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<div>The recent progress of machine learning, driven by pervasive data and increasing computational power, has shown its potential to achieve higher robot autonomy. Yet, with too much focus on generic models and data-driven paradigms while ignoring inherent structures of control systems and tasks, existing machine learning methods typically suffer from data and computation inefficiency, hindering their public deployment onto general real-world robots. In this thesis work, we claim that the efficiency of autonomous robot learning can be boosted by two strategies. One is to incorporate the structures of optimal control theory into control-objective learning, and this leads to a series of control-induced learning methods that enjoy the complementary benefits of machine learning for higher algorithm autonomy and control theory for higher algorithm efficiency. The other is to integrate necessary human guidance into task and control objective learning, leading to a series of paradigms for robot learning with minimal human guidance on the loop.</div><div><br></div><div>The first part of this thesis focuses on the control-induced learning, where we have made two contributions. One is a set of new methods for inverse optimal control, which address three existing challenges in control objective learning: learning from minimal data, learning time-varying objective functions, and learning under distributed settings. The second is a Pontryagin Differentiable Programming methodology, which bridges the concepts of optimal control theory, deep learning, and backpropagation, and provides a unified end-to-end learning framework to solve a broad range of learning and control tasks, including inverse reinforcement learning, neural ODEs, system identification, model-based reinforcement learning, and motion planning, with data- and computation- efficient performance.</div><div><br></div><div>The second part of this thesis focuses on the paradigms for robot learning with necessary human guidance on the loop. We have made two contributions. The first is an approach of learning from sparse demonstrations, which allows a robot to learn its control objective function only from human-specified sparse waypoints given in the observation (task) space; and the second is an approach of learning from</div><div>human’s directional corrections, which enables a robot to incrementally learn its control objective, with guaranteed learning convergence, from human’s directional correction feedback while it is acting.</div><div><br></div>

Bientôt, les robots ne travailleront plus de manière isolée mais avec nous. Ils entrent peu à peu dans notre vie de tous les jours pour coopérer, assister, aider, servir, apprendre, enseigner ou même jouer avec l'homme. Dans ce contexte, nous considérons que ce ne doit pas être à l'homme de s'adapter au robot. Au contraire, le robot doit être capable d'intégrer, dans ses stratégies de planification et de décision, différents facteurs d'effort et de confort et de prendre en compte les préférences et désirs de l'homme ainsi que les normes sociales de son environnement. Tout en respectant les principes de sécurité réglementaire, le robot doit se comporter, naviguer, manipuler, communiquer et apprendre d'une manière qui soit pertinente, acceptée et compréhensible par l'homme. Cette thèse explore et définit les ingrédients clés nécessaires au robot pour développer une telle intelligence socio-cognitive. Elle définit également un cadre pour l'interaction homme-robot permettant de s'attaquer à ces challenges dans le but de rendre le robot socialement intelligent / Robots will no longer be working isolated from us. They are entering into our day-to-day life to cooperate, assist, help, serve, learn, teach and play with us. In this context, it is important that because of the presence of robots, the human should not be on compromising side. To achieve this, beyond the basic safety requirements, robots should take into account various factors ranging from human’s effort, comfort, preferences, desire, to social norms, in their various planning and decision making strategies. They should behave, navigate, manipulate, interact and learn in a way, which is expected, accepted, and understandable by us, the human. This thesis begins by exploring and identifying the basic yet key ingredients of such socio-cognitive intelligence. Then we develop generic frameworks and concepts from HRI perspective to address these additional challenges, and to elevate the robots capabilities towards being socially intelligent

