Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-105). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-105).

Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T12:51:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T13:56:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Dissertação (Mestrado) / IPEN/D / Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares - IPEN-CNEN/SP

This paper investigates the effects of automating system administration within a virtualized server environment. For system administrators, creation and configuration of new Virtual Machines has shown to be a common, and yet time and manual labour consuming task. Thus, this process has been studied thoroughly to find out in what degree it will lend itself to automation. The nature of the process was found to be well-suited for a high degree of automation. The automation tool is developed, presented and evaluated. A series of quantitative tests were orchestrated, testing both manual configuration and configuration by using the tool. The results were analysed, and it became visible that the manual configuration has an interruptive behaviour which is not the case in the produced process. The time improvements of the automation are approximated from the gathered test data and the results show a significant improvement in process speed-up with a test average of 300% corresponding to roughly 22 minutes per configured VM. Note that when calculating time saving and process speed-up the assumption is made that two employees are depending on the configuration which has been seen often to be the case. This work has shed light on the need for a more holistic estimation model of calculating process speed-up when you have factors as multiple people being dependent on a process and added time due to loss of operator focus (e.g. due to interruptive behaviour during the process). Furthermore, a strong case is made for the implementation of process automation in administrat ive tasks within virtualized server environments.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T12:51:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-09T13:56:58Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 / Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento de um Simulador do Reator de Pesquisa IEAR1. O Simulador foi desenvolvido com Visual C++ em duas etapas: 1) construção dos modelos matemáticos e 2) criação e configuração de interfaces gráficas em um aplicativo Windows XP. Utilizou-se uma modelagem simplificada dos principais fenômenos físicos: o nuclear através de cinética pontual, e o modelo de térmica e hidráulica através das leis de conservação de massa e energia no canal médio do reator. As equações diferenciais dinâmicas dos processos nucleares, térmicos e hidráulicos foram solucionadas pela técnica de diferenças finitas através do método de Runge-Kutta de 4ª ordem. Foram modelados os sistemas: controle de reatividade, resfriamento do reator e proteção do reator. As variáveis de processo são armazenadas em arquivos ASCII. O Simulador permite o usuário navegar por interfaces gráficas dos sistemas e monitorar tendências dos transientes de operação sendo uma ferramenta interativa para ensino e treinamento de operadores do IEA-R1. Este também pode ser usado por alunos e professores no ensino de teoria de reatores, térmica e hidráulica. O Simulador permite simulações de operações de partida, manobra de potência e parada. / Dissertação (Mestrado) / IPEN/D / Instituto de Pesquisas Energeticas e Nucleares - IPEN-CNEN/SP

Doctorat en sciences psychologiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

M.Phil. (Mechanical Engineering) / The coal mining industry plays a major role in the global economy. Coal is required for the provision of primary energy needs, generation of electricity and production of steel. Hence, there is a high demand of coal worldwide. For the continuous supply of coal, mining equipment should be in good working conditions and the maintenance teams should be highly equipped and motivated to perform their maintenance activities ...

With the increased demand for the utilization of computerized information systems by business users, the need for investigating the impact of various user interfaces has been well recognized. It is usually assumed that providing the user with assistance in the usage o-f a system would significantly increase the user's productivity. There is, however, a dearth of systematic inquiry into this commonly held notion to verify its validity in a scientific fashion. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of system-provided user assistance and complexity level of the problem on novice users' productivity in specifying database queries. The study is theoretical in the sense that it presents an approach adopted from research in deductive database systems to attack problems concerning user interface design. It is empirical in that it conducts an experiment in a controlled laboratory setting to collect primary data for the testing of a series of hypotheses. The two independent variables are system-provided user assistance and problem complexity, while the dependent variable is the user's query specification productivity. Three measures are used as separate indicators of query specification productivity: number of syntactic errors, number of semantic errors, and time required for completing a query task. Due to the lack of a well-defined metric for user assistance, the study first presents a generic classification scheme for relational query specification. Based on this classification scheme, two quantitative metrics for measuring the amount of user assistance in terms of prompts and defaults were developed. The user assistance is operationally defined with these two metrics. Four findings emerge as significant results of the study. First, user assistance has a significant main effect on all of the three dependent measures at the 1 percent significance level. Second, problem complexity also has a significant impact on the three productivity measures at the 1 percent significance level. Third, the interaction effect of user assistance and problem complexity on the number of semantic errors and the amount of time for completion is significant at the 1 percent level. Fourth, Although this interaction effect on the number of syntactic errors is not significant at the 5 percent level, it is at the 10 percent level. More research is needed to permit a thorough understanding of the issue of user interface design. A list of topics is suggested for future research to confirm or to modify the findings of this study.

