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Scientists at Linkoping Institute of Technology assess the state of tactile sensing and offer some of their own ideas.

By tradition, sensors are used to measure one desired parameter; all other parameters influencing the sensor are considered as interfering inputs, to be eliminated if possible. Hence most of existing sensors are specifically intended for measuring one parameter, e.g. temperature, and the ideal temperature sensor should be as immune to all other parameters as possible. True, we sometimes use primitive sensor fusion, e.g. when calculating heat flow by combining separate measurements of temperature difference and of fluid flow.

The purpose of this paper is to present a “manifesto” exploring a methodological approach to legal analysis, relying upon a morphological understanding of ideology.

The authors explore ideology within law and legal culture. They examine one such ideology – rule of law – and consider how this can shape judicial decision-making. They suggest techniques by which such influences can be identified.

The authors make four findings. First, following Freeden, ideology can be understood as a ubiquitous form of political thinking which seeks to fix the meanings of essentially contested concepts. Second, ideology in this sense forms an important part, but is distinguishable from the wider notion of legal culture. Considering ideology in law as a sub-system of legal culture can therefore be fruitful in providing a rich understanding of interpretive disagreements among the judiciary. Third, rule of law as an ideal is itself ideological, as it comprises contested concepts such as certainty, equality, stability and legality. It can be considered to constitute an internal ideology of law and it can be analysed how the concepts are de-contested in individual decisions. Finally, understanding this can help in the analysis of judgments in areas with high levels of administrative discretion and political contestation, such as planning and environmental law, as it helps us to understand how any particular judge sees the role of the court in its wider political context.

The originality of the authors’ approach lies in the drawing together of methodological techniques and understandings of ideology in, and in relation to, law.

The purpose of this study has been to evaluate the technology of autonomous mobile manipulation in a real world industrial manufacturing environment. The objective has been to obtain experience in the integration with existing equipment and determine key challenges in maturing the technology to a level of readiness suitable for industry. Despite much research within the topic of industrial mobile manipulation, the technology has not yet found its way to the industry. To mature the technology to a level of readiness suitable for industry real-world experience is crucial. This paper reports from such a real-world industrial experiment with two mobile manipulators.

In the experiment, autonomous industrial mobile manipulators are integrated into the actual manufacturing environment of the pump manufacturer Grundfos. The two robots together solve the task of producing rotors; a task constituted by several sub-tasks ranging from logistics to complex assembly. With a total duration of 10 days, the experiment includes workspace adaptation, safety regulations, rapid robot instruction and running production.

With a setup time of less than one day, it was possible to program both robots to perform the production scenario in collaboration. Despite the success, the experiment clearly demonstrated several topics in need of further research before the technology can be made available to the industry: robustness and cycle time, safety investigations and possibly standardization, and robot and workstation re-configurability.

Despite the attention of research around the world, the topic of industrial mobile manipulation has only seen a limited number of real-world integrations. This work reports from a comprehensive integration into a real-world running production and thus reports on the key challenges identified from this integration.

This study aims to contribute to an increased understanding of intra-organizational city brand resistance by identifying and discussing different types of counter-narratives emerging from the political and administrative arenas.

The empirical material consists of secondary data as well as six in-depth semi-structured interviews with Danish mayors and city managers in three different municipalities in Denmark.

Intra-organizational counter-narratives differ from inter-organizational counter-narratives but resemble a number of issues known from extra-organizational resistance. Still, significant differences are found within the political arena: lack of ownership, competition for resources and political conflicts. Lack of ownership, internal competition for resources and distrust of motives play an important role within the administrative arena. Mayors are aware of the needs for continued political support for branding projects but projects are nonetheless realized despite resistance if there is a political majority for it.

This study points to the implications of city brand resistance and counter-narratives emerging from the “inside” of the political and administrative arenas in the city, here defined as “intra-organizational counter-narratives”.

It is suggested that politicians and municipality staff should be systematically addressed as individual and unique audiences and considered as important as citizens in the brand process.

