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This thesis examines the question of what kind of guidance curriculum is suitable for primary schools in Hong Kong. The call for the development of guidance curriculum for primary school children in Hong Kong arises from the needs of students: their need for enhancement of their self-concept, and has been translated into guidance and educational policy documents, and structural and administrative changes in schools which allow more time for the development of guidance in primary schools. Given that the educational context of Hong Kong is "East meets West," the researcher posits that, in studying guidance in Hong Kong, both Eastern and Western traditions in guidance must be taken into consideration. The researcher further argues that a guidance curriculum that is suitable for the primary school children in Hong Kong should start by looking at the particular experiences, expectations and tensions that educators, guidance professionals, teachers, parents and children are facing in the competing and changing contexts of the Hong Kong society. These expectations and tensions are very much related to the colossal changes in Hong Kong and are reflections of various degrees of overlaps between "East" and "West", as well as "past" and "present". The researcher has drawn on literature concerning globalization as hybridization, the Chinese concept of yin-yang and the psychological processes at work when Western modernization meet with indigenous Chinese culture, to explain the dynamics of change in the Hong Kong context. This thesis develops a hybrid framework for studying such changes. The framework consists of open-ended questions designed by the researcher from the literature, an adaptation of Confucian's cardinal relationships and Lawton's model for curriculum development A qualitative case study method is used for this study. Data are drawn from the author's own experience in a two-week teaching attachment in a primary school, and interviews with guidance professionals, primary school principals, teachers and students in three selected primary schools in Hong Kong. A qualitative study is chosen so that the multiple realities of teaching guidance in schools can be understood in their naturalistic settings. The boundary of the case is Hong Kong with its implementation of Hong Kong versions of Radd's (1993) Grow with guidance system. Three out of the eight Grow with guidance system pilot schools are studied. The chosen schools differ in student composition, school type, and methods of implementation of the guidance curriculum. Data are obtained by individual interviews, the in-depth study of one case study school by the researcher as participant observer, and content analysis of guidance materials in the case study schools. Data by these three methods and from different stakeholders are triangulated, as information obtained is checked against each other. This study uses multiple forms of evidences and they persuade by reason. Being a qualitative case study, its purpose is to illuminate but not to generalize. The criteria for judging the success of this study depend on the richness and accuracy of data, as well as the coherence, insight and instrumental utility in presenting and reading the data. The researcher argues for a hybrid guidance curriculum for the primary schools in Hong Kong to suit the hybrid contexts in Hong Kong. Data obtained from content analysis and the case study schools show that the philosophical, sociological and psychological factors as well as the content, pedagogies, organization for teaching and practical arrangements of the guidance curricula are hybrid in the Hong Kong implementation of Radd's Grow with guidance system. The researcher concludes that a useful guidance curriculum for Hong Kong primary schools must first listen to the different voices of all stakeholders about the guidance curricula and their "self-other relationships", for those voices reflect their tensions and reality. Much of their voices are presented as stories following the Chinese storying traditions. Methods to help children to deal with tensions and conflicts at personal, school, home and societal levels include giving up self to follow others [chinese characters omitted, knowing self and others [chinese characters omitted], awareness of and accommodation of differences [chinese characters omitted]context analysis, communication using culturally and contextually appropriate ways and emotional management. This thesis contributes to knowledge by inventing the concept of "hybrid guidance curriculum" to suit the hybrid context of Hong Kong. A new hybrid research methodology is also developed in this thesis which enables the forming of new categories of "self-other relationships" and new hybrid key concepts for the guidance curriculum. As such, this study allows for the re-reading of new ideas and practices of traditions in a modern hybrid society. Moreover, it also highlights the importance of the development of a reflexive self in which one negotiates one's own positions and one's relationships with others. In a special case, this study examines the fundamental issue of adapting and integrating western traditions in a country with different culture and contexts. Research frontiers, home school co-operation and implications to teacher educators, practitioners and policy makers in the guidance fields are discussed. Although this research is basically about Hong Kong, the findings may also be relevant to other places in the world where modernization has taken place in the indigenous culture.