effect of providing CoExist on programming performance. The result of analyzing 88 hours of programming suggests that built-in recovery support as provided with CoExist positively has a positive effect on programming performance in explorative programming tasks. / Diese Arbeit präsentiert Konzepte und die zugehörige Werkzeugunterstützung um einen komplementären Umgang mit Wiederherstellungsbedürfnissen zu ermöglichen. Programmierer haben Bedarf zur Wiederherstellung eines früheren Entwicklungszustandes oder Teils davon, wenn ihre Änderungen ungewünschte Implikationen aufzeigen. Wenn dieser Bedarf plötzlich und unerwartet auftritt, dann ist die notwendige Wiederherstellungsarbeit häufig mühsam und aufwendig. Zur Vermeidung mühsamer Arbeit empfiehlt die Literatur die Vermeidung von unerwarteten Wiederherstellungsbedürfnissen durch einen strukturierten und disziplinierten Programmieransatz, welcher die Verwendung verschiedener bewährter Praktiken vorsieht. Diese Praktiken sind zum Beispiel: nur an einer Sache gleichzeitig zu arbeiten, immer nur kleine Schritte auszuführen, aber auch der sachgemäße Einsatz von Versionskontroll- und Testwerkzeugen. Jedoch ist der Versuch des Abwendens unerwarteter Wiederherstellungsbedürfnisse sowohl zeitintensiv als auch fehleranfällig. Einerseits erfordert es unverhältnismäßig hohen Aufwand, das Risiko des Eintretens unerwarteter Situationen auf ein Minimum zu reduzieren. Andererseits ist eine zeitsparende selektive Ausführung der empfohlenen Praktiken kaum hinreichend, um Wiederherstellungssituationen zu vermeiden. Zudem bringt die ständige Notwendigkeit an Voraussicht und Selbstkontrolle Nachteile mit sich. Dies ist ermüdend und erschwert das kreative Problemlösen. Diese Arbeit schlägt vor, Wiederherstellungsaufgaben zu vereinfachen und beschleunigen, und stellt entsprechende Werkzeugunterstützung namens CoExist vor. Solche zielgerichtete Werkzeugunterstützung macht aus unvorhergesehenen mühsamen Wiederherstellungssituationen eine konstruktive Erfahrung. Damit ist Wiederherstellung auch dann leicht und schnell durchzuführen, wenn explizit gespeicherte Zwischenstände fehlen oder die Tests für einige Zeit ignoriert wurden. Wenn Fehler und unerwartete Ein- sichten nicht länger mit mühsamen Schadensersatz verbunden sind, fühlen sich Programmierer eher dazu ermutig, Quelltext zu ändern, um dabei darüber zu reflektieren, und nehmen nicht erst dann Änderungen vor, wenn sie diese gedanklich strukturiert und evaluiert haben. Diese Arbeit berichtet weiterhin von einer Implementierung der vorgeschlagenen Werkzeugunterstützung in der Squeak/Smalltalk Entwicklungsumgebung. Regelmäßige Tests von Laufzeitverhalten und Benutzbarkeit begleiteten die Entwicklung. Zudem prüft die Arbeit, ob sich die Verwendung der vorgeschlagenen Werkzeuge auf die Leistung der Programmierer auswirkt. In einem kontrollierten Experiment, verbesserten 22 Teilnehmer den Aufbau von zwei verschiedenen Anwendungen. Unter der Verwendung einer Versuchsanordnung mit wiederholter Messung, ermittelte die Studie die Auswirkung von CoExist auf die Programmierleistung. Das Ergebnis der Analyse von 88 Programmierstunden deutet darauf hin, dass sich eingebaute Werkzeugunterstützung für Wiederherstellung, wie sie mit CoExist bereitgestellt wird, positiv bei der Bearbeitung von unstrukturierten ergebnisoffenen Programmieraufgaben auswirkt.

O Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos (PDP) é considerado a essência da criação de novo conhecimento na empresa. Os investimentos e esforços em gestão que visam à melhoria da capacidade criativa, da tomada de decisão e do emprego de melhores práticas, tendem a elevar o nível de competência dos recursos humanos, intervindo, conseqüentemente, no resultado final do produto. Esta dissertação apresenta um modelo conceitual de integração de ferramentas de auxílio ao PDP com aplicação no setor alimentício, com vistas a enfatizar a utilização destas de maneira associada, considerando alguns princípios da Gestão do Conhecimento (GC). Este modelo foi construído utilizando a estrutura base de um modelo referencial de PDP para a indústria de alimentos. Para a alocação no modelo proposto, algumas ferramentas foram selecionadas na literatura para o setor e, posteriormente, foram analisadas sob a ótica da criação do conhecimento. A relação existente nesta dissertação entre o PDP e a GC é relevante para elucidar a importância de criar, utilizar, compartilhar e registrar o conhecimento que faz parte da memória organizacional e que, normalmente, existe dentro da empresa de forma não estruturada. Neste contexto, as ferramentas de auxílio ao PDP podem servir como conversoras do conhecimento, transformando-o de tácito para explícito, e reciprocamente. Após o desenvolvimento do modelo, o mesmo foi validado junto à gerência do setor de P&D de uma empresa, comprovando-se a sua exeqüibilidade e facilidade de aplicação e benefícios associados ao PDP. Também foi possível comprovar a existência da relação entre a exeqüibilidade do modelo, o nível de maturidade da empresa e o investimento em capacitação. / The Product Development Process (PDP) is the essence of new knowledge creation in any industry. There is no doubt that the human resources’ abilities and expertise are improved by investments and efforts towards projects that bring higher levels of creative capacity, decision making support and better procedures implementation support. And it’s clear that improving the human resources’ level of competence interferes in the final product result. The present dissertation shows a tool integration conceptual model that assists PDP especially in the food industry. One of the main ideas is to emphasize the tool’s application in an associated manner, considering some Knowledge Management (KM) principles. This model was built based on a PDP’s referential model for the food industry. Some tools were selected from the food industry’s literature in order to allocate the tools in the proposed model. After, the tools were analyzed with a knowledge creation point of view. The relation between PDP and KM showed in this dissertation is important to explain the relevance of creating, using, sharing and registering the knowledge, which is a corporate memory’s part that usually exists in the industry in a non-structured way. In this context, the PDP’s tools are able to convert the knowledge, turning it from tacit into explicit and reciprocally. The Research and Development Department’s manager of a confidential company validated the proposed model. According to the interviewing results, it was considered that the model is executable, easy to apply and its use brings advantages to the PDP. Also, it was evident that there is a relation among the model’s application, the company’s maturity phase and the investments in the employee’s capabilities.