As robots become more prevalent in our everyday lives, both in our workplaces and in our homes, it becomes increasingly likely that people who are not experts in robotics will be asked to interface with robotic devices. It is therefore important to develop robotic controls that are intuitive and easy for novices to use. Robotic hands, in particular, are very useful, but their high dimensionality makes creating intuitive human-machine interfaces for them complex. In this dissertation, we study the control of non-anthropomorphic robotic hands by non-roboticists in two contexts: collaborative manipulation and assistive robotics. In the field of collaborative manipulation, the human and the robot work side by side as independent agents. Teleoperation allows the human to assist the robot when autonomous grasping is not able to deal sufficiently well with corner cases or cannot operate fast enough. Using the teleoperator’s hand as an input device can provide an intuitive control method, but finding a mapping between a human hand and a non-anthropomorphic robot hand can be difficult, due to the hands’ dissimilar kinematics. In this dissertation, we seek to create a mapping between the human hand and a fully actuated, non-anthropomorphic robot hand that is intuitive enough to enable effective real-time teleoperation, even for novice users. We propose a low-dimensional and continuous teleoperation subspace which can be used as an intermediary for mapping between different hand pose spaces. We first propose the general concept of the subspace, its properties and the variables needed to map from the human hand to a robot hand. We then propose three ways to populate the teleoperation subspace mapping. Two of our mappings use a dataglove to harvest information about the user's hand. We define the mapping between joint space and teleoperation subspace with an empirical definition, which requires a person to define hand motions in an intuitive, hand-specific way, and with an algorithmic definition, which is kinematically independent, and uses objects to define the subspace. Our third mapping for the teleoperation subspace uses forearm electromyography (EMG) as a control input. Assistive orthotics is another area of robotics where human-machine interfaces are critical, since, in this field, the robot is attached to the hand of the human user. In this case, the goal is for the robot to assist the human with movements they would not otherwise be able to achieve. Orthotics can improve the quality of life of people who do not have full use of their hands. Human-machine interfaces for assistive hand orthotics that use EMG signals from the affected forearm as input are intuitive and repeated use can strengthen the muscles of the user's affected arm. In this dissertation, we seek to create an EMG based control for an orthotic device used by people who have had a stroke. We would like our control to enable functional motions when used in conjunction with a orthosis and to be robust to changes in the input signal. We propose a control for a wearable hand orthosis which uses an easy to don, commodity forearm EMG band. We develop an supervised algorithm to detect a user’s intent to open and close their hand, and pair this algorithm with a training protocol which makes our intent detection robust to changes in the input signal. We show that this algorithm, when used in conjunction with an orthosis over several weeks, can improve distal function in users. Additionally, we propose two semi-supervised intent detection algorithms designed to keep our control robust to changes in the input data while reducing the length and frequency of our training protocol.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to deeply alter the structure of organizations and work. This dissertation explores how firms and their human workers interact with the diffusion of automation and related technologies in the workplace, and how this informs our general understanding of organizations. I use three experiments to examine the consequences and implications of human-machine interaction in organizations. Chapter 1 studies the introduction of AI agents and human new hires into "laboratory firms" as they engage in a coordination-based game. Chapter 2 focuses on the sources of AI bias and offers practical solutions managers can adopt to limit bias. Finally, Chapter 3 studies how organizations can enjoy the benefits of AI and ensure that human collaborators remain engaged and exert effort. Overall, my dissertation develops an organizational and team perspective on the impact of workplace automation. Successful human/AI collaboration requires going beyond the technical capabilities of AI and developing a human-centered approach that incorporates firm strategies, behavioral responses, and managerial choices.