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:30:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-03-23Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:21:15Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 pugliesi_ea_dr_prud.pdf: 3859130 bytes, checksum: 645542947cbc0887ddc9305b7a183a0b (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / O objetivo desta pesquisa é avaliar representações cartográficas para manutenção na rota, em um Mapa Visual Dinâmico de Sistema de Navegação e Guia de Rota em Automóvel (SNGRA), por meio das análises de demanda visual, preferência subjetiva e erro navegacional. Os pontos de referência e os sinais de direção de trânsito são elementos de informação importantes que auxiliam os motoristas nas tarefas de manutenção na rota. A tese central é que o Mapa Visual Dinâmico de um SNGRA pode apresentar baixa demanda visual, alta preferência subjetiva e pouco erro navegacional quando se combina representação cartográfica áudio-dinâmica com pontos de referência representados na perspectiva do motorista e representação de seta para indicar a direção da manobra. Os elementos de pontos de referência foram selecionados a partir das características da atratividade visual e cognitiva de um pequeno espaço urbano brasileiro e, principalmente, da rota de teste. As representações cartográficas foram produzidas com base em fatores humanos (cognição, percepção e atenção) e, testadas junto a um grupo de 28 motoristas. Utilizou-se a estatística não paramétrica para analisar os dados coletados nos testes de demanda visual. Os resultados indicam as representações cartográficas eficientes e eficazes para manutenção na rota, bem como apontam a relação da demanda visual com os fatores sexo, habilidade espacial e experiências com mapas. Este trabalho confirma os resultados de pesquisas anteriores de que os motoristas preferem mapas para navegação e guia de rota em automóvel porque querem conhecer sua localização e o contexto espacial, em relação às referências urbanas. / The aim of this research is to evaluate cartographic symbols for route following in a Dynamic Visual Map of a Car Navigation and Route Guidance System, taking into account visual demand, subjective preference and navigational error. Landmarks and traffic signs are information elements that help drivers when following a route. The central hypothesis is that Dynamic Visual Map could be more efficient and effective when combining audio-dynamic cartographic representation with landmarks in a driver's perspective view and arrow to indicate maneuver direction. The landmarks were selected from characteristics of visual and cognitive attractiveness from a town and, mainly of the test route. The cartographic symbols were produced based on human factors (cognition, perception and attention) and tested with 28 drivers. Non-parametric statistic was applied in order to analyze the collected data from visual demand test. The results indicate cartographic symbols efficient and effective for route following, as well as point out association between visual demand with sex, spatial abilities and experiences with maps factors. This work confirm previous research that the most of drivers prefer maps to navigation and route following in car, because they want know en-route where they are in relation to particular areas and landmarks.

Orientador: Mônica Modesta Santos Decanini / Banca: Vilma Mayumi Tachibana / Banca: Nilton Nobuhiro Imai / Banca: Claudia Robbi Slutter / Banca: Luciene Stamato Delazari / Resumo: O objetivo desta pesquisa é avaliar representações cartográficas para manutenção na rota, em um Mapa Visual Dinâmico de Sistema de Navegação e Guia de Rota em Automóvel (SNGRA), por meio das análises de demanda visual, preferência subjetiva e erro navegacional. Os pontos de referência e os sinais de direção de trânsito são elementos de informação importantes que auxiliam os motoristas nas tarefas de manutenção na rota. A tese central é que o Mapa Visual Dinâmico de um SNGRA pode apresentar baixa demanda visual, alta preferência subjetiva e pouco erro navegacional quando se combina representação cartográfica áudio-dinâmica com pontos de referência representados na perspectiva do motorista e representação de seta para indicar a direção da manobra. Os elementos de pontos de referência foram selecionados a partir das características da atratividade visual e cognitiva de um pequeno espaço urbano brasileiro e, principalmente, da rota de teste. As representações cartográficas foram produzidas com base em fatores humanos (cognição, percepção e atenção) e, testadas junto a um grupo de 28 motoristas. Utilizou-se a estatística não paramétrica para analisar os dados coletados nos testes de demanda visual. Os resultados indicam as representações cartográficas eficientes e eficazes para manutenção na rota, bem como apontam a relação da demanda visual com os fatores sexo, habilidade espacial e experiências com mapas. Este trabalho confirma os resultados de pesquisas anteriores de que os motoristas preferem mapas para navegação e guia de rota em automóvel porque querem conhecer sua localização e o contexto espacial, em relação às referências urbanas. / Abstract: The aim of this research is to evaluate cartographic symbols for route following in a Dynamic Visual Map of a Car Navigation and Route Guidance System, taking into account visual demand, subjective preference and navigational error. Landmarks and traffic signs are information elements that help drivers when following a route. The central hypothesis is that Dynamic Visual Map could be more efficient and effective when combining audio-dynamic cartographic representation with landmarks in a driver's perspective view and arrow to indicate maneuver direction. The landmarks were selected from characteristics of visual and cognitive attractiveness from a town and, mainly of the test route. The cartographic symbols were produced based on human factors (cognition, perception and attention) and tested with 28 drivers. Non-parametric statistic was applied in order to analyze the collected data from visual demand test. The results indicate cartographic symbols efficient and effective for route following, as well as point out association between visual demand with sex, spatial abilities and experiences with maps factors. This work confirm previous research that the most of drivers prefer maps to navigation and route following in car, because they want know en-route where they are in relation to particular areas and landmarks. / Doutor

