Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore how tracking of products by the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology may describe customer behaviour in real-time.

The study was conducted as a field experiment, where a commercially available RFID platform was deployed in the fitting rooms of a fashion retail store.

The study demonstrates an application of in-store RFID tracking to describe customer behaviour, and some practical challenges of utilising such technology. An example typology of four fitting room traits was constructed based on the data collected.

Different customer types most likely require and respond differently to attention from the personnel operating the fitting room area. By identifying customer behaviour in real-time, it is possible to deliver “best practice” shop stewardship and create a more personalised retail experience.

The study is based on real-life retail settings, rather than anecdotal management observations or economic and demographic indicators. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, few contributions combine RFID and consumer behaviour outside conceptual work or laboratory experiments.

The purpose of this paper is to present a localisation system for an indoor rotary‐wing micro aerial vehicle (MAV) that uses three onboard LEDs and base station mounted active vision unit.

A pair of blade mounted cyan LEDs and a tail mounted red LED are used as on‐board landmarks. A base station tracks the landmarks and estimates the pose of the MAV in real time by analysing images taken using an active vision unit. In each image, the ellipse formed by the cyan LEDs is used for 5 degree of freedom (DoF) pose estimation with yaw estimation from the red LED providing the 6th DoF.

About 1‐3.5 per cent localisation error of the MAV at various ranges, rolls and angular speeds less than 45°/s relative to the base station at known location indicates that the MAV can be accurately localised at 9‐12 Hz in an indoor environment.

Line‐of‐sight between the base station and MAV is necessary while limited accuracy is evident in yaw estimation at long distances. Additional yaw sensors and dynamic zoom are among future work.

Provided an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) as the base station equipped with its own localisation sensor, the developed system encourages the use of autonomous indoor rotary‐wing MAVs in various robotics applications, such as urban search and rescue.

The most significant contribution of this paper is the innovative LED configuration allowing full 6 DoF pose estimation using three LEDs, one camera and no fixed infrastructure. The active vision unit enables a wide range of observable flight as the ellipse generated by the cyan LEDs is recognisable from almost any direction.

Urban design has historically occupied the gap between architecture and planning. Although there have long been calls for the discipline to bridge this gap, urban design has continued to lean more heavily on design than planning. The efforts to revitalize downtown Toledo, a mid-western U.S. town experiencing steep economic decline, present a classic example of the potentially unfortunate results of this approach. Over the past three decades, there have been many attempts to revitalize the city, especially its downtown, by constructing several large public buildings, all within a few blocks of each other, all designed with little attention to each other or to the surrounding public spaces, and with a remarkable lack of civic engagement.

Responding to calls in the literature for inter-disciplinarity in urban design, and to the city's experience with urban design, the authors created a collaborative studio for architects and planners from two neighboring universities with two purposes: first, to establish a collaborative work environment where any design interventions would be firmly rooted in the planning context (i.e., to erase boundaries between architects and planners); second, to draw lessons from this experience for the practice and teaching of urban design.

Despite the difficulties of collaborating, architects and planners benefited from exposure to each other, learning about each other's work, as well as learning to collaborate. The interdisciplinary teams developed richer proposals than the architect-only teams. Finally, critical engagement with the community is essential to shaping downtown development.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new approach for finding a minimum-length trajectory for an autonomous unmanned air vehicle or a long-range missile from a release point with specified release conditions to a destination with specified approach conditions. The trajectory has to avoid obstacles and no-fly zones and must take into account the kinematic constraints of the air vehicle.

A discrete routing model is proposed that represents the airspace by a sophisticated network. The problem is then solved by applying standard shortest-path algorithms.

In contrast to the most widely used grids, the generated networks allow arbitrary flight directions and turn angles, as well as maneuvers of different strengths, thus fully exploiting the flight capabilities of the aircraft. Moreover, the networks are resolution-independent and provide high flexibility by the option to adapt density.

As an application, a concept for in-flight replanning of flight paths to changing destinations is proposed. All computationally intensive tasks are performed in a pre-flight planning prior to the launch of the mission. The in-flight planning is based entirely on precalculated data, which are stored in the onboard computer of the air vehicle. In particular, no path finding algorithms with high or unpredictable running time and uncertain outcome have to be applied during flight.

The paper presents a new network-based algorithm for flight path optimization that overcomes weaknesses of grid-based approaches and allows high-quality solutions. The method can be applied for quick in-flight replanning of flight paths.

The ability for learners to interact online via their avatars in a 3-D simulation space means that virtual worlds afford a host of educational opportunities not offered by other learning technology platforms, but their use also raises several pertinent issues that warrant consideration. This chapter reviews the educational use of virtual worlds from a design perspective. Virtual-world definitions are explored, along with their key educational characteristics. Different virtual-world environments are briefly contrasted, including Second Life, Active Worlds, Open Sim, and Minecraft. A wide variety of virtual-world uses in schools and universities are examined so as to understand their versatility. Key educational benefits of virtual worlds are distilled from the literature, such as the ability to facilitate 3-D simulations, role-plays, construction tasks, and immersive learning. Emergent issues surrounding the use of virtual worlds are also analyzed, including cognitive load, safety, and representational fidelity. One higher education and one school level vignette are provided in order to offer more detailed insight into the use of virtual worlds in practice. Recommendations for learning design and implementation are presented, based on the thematic analysis of contemporary virtual-worlds research.

The paper deals with the design and creation of an intelligent user interface augmenting the user experience in everyday environments, by providing an immersive audio environment. We highlight the potential of augmenting the visual real environment in a personalized way, thanks to context modeling techniques. The LISTEN project, a system for an immersive audio augmented environment applied in the art exhibition domain, provides an example of modeling and personalization methods affecting the audio interface in terms of content and organization. In addition, the different evolution steps of the system and the outcomes of the accompanying user tests are here reported.

This chapter critically engages with ways that teaching excellence has been operationalised in practice. Specific focus is on developing individual teaching excellence, rewarding of success and recognition of teaching excellence and the building of evidence around what works in teaching for the benefits of students. We consider the daily interactions with students that form the basis of frameworks of teaching excellence before arguing that operationalisations of teaching excellence are highly context specific and operate at the level of institutions and the whole higher education sector. We discuss the criteria that underpin teaching excellence awards. This includes governance as well as development frameworks. After considering the complex links between research and teaching and the importance of the disciplinary dimension of teaching excellence, the chapter finally looks at the skills and attributes commonly associated with individual teacher excellence and argues that these are exceptionally difficult to pin down let alone measure. It concludes with some reflections on some of the challenges faced by institutions as they seek to develop the quality of teaching whilst meeting the requirements of the TEF.