Forskning om entreprenörskap fokuserar på framgång som ignorerar den höga felfrekvensen av Nya företag. Många nya företag misslyckas så hur entreprenörer hantera det när deras företag misslyckas? Framgångsrika entreprenörer prisar fördelarna med misslyckande som en värdefull lärare. Resultatet av misslyckande regelbundet fylld med ekonomiska, sociala, psykologiska och fysiska hälsoproblem. Syftet med denna forskning är att bedöma företagets misslyckande upplevelser för företagare, från det ögonblick resultatet genom att  återhämtningen för att hantera företagande fel och avsluta för påverkan av den slutna företag.  I denna forskning aspekter av livet som påverka av entreprenörs fel undersöka ekonomiskt, socialt och psykologiskt att belysa faktorer som kan påverka mängden av kostnaderna för ett misslyckande. Därefter beskriver forskningen hur entreprenörer lära av misslyckanden. Den presenterar på resultaten av företagets misslyckande, inklusive hantera fel och återhämtning tillsammans med kognitiva och beteendemässiga utfall. / Research on entrepreneurship focuses on success which ignores the high failure rate of new ventures. Many new ventures fail so how entrepreneurs deal with it when their venture    fails? Successful entrepreneurs praising the advantages of failure as a valuable teacher. The result of failure is regularly filled with economic, social, psychological, and physical health disorder. The aim of this research is to assessment venture failure experiences for entrepreneurs, from the instant result through to recovery for coping with entrepreneurial failure and exit for impact of the closed venture. In this research, aspects of life affected by entrepreneurial failure examine economically, socially and psychologically in highlighting factors that may influence the amount of costs of failure. Next, the research describes how entrepreneurs learn from failure. It presents on the outcomes of venture failure, including coping with failure and recovery together with cognitive and behavioral outcomes. The main objective of the research study is to understand the failure from entrepreneurs    who have experienced it and also to make a theoretical framework of failure based on entrepreneurial venture failure experiences. Every entrepreneur starts up a venture with high expectations of achieving success. Failure can be emotionally disturbing, devastating,  painful, distressing and costly for the entrepreneur who may have to aspect the stigma of failure and the loss of reputation. The entrepreneur can get involved in grief, heartache, anxiety, depression, shame, rejection and discouragement (Politis &amp; Gabrielsson, 2009). The purpose of the research is to investigate how entrepreneurs realize and react to venture  failure. Moreover, entrepreneurs are looking for positive aspects of failure as enhancing experiences that help their coping with entrepreneurial failure, learning from failure, the willingness to begin a new venture and also trigger changes in upcoming decision-making. The purpose of the research is to take a view of the existed experience of failure, taking into consideration impact from the entrepreneurship.

Many healthcare organisations face repetitive incidents because organisations tend to fail to learn from the past. Learning from incidents (LFI) in healthcare is a process through which healthcare professionals and the organisation as a whole seek to understand adverse events that have taken place. The LFI process consists of five main steps: data acquisition, investigation and analysis, planning interventions, implementing interventions, and evaluations. In order to reduce the reoccurrence of incidents, it is important that LFI processes are improved. As a prerequisite, it is necessary to gain insight into the steps of the LFI process to identify hindrances (bottlenecks) and mitigate them. This thesis is a broad comparative study of the LFI processes in Dutch and Swedish healthcare systems. Cross-border comparisons between LFI systems can support mutual learning, and consequently lead to improvements of healthcare organisations’ learning processes. The study consists of an analysis of Swedish and Dutch legislation, national healthcare inspectorates, and hospitals’ learning from incidents processes. Legislation was analysed through a (legal) documentation study. Healthcare inspectorates’ practices in LFI were analysed by a combination of documentation studies, and by conducting interviews with one Dutch inspector, one Swedish inspector, and one Swedish development strategist. For analysis of hospitals’ LFI processes, a questionnaire and interview study with fourteen Dutch and eleven Swedish hospitals were conducted. Analysis of these