Semester Report M1.2 Industrial Design by Laurens Doesborgh

project

master class

module

SemesterReport M 1.2 2007/2008

A study on heart rate perception during social communication Creating a Product Creation Process for Highly Innovative Products How to use Quantitative Research Methods

Laurens Doesborgh Student # s030674

Dear Reader, The document in front of you is the semester report of my M1.2 phase 2007/2008. This document describes my competency development by reporting important learning points during my design research project, one six-week master class Business Process Design, and one compulsory module called ‘Quantitative Research Methods’. The focus of this semester is research, and the project’s focus is obtaining an answer to the research question ‘can we create new sensing abilities for the body, using external electronic sensors?’. The project is executed in the domain ‘Empowering People’ and is guided by René Ahn of the Designed Intelligence research group. Since Jing Wang, a co-student, and I were jointly interested in the project’s direction, we decided to team up and do the project together. My competency focus during this project was Technology, creation of a working prototype. Besides this competency focus, we planned, elaborated and performed all the activities together. The module ‘quantitative research methods’ was an introduction to the theme and was therefore used to get familiar with the dos and don’ts of scientific research. As a third part of the report, the master class was elective and was chosen for it’s potential to develop my market(ing) skills. Have fun reading my m1.2 semester report,

Laurens Doesborgh, Student Industrial Design Eindhoven University of Technology

Index

Introduction to the topic

The Heart, the Body and the Brain Heart Rate & Heart Rate Variability “Love is in the Air” Detecting Emotions

Research question

User Definition Objectives Research Approach

Research prototypes

Technology introduction Our Prevalence Prototype #1.1 | PIR Prototype #1.2 | PIR Prototype #2.0 | Heart Rate Monitor

Translate Social Interaction to Technology - Communication

Potential Technologies Conclusion Communication Technology

Hów to sense the heartbeat?

Characteristics of the human body Exploring Haptics Whére to feel the heart beat? Force Sensitive Resistor

The Final Package

Social Study

Approach Qualitative Quantitative User User Testing

Analysis and Evaluation

Quotes so far...

Master Class Business Process Design

Collaborations Bill Buxton Evaluation Lecturer Feedback

Module Quantitative Research Methods

Learning Points and Landmarks of M1.2

References

Literature Web

Appendices

Open new doors We connect to the world through our body, and we act and experience our world through our senses as an intricate interplay of movement and perception. Modern electronics and sensors that have become available offer the possibility to create tools or wearables which can sense various aspects of the physical world, and can mediate the information that they sense to users through different channels. Thus, if we can use these electronic sensors to create new sensing abilities of the body, we can not only change the experiences that are open to us, but we might be able to learn to interact with the world in novel ways.

- RenĂŠ Ahn -

| Project | Open New Doors | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Introduction to the topic .................................. Wanting to sense new natural phenomena is nothing new for mankind. Think of complete comic strip-series like the ones from Marvel writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby who created superhero’s that had x-ray vision, could sense danger or manipulate the magnetic field. These visions on new senses for human kind are to some degree unrealistic but nevertheless interesting as inspiration. Together with the interest of humans to one another, social interactions came to us as a hot topic to implement in the research project. Research in the social studies show that only 7 percent of all human-to-human communication is done using words. The remaining part consists of voice tone (38%) and body language (55%) according to Mehrabian. During social conversations, with respect to these figures, many nuances are communicated that cannot be noticed when only looking at the words communicated.

Listen to your Heart - Or that of someone else...

..................................

“Okay, but what is the heart actually saying?”.

your heartbeat too? Would it improve the

Since we were after a natural phenomena

Is there a way to communicate this “talking

communication between people? Would it

which cannot be perceived immediately,

of the heart” to the outside world, and

become some kind of virtual representation

we were very interested by the heart and

what kind of implications would they have

of another person?

it’s heart-beat; how does it relate to social

to other people? In order to figure this out,

interaction and what can and cannot be

more information had to be gathered about

Since the focus of this semester is research,

perceived directly by other persons. Many

whát the heart is capable of communicating;

the end result of the project did not have

ancient-old sayings are related to the ‘hidden’

whát is it actually saying?

to be an explicit well defined application

power of the heart. “Wearing your heart on

We all know that in certain stressful

or service, our study should be a platform

your sleeve” or “Listen to your heart” are

situations, your heartbeat increases almost

or starting point for further research. This

only a few examples. Shakespeare once also

instantly. The feeling of having your heart

gave us the freedom to choose for a more

said “Tell me where is fancy bred. . . in the

in your throat, but trying not to show it

explorative nature of the study.

heart or in the head?” After thinking more

to the outside world really intrigued us.

thoroughly about those sayings I wondered

What if someone else could actually sense

The Heart, the Body and the Brain

differences in heart patterns et cetera.

“Love is in the Air”

..................................

FutureHealth.org ( Network for Future

..................................

The Institute of HeartMath, a research

Regional Health Care (Future Health) is

Another very interesting phenomenon that

centre founded in 1991 which is located in

a network operation co-financed by the

was shown by various studies [REFERENCES]

the United States is dedicated to the study

European Union structural funds through

was that the heart beat of one person affects

of the heart and the physiology of emotions.

the Interreg IIIC programme. The goal of

other peoples heart beat.

The institute has conducted numerous

the operation is to promote sustainable

The electrical waves of the heart act like

studies identifying what the heart actually

and cohesive development of the regional

radio waves and are also transmitted

communicates. The following text was

health care systems in partner countries

outside of the human body. This may

taken from the website of the Institute of

through cooperation and learning from each

explain why you can sometimes walk into

HeartMath.

other’s experience, and through building

a room and tell if two people just had an

up system models implementable under

argument, even though they are quietly

“Recent biomedical research has revealed

different national environments) uses this

standing there. You can “feel it in the air.”

that the heart is not just a simple pump,

knowledge and has done studies that show

The electrical frequencies radiated by the

but

self-organized

a difference in HRV patterns when persons

heart change dramatically when you are in

information processing center with its own

are experiencing positive or negative

different emotional states and can affect

highly

complex,

functional “brain.” With each beat, the heart

not only yourself but the people around

continuously communicates with the brain

you. This change in frequency can also be

and body via the nervous system, hormonal

seen in figures 1A & 1B.

system, bioelectromagnetic interactions, and other pathways. At the HeartMath Research

According to McCraty, Atkinson and

Center, we are demonstrating that the

Tomasino, when two people are touching or

messages the heart sends the brain not only

even standing near each other, it is possible

affect physiological regulation, but can also

to measure the heartbeat of one person figure 1A: HRV pattern when in stress

behaviors, performance, and health.”

feelings. Figure 1A shows a person’s HRV

being registered in the other person’s

pattern when experiencing frustration or the

above,

the

heart

communicates an abundance of information

anger, it is characterized by its random, jerky pattern.

