Thesis (MScEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: RoboCup promotes research in robotics and multi-robot systems (MRS). The RoboCup Small Size League (SSL), in particular, offers an entry level opportunity to take part in this field of study. This thesis presents a starting phase for research in robotics and MRS at Stellenbosch University. It includes the full documentation of the mechanical, electronic and software design of an omni-directional soccer robot for RoboCup SSL. The robot is also meant to operate as a hardware and software development platform for research in MRS. The platform was therefore designed with high-level programming language compatibility, a wide range of connectivity, and modularity in mind. The robot uses a single board computer (SBC) running a Linux operating system to accomplish these objectives. Moreover, a driver class library was written in C++ as a software application interface (API) for future development on the robot platform. The robot was also developed with a particular focus on a distributed control architecture. "Player" was implemented as the middleware, which can be used for communication between multiple robots in a distributed environment. Additionally, three tests were performed to demonstrate the functionality of the prototype: a PI speed control test, a direction accuracy test and a static communication test using the middleware. Recommendations for possible future work are also given. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: RoboCup bevorder navorsing in robotika en multi-robot-stelsels (MRS). Die RoboCup Klein Liga (KL) bied in die besonder die geleentheid om op intreevlak navorsing te doen in hierdie veld. Hierdie tesis verteenwoordig die eerste fase van navorsing in robotika en MRS by Stellenbosch Universiteit. Dit sluit die volledige dokumentasie van die meganiese, elektroniese en sagteware-ontwerp van ’n omnidireksionele sokker-robot vir die KL in. Die robot is ook veronderstel om te dien as ’n hardeware- en sagteware-ontwikkelingsplatform vir navorsing in MRS. Die platform is dus ontwerp met ’n verskeidenheid van uitbreingsmoontlikhede en modulariteit in gedagte asook die moontlikheid om gebruik te maak van ’n hoë-vlak programmeertaal. Om hierdie doelwitte te bereik, maak die robot gebruik van ’n enkel-bord-rekenaar met ’n Linux bedryfstelsel. Verder was ’n sagteware drywer in C++ geskryf om te dien as ’n sagteware-koppelvlak vir toekomstige ontwikkeling op die robot platform. Die robot is ook ontwikkel met die besondere fokus op ’n gedesentraliseerde beheerstels. Player was geïmplementeer as die middelware, wat gebruik kan word vir kommunikasie tussen verskeie robotte in ’n gedesentralliseerde beheerstelsel. Daar is drie toetse uitgevoer om die funksionaliteit van die prototipe te demonstreer, ’n PI spoed beheer toets, ’n rigting akkuraatheidstoets en ’n statiese kommunikasie toets deur van die middelware gebruik te maak. Aanbevelings vir moontlike toekomstige werk word ook verskaf.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / This paper presents work being done at NASA/GSFC by the Operating Missions as Nodes on the Internet (OMNI) project to demonstrate the application of Internet communication technologies to space communication. The goal is to provide global addressability and standard network protocols and applications for future space missions. It describes the communication architecture and operations concepts that will be deployed and tested on a Space Shuttle flight in July 2002. This is a NASA Hitchhiker mission called Communication and Navigation Demonstration On Shuttle (CANDOS). The mission will be using a small programmable transceiver mounted in the Shuttle bay that can communicate through NASA’s ground tracking stations as well as NASA’s space relay satellite system. The transceiver includes a processor running the Linux operating system and a standard synchronous serial interface that supports the High-level Data Link Control (HDLC) framing protocol. One of the main goals will be to test the operation of the Mobile IP protocol (RFC 2002) for automatic routing of data as the Shuttle passes from one contact to another. Other protocols to be utilized onboard CANDOS include secure login (SSH), UDP-based reliable file transfer (MDP), and blind commanding using UDP. The paper describes how each of these standard protocols available in the Linux operating system can be used to support communication with a space vehicle. It will discuss how each protocol is suited to support the range of special communication needs of space missions.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Ongoing work at National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA/GSFC), seeks to apply standard Internet applications and protocols to meet the technology challenge of future satellite missions. Internet protocols and technologies are under study as a future means to provide seamless dynamic communication among heterogeneous instruments, spacecraft, ground stations, constellations of spacecraft, and science investigators. The primary objective is to design and demonstrate in the laboratory the automated end-to-end transport of files in a simulated dynamic space environment using off-the-shelf, low-cost, commodity-level standard applications and protocols. The demonstrated functions and capabilities will become increasingly significant in the years to come as both earth and space science missions fly more sensors and the present labor-intensive, mission-specific techniques for processing and routing data become prohibitively. This paper describes how an IP-based communication architecture can support all existing operations concepts and how it will enable some new and complex communication and science concepts. The authors identify specific end-to-end data flows from the instruments to the control centers and scientists, and then describe how each data flow can be supported using standard Internet protocols and applications. The scenarios include normal data downlink and command uplink as well as recovery scenarios for both onboard and ground failures. The scenarios are based on an Earth orbiting spacecraft with downlink data rates from 300 Kbps to 4 Mbps. Included examples are based on designs currently being investigated for potential use by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission.