processes was done at the hand of a number of quality statements developed based on a literature study. The main differences between how the two countries’ learn from incidents are in data acquisition, and investigation and analysis. The Netherlands have various reporting systems, as well as diversity in incident investigation methods. Sweden has more uniformity in these matters. Moreover, Sweden has a national system for sharing lessons learned between hospitals, which can benefit the learning process on a national level. The Netherlands currently does not have such a system. Sweden and the Netherlands have similar strengths and weaknesses in LFI. Both countries have accessible data acquisition systems, and it does not take much time to report incidents. There are however significant disparities between incidents and sentinel events in both countries in the quality of investigations and analyses, planning of interventions and implementation of interventions. The implementation and evaluation phases are also regarded to have the lowest quality, based on analysis of the quality statements. Dutch and Swedish legislation and the supervision of the healthcare inspectorates only cover these last two phases to a limited extent. Requirements with respect to incidents are also only formulated to a limited extent (except data acquisition), which may explain the significant difference of quality when compared to sentinel events. There are resemblances between the scopes of the legal frameworks and inspectorates, and the LFI processes in hospitals. There is therefore reason to believe that hospitals typically do not excel above what is required by legislation or by the healthcare inspectorates. / I många vårdorganisationer upprepar sig incidenter eftersom organisationer tenderar att misslyckas med att lära sig från incidenter. Att lära från incidenter (LFI) inom hälso- och sjukvården är en process genom vilket vårdpersonal och organisationen som helhet försöker förstå incidenter som har ägt rum. LFI-processen består av fem huvudsteg: datainsamling, utredning och analys, planering av åtgärder, implementering av åtgärder, och utvärderingar. För att minska upprepande av incidenter är det viktigt att LFIprocesser förbättras. Det här examensarbetet är en jämförande studie av LFI-processerna i holländska och svenska sjukvårdssystem. Gränsöverskridande jämförelser mellan LFI-system kan stödja ömsesidigt lärande och därmed leda till förbättringar av vårdorganisationernas lärande. Studien består av en analys av svensk och holländsk lagstiftning, nationella inspektioner och sjukhusens lärande från incidensprocesser. Lagstiftningen analyserades genom en (juridisk) dokumentationsstudie. Sjukvårdsinspektionernas praxis i LFI analyserades med en kombination av dokumentationsstudier och genom att göra intervjuer med en holländsk inspektör, en svensk inspektör och en svensk utvecklingsstrateg. För analys av sjukhusens LFI-processer genomfördes en enkätstudie och intervjustudie med 14 holländska och 11 svenska sjukhus. Analysen genomfördes med ett kvalitetsindikatorer som är baserade på en litteraturstudie. De viktigaste skillnaderna mellan hur de två länderna lär sig av incidenter är inom datainsamling och incidentutredning. I Nederländerna används många olika rapporteringssystem och utredningsmetoder för händelser. Sverige har mer enhetlighet i dessa frågor. Dessutom har Sverige ett nationellt system för att dela lärdomar mellan sjukhusen, vilket kan gynna lärningsprocessen på nationell nivå. Nederländerna har för närvarande inget liknande system. Sverige och Nederländerna har liknande styrkor och svagheter i LFI. Båda länderna har tillgängliga datainsamlingssystem och det tar inte mycket tid att rapportera incidenter. Det finns betydliga skillnader mellan incidenter och händelser som har medfört allvarliga vårdskador i båda länderna. Detta gäller kvaliteten på utredningar, planering av åtgärder och implementering av årgärder. Implementerings- och utvärderingsfaserna anses ha lägsta kvalitet, baserat på analys av kvalitetsindikatorerna. Holländsk och svensk lagstiftning och tillsynen av inspektionerna täcker dessa två sista faser endast i begränsad utsträckning. Krav på incidenter formuleras också endast i begränsad omfattning (förutom datainsamling), vilket kan förklara skillnaden i kvalitet jämfört med händelser som har medfört en allvarlig vårdskada. Det finns likheter mellan räckvidden av lagstiftningen och inspektionen, och LFIprocesserna på sjukhus i både länder. Det finns därför anledning att tro att sjukhus vanligtvis inte utmärker sig högre än vad som krävs enligt lagstiftningen eller av hälsooch sjukvårdsinspektionerna.

