<p>By purposefully utilising sensors, for instance by a datafusion system, the state of some system-relevant environmentmight be adequately assessed to support decision-making. Theever increasing access to sensors o.ers great opportunities,but alsoincurs grave challenges. As a result of managingmultiple sensors one can, e.g., expect to achieve a morecomprehensive, resolved, certain and more frequently updatedassessment of the environment than would be possible otherwise.Challenges include data association, treatment of con.ictinginformation and strategies for sensor coordination.</p><p>We use the term information acquisition to denote the skillof a data fusion system to actively acquire information. Theaim of this thesis is to instructively situate that skill in ageneral context, explore and classify related research, andhighlight key issues and possible future work. It is our hopethat this thesis will facilitate communication, understandingand future e.orts for information acquisition.</p><p>The previously mentioned trend towards utilisation of largesets of sensors makes us especially interested in large-scaleinformation acquisition, i.e., acquisition using many andpossibly spatially distributed and heterogeneous sensors.</p><p>Information acquisition is a general concept that emerges inmany di.erent .elds of research. In this thesis, we surveyliterature from, e.g., agent theory, robotics and sensormanagement. We, furthermore, suggest a taxonomy of theliterature that highlights relevant aspects of informationacquisition.</p><p>We describe a function, perception management (akin tosensor management), which realizes information acquisition inthe data fusion process and pertinent properties of itsexternal stimuli, sensing resources, and systemenvironment.</p><p>An example of perception management is also presented. Thetask is that of managing a set of mobile sensors that jointlytrack some mobile targets. The game theoretic algorithmsuggested for distributing the targets among the sensors proveto be more robust to sensor failure than a measurement accuracyoptimal reference algorithm.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>information acquisition, sensor management,resource management, information fusion, data fusion,perception management, game theory, target tracking</p>

China has a long tradition of using deception and psychological tactics. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China displayed extensive perception management, aiming at showing a better picture of China. The purpose of this study is to examine if China has continued to display a distorted image since the Olympics and if it could be classified as attempts on deception directed towards a western audience. By combining case studies with descriptive, comparative and a qualitative content analysis method, three cases are researched in order to establish how they are portrayed in the Chinese newspaper China Daily and the BBC News. The differences discovered are matched with the six different kinds of deception presented in Barton Whaley’s general deception theory. In all three cases, numerous examples can be found which indicates that China attempts to deceive their western audience through the media. Both passive and active types of deception are discovered. The results are discussed concerning whether the differences are examples of deception, perception management or both. Numerous suggestions for future studies conclude the paper. / Kina har en lång och gammal tradition av informationsoperationer och av att vilseleda sin motståndare i krig. Denna tradition lever kvar idag och kan bland annat ses i nyare kinesiska doktriner. Under OS i Peking 2008 visade Kina i fredstid exempel på så kallad perceptionsstyrning där kommunistpartiet styrde vad som skulle visas i media och gjorde allt för att framställa den egna staten i så gott ljus som möjligt. Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka om Kina även efter OS 2008 försöker framställa en tillrättalagd bild av den egna staten och om det i så fall kan klassificeras som vilseledning. Syftet uppnås genom att undersöka om försök till vilseledning förekommer i kinesisk medierapportering riktad mot en västerländsk publik. Uppsatsen är uppbyggd kring tre stycken fallstudier av händelser som antas kunna påverka Kinas internationella anseende negativt. De tre fallen är när den kinesiska regimkritikern Liu Xiaobo anhålls 2009, när han tilldelas Nobels Fredspris 2010 samt när Google 2010 meddelar att de överväger att sluta censurera sin kinesiska sökmotor google.cn och eventuellt lämna den kinesiska marknaden. En beskrivande metod används för att undersöka hur kinesisk media riktad mot Europa rapporterar om händelserna. Som kinesisk media används tidningen China Dailys Internetupplaga. Den kinesiska framställningen jämförs sedan med hur brittiska BBC News skriver om samma händelser. Genom kvalitativ innehållsanalys och med komparativ metod analyseras hur den kinesiska medierapporteringen skiljer sig från den västerländska. De skillnader som upptäcks i de olika nyhetsmediernas framställningar jämförs därefter med Barton Whaleys generella deceptionsteori som säger att vilseledning genomförs på ett av sex olika sätt. Jämförelsen visar att det i samtliga studerade fall förekommer skillnader i nyhetsrapporteringen som kan klassificeras som försök till vilseledning. Både passiv och aktiv form av vilseledning kan identifieras.