So far little attention has been paid to internal stakeholders within the municipal organization and their impact on the city branding process approached from a narrative perspective.

Introducing the concept of a design domain to truss topology optimization, this paper presents an algorithm generating geometrically admissible ground structures on possibly concave (or even disconnected) 3D design domains. That is a set of connections between nodal points actually respecting the geometry of the design domain. Since ground structures may be applied in other contexts the presentation does not assume any specifics of truss topology optimization. However, in the example section an application of ground structures in a truss topology optimization problem may be found.

In this concluding chapter, the editors provide an overall assessment of contemporary Danish public governance based on the main findings in the preceding chapters of the edited volume. Surveying the Danish governance responses to contemporary mega-challenges, the chapter reflects on policy implications and contemplate the future of both research and practice related to public administration, politics and governance in Denmark. The chapter argues that recent public governance reforms have turned the Danish welfare state into a mix of a neo-Weberian state and an enabling state, which deploys its considerable resources to create economic growth for the benefit of the large majority of Danes, to satisfy the needs of citizens and businesses and to develop collaborative solutions to complex problems. While the chapter concludes that this modified version of the well-known universal welfare state is largely apt for meeting the mega-challenges of the twenty-first century, recent reforms seeking to enhance job-seeking incentives for the unemployed and to integrate immigrants have resulted in new forms of marginalisation of weaker societal groups. Moreover, evolving problems such as climate change, an ageing population and digital citizen privacy will require further public governance reforms in the years to come.

In the twenty-first century, societies around the world are facing a wide range of daunting global mega-challenges: poverty, unemployment, income inequality, unequal distribution of political power, ageing populations, uncontrolled migration, segregated urbanisation, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and a massive decrease in biodiversity. In recent years, politicians, journalists and academic observers have singled out the Nordic countries, Denmark in particular, as model societies of trusting and happy people that have handled many of these challenges with remarkable effectiveness. And yet others warn against ‘becoming Denmark,’ painting a picture of a dysfunctional, socialist nightmare with high taxes, low job motivation and a general lack of private initiative. In this introductory chapter, the editors cut through the noise of the international debate and set the scene for the nuanced analyses presented here of contemporary public governance in Demark and its capacity to tackle some of the most pressing problems of our time. Specifically, the chapter discusses various conceptualisations of the Danish welfare state, delineates some of its most important historical and structural traits and outlines the main empirical features of contemporary Danish public governance. Finally, it outlines the structure of the book and briefly introduces each of its subsequent chapters.

Quality is often defined as cognitive perceptual attributes or properties, and researchers often disagree about which terms should be appropriate in determining quality(Reeves & Bednar, 1994). Business research in marketing attaches value to the properties of quality (Zeithaml, 1988) and measures this in terms of ‘money’ and customer ‘expectations’. The idea of connecting quality to values through a persistent market – that is determining measurable accounts to products and properties – relies on the idea of an invisible hand controlling the market by competition (March, 1994; Smith, 1776/1976), and it assumes there is a reliable way to control quality and value. But discussions and debates arise when discussing the quality or value of abstract phenomena such as service.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the evolution of marketization in the public sector as a process of institutional change.

The paper is based on a study of marketization and gradual changes in the involvement of private contractors (as providers of maintenance services) in the municipal road and park sectors in Denmark over the past 30 years. The study draws theoretically on historical institutionalism as an interpretive framework and empirically on findings from earlier research, register data from municipal accounts as well as new survey data.

Marketization within the road and park sectors has historically taken place through gradual changes, in particular by processes of layering and displacement, which has added up to substantial transformations in both sectors. Transformations relate to the levels of private sector involvement, the purpose of using private contractors, the extent of competition and the design of contractual arrangements. The road sector has been a frontrunner in this marketization process, while the park sector increasingly has been “catching up.”

The paper contributes to the understanding of the historical development and differential pathways of marketization within the public sector. In particular, the study highlights how pathways of gradual change, spurred by the influx of long-term policy pressures, over time can lead to substantial institutional transformations.