This diploma thesis describes the design of a translation stage for focusing objective inside the LIBS interaction chamber. It contains a description of the fundamentals and basic functions of LIBS spectroscopy. Moreover, in the thesis an overview of different translation stages as possible LIBS components is given. Their advantages and disadvantages for use in a vacuum translation stage construction are evaluated. The thesis describes the final solution of a linear translation stage for focusing objective, and his advantages for LIBS method

Robots are often used within the industry for automated tasks that are too dangerous, complex, or strenuous for humans, which leads to time and cost benefits. Robots can have an arm and a gripper to manipulate the world and sensors for eyes to be able to perceive the world. Human vision can be seen as an effortless task, but machine vision requires substantial computation in an attempt to be as effective as human vision. Visual object recognition is a common goal for machine vision, and it is often applied using deep learning and generic object detection. This thesis has a focus on robot guidance systems that include a robot with its gripper on the robot arm, a camera that acquires images of the world, boxes to detect in one or more layers, and the software that applies a generic object detection model to detect the boxes. Robot guidance systems’ performance is impacted by many variables such as different environmental, camera, object, and robot gripper aspects. A survey was constructed to receive feedback from professionals on what thresholds that can be defined for detection from the model to be counted as correct, with the aspect of the detection referring to an actual object that needs to be able to be picked up by a robot. This thesis has implemented precision, recall, average precision at a specific threshold, average precision at a range of thresholds, localization-recall-precision error, and a manually constructed counter based on survey results for the robot’s ability to pick up an object from the information provided by the detection, called pickability score. The metrics from this thesis are implemented within a tool intended for analyzing different models’ performance on varying datasets. The values of all the metrics for the applied dataset are presented in the results. The metrics are discussed with regards to what information they portray together with a robot guidance system. The conclusion is to see the metrics for what they are best at by themselves. Use the average precision metrics for the performance evaluation of the models, and the pickability scores with extended features for the robot gripper pickability evaluation.

Central venous catheterization (CVC) is performed frequently in clinical practices in Operation Rooms(OR) and Emergency Rooms(ER). CVC is performed for different reasons such as supply nutrition or medicine. For CVC ultrasound (US), diagnostic device is preferable among other medical imaging technologies. Central Venous Catheterization (CVC) under the 2D US guidance requires skills for catheter placement to avoid damaging non-targeted blood vessels. Therefore, there is a great need for improvements in the CVC field where mechanical complication has a risk of occurring during the procedure, for example misplacement of the needle. This master thesis project was performed at Kyushu University department of mechanical engineering and collaboration with Maidashi Kyushu University Hospital department of Advanced Medicine and Innovative Technology in Japan. This thesis is aimed to develop a new simple and cheap guidance system for CVC placement. The system performed on a Tablet PC and will be using already existing Ultrasound machines in Hospitals and Augmented Reality(AR). The project developed a simple AR-System for CVC placement with use of the ArUco library. The new developed system takes information from Ultrasound images and constructs a 3D-model of a vein and artery. Then the 3D-model is augmented on the patient through the tablet PC by using the ArUco library. The construction and augmentation is all performed on the tablet PC and has a small computation to complete the necessary procedures for the 3D-blood vessels. The AR-system has a simple control where the interface of the system is a simple push and action system. When a good visualization of the blood vessels and Doppler effect is shown on the ultrasound machine, the surgeon presses the screen and the image is saved. After about five images are acquired, the system builds the 3D-model and augments it on the patient using a marker. For the development of this system it implemented the waterfall method where each step was tested and checked, before moving to the next step. A full functional system was developed and tested. From the tests performed it is shown that there were limitations due to segmentation and depth perception. But the system has possibilities as an aid for CVC placement.