Holding Hands

Subject A Brainwave (EEG)

U Volts

Summarizing

[Heartbeat Signal Averaged Waveforms]

No Contact

U Volts

profoundly influence perception, emotions,

about our inner habitude. Most of the Subject B Heartbeat (ECG)

U Volts

unconsciously, be it visible to others or not.

U Volts

Subject B Heartbeat (ECG)

information communicated is processed

Seconds

Heart Rate & Heart Rate Variability

figure 2: Electricity of Touch

..................................

brainwaves. Figure 2 shows the heart

Just to clear things up, there is a difference

beat of person B being traced back in the

between Heart Rate and Heart Rate

brainwaves of person A. Also, in a social

Variability (HRV). The HRV is the derivative

figure 1A: HRV pattern when feeling appreciated

context, the hearts of two people in close

of the heart rate over time. It measures the

On the other hand, figure 1B shows a

proximity influence each other and will

beat-to-beat interval, and displays it over a

person’s HRV pattern when experiencing

synchronize over time. An object that has

timeline. Since the HRV is a measurement

positive feelings. The HRV patterns results

a (artificial) heartbeat is easily considered

over time, according to Porges and

in highly ordered and coherent waves.

to be alive and causes a strong visceral

Byrne, this variant is widely used to show

response in people.

| Project | Open New Doors | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Detecting Emotions .................................. In the field of ubiquitous computing, various studies have been done when it comes to observing emotional states of humans. Rosalind W. Picard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology classified 8 different emotions using a portable device.

Her

results are very accurate, it shows an accuracy-rate of 81%, but the classification of the chosen emotions is ambiguous, and the number of test people is too few. The high accuracy-rate Rosalind W. Picard shows are based on observations of many parameters. She investigated the following: Autonomous Nervous System (ANS), including Respiration, Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), Temperature, Blood Volume Pressure (BVP), and Electromyogram (EMG). Even though using these many parameters positively contribute to achieving high emotional identification accuracy, it also increased computational power and costs. R. Sinha opposed this method and tested only 2 emotions; fear and anger. He used 6 parameters, namely Heart Rate, GSR, Finger Temperature,

BVP,

Electro-oculogram

and Facial EMG. Sinha also showed high accuracy in his experiment, but used too many parameters, which resulted in a very complicated bio-signal measurement. With respect to the research to be conducted, it is absolutely necessary to find an acceptable parameter to classify various inner states. According to Kim, Bang & Kim, and Sun K. Yoo et al, Heart Rate Variability (HRV) contains abundance information to identify the state of the Autonomous Nervous System and is therefore the appropriate focus for our study.

Likewise, Avicenna, an Islamic physicians,

be interpreted by other people?

described the effect of various emotions on

people will be sought in more private settings, friends, family, et cetera. On the

the heart rate pulse:

User Definition

other hand, two people how are not familiar

“Anger: Pulse is large, rises high, swift and

..................................

with each other start blank. The entire

brisk.

The choice of ‘heart beat’ made the user

procedure of getting acquainted might be a

Delight: Movement is gradual and outwards,

definition a lot more difficult at one hand;

totally different situation if the very private,

volume is adequate and therefore, the pulse is

how do you pick the right persons for the

intimate information of the heart is also

slow and infrequent.

test if you want to test on heart-beat aspect?

being communicated. Do certain heart rate

Joy: The pulse is similar to [delight] large in

What makes one person more suitable than

changes indicate a sensitive subject? Does

volume and soft, therefore slow and infre-

the other? On the other hand, the social

it indicate interest of the other person or

quent.

factor gave us a good indication of what to

the extreme opposite? All these questions

Grief: Pulse is small, weak, sluggish and slow.

look for in the test persons. Since we wanted

are reasons why we think this is definitely

Fear: If of sudden origin, the pulse becomes

to test the influence of the heart-beat tool

a very interesting direction, and therefore

quick, irregular, disorderly.

on social communication, we classified the

has to be explored.

Love: Now the lover’s pulse is variable and ir-

target group into several categories. One

regular, especially when he sees the object of

other very important factor is the context

A difficult part for me when defining the

his affections or hears her name or hears tid-

of the persons, what is the setting they are

user was not to focus on an application.

ings of her.”

in? Are they in a public place or in a private

Normally, we as designers, are resolution

space? Here is a list of what we thought

focused; define the problem and then

might be interesting settings for our tool.

search for a proper solution. In this case,

Even though I’ve elaborated on the reception of emotions, it must be noticed

the study should serve a research purpose,

that the proposed research is not aimed at

- Speed dating

and be a stepping stone for future studies

classifying emotions; it is merely aimed at

- Job appliance

and/or designs. Therefore I would prefer the

trying to find the most natural mediation of

- Virtual presence

results to cover an as wide as possible area.

another level of personal information. Social

- Love couple

This is re-enforced by the fact that there

interaction has a lot of overlapping surfaces

- Doctor - Patient relationship

has not been done a lot studies on heart

with regards to communicating emotions

- Going out

rate awareness with a strong focus on the

which explains the previously discussed orientation.

social aspect. The ideal situation would be that our tool can register the heartbeat of any other person,

Three major challenges for the acceptance

this way the tool can be used extremely

of the sensory tool are the usability, the

Research question

anonymous. How to deal with privacy issues

added value and the pleasure when using

..................................

was at this point not relevant. Thinking of

the extended sense. In this study, the

The ultimate goal of the study is to give

which people to use for the test forced us to

researcher should keep in mind that the

people an extra dimension of information

think in more depth about social situations.

learning curve of using and interpreting the

when engaging in social communication.

If two people are already acquainted well,

extended sense is a long-term effect.

Therefore, what this study is about is to

there initial interest in the heart beat of the

see if the information that is being sent by

other might be less surprising. This because

Objectives

the heart can be considered an addition to

the issue of intimacy, privacy and that of

..................................

social communication dimensions. In other

exploring what is and is not accepted by

Main Objective:

words, does the heartbeat of a person send

the other person. Nevertheless it is a good

- Which effect does the extended heart rate

out extra information about the habitude of

way to check whether certain assumptions

sense have on social communication?

this person, and if so, can this information

are right between the two people. These

| Project | Open New Doors | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Sub-objective:

would be ideal for the study proposed

..................................

since it allows the user and us to randomly

- What is the meaning of the added

pick subject without having to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;wire upâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

information?

the participants. It creates a more natural atmosphere. Unfortunately, after a more

Research Approach

thorough examination of the method, it

..................................

turns out that the radar technique uses the

To cover the missed out relevant information

Doppler effect to detect displacements of

from

the

the heart (the heart pulse), but these very

researcher will execute qualitative research

small shifts can only be detected if the

because of its exacting nature and to pin

person is in a fixed position and surrounding

down the details of research.

sounds are limited to almost zero. These

Figure 3: Computer derivative from IR image

conditions cannot be dealt with in the

cycle. The majority of studies

Qualitative:

social study that is part of the proposed

thermal imaging using long-wave infrared

- How does the extended sense become

research. Besides, according to the World

of the face and neck areas. A new method

meaningful for people in social contexts?

