Integrating animism and anthropomorphism into technology and our interactions with said technology allows for the design of better affordances, easier comprehension, and more intricate interactions between humans and technological artefacts. This study seeks to understand the circumstances and contexts under which humans tend to form emotional bonds with nonhuman entities and ascribe life-like or human-like qualities to them, through qualitative research. It also seeks to investigate whether animism and anthropomorphism apply to abstract entities such as a space, through ‘constructive design-based research’ and ‘thing-centered design’ methodologies. The investigations yield several insights in general, that are useful to designers attempting to incorporate animism and anthropomorphism into their work. The prototyping led to the creation of a prototype space that can serve as the foundation for future research. / Integrering av animism och antropomorfism i teknik och vår interaktion med nämnda teknik möjliggör design av bättre överkomliga priser, lättare förståelse och mer invecklade interaktioner mellan människor och tekniska artefakter. Denna studie syftar till att förstå de omständigheter och sammanhang under vilka människor tenderar att bilda känslomässiga band med icke-mänskliga enheter och tillskriva dem livsliknande eller mänskliga egenskaper genom kvalitativ forskning. Det försöker också undersöka om animism och antropomorfism gäller abstrakta enheter som ett utrymme, genom ‘constructive design-based research’ och ‘thing-centered design’ metoder. Undersökningarna ger i allmänhet flera insikter som är användbara för designers som försöker integrera animism och antropomorfism i sitt arbete. Prototyperingen ledde till skapandet av ett prototyputrymme som kan tjäna som grund för framtida forskning.

Deep learning and Computer vision are becoming a part of everyday objects and machines. Involvement of artificial intelligence in human’s daily life open doors to new opportunities and research. This involvement provides the idea of improving upon the in-hand research of spatial relations and coming up with a more generic and robust algorithm that provides us with 2-D and 3-D spatial relations and uses RGB and RGB-D images which can help us with few complex relations such as ‘on’ or ‘in’ as well. Suggested methods are tested on the dataset with animated and real objects, where the number of objects varies in every image from at least 4 to at most 10 objects. The size and orientation of objects are also different in every image.

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This thesis examines the topic of determining spatial relations between crane tracks and the processing of measured data. Before the measurements were made, the precision of the measuring equipment being used was determined in order to increase the accuracy of the results in ascertaining spatial relations. The cyclic error, additive constant, and difference between the reflecting target and prism were all determined in measuring distances. In the context of this thesis we observed the spatial parameters of crane tracks in the hall of Mostarna, which is a part of the business KRALOVOPOLSKA a.s..

Ces dernières années, la quantité de données visuelles produites par divers types de capteurs est en augmentation permanente. L'interprétation et l'indexation automatique de telles données constituent des défis importants pour les domaines liés à la reconnaissance de formes et la vision par ordinateur. Dans ce contexte, la position relative des différents objets d'intérêt composant les images représente une information particulièrement importante pour interpréter leur contenu. Les relations spatiales sont en effet porteuses d'une sémantique riche, qui est fortement liée à la perception humaine. Les travaux de recherche présentés dans cette thèse proposent ainsi d'explorer différentes approches génériques de description de l'information spatiale, en vue de les intégrer dans des systèmes de reconnaissance et d'interprétation d'images de haut niveau. Tout d'abord, nous présentons une approche pour la description de configurations spatiales complexes, où les objets peuvent être imbriqués les uns dans les autres. Cette notion est formalisée par deux nouvelles relations spatiales, nommées enlacement et entrelacement. Nous proposons un modèle qui permet de décrire et de visualiser ces configurations avec une granularité directionnelle. Ce modèle est validé expérimentalement pour des applications en imagerie biomédicale, en télédétection et en analyse d'images de documents. Ensuite, nous présentons un cadre d'apprentissage de relations spatiales composites à partir d'ensembles d'images. Inspirée des approches par sacs de caractéristiques visuelles, cette stratégie permet de construire des vocabulaires de configurations spatiales apparaissant dans les images, à différentes échelles. Ces caractéristiques structurelles peuvent notamment être combinées avec des descriptions locales, conduisant ainsi à des représentations hybrides et complémentaires. Les résultats expérimentaux obtenus sur différentes bases d'images structurées permettent d'illustrer l'intérêt de cette approche pour la reconnaissance et la classification d'images. / In recent years, the amount of visual data produced by various types of sensors has been continuously increasing. The automatic interpretation and indexation of such data constitute an important challenge in the fields of pattern recognition and computer vision. In this context, the relative position of the different objects of interest depicted in images represents particularly important information for the interpretation of their content. Spatial relations indeed carry rich semantics that are strongly tied with human perception. The research work presented in this thesis thus proposes to explore different generic approaches to the description of spatial information, in order to integrate them in high-level image recognition and understanding systems. First, we present an approach for the description of complex spatial configurations, where objects can be imbricated in each other. This notion is formalized by two novel spatial relations, namely enlacement and interlacement. We propose a model to describe and to visualize these configurations with directional granularity. This model is experimentally validated for applications in biomedical imaging, remote sensing and document image analysis. Then, we present a framework for learning composite spatial relations from image datasets. Inspired by bags of visual features approaches, this strategy allows to build vocabularies of spatial configurations occurring across images, at different scales. These structural features can notably be combined with local descriptions, leading to hybrid and complementary representations. Experimental results obtained for different datasets of structured images highlight the interest of this approach for image recognition and classification tasks.