Software is the crux of many commercial, industrial and military systems. The software systems need to be very reliable especially in case of safety critical systems. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and manned aircraft are safety critical systems and hence failures related to software or software-hardware interaction leads to huge problems. The software systems need to be certified before they are deployed. Even after being certified several accidents and incidents have occurred and are occurring. The software errors can occur during any phase of software development. The reliability of the software is enhanced using the verification process. Runtime monitoring has various advantages over testing and model checking. Hence this thesis work explores runtime monitoring of UAV. The runtime monitoring shall verify the run of the current system state. The runtime monitoring shall monitor the health of the UAV and shall report to the operator about its status. The software faults and errors if not prevented shall lead to software failure. UAV lacks the situational awareness due to absence of pilot onboard. This motivated to use runtime monitor to enhance the situation awareness. The runtime monitor shall detect the software errors and avoid failures. This monitor shall also enhance the situational awareness of the remote operator. The runtime monitor that enhance situation awareness shall not only be applicable to specific UAV but this shall be applicable to all the UAV’s. Hence this work provides an independent Generic Runtime Monitor (GRM) to enhance the situation awareness. The runtime monitor has various methods but using formal specifications in specific using Linear Temporal Logic(LTL) to generate monitor is considered in this work. Runtime monitoring makes UAV more safe and at the same time reduces the costs as it verifies only the current run of the system state by providing a detection of critical errors. The situation awareness includes functional and environmental states that remote pilot shall not be aware of. The architecture plays vital role for the system design. GRM architecture is one such architecture which chalks out the overall independent system design for the runtime monitoring of the UAV system. This architecture is an extensible one. The generic requirements were elicited from different sources such as Aircraft Incidents and Accidents, Boeing Aero Magazine, Autonomous Rotorcraft Testbed for Intelligent Systems (ARTIS) requirements, generic Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems (ALFURS) framework etc. The situation awareness can be categorized into three levels namely perception, comprehension and projection. The requirements were elicited for all the three levels of situation awareness. These requirements further formalized using temporal logics. The formalized requirements further translated into state automaton automatically.

Denna rapport beskriver ett examensarbete för högskoleingenjörsexamen i elektroteknik vid Växjö Universitet. Syftet är att konstruera ett styrsystem till en robotbil, ett program som hindrar bilen från att krocka med omgivningen. Roboten ska även kunna styras från en dator via ett grafiskt gränssnitt implementerat i Labview. Nödvändig hårdvara för styrning och kommunikation har konstruerats. Det har behövts tre olika programmeringsspråk för att nå de krav som har ställts på uppgiften, C, Perl och Labview. Microprocessorn i robotbilen har programmerats i C och gör bilen helt autonom, endast beroende av signaler från avståndssensorer. Avlusningsprogrammet skrevs i Perl och styrningen från datorn har implementerats i Labview. Avlusningsprogrammet togs fram på grund av att det blev svårt att hålla koll på allt som skedde med värden och beräkningar i den automatiska styrningen av robotbilen. / This thesis describes a project for the bachelor degree in electrical engineering at Växjö University. The purpose with this project is to construct a guidance system for a robot car, a program that prevents the car from colliding with objects when moving without external control. The robot could also be controlled from the computer through a virtual instrument implemented in Labview. The necessary hardware for steering and communicating has been constructed. The software is implemented using three different programming languages, C, Perl and Labview.