Health Organization, radar - and Doppler-

based on wavelet analysis is developed to

- How valuable is the mediated information

devices have the disadvantage of being

extract the pulse and respiration. Thermal

in relation to the context at hand?

active sensors, that is, the energy that is

Imaging is not an option since it requires

focused may have harmful side-effects on

high computational powers to constantly

Quantitative:

the health of the participants. Therefore we

analyze the dynamic images.

- Which kind of mediation is most

will not make any more effort in evaluating

appropriate for the particular sense?

this method.

the

quantitative

research

Image 6: Image captured by IR camera

focus on

Electrodes ..................................

- To what degree of accuracy must the heart

Thermal Imaging

The method of electrodes is the most

..................................

familiar one, it is used in a wide variety of

Thermal imaging is considered to be a

appliances, both medical as well as in the

Research prototypes

non-intrusive method for measurements

domestic environment. Most hospitals

Technology introduction

of human vital signs according to Richard

use electrodes to check a patients cardiac

..................................

D. Hudson. Breathing causes noticeable

rhythm. It measures electrical potentials

After having defined the research focus,

changes in temperature at the nasal area,

on the body surface and generates a record

appropriate techniques had to be found

which appear as periodic changes in a face

of the electrical currents associated with

in order to conduct the proposed study.

thermogram. The major arteries of the

heart muscle activity. Analysis of the ECG

Detection of the heart beat can be done in

body produce time-varying heat patterns

(ElectroCardioGram)

4 ways. Using infrared light, radar, thermal

which yield information about the cardiac

about possible damages to specific regions

rate signal be translated?

gives

information

imaging and by electrodes. A necessity for

of the heart. The electrode-system used

our research is that the device is portable.

in most hospitals consist of 3 stick-on

Radar .................................. A first superficial comparison showed that radar is capable of detecting a heart beat from a range up to 10 meters, contactless

according to

Yasuda et al. Contactless

Image 5: Example of an experiment setup

Image 7: commercially available heart rate monitor

information about the cardiac rhythms. A minus about the electrode technique is that the attachment of the sensors is to some degree invasive; a chest strap has to be worn directly to the skin, or 3 electrodes have to be attached spread across the body.

Passive Infrared Reflection .................................. Passive Infrared Reflection, which falls under the category of Photoplethysmography (a volumetric measurement of an organ), is based on the principle of blood pulsating through the body at the same pace of the heart. The blood flowing through the vessels absorbs infrared light, so at every pulse, the Image 8: attached electrode (+)

compactness of the blood increases, which

disposable electrodes, where one electrode

heart rate monitors are used for heart

ensures a higher volume of infrared light

is the positive (+) , one is the negative (-) and

rate logging by runners, bikers et cetera,

being absorbed. The results is a reduction in

the third one is the ground. To get the best

and mostly consist of a chest strap and a

the amount of infrared light reflected. Using

results, the (+) and the (-) should be placed

watch. Some more expensive ones are in

a photo optical sensor, the exact amount of

as far from each other as possible; mostly

the shape of a glove and detect the heart

reflected infrared light can be detected and

this is each on one arm.

rate through passive infrared reflection.

is therefore an indicator of the heart rate.

Commercial heart rate monitors are widely

The electrodes method gives a very high

available at most sport stores and even at

accuracy in measurements, and is therefore

Our Prevalence

some discount stores. These commercial

an often chosen method for obtaining

..................................

Image 9: Example of an experiment setup

After having informed ourselves of the possibilities, we had to get our own. The first thing that came to mind was the medical scene. Contacts within the Maxima Medical Centre provided us with some examples of the instruments used. The images on the left are the instruments we got. Image 9 displays a heart rate monitor based on electrodes, and image 10 is an example of the infrared method. Keeping in mind our requirements for the test (social conversation, freedom to move, et cetera) we made the decision to go for the Passive Infrared Light Reflectance method. The internet provided many electronic schematics of appropriate circuits for this

| Project | Open New Doors |

application, and it was also stated that

Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

functions as a passive infrared reflector, on

this was a simple way to obtain cardiac information, without being too invasive.

Research prototypes Prototype #1.1 | PIR .................................. Image 10 displays a finger clamp that Infrared LED

light resisting foam

Figure 4: Example of an experiment setup

Photoresistor

one side of the finger a LED is transmitting infrared light; on the opposite side, a photoresistor measures the amount of infrared

Image 11: Example of an experiment setup

Image 12: Example of an experiment setup

time the heart beats, the blood pulsates in

‘an

prototyping

programming language (based on Wiring)

sync. This means the density of the blood

platform based on flexible, easy-to-use

and the Arduino development environment

increases with every pulse. Due to the

hardware and software. It’s intended for

(based on Processing). Arduino projects can

compactness of the blood at times of a pulse,

artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone

be stand-alone or they can communicate with

more infrared light will be absorbed resulting

interested in creating interactive objects or

software on running on a computer (e.g. Flash,

in a lower output of the photo resistor.

environments.

Processing, MaxMSP). ‘

This output of the photo resistor has to be

Arduino can sense the environment by receiving

amplified heavily to get a credible signal. A

input from a variety of sensors and can affect

Signal Processing

schematic overview (figure 4) of this system

its surroundings by controlling lights, motors,

..................................

is displayed at the next page. The schematic

and other actuators. The microcontroller on

We used the software ‘Processing‘ to

Figure 5: Example of an experiment setup

Figure 6: Example of an experiment setup

light that passes through the finger. Every open-source

electronics

the board is programmed using the Arduino

was rebuild on a bread-board to be able to make quick changes to resistors or other components. The schematic we initially used was not equipped with an infrared LED, it used light from the environment as transmitter and was therefore very sensitive for environmental influences. After adapting the circuit by adding a LED to beam through the finger, creating a more constant transmitting source, the results were very encouraging. The analog/digital convertor of the Arduino was used to connect the circuit to the computer and be able to process the signal. The Arduino is a very handy tool for rapid testing. According

to the website, the Arduino is:

convert the signal from the Arduino into a graph. After fine-tuning the software and hardware, we were able to display the signal printed in Image 13. Related to the theory, the peaks represent a decrease in the amount of infrared light sensed by the photo resistor because of an increased blood-density. We were surprised by the richness and correctness of the signal. To compare our findings with original ECGs, an ECG was used from ECGpedia, a subpart of WikiPedia. Image 13 was edited in Photoshop, it was mirrored and a color change was applied in order to make it better visible. Overlapping the two images resulted in the image displayed as image 14. Working with Arduino allowed an easy to change threshold to activate output of the Arduino. A more in depth description of the output signal is given in the next chapter â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Actuatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Various adaptions were made to improve the stability of the signal. During pre-

Image 13: Example of an experiment setup

when you just arrived at the workspace, but

signal. Overall the heart beat of a man was

testing, we noticed that the signal was very

a couple of hours later the signal would be

better to detect than that of a woman. The

unstable when it came to testing different

unrecognizable or the entire signal would

difficulty was the actuator-part, since the

people, or even at the same person. At

drop for half a Volt. Also a change of sex

threshold was set at a specific level of X

some times the signal would be perfect

made a big difference in the gain of the

Volts, the actuator would be activated the

| Project | Open New Doors | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

entire time when the signal drops.