Agricultural sustainability is critical global agenda, integrating environmental stewardship and social equity, with scale production and gender dynamics significantly influencing the social-ecological-spatial relations on farms. Nevertheless, the relationships between scale production and gender dynamics of farms are missing in existing literature. Through the lens of Feminist Political Ecology and care ethics, and with an emphasis on scale, this thesis focuses on forces across scales that can influence the socio-ecological transformations of different farms and women farmers’ embodied experiences within and beyond farms. Through life-course interviews with women farmers and document analysis of agricultural policies at local, regional, and national levels, this thesis investigates small-scale and large- scale farm cases in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region of China. This thesis indicates that social relations are deeply intertwined with environmental processes, where the scale of farms is produced and manipulated by governance power, metabolism between places, and individuals’ trajectories. While facing challenges of labor exploitation, women farmers embrace care ethics to contribute to human-nature and interpersonal connections, shaping the sustainable development of farms. Women farmers’ care practices reflect how they navigate the constructed patriarchal hierarchy in agricultural activities, involving the tensions between empowerment and subordination. The research suggests that integrating care ethics with the politics of scale can provide a comprehensive understanding of gender dynamics in agricultural socio-ecological transitions.

Avec l'importante disponibilité de données topographiques de référence, la création des données géographiques n'est plus réservée aux professionnels de l'information géographique. De plus en plus d'utilisateurs saisissent leurs propres données, que nous appelons données thématiques, en s'appuyant sur ces données de référence qui jouent alors le rôle de données support. Les données thématiques ainsi saisies font sens en tant que telles, mais surtout de par leurs relations avec les données topographiques. La non prise en compte des relations entre données thématiques et topographiques lors de traitements modifiant les unes ou les autres peut engendrer des incohérences, notamment pour les traitements liés au changement de niveau de détail. L'objectif de la thèse est de définir une méthodologie pour préserver la cohérence entre les données thématiques et topographiques lors d'un changement de niveau de détail. Nous nous concentrons sur l'adaptation des données thématiques suite à une modification des données topographiques, processus que nous appelons migration des données thématiques. Nous proposons d'abord un modèle pour la migration de données thématiques ponctuelles sur réseau composé de : (1) un modèle pour décrire le référencement des données thématiques sur les données topographiques par des relations spatiales (2) une méthode de relocalisation basée sur ces relations. L'approche consiste à identifier les relations finales attendues en fonction des relations initiales et des changements sur les données topographiques entre les états initial et final. La relocalisation est alors effectuée grâce à une méthode multicritère de manière à respecter au mieux les relations attendues. Une mise en œuvre est présentée sur des cas d'étude jouets et sur un cas réel fourni par un service de l'Etat gestionnaire de réseau routier. Nous discutons enfin l'extension du modèle proposé pour traiter la prise en compte des relations pour d'autres applications que la migration de données thématiques / With the large availability of reference topographic data, creating geographic data is not exclusive to experts of geographic information any more. More and more users rely on reference data to create their own data, hereafter called thematic data. Reference data then play the role of support for thematic data. Thematic data make sense by themselves, but even more by their relations with topographic data. Not taking into account the relations between thematic and topographic data during processes that modify the former or the latter may cause inconsistencies, especially for processes that are related to changing the level of detail. The objective of this thesis is to define a methodology to preserve the consistency between thematic and topographic when the level of detail is modified. This thesis focuses on the adaptation of thematic data after a modification of topographic data: we call this process thematic data migration. We first propose a model for the migration of punctual thematic data hosted by a network. This model is composed of: (1) a model to describe the referencing of thematic data on topographic data using spatial relations (2) a method to re-locate thematic data based on these relations. The approach consists in identifying the expected final relations according to the initial relations and the modifications of topographic data between the initial and the final state. The thematic data are then re-located using a multi-criteria method in order to satisfy, as much as possible, the expected relations. An implementation is presented on toy problems and on a real use case provided by a French public authority in charge of road network management. The extension of the proposed model to take into account the relations for other applications than thematic data migration is also discussed

The purpose of this study was to confirm the original factor structure of the Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning (WRAML) utilizing a non-clinical adolescent population. Additional analysis examined the relationship between SAT-M scores and spatial relations ability. Exploratory analyses were conducted to determine ethnic and gender differences on the WRAML and subtests from the DAT. Sixty-four academically talented adolescents completed the WRAML and the mechanical reasoning and spatial relations subtests from the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT). The confirmatory factor analysis found the data obtained to not be a good fit for the factor structure of the WRAML (Sheslow & Adams, 1990). Additional confirmatory analyses were conducted which examined data fit of a three factor model found by reanalyzing the standardization data (Burton et al., 1996; Wasserman & Cambias, 1991) as well as two null models. The data failed to fit any of these three models. No support was found for the second hypothesis that predicted a positive relationship between SAT-M scores and spatial relations ability. Ethnic and gender differences on the WRAML and two DAT subtests were examined and discussed. Limitations of this study were reviewed which may have accounted for the overall lack of results.