By purposefully utilising sensors, for instance by a datafusion system, the state of some system-relevant environmentmight be adequately assessed to support decision-making. Theever increasing access to sensors o.ers great opportunities,but alsoincurs grave challenges. As a result of managingmultiple sensors one can, e.g., expect to achieve a morecomprehensive, resolved, certain and more frequently updatedassessment of the environment than would be possible otherwise.Challenges include data association, treatment of con.ictinginformation and strategies for sensor coordination. We use the term information acquisition to denote the skillof a data fusion system to actively acquire information. Theaim of this thesis is to instructively situate that skill in ageneral context, explore and classify related research, andhighlight key issues and possible future work. It is our hopethat this thesis will facilitate communication, understandingand future e.orts for information acquisition. The previously mentioned trend towards utilisation of largesets of sensors makes us especially interested in large-scaleinformation acquisition, i.e., acquisition using many andpossibly spatially distributed and heterogeneous sensors. Information acquisition is a general concept that emerges inmany di.erent .elds of research. In this thesis, we surveyliterature from, e.g., agent theory, robotics and sensormanagement. We, furthermore, suggest a taxonomy of theliterature that highlights relevant aspects of informationacquisition. We describe a function, perception management (akin tosensor management), which realizes information acquisition inthe data fusion process and pertinent properties of itsexternal stimuli, sensing resources, and systemenvironment. An example of perception management is also presented. Thetask is that of managing a set of mobile sensors that jointlytrack some mobile targets. The game theoretic algorithmsuggested for distributing the targets among the sensors proveto be more robust to sensor failure than a measurement accuracyoptimal reference algorithm. <b>Keywords:</b>information acquisition, sensor management,resource management, information fusion, data fusion,perception management, game theory, target tracking / NR 20140805

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / This study argues that after World War I, corporate executives continued a strategy of perception management (PM) to control Americans’ choices in the commercial sphere and to shape the economic and cultural landscape of the 1920s. The state used PM on an unprecedented scale in 1917 and 1918 to promote a model of loyal American behavior (as part its effort to manage the mobilized U.S. society), but the use of PM did not end after the Armistice. While many historians have seen wartime propaganda measures as the result of special fears and circumstances tied to a sense of pervasive national emergency, they fail to explain the continuation of comparable methods into the period of peace supposedly characterized by a return to "normalcy." Whereas most historical studies sharply delineate between political propaganda and commercial advertising, this study stresses leaders' continuous use of PM to promote their notions of what constituted typical, normal, even loyal American behavior in times of both war and peace. While not a contemporary term in the early twentieth century, PM offers an appropriate conceptual framework to analyze a deliberate strategy at that time. This study defines it as actions used to convey or deny selected information to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, resulting in behaviors and actions favorable to the originators’ objectives. During WWI, policymakers and bureaucrats concealed the state's effort to control people's behavior with claims of defending liberty and democracy. After the war, corporate executives used PM to manufacture consumer demand and encourage Americans to think of themselves foremost as consumers. A cross section of political, economic, and cultural history, Perception Management in the United States from the Great War to the Great Crash offers an original perspective that emphasizes the consistency between the wartime and postwar eras by highlighting leaders' ongoing use of perception management to control Americans' behavior.