more important since your after test

information of the rich signal displayed in

After evaluating the situation we made

results/field data. The importance of having

figure 5. But in the end we were assured

a second set of improvements to the

reliable, stable technology should be one of

of a test-stable situation which was more

prototype. I liked the way iterations

the very major concerns. It is just not done

important.

were almost automatically applied to the

to provide test persons with a prototype

process. To my experience this worked very

that is not functioning proper, since it

The Technology

well, therefore I subconsciously made use

will, without exception, influence the data

The chest strap heart rate monitor works

of it during this process.

gathered. Realizing this was also why we

on the following principle. The chest

changed our technology approach, even if

strap holds electrodes on the left and

Prototype #1.2 | PIR

it felt like a lot of work was done without

right side of your heart. When the heart

.................................

any results. I think realizing this is already a

pulsates, the difference in current is being

The improvements were both on a hardware-

good result of its own.

measured by

as well as on a software-level. The LED

being processed as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;one heart beatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and the

and photo-resistor were exchanged for a

Prototype #2.0 | Heart Rate Monitor

chest strap electronics send a 5 KiloHertz

component that houses both electronic

.................................

signal through the transmitter that is

parts. The amount of IR-light measured

The main reason why we chose this

also implemented into the chest strap.

was now really the reflection of the

method was, as explained above, because

Normally, this signal is received by the HRM

transmitter onto the skin instead of through

of its stable functioning, Using standard

watch, who on its turn calculates the delay

the skin. We also decreased the amount

consumer electronics assures you that

between the pulses received and displays

of environmental light interfering with

the working is (almost) guaranteed and

the heart beat on a digital display as being

the IR-light by creating a closed tube that

therefore reliable. We had to moderate

X beats-per-minute. So basically what we

could be wrapped around the participantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

some of the requirements for the sense and

need to do was to hack the signal that is

finger.

also I felt like this method misses out many

being send to the watch. As said, these

These

hardware-improvements

made a significant

difference to the

signal retrieved. The signal got stretched vertically because the difference in voltage was much higher. Still the problem of the dropping voltage at various moments of the day was not solved. Also small movements were of influence to the signal. It meant we either had to implement a very complex software program or in the worst case look for alternatives. After consulting electronics-experts, going through the pros and cons of the predescribed method, we commonly agreed it was better to go for the alternative direction of using Heart Rate Monitors (HRM). Reflecting at the process so far I realize once again that technology is never easy.

these electrodes. This is

When doing a research project, it is even

Figure 7: 5 KHz signal receiver schematic

Image 14: 5 KHz signal receiver circuit

HRM it concerns a 5 Khz signal, so a receiver

like an easy way to get your hands on

circuit can be build for these specifications.

appropriate technology, and of course, to a

Passive Infrared Technology, this one

The circuit shown on figure 7 was drawn by

this luxury are the components used in such

Translate Social Interaction to Technology - Communication

Rick Moll. It was written to do exactly what

schematics. It has never occurred to me that

..................................

we’ve been looking for; It receives 5 Khz

the components used were all available.

Now that the signal could serve an stable

signals. Since these peaks are of extremely

They are either out of stock, replaced

input for the Arduino, the next step was

low voltage, it is being amplified 100 times,

by newer ones or other causes. What I

creating the communication channel that

then filtered to leave out signals transmitted

try to say is that these inconveniences

would provide interaction of the signal on

by for example TL-lights, amplified again

still create a good learning opportunity

two sides. As explained during the previous

for a 100 times and filtered, and a one

for me. If a component is not available,

chapters, one of the requirements for

more time amplification of a factor 10. The

you really have to go through the entire

our research is that the sense is portable.

power supply, in combination with the peak

schematic in order to be able to decide

This means the signal has to be wirelessly

detector, results in a clear 5 volts analog

which component might be its replacement.

communicated to the other person. Again

pulse whenever a 5 Khz signal is received. An

This way a thorough understanding of

this meant an overview of the available

advantage of having a clear switch between

these schematics is achieved, which I

technologies

0 and 5 volts is that the signal can be read

believe is more important than being able

communication had to be made.

out as a true digital signal where 0 volts

to produce an own version from scratch.

certain extend it is. The thing that decreases

that

provide

wireless

Potential Technologies

means ‘off’ and 5 volts means ‘on’. replacement

..................................

These pulses are then sampled with the

components for the ones that weren’t

Availability of the technology was the most

Arduino’s Digital In port.

available, the technology was quite quickly

important selection criteria. We needed it as

Taking circuits from the internet looks

up and running. Compared to the method of

fast as possible. Many options were quickly

After

finding

the

right

| Project | Open New Doors | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

analyzed and a few withstood our criteria.

These were Bluetooth, Radio Frequency

‘Digi’s XBee Series 2 Personal Area Network

Transceivers, ZigBee and WiFi.

(PAN) RF products are full-featured data radios that combine the features of ZigBee

Conclusion Communication Technology

with mesh and the unparalleled flexibility of

..................................

the XBee product family. They incorporate the

Selection was done using Costs, Availability,

latest dynamic self-healing and self-discovery

Directional options , Size and Distance as

functionality, low-power sleep modes, and

our selection criteria. Eventually we chose

multiple interface options (modules, adapters,

the ZigBee technology because of its easy

gateways), to enable cost-effective and robust

to program mesh networking function and

end-to-end wireless connectivity to local and

cost friendly modules.

remote infrastructure.

acted as extenders. From our project’s perspective it means

Taking in mind possible future applications,

you are able to, for example, let person A

the Zigbee technology also has the

send his ‘heart beat’ to person B, C, D but

advantage of being able to address specific

not E and F; or that C is only a receiver, not

modules within a meshed network. This

giving his own information away. Unlimited

means that even when module A is out of

variations can be made, creating all kinds of

reach of a direct connection to module B,

scenarios using this technology.

other modules function as range extenders and will pass on the information sent by

For the initial social study, we will limit

module A, and therefore module B will

ourself to two-way communication; even

eventually receive the message sent by

though the technology is ready for possible

The Xbee modules were available at the

module A. The possibility to give each

future

faculties research group. Xbee modules refer

module its own identification makes sure

participants.

to the ZigBee standard. The manufacturer

that the information sent from module A to

of the Xbee modules describes them as

module B does not affect the modules that

Image 15: Maxstream Xbee Module

experiments

with

many

For more information on programming

the Arduino and the Zigbee for 2-way

references are created by preceding inputs

private. Hearing could be private, but

communication, see appendix I.

from the sense, which are remembered by

would mean having some kind of earplug/

the brain. Putting this in the perspective

headphones which is on its own a no-go (the

Hów to sense the heartbeat?

of our project, since we are only creating a

test phase requires being able to engage

- mediating the signal back to the body

transmitter for heartbeats and not an actual

in normal social interaction). Sight would

..................................

heart rate monitor which gives you analytic

require some kind of visual display to enable

Parallel to these improvements we started

data of the heart (heartbeat in beats-per-

the participant to ‘see’ the heartbeat of the

exploring ways to mediate the signal back

minute et cetera) the sense will have to be

other person, which has the disadvantage

to the human body.

used in the same way as other senses. It has

of éither being very public, or that of

Realizing this was a crucial aspect in the

to create a dynamic image of the stimuli

distracting attention of the original subject,

process of creating artificial senses for

it receives and the participants have to

whatever that might be at that time.

the human body, we wanted to make

interpret the data for themselves.