Arabic text recognition was not researched as thoroughly as other natural languages. The need for automatic Arabic text recognition is clear. In addition to the traditional applications like postal address reading, check verification in banks, and office automation, there is a large interest in searching scanned documents that are available on the internet and for searching handwritten manuscripts. Other possible applications are building digital libraries, recognizing text on digitized maps, recognizing vehicle license plates, using it as first phase in text readers for visually impaired people and understanding filled forms. This research work aims to contribute to the current research in the field of optical character recognition (OCR) of printed Arabic text by developing novel techniques and schemes to advance the performance of the state of the art Arabic OCR systems. Statistical and analytical analysis for Arabic Text was carried out to estimate the probabilities of occurrences of Arabic character for use with Hidden Markov models (HMM) and other techniques. Since there is no publicly available dataset for printed Arabic text for recognition purposes it was decided to create one. In addition, a minimal Arabic script is proposed. The proposed script contains all basic shapes of Arabic letters. The script provides efficient representation for Arabic text in terms of effort and time. Based on the success of using HMM for speech and text recognition, the use of HMM for the automatic recognition of Arabic text was investigated. The HMM technique adapts to noise and font variations and does not require word or character segmentation of Arabic line images. In the feature extraction phase, experiments were conducted with a number of different features to investigate their suitability for HMM. Finally, a novel set of features, which resulted in high recognition rates for different fonts, was selected. The developed techniques do not need word or character segmentation before the classification phase as segmentation is a byproduct of recognition. This seems to be the most advantageous feature of using HMM for Arabic text as segmentation tends to produce errors which are usually propagated to the classification phase. Eight different Arabic fonts were used in the classification phase. The recognition rates were in the range from 98% to 99.9% depending on the used fonts. As far as we know, these are new results in their context. Moreover, the proposed technique could be used for other languages. A proof-of-concept experiment was conducted on English characters with a recognition rate of 98.9% using the same HMM setup. The same techniques where conducted on Bangla characters with a recognition rate above 95%. Moreover, the recognition of printed Arabic text with multi-fonts was also conducted using the same technique. Fonts were categorized into different groups. New high recognition results were achieved. To enhance the recognition rate further, a post-processing module was developed to correct the OCR output through character level post-processing and word level post-processing. The use of this module increased the accuracy of the recognition rate by more than 1%.

According to American philosopher W. W. Bartley, the transition from tradi- tional Aristotelian to Boolean logic is a revolutionary milestone in the history of logic. The work of George Boole which was followed by a developement of a mathematicaly oriented logic brings a shift of paradigm. In my thesis I follow the period in which the shift is said to have happened. I explicate the elements of syllogistic and its main conceptions as expounded in a textbook The Rudiments of Logic written by Henry Aldrich. Furthermore I demon- strate logical systems of three authors: Archbishop Richard Whately, George Boole and Lewis Carroll. I accent the connection of those systems and the practical aspect of logic. With this in mind I consider Bartley's statement and estimate the role of the rules in the systems and its possible use in three domains circumscribed in Aldriches book: simple apprehension, judgement and discourse. 1

Bakgrund E-handeln utgör idag en allt större del av den totala detaljhandeln och kunder ställer högre krav på en sömlös shoppingupplevelse. Detta kräver en viss integration mellan försäljningskanaler vilket kan mätas i begreppen multi-, cross- och omni-kanal. Syfte Syftet med studien är att undersöka integrationen mellan försäljningskanaler inom svenska klädföretag samt lokalisera de mest problematiska områdena inom integrationsarbete. Vidare är syftet att undersöka hur kommunikation, ledarskap och målsättning påverkar integrationsarbete. Metod Detta är en kvalitativ studie där det deduktiva angreppssättet använts, med inslag av det induktiva angreppssättet, där tidigare forskning legat till grund för utformandet av studien. Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem fallföretag och där studiens KAI-modell legat till grund för intervjuguiden. Slutsats Tack vare studien kan vi konstatera att uppfattningen av begreppet integration på den svenska klädmarknaden är splittrad. Många företag har ett starkt kundfokus vilket leder till att interna lösningar åsidosätts vid ett integrationsarbete, vilket leder till meningsskiljaktigheter mellan försäljningskanalerna. Vidare kan vi se att kommunikation har en stark påverkan på integrationsarbete vilket även ledarskap och målsättning har, dock inte i samma utsträckning. / Introduction E-commerce is expanding within the retail industry and the customer’s demand for a seamless shopping experience is constantly increasing. This requires an integration of channels which can be measured by the terms multichannel, crosschannel and omnichannel. Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the integration between channels within Swedish clothing companies and to identify problematic areas within integration. Furthermore, the purpose is to investigate in how integration is dependent on communication, leadership and goalsetting. Method This qualitative study has a deductive approach but with elements of an inductive approach and was founded upon previous research. The study includes five business cases which has participated in a total of eight semi structured interviews and the study’s KAI-model has been used as a framework for the interviews. Conclusion The result of the study shows that there is a defuse definition of the term integration among Swedish clothing companies. The majority of companies within the study has a strong customer focus which has led to a lack of focus on internal processes which creates indifferences among the channels. The study also shows that communication has a strong impact on integration. Leadership and goalsetting also effects the work of integration but not in the same extent as communication.