Le modèle computo-fonctionnel de la vision de haut niveau de Kosslyn et Koenig (1992) repose sur la dissociation entre la reconnaissance et le traitement spatial de la scène visuelle. En 1987, Kosslyn postula l’existence de deux processus pour le traitement des relations spatiales : un processus catégoriel qui calcule les positions relatives des objets et un processus coordonné qui calcule la distance entre les objets. Des études utilisant le paradigme de présentation en champ visuel divisé ont mis en évidence que l’hémisphère gauche sous-tendrait un traitement catégoriel ; l’hémisphère droit sous-tendrait un traitement coordonné. Cette interaction semblerait valider la dichotomie des deux types de processus.Une revue de la littérature pluridisciplinaire a été menée afin de savoir si ce fait est suffisant pour rejeter l’hypothèse d’un processus unique pour les traitements catégoriels et coordonnés. Entre autres, plusieurs études ont observé un effet de pratique au cours de la réalisation de jugements coordonnés : une diminution de l’intervention de l’hémisphère droit au profit d’une prise en charge progressive de l’hémisphère gauche. De plus, l’avantage de l’hémisphère gauche pour le traitement catégoriel a été rarement observé.Une série de cinq expériences comportementales ont été conduites pour vérifier certains biais expérimentaux qui pourraient expliquer les différences hémisphériques et l’effet de pratique observés. Nos résultats nous ont permis d’avancer des hypothèses axées sur la communication entre les hémisphères et sur un lien entre les processus catégoriels et coordonnés. Une critique du paradigme de présentation en champ visuel divisé et différents modèles d’interaction hémisphérique ont été présentés. Trois expériences ont été menées, afin d’évaluer l’impact des communications hémisphériques dans le traitement des relations spatiales. A la lumière de nos résultats, la dichotomie des processus catégoriels et coordonnés a été discutée. / The computational-functional conception of high-level processing of vision in Kosslyn and Koenig (1992) relies on dissociation between object recognition and spatial processing. In 1987, Kosslyn postulated that two different processes compute spatial-relations: categorical process computes relative position of objects and coordinate process computes the distance between objects. Some studies indicate a left-hemisphere advantage for processing categorical spatial relations and a right-hemisphere advantage for processing coordinate spatial relations. This hemispheric difference is interpreted as an evidence of a dichotomy between these two processes. A pluridisciplinary review was conducted to assure that single process hypothesis is dismissed out. Some studies showed, in a coordinate task, that practice resulted in a decreased right-hemisphere involvement and a concurrent increase in left-hemisphere involvement (i.e., practice effect). Furthermore, the left-hemisphere advantage in categorical was seldom observed. The theoretical aim of the thesis was based on two questions: (1) Are there single or several processes encoding visual spatial relations? (2) How can we interpret this practice effect ?Five experiments were run to verify possible bias which might explain observed hemispheric differences and practice effect. Our results suggested that hemispheric communication might be an important factor in spatial-relation processing.An theoretical investigation of divided visual field paradigm was led and several interhemispheric models were described. Three experiments were conducted to estimate hemispheric communication in spatial-relation process. In the light of our results, separate categorical-coordinate processes hypothesis were discussed.

Set within discussions of gender, migration and social practices, this thesis explores the ways in which Thai women migrants to Sweden build connections between rural areas through their daily activities. Arriving in Sweden primarily through marriage ties, Thai women migrants are more likely to live in Swedish rural areas than in urban areas. Rural areas are typically not seen as a site of globalization or as receivers of international migrants. In contrast to these perceptions, the case of Thai women migrants in the Swedish countryside reveals a complex and vigorous set of social practices that connect rural Sweden across spatial and temporal scales. The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which Thai migrant women construct and implement social practices spatially and temporally. Drawing on the life stories of 16 Thai women living in Sweden, along with other sources of empirical data analysed within feminist epistemologies, this thesis discusses: In what ways does gender shape migrant social practices? How are social practices constructed within individual migrant micro-geographies? By what means are migrant social practices contextualized by spaces and places? Thai women migrants are gendered agents of these social practices and are utilizing specific resources, objects and networks to bridge the distances found in their daily lives. The empirical material examined in this thesis points to the importance of women’s everyday social practices in connecting and linking rural areas globally at different spatial and temporal scales. The results highlight the importance of a translocalism perspective to understanding gendered social practices. This study adds to the translocal discussion by demonstrating that social practices are embedded in multiple geographic sites and scales. Thai women migrants, in this study, emerge as significant actors in global countrysides and do the functional work of bringing spaces and places together daily and through their life course. This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and five papers. The introductory chapter outlines the context and theoretical approaches to understanding Thai migration flows to Sweden. The papers share an emphasis on local sites: homes, workplaces and community. They examine different ways that women construct and build social practices – for example, through food, community projects and in developing their businesses. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Submitted. Paper 5: Submitted.</p>