The indications so far are that using

sure the selection of the actuator would

the touch-sense seems to be the most

be appropriate. During the initialization

One other issue we had elaborated on was

appropriate. Another approach for using

of the project, a list of the senses of the

that of having a constant incoming signal.

the touch-sense is that the current way the

human body was created. This list proved

We had to make sure that the signal wouldn’t

heartbeat can be sensed is also through

to be a good starting point for selecting

be irritating over time. The characteristics of

touch, you feel your heartbeat, either as

the appropriate option. The 5 senses of the

the human brain kind of helped us out here,

your chest moving back and forth, or by the

human body are:

it stops sending information about constant

changes in thickness of the blood vessels

- Sight - Smell - Taste - Touch - Hearing

exposures to the same thing; e.g. if you are

all throughout your body. Using touch as a

not consciously thinking of the clothes you

way to mediate the signal back seemed to

are wearing right now, you do not feel them

us to be the best option. It seemed to be the

at all. This goes for almost all stimuli the

closest variant to the real-world situation of

body encounters. This makes it possible for

perceiving your own heart beat.

For practical reasons smell and taste were

us to use a constant signal because if we are

Still, in the field of haptics, there are

excluded from the options; we considered

right, only changes in this constant pattern

numerous options that can be explored.

these senses not appropriate for receiving

will be noticed, highlighting exactly that

Haptic technology refers to technology

heart rate information. The options still

what we find interesting.

which interfaces the user via the sense of

open were Sight, Touch and Hearing.

These dynamics and characteristics of the

touch by applying forces, vibrations and/or

human body really interested me when

motions to the user.

Characteristics of the human body

doing this project, it was also something I

- how do senses function?

tried to keep in mind throughout the entire

Exploring Haptics

..................................

project.

..................................

Choosing one of these three options was not

During the exploration phase we tried to find

that easy, it could really make or break the

Requirements, then Selection

the best solution to mediate the signal back

experience the participants would get. What

.................................

to the body, without being irritating over

I found particular important was that the

As said, keeping these requirements in our

time or being too invasive. We used various

sense could become even more interesting

mind we created a pros-and-cons list for

electronic components to experiment with

if it was used in a dynamic way. What I try

each of the three remaining senses. Below

various directions of haptics. Images 14 - 18

to say is that the output signal of a sense

is a short summary of the most important

display the different components that were

of one specific moment in time (in our case

factors.

tested. Here I will give a short summary of

only one heartbeat) has no value unless

Sight and Hearing are to some extend the

why the component was chosen and what it

it can be compared to a reference. These

more publicly ones, whereas touch is very

was supposed to accomplish.

| Project | Open New Doors | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

The piëzo-speakers from image 14 were not

direction is vertical), while the closed ones

used as actual speakers, but they were held

were less penetrating but still good to feel.

against the skin in order create a very subtle

Therefore these were chosen for the final

vibrating effect. The effect was quite nice

prototype.

when holding your finger onto the speaker,

Image 14: Piëzo speakers

Image 15: Relais

Image 16: Solenoïd

but since the arm is far less sensitive, the

Whére to feel the heart beat?

result was too meagre to continue with this

.................................

direction. Varying the frequency or/and

Now that the it was clear how to mediate

amplitude did not have a significant effect.

the signal back to the body, the final choice

The relais displayed in image 15 was used for

we had to make was ‘where to place the

its characteristic to ‘click’ when switching

vibration motors?’. The test was done using

the supply current. The ‘click’ is produced

a bracelet around the wrist, but this was

by a mechanism which is mechanic. The

only chosen for practical reasons. Another

triggering of this mechanism can be felt

very interesting option would have been

quite directly, and showed good potention

the belly area. The Babylonians thought that

for continuation.

the liver was the most important organ of

The solenoïd was tried for its ability to apply

the body because it was used for divination,

pressure to a small area. This component is

which was an integral part of their daily

show in image 16. The pin on the right side can

life. Hence, the liver was thought of as the

be extracted using a magnetic current. We

center of feelings and emotions.

wanted to use the principle of the solenoïd

Due to practical and technical issues this

to contract and extract a strap that could be

direction was not explored any further,

worn around for example the wrist or chest.

although I think this direction might have

Eventually it turned out to be a dead end;

big potentials.

either the amount of contraction was not

Eventually the wrist was selected as the

enough to get a clear signal when used as

place for receiving the heart rate information

a chest strap, or when using it as a bracelet,

of the other person. Many associations are

the dimensions of the component were too

being commonly made about perceiving

big for implementing in a prototype.

heart rate information from the wrist area.

The last option was using vibration.

Also during the haptics exploration phase

Vibration motors come in various ways, two

the test persons could easily relate the

examples are depicted in image 17 and 18.

pulsating of the bracelet to heartbeats.

The difference is their vibrating direction; Image 17: Open Pager vibration motor

Image 18: Closed Pager vibration motor

while the open vibration motors rotates

Force Sensitive Resistor

on a vertical level, the closed ones rotate

.................................

on a horizontal level. Putting these two on

Our study focuses on what the information

your skin gives very different experiences.

of the heart contributes to social interaction/

The closed version was chosen after a small

communication. Therefore we’ve created

test with 4 participants. A test prototype

a prototype that continuously sends heart

was made, being a abstract bracelet with

beats of one person to the other. These

the 2 motors on it. After evaluating the test,

heart beats are translated into a pulsating

the open vibration motors were perceived

bracelet. Our research is focused on

as being kind of penetrating (since their

obtaining information about the influence

of the extended sense in social contexts. We

created to make two way communication

donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want the sense to be abound during

possible. These different parts should be

these situations. It should be something that

worn as depicted on the right.

is normally in the periphery of attention, and comes into prominence when necessary. As said the vibration motors weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve used should not be vibrating at their maximum because of its penetrating feeling; although you should be able to clearly feel the pulses at times demanded. To provide the prototype with

Image 19: Feeling ones own heart rate pulse

this function, an Force Sensitive Resistor

The Final Package

(FSR) has been added. This component

.................................

allows more current to pass when more

After completing all the technical aspects of

force is applied. This result in a button that

the prototype, the Final Prototype consists

can be pressed to let the motors vibrate

of:

harder. Giving the participants the option to listen more closely to the heart beat of the