Heutige Roboter sind nur begrenzt in der Lage etwas zu erlernen, sich unerwarteten Umständen anzupassen oder auf diese zu reagieren. Als Antwort auf diese Fragen, develomental robotics setzt sich den Aufbau eines künstlichen Systems zum Ziel, das motorische und kognitive Fähigkeiten analog zur menschlichen Entwicklung durch Interaktion mit der Umgebung entwickeln kann. In dieser Arbeit wird ein ähnlich Ansatz verwendet, mit Hilfe dessen grundlegende Verhaltenskomponenten identifiziert werden sollen, die eine autonome Aneignung motorischer und kognitive Fähigkeiten durch die Roboter ermöglichen könnten. Diese Arbeit untersucht die sensomotorische Interaktion als Mittel zur Schaffung von Erfahrungen. Es werden Experimente zu explorative Verhaltensweisen zur Aneigung von Arbewegungen, der Werkzeugnutzung und von interaktiven Fähigkeiten vorgestellt. In diesem Rahmen wird auch die Entwicklung sozialer Fähigkeiten, insbesondere durch joint attention, behandelt. Dabei werden zwei Vorraussetzugen zu joint attention untersucht: Zeigegesten und Erkennung von visueller Salienz. Dabei wurde das Framework der interen Modelle für die Darstellung von sensomotorischen Erfahrungen angewendet. Insbesondere wurden inverse und Vorwärtsmodelle mit unterschiedlichen Konfigurationen am sensorischen und motorischen Daten, die vom Roboter durch exploratives Verhalten, durch Beobachtung menschliche Vorführern, oder durch kinästhetisches Lehren erzeugt wurden geschult. Die Entscheidung zu Gunsten dieses Framework wurde getroffen, da es in der Lage ist, sensomotorische Zyklen zu simulieren. Diese Arbeit untersucht, wie grundlegende kognitive Fähigkeiten in einen humanoiden Roboter unter Berücksichtigung sensorischer und motorischer Erfahrungen implementiert werden können. Insbesondere wurden interne Simulationsprozesse für die Implementierung von Kognitivenfahigkeiten wie die Aktionsauswahl, die Werkzeugnutzung, die Verhaltenserkennung und die Self-Other distinction, eingesetzt. / State-of-the-art robots are still not properly able to learn from, adapt to, react to unexpected circumstances, and to autonomously and safely operate in uncertain environments. Researchers in developmental robotics address these issues by building artificial systems capable of acquiring motor and cognitive capabilities by interacting with their environment, inspired by human development. This thesis adopts a similar approach in finding some of those basic behavioural components that may allow for the autonomous development of sensorimotor and social skills in robots. Here, sensorimotor interactions are investigated as a mean for the acquisition of experience. Experiments on exploration behaviours for the acquisition of arm movements, tool-use and interactive capabilities are presented. The development of social skills is also addressed, in particular of joint attention, the capability to share the focus of attention between individuals. Two prerequisites of joint attention are investigated: imperative pointing gestures and visual saliency detection. The established framework of the internal models is adopted for coding sensorimotor experience in robots. In particular, inverse and forward models are trained with different configurations of low-level sensory and motor data generated by the robot through exploration behaviours, or observed by human demonstrator, or acquired through kinaesthetic teaching. The internal models framework allows the generation of simulations of sensorimotor cycles. This thesis investigates also how basic cognitive skills can be implemented in a humanoid robot by allowing it to recreate the perceptual and motor experience gathered in past interactions with the external world. In particular, simulation processes are used as a basis for implementing cognitive skills such as action selection, tool-use, behaviour recognition and self-other distinction.