The purpose of information acquisition for data and information fusion is to provide relevant and timely information. The acquired information is integrated (or fused) to estimate the state of some environment. The success of information acquisition can be measured in the quality of the environment state estimates generated by the data and information fusion process. In this thesis, we introduce and set out to characterise the concept of large-scale information acquisition. Our interest in this subject is justified both by the identified lack of research on a holistic view on data and information fusion, and the proliferation of networked sensors which promises to enable handy access to a multitude of information sources. We identify a number of properties that could be considered in the context of large-scale information acquisition. The sensors used could be large in number, heterogeneous, complex, and distributed. Also, algorithms for large-scale information acquisition may have to deal with decentralised control and multiple and varying objectives. In the literature, a process that realises information acquisition is frequently denoted sensor management. We, however, introduce the term perception management instead, which encourages an agent perspective on information acquisition. Apart from explictly inviting the wealth of agent theory research into the data and information fusion research, it also highlights that the resource usage of perception management is constrained by the overall control of a system that uses data and information fusion. To address the challenges posed by the concept of large-scale information acquisition, we present a framework which highlights some of its pertinent aspects. We have implemented some important parts of the framework. What becomes evident in our study is the innate complexity of information acquisition for data and information fusion, which suggests approximative solutions. We, furthermore, study one of the possibly most important properties of large-scale information acquisition, decentralised control, in more detail. We propose a recurrent negotiation protocol for (decentralised) multi-agent coordination. Our approach to the negotiations is from an axiomatic bargaining theory perspective; an economics discipline. We identify shortcomings of the most commonly applied bargaining solution and demonstrate in simulations a problem instance where it is inferior to an alternative solution. However, we can not conclude that one of the solutions dominates the other in general. They are both preferable in different situations. We have also implemented the recurrent negotiation protocol on a group of mobile robots. We note some subtle difficulties with transferring bargaining solutions from economics to our computational problem. For instance, the characterising axioms of solutions in bargaining theory are useful to qualitatively compare different solutions, but care has to be taken when translating the solution to algorithms in computer science as some properties might be undesirable, unimportant or risk being lost in the translation. / QC 20100903

隨著現代人越來越忙碌的生活步調，排隊帶來的負面情緒影響也越來越大；對於企業而言，必須面對因為在消費的過程中等待，而造成顧客對於服務評價降低的現象。當許多研究致力於提出應對排隊問題的可行方案時，時代的推進帶來了行動裝置與網路的普及化，也因此出現了透過應用程式推播排隊資訊，藉此舒緩顧客負面情緒的解決方案。本研究串聯排隊心理、知覺管理…等不同的研究議題，在不同的消費情境中，透過狩野模型(Kano model)探索排隊資訊具備的服務品質，以及透過SERVQUAL的概念建構研究模型，驗證排隊資訊的整體服務品質與顧客滿意度之間的關係。研究結果發現排隊資訊具備的服務品質，多數歸類於魅力品質 (Attractive quality) 要素，一維品質(One-dimensional quality)要素則為其次，其中服務品質大多維持著一致性，但消費情境會對於特定幾項服務品質的帶來影響。研究模型亦驗證了排隊資的整體服務品質和顧客滿意度有正向關係。 / The aim of this paper is to discuss the impact of queue information provisions. As we observe the latest application of revealing queue information via mobile device to deal with the queuing management problem, this research intends to provide a new viewpoint of queuing information crossing different research issues. We develop research framework from four facets: (1) perception management, (2) queuing research, (3) Kano model, and (4) SERVQUAL. The research is divided into three parts. First, via Kano model we find the service quality of queuing information and categorize the service qualities into 6 categories. Second, we examine the relationships between the overall service quality of queuing information provision and customer satisfaction. Third, we are also concerned the impact of consume situation, so the hypothesis will be tested in the different simulated situation in experiment. According to the result, we discover that most queuing information provisions’ service qualities are attractive quality dimension and One-dimensional quality. Besides, the hypothesis of queuing information provisions’ service quality is accepted, which also proves the results which we find in the first part of this research by Kano model. Finally, this research examines the effect of consume situations on the queuing information, and we also have further discussion about the exception situation.