- Heart Rate Chest Strap (A) including a chest Strap Signal Receiver (B)

other also makes the use of the extended sense more explicit. You are more in control

- Vibrating bracelet including FSR

of when to listen, allowing a better focus at

component (C)

times necessary. The FSR was built into the

- Xbee module (D)

bracelet to create a metaphor to listening to

- Arduino Micro Controller (E)

your own heartbeat (as displayed in image

- 9 Volts battery (F)

19). The image below shows the package of one participant, two of these packages have been Image 20: Electronic prototype; components

F D E

DEF

| Project | Open New Doors | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Social Study

in order to work with both qualitative as

together with an interview afterwards to

Approach

well as quantitative research methods and

redefine events and/or experiences was also

.................................

analysis.

a good option. In an article of Zimmerman

The aim for this design research project is to explore the effect of the extended Heart

Qualitative

approach which they summarized in the

Rate Sense on social behavior between

.................................

following way:

people with a focus on empathy. Three major

For the explorative part we wanted to

challenges for the acceptance of the sensory

give the participants a very short, minimal

Individuals

tool are the usability, the added value and

introduction of what they would be using,

investigator to maintain … a record over some

the pleasure in experience. In this study, a

how it should be used, what it could do et

specified period of time according to a set of

critical point is the learning curve of using

cetera and just let them go out and wear

instructions … The technique we described

and interpreting the extended sense which

the extended sense, explore its limits.

emphasizes the role of diaries as an observation

is a long-term effect. Our research approach

The danger of applying such explorative

log maintained by subjects which can be used

was divided in two parts; one was aimed at

methods is ‘ how do I receive the right

as a basis for intensive interviewing. (1977, p.

discovering new insights to the research

information from such a test?’. We wanted

481)

area as a whole, having a more qualitative,

to capture and analyze their findings, but

explorative nature, while the other part was

without ourselves distorting their usual

This approach seemed to meet our

created to obtain more detailed information

processes. As where interviews rely on

requirements, The diary would serve as a

about the extended sense (quantitative).

memory, the participants were likely to

notebook for events, and we could use these

This division was made to cover a large area

forget minor events that might be just as

notes during the interview to gain extra

to discover new interesting areas and /or

interesting to us as any other. We therefore

insights. Therefore we decided to use this

applications, but without losing focus of

decided to use a less intrusive approach

method. According to Alaszewski, a diary

the more detailed elements of the extended

by inviting the participant to act as self-

can be defined as a document created by

sense.

observers and record their observations in

an individual who has maintained a regular,

diaries (Alaszewski et al, 2000 pp. 81-82). A

personal and contemporaneous record. The

combination of using a diary to log events,

defining characteristics of diaries include:

Personally I wanted to persevere this division

and Weider, they described a diary-interview

Image 21: Engaging Diaries

are

commissioned

the

To which degree was the sense useful? What are your expectations of the sense? At what kind of moments did the sense provide valuable information? How did the prototype feel? How accurate was the sense? Did you gain more empathy by using the sense?

Quantitative ................................. Figure 8: Introduction Page Engaging Diary

Engaging | Diaries Photoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s: Yes/No Experience:

Foto No.:

Day

The second part of the study focuses on a Night

Verbal Event Non-Verbal Event

Engaging | Diaries Photoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s: Yes/No Experience:

Foto No.:

Day

Night

Verbal Event Non-Verbal Event

more specific aspect of using the heart rate sense. The aim of this part of the study was to discover to which degree the heart rate

Setting:

Empathy:

Photos: Yes/No Experience:

Foto No.:

Verbal Event Non-Verbal Event

Photos: Yes/No Experience:

sense supports people in their ability to gain empathy for another person. In other Foto No.:

Verbal Event Non-Verbal Event

words, to which degree does the heart rate sense supports people in their ability to directly perceive, recognize and feel

Setting:

Empathy:

the emotion of another person? Note the division of empathy in perceive, recognize and feel. There are two commonly accepted

Figure 9: Page Engaging Diary

classifications of emotions, one of them, considers relevant and important and may

created by Robert Plutchik, is considered

Regularity, a diary is organized around a

include events, activities, interactions,

the most influential classification approach

sequence of regular and dated entries over

impressions and feelings. The record usually

in the study of emotion classification. He

a period of time during which the diarist

takes the form of a time-structured written

divided it into eight primary emotions.

keeps or maintains the diary. These entries

document, though with the development of

Anger, Fear, Sadness, Joy, Disgust, Curiosity/

may be at fixed time intervals such as each

technology it can also take the form of an

interest, Surprise and Acceptance.

day or linked to specific events.

audio or audiovisual recording.

Similar to the way primary colors combine, primary emotions are believed to blend

Personal, the entries are made by an

During this test, participants were able to

together to form the full spectrum of human

identifiable individual who controls access

get familiar with the extended sense and

emotional experience. The other list was

to the diary while he or she records it.

discover its possibilities and limits.

described by the psychologists Paul Ekman; he classified 5 basic emotions being:

Contemporaneous, the entries are made

Evaluation will be done by analyzing the

Anger, Fear, Sadness, Happiness and Disgust

at the time or close enough to the time

diary and using the entries from the diary

Ekman concluded that the facial expression

when events or activities occurred so that

to steer the interview. Since it might be

of some basic emotions is innate, and can

the record is not distorted by problems of

possible that not all aspects we expect to be

therefore not be classified as an emotion.

recall.

interesting will be covered in the diary, a list

To check to which degree the sense can give

of questions was made to cover for these

information on emotional states, a series

misses.

of tests should be done were a diversity

A record, the entries record what an individual

| Project | Open New Doors |

of movies should be edited, which evoke a

person A. The results from person B can than

good classification by person B can barely be

certain emotional response. Two persons

be elaborated on using well documented

done, resulting in unreliable data. The best

are needed for one test. The following set-

and structured material. An example of

way is using a percentage scale. This way

up should be used: Person A watches the

what the data could look like is displayed in

Person B can indicate a tendency towards

edited movies containing emotional stimuli,

image 22.

for example frustration (50%), anger (35%)

Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

In stage 2 person A will use the heart rate

alternated by a neutral movieclip to retain a neutral state of mind. Person B can see

In order to verify the outcomes of person B,

The other approach is based on classifying

person A, but not the movies displayed.

the overview described in the first chapter

negative and positive emotions; this method

Person B than has to make a judgement of

by Avicenna (emotional influence on the

is quite straightforward, person B has to

the emotional state of person A by analyzing

vascular system of the body) can be used.

indicate if the change in pulse indicates a

facial expressions and body language. In all

This overview might serve a good reference

negative or a positive state of mind.

stages, person B is not visible for person A.

for the test proposed. One remark can be made; to see whether

sense, transmitting his/her heart rate to

Person B’s part consists of judging evoked

there is a learning effect when using the

person B, while Person B wears a ‘listen-only’

emotional responses. The test can be done

heart rate sense, test persons from the

prototype; Person B will not send his/her

using 2 different approaches; one is trying

qualitative test should be used and their

heart rate to person A. Person A will watch

to classify emotional states based on either

results have to be compared to the ‘new’

a second set of different movie material.