There is a need for cleaner technology initiatives into the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) market to combat the effects of climate change. The difficulty of these initiatives lies in their business model innovation process, as those organisations struggle in finding adequate strategies to establish their business in the BoP market. The BoP market is characterised as highly uncertain, which makes the operation of businesses challenging. Hereby the thesis aims at answering the question on how organisational learning occurs in business model innovation in the BoP market. Through a case study approach, the thesis intends to understand the requirements to establish a functioning business model by analysing organisational learning under business model innovation within the BoP market. This has been realised through a three week field study in Northern Mozambique, observing the market introduction of a cleantech company operating in this context. Hereby the business model innovation process and the environment of operation was analysed. This research contributes to the current discussion of business model innovation in BoP markets by detecting organisational learning as a useful mechanism and adding relevant insights on how organisational learning occurs in this specific context. Therefore the study opens the discussion on organisational learning in business model innovation in the context of the BoP market by asking for further studies on the topic.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This qualitative study was successful in utilization of grounded theory methodology to ascertain nurses’ decision-making processes following their awareness of having made a medical error, as well as how and/or if they corrected and reported the error. Significant literature documents the existence of medical errors; however, this unique study interviewed thirty nurses from adult intensive care units seeking to discover through a detailed interview process their individual stories and experiences, which were then analyzed for common themes. Common themes led to the development of a theoretical model of thought processes regarding error reporting when nurses made an error. Within this theoretical model are multiple processes that outline a shared, time-orientated sequence of events nurses encounter before, during, and after an error. One common theme was the error occurred during a busy day when they had been doing something unfamiliar. Each nurse expressed personal anguish at the realization she had made an error, she sought to understand why the error happened and what corrective action was needed. Whether the error was reported on or told about depended on each unit’s expectation and what needed to be done to protect the patient. If there was no perceived patient harm, errors were not reported. Even for reported errors, no one followed-up with the nurses in this study. Nurses were left on their own to reflect on what had happened and to consider what could be done to prevent error recurrence. The overall impact of the process of and the recovery from the error led to learning from the error that persisted throughout her nursing career. Findings from this study illuminate the unique viewpoint of licensed nurses’ experiences with errors and have the potential to influence how the prevention of, notification about and resolution of errors are dealt with in the clinical setting. Further research is needed to answer multiple questions that will contribute to nursing knowledge about error reporting activities and the means to continue to improve error-reporting rates

Research on entrepreneurship focuses on success which ignores the high failure rate of new ventures. Many new ventures fail so how entrepreneurs deal with it when their venture fails? Successful entrepreneurs praising the advantages of failure as a valuable teacher. The result of failure is regularly filled with economic, social, psychological, and physical health disorder. The aim of this research is to assessment venture failure experiences for entrepreneurs, from the instant result through to recovery for coping with entrepreneurial failure and exit for impact of the closed venture. In this research, aspects of life affected by entrepreneurial failure examine economically, socially and psychologically in highlighting factors that may influence the amount of costs of failure. Next, the research describes how entrepreneurs learn from failure. It presents on the outcomes of venture failure, including coping with failure and recovery together with cognitive and behavioral outcomes. The main objective of the research study is to understand the failure from entrepreneurs who have experienced it and also to make a theoretical framework of failure based on entrepreneurial venture failure experiences. Every entrepreneur starts up a venture with high expectations of achieving success. Failure can be emotionally disturbing, devastating, painful, distressing and costly for the entrepreneur who may have to aspect the stigma of failure and the loss of reputation. The entrepreneur can get involved in grief, heartache, anxiety, depression, shame, rejection and discouragement (Politis &amp; Gabrielsson, 2009). The purpose of the research is to investigate how entrepreneurs realize and react to venture failure. Moreover, entrepreneurs are looking for positive aspects of failure as enhancing experiences that help their coping with entrepreneurial failure, learning from failure, the willingness to begin a new venture and also trigger changes in upcoming decision-making. The purpose of the research is to take a view of the existed experience of failure, taking into consideration impact from the entrepreneurship. / Forskning om entreprenörskap fokuserar på framgång som ignorerar den höga felfrekvensen av nya företag. Många nya företag misslyckas så hur entreprenörer hantera det när deras företag misslyckas? Framgångsrika entreprenörer prisar fördelarna med misslyckande som en värdefull lärare. Resultatet av misslyckande regelbundet fylld med ekonomiska, sociala, psykologiska och fysiska hälsoproblem. Syftet med denna forskning är att bedöma företagets misslyckande upplevelser för företagare, från det ögonblick resultatet genom att återhämtningen för att hantera företagande fel och avsluta för påverkan av den slutna företag. I denna forskning aspekter av livet som påverkas av entreprenörs fel undersöka ekonomiskt, socialt och psykologiskt att belysa faktorer som kan påverka mängden av kostnaderna för ett misslyckande. Därefter beskriver forskningen hur entreprenörer lära av misslyckanden. Den presenterar på resultaten av företagets misslyckande, inklusive hantera fel och återhämtning tillsammans med kognitiva och beteendemässiga utfall.