The objective of this master's thesis is to analyse trends in distribution in the German market and evaluate their importance in the retail environment. The first chapter of the thesis deals with the issue of distribution from a theoretical perspective. Analysis of the German economy and retail environment serves as a basis for further elaboration of the thesis. In the German market is growing the importance of the e-commerce and there is a tendency of integration of distribution channels. The current situation and trends in distribution channels as well as the trends of the future are outlined on the basis of secondary data. The analysis is completed by qualitative research, which determines the potential use of current trends.

Physical haptic interaction is added to the modern manipulation with objects in virtual space. In content of this master's thesis the haptic technology is represented by SensAble Phantom Omni device and OpenHaptics toolkit, which is related to the device. Reader is initially introduced into mathematical basics of manipulation and into haptic technology history including current state. The introduction into Openhaptics toolkit follows as well as HDAPI and HLAPI libraries description. As a result of this theoretical basics demo aplications have been created, that show basic and advanced abilities of the Phantom Omni device. Demos represent the functionality of the device as examples integrating well-known elementary physical laws and events.

Retail apocalypse has been discussed as a result of the increasing online consumption due to a digitalized society. Many researchers claim that the future of consumption will solely take place digitally, that the physical store won't have an actual function and will eventually get replaced by new appealing meeting places online. Why do companies choose to keep and newly establish physical stores in a digitalized society? Which synergies between online channels and physical stores do companies choose to use in order to create a favorable interface? By implementing qualitative semi structured interviews with five different companies, the answer to the above mentioned questions is therefore that companies that sell high engagement products tend to have a higher need of physical stores despite digitalization. Such companies consider that physical stores and online channels are complements to each other, thus one needs the other in order to perform as well as desired. Another aspect that is more achievable in physical stores compared to online channels is the cross sales aspect. Additionally, companies tend to use transparency and digitalized transitions between their different sales channels in order to achieve the highest desired results.  Therefore, the aim of this study is to add a new knowledge aspect to the already existing research in this field. That is, through shedding the light on the remaining need of physical stores for companies that sell high engagement products. Hence, this study could be summed up with the simple fact that retail apocalypse is not the ultimate truth in all situations. / Butiksdöden har länge diskuterats till följd av den ökande e-handeln som har framkommit i samband med det digitaliserade samhället. Många forskare menar att framtidens handel enbart kommer äga rum digitalt, att den fysiska butiken inte fyller någon funktion och kommer så småningom att ersättas med nya tilltalande mötesplatser online. Varför väljer då företag att bibehålla och nyetablera fysiska butiker i ett digitaliserat samhälle och vilka synergier mellan onlinekanaler och fysiska butiker använder sig företag av för att skapa ett gynnsamt samspel? Genom kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer med fem olika företag kan ovannämnda frågor besvaras genom att konstatera att företag som säljer högengagemangsprodukter anser att behovet av den fysiska butiken kvarstår trots digitaliseringen. Detta då sådana företag anser att den fysiska- och den digitala verksamheten agerar komplement och därmed presterar den ena inte lika bra utan den andra. Mer försäljningen är ännu en aspekt som sker i den fysiska butiken som inte går att uppnå till samma grad genom e-handeln. Företag tillämpar även en transparens samt digitala övergångar mellan diverse försäljningskanaler för att skapa ett så gynnsamt samspel som möjligt. Syftet med denna studie är således att tillföra en kompletterande kunskapsvinkel till den redan befintliga forskningen inom området. Detta genom att belysa att företag med olika engagemangsprodukter har olika behov av en fysisk verksamhet. Därmed summeras denna studie med att butiksdöden inte är den förutsedda sanningen alla gånger.

With the increasingly prevalent use of robots, this paper presents the design and evaluation of a multifunctional Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) with an adjustable suspension system, overmolding omni-wheels, and a unique tool head pick-up mechanism. The UGV addresses current adaptability, performance, and versatility limitations across various industries, including agriculture, construction, and surveillance. The adjustable suspension system enhances the UGV's stability and adaptability on diverse terrains, and the overmolding omni-wheels improve maneuverability and durability in off-road conditions. The tool head pick-up mechanism allows for the seamless integration of various tools, enabling the UGV to perform multiple tasks without manual intervention. A comprehensive performance evaluation assessed the UGVs' versatility, load capacity, passability, and adaptability. The results indicate that the proposed UGV design successfully addresses current limitations and has the potential to revolutionize various applications in different industries. Further research and development are necessary to optimize the UGV's performance, safety, and cost-effectiveness. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)