Plutchik’s or Ekman’s list of emotions.

participants.

Again person B has to make a judgement of

Choosing this approach means that the

the emotional state of person A, using the

answers that can be given have to be

Unfortunately, due to a lack of time, the

heart rate sense as a reinforcement of his

adapted. Based on Avicenna’s list, there is

quantitative test could not be executed by

findings based on body language and facial

a large overlap between several emotions

us. Nevertheless it could serve a well defined

expressions.

regarding heart pulse variations. Therefore a

research project in the future. It also helped

The final stage of the test is that person

Image 22: Data analysis test II

A watches again a different set of movies, while person B only has the heart rate sense to base his/her judgement on, thus not having visual contact with person A. Analysis of the experiment should be done by a variety of ways. The data from the

experiment

should

therefore

documented carefully. An example of how this could be done: The prototype worn by person A should be set to broadcast to both the prototype of person B as well as an Xbee-module connected to the computer of the researcher. This way the data coming from person A can be logged and be used for analysis afterwards. To do this properly, the incoming data-stream has to be marked at the actual start of the test. Furthermore,

or joy (15%).

a video observation should be made from

improved my knowledge on how to create

walking on your street.

a quantitative study. Therefore it has still

agreements were created (one set is shown on image 23). The latter was made to be

Regular - not planned, but very common,

able to use data gathered from these tests

likely to raise questions when missed.

for future use in reports and presentation.

User

Meeting a doorman or a security guard

A copy of these agreements can be found in

.................................

every workday in your workplace, dining

appendix II.

Creating these user tests made me realize

every day in the same restaurant, et cetera.

As for our qualitative test, we chose a couple

served a good purpose.

again how important it is to find the right

that was actually in a love relationship (they

users/participants and be very carefull

Regulated - planned and regulated by customs

fit the Regulated category), one male, one

with this. Selecting the different users for

or law, will definitely raise questions when

female. The participants were, even though

the user test was therefore done based

missed. Interaction in a workplace (coming

in a loving relationship, in a professional

on their interpersonal relationship; social

to work, staff meetings, playing team sport)

context.

interaction can be differentiated into

family, et cetera.

several categories: The study focuses on exploring possible

Even though we extensively tested the

Accidental (also known as social contact)

interesting areas, therefore the best

prototypes ourselves (Jing and I both wore

not planned and likely not repeated. For

thing would be to involve users from each

the prototypes for over 2 hours, without

example, asking a stranger for directions or

category.

any strange things happening), suddenly

shopkeeper for product availability.

the prototypes broke down. The bracelets

User Testing

were

Repeated - not planned, bound to happen

.................................

transmitting any reliable data. The cause

from time to time. For example, accidentally

For the first user test 2 sets of test prototypes

of the failure could not be determined by

meeting a neighbor from time to time when

of the extended sense, 2 diaries and 2 privacy

myself, neither by experts as Sjriek Alers

Image 23: Qualitative Test Package 1 Person

now

vibrating

constantly,

not

from the research department, specialised in wireless communication or Peter Peters, also a member of the research group. His focus is software development. The only possible cause I could think of was that the participants sat too close to each other for too long, causing a deadlock in the communication. If the chest strapâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s signal of one person is received by one personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s signal receiver, the Xbee will send a signal to the other prototype to vibrate the bracelet. If this signal is received from both the persons in one persons signal receiver, the Xbee has to send 2 signals, of which one is also being transmitted at exactly the same time. In order to continue with the tests, we decided to adapt the test approach. Instead of using one test to test two personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experiences, we did two test, where one person will first send his/her heartrate for

| Project | Open New Doors |

one day; the next day these persons will

Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

testing 2-way is still an extremely interesting

Participant #2:

direction and can definitely be tested in the

‘I was not around my partner but could feel

near future. A better isolation of the chest

the heartrate go up, i went out to look for

strap transmitters might already do the job.

her’

Quotes so far...

switch their prototype, making the receiver

.................................

now the transmitter and vice versa.

Partcipant #1: ‘On my way back i hoped he would notice i

Eventually I think testing in this way created

was back around so we could go home’

better to interpret data. Testing 2 way communication in one time results in very

‘I did not like to lose the connection although

complex data; how do you filter out the

i can’t feel the connection myself’

actual influence of the sense if the reaction of one person might also be a reaction to

‘i am more aware of his position to me, i can

the reaction of the other person who also

feel him around me’

perceives a varying heart rate? Of course,

‘The tool made me more aware of subtle

Analysis and Evaluation

things that were communicated’

................................. Doing only this one test gave us so much new

‘Sometimes the vibration was kind of

information about the use of the extended

distracting’

sense, also in terms of new possible research directions and future applications, that we

draagt de zintuig bij aan de communicatie?

decided there was an absolute need to do more (qualitative) testing.

draagt de zintuig bij aan jullie relatie?

These extra tests will be executed during the

draagt de zintuig bij aan jullie perceptie

week between handing in this report and

over elkaar?

the semester presentation. This report will therefore not be completed at this time, but

social behavior

a supplement containing the user tests and analysis, and also a reflection to the project

aanpassing/ eigen gedrag aanpassen aan

will be delivered to the persons possessing

sense --> je weet dat de ander het voelt

a copy of this report. future applications

wiegedood

mantelzorgers

Reserved for analysis and evaluation

28 Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Reserved for analysis and evaluation

| Project | Open New Doors |

Reserved for analysis and evaluation

Master Class

Business Process Design This class concentrates on the (research aspects of-) the design of business processes that can be used for the creation and realization of (ambient) intelligent systems, products and services. The Master Class pays attention to both the (ongoing) research of the Industrial Design Business Process Design-group as well as on the operational aspects of Business Process Design in the industrial field.

- Aarnout Brombacher -

| Master Class | Business Process Design |

Master Class Business Process Design

in this area. Also during my internship I felt

Collaborations

business process design class and the user

this was a competency that really should

.................................

class arranged a meeting for us with Bill

be improved. In the meantime I did work

One of the co-students was a graduate

Buxton. A small introduction to Bill can be

on this competency by reading several

student from innovation management. It

found below:

books on sales marketing, but not really on

was a very pleasant variation to work with

Bill Buxton is a designer and a researcher

the processes one has to go through when

people who have a very wide understanding

concerned

developing high tech products. When to

of another field. Collaborating with other

technology. His work reflects a particular

start getting in touch with possible suppliers,

faculties is something that in my opinion

interest in the use of technology to support

and also in this time of globalization: where

should be done so much more, according to

creative activities such as design, film making

Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

to look for these suppliers? I was also

me it energizes people to do the best they

and music. Buxtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research specialties

eager to learn more about the financial

can in their own field, creating a buzz in

include

part of product development. I never got

trying to jointly create a high quality result.

theories of input to computers, technology

the chance to do this and the master class

Collaborating with other students was very

mediated human-human collaboration, and

proved to be a good opportunity.

well done in this class. Professor Brombacher

ubiquitous computing.

arranged a series of net-meetings with

In December 2005, he was appointed

Although the master class was in the

lecturers and students from the University

Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research.

beginning a bit undefined, it turned out to be

of GeorgiaTech. This was done because the

Prior to that, he was Principal of his

a good provider for my market competency

assignment of the PCP was also executed

own Toronto-based boutique design and

development. The class provided several

by students from that university. It was

lectures on subjects as Highly Uncertain

nice to use the video conferencing system

.................................

Markets, Maturity Index on Reliability

to follow lectures given by a professor from

This master class was chosen because of

and Increasing Customer Demand. The

the GeorgiaTech university.

its potential to develop my marketing

final deliverable was the development of a

skills. I felt that during my previous years

product creation process (PCP) for a highly

Bill Buxton

of Industrial Design education, I missed

innovative product.

................................. During the class, the lecturers of both the

out on a lot of very important knowledge

Image 24: Initialization Phase Master Class Business Process Design

with

human

technologies,

aspects

techniques

and

consulting firm, Buxton Design, where his time was split between working for clients, lecturing, and trying to finish a long-delayed book on sketching and interaction design. As well, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he still works with graduate students. The meeting was well organized, resulting in a very interactive talking session. His experience in both design, research and product creations made it a very interesting and inspirational lecture. One aspect I found particular interesting was his vision on the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC; Order of Magnitudeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. His vision was that

the order of magnitude could be applied at

near-state of the art business process. Given the lack of exposure to this field earlier in their education the result was truly remarkable, certainly compared to the results for the same project generated by earlier students with a better background in this field. And the feedback on the competency development; although more on a general level than an individual level: At the start of the class the student had had only limited exposure to the key-elements of competence 5 as well as to the research program as it is executed by the scientific staff of the department Industrial Design. The student has demonstrated, both individually

Image 25: Bill Buxton

anything, anywhere and anytime. Especially

development as a designer. It was good to

and as part of a group, an amazing capability

for us as designers, it was important to play

do a design project from a totally different

to absorb new knowledge in this field and

with this order of magnitude. It could really

perspective, that of a business process

has been able to apply this in the context of a

open up new directions, for example if you

analyst. It has made me more aware of the

pseudo-industrial project.

are developing a new product and want to

bigger picture instead of only thinking about

create a vision of how this product might

the true value of the concept or where to

A copy of the final deliverable for this report

influence the world in a decade, change

place certain parts of the product et cetera.

can be found as appendix IV

for example the magnitude of the costs,

Eventually, when the PCP deliverable was

make the product a 100 times cheaper

handed in, we got a feedback meeting

and elaborate of what would happen. Or

with professor Brombacher and since our

make the product 10 times smaller, what

co-student

would then happen? Would people take it

still used actual grades, we were also

everywhere? If this product uses wireless

aware of the quality of our work. Professor

communication, how would this portability

Brombacher judged our work as being â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;of

affect everything around us? As you see

exceptional high qualityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and assigned us a

the Order of Magnitude is a very good tool

9. That was quite nice!

of Innovations Management

to be aware of. The lecture was also very inspirational because of all the experiences

Lecturer Feedback

he had in other areas of product and service

.................................

design.

The feedback we got on the deliverable: The case-study that was used as final project

Evaluation

of this masterclass, was of an excellent quality.

.................................

In the project the students have demonstrated

Reflecting on the Master Class Business

an excellent capability to retrieve knowledge

Process Design I can state that this class

(both from literature and in the field) and to

was definitely of added value to my personal

synthesise this knowledge into the design in a

Module

Quantitative Research Methods A research study constitutes a specific way of thinking and working that is aimed at answering questions (i.e., testing hypothesis, making selections between alternatives). It uses procedures, methods and techniques that have been tested for their validity and reliability, and that are accepted by a large (research) community. This module aims at introducing the philosophy (way of thinking) that is adopted by researchers, and at providing an introduction to quantitative research models and methods.

- Jean-Bernard Martens -

| Module | Quantitative Research Methods| Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Module Quantitative Research Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

To me this module really served as an introduction to design research. The module was executed in the second week of the semester and could therefor be linked to the writing of a research proposal. The difficulty I encountered was that the main part of our study was going to be qualitative. Therefore I was not able to fully exploit the module for projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purposes. A research proposal had to be written according to scientific standards, taking in mind all the aspects of proposing, testing and analyzing data. Because of the explorative nature of the project, a research proposal was designed that would not be executed by us. A more defined user group was taken to be able to specifically propose appropriate research methods. In my opinion the best example of how the information gathered during this module has been used is the M1.2 project, Open New Doors. A copy of the research proposal has been added as appendix III

| Learning Points & Landmarks | M1.2 | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Learning Points and Landmarks of M1.2

certain things that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve explained them.

.................................

The project collaboration also gave me a

A short summary of my learning points and

good focus for this semester. Sometimes it

landmarks during my m1.2 phase are:

was kind of annoying to be really responsible for one part of the project, especially when

Introduction to the Research philosophy;

things donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work the way they supposed

Although I had not expected myself to say

to. But on the other hand it gave me a

this, I really enjoyed doing this research

clear goal to work towards. I must say I am

phase. It really changed my opinion about

proud that the prototype worked good in

design research, i can now relate to the

the end. I also know for sure that the 2-way

people doing research that creates no direct

communication can be solved if I would

value in the form of user products or services,

have some more time.

but serves as a stepping stone for future research. Before this semester I always

Another skill I liked working on was my

thought the real design fun is in the more

graphic skill. I learned that creating high

commercial direction, but I have to admit

quality work results in a higher credibility;

that it is the design research direction that

and this relates to everything you do. I am

is really founded on a thorough knowledge

getting faster and better at making a normal

and understanding. Referring to the work of

report look like something nice. I also

others, widening your own scope was what i

created the final lay out for the Master Class

really learned during all three exercises this

Business Process Design report, which was

semester (Module, Project & Class).

warmly received by professor Brombacher.

- stand on the shoulder of giants -

Even though I have learned very much this semester, it also made me realize that there

It is a nice saying actually...

is always more to explore, but also to create. Which I believe is a very positive attitude in

As for the teamwork competency, I really

my pursuit towards becoming an industrial

enjoyed doing a project together with

designer.

someone else. Of course it is a bit frustrating if you have to rethink or explain again what you really mean. But it definitely made me more aware of why i was doing the things i was doing. Having to explain it to someone else, just discussing findings et cetera is a good way to get things clear. As

for

the

class

the

international

collaboration was really a lot of fun. There is so much more that I can learn from doing things together, and I think this also works the other way around in some cases. It is

nice to see someone else getting better at

References

NJ.

Literature

Web

.................................

Mehrabian, A; The Three Elements of

Alaszewski et al, Using Diaries for Social

Communication, 1985.

................................. www.arduino.cc

Research, 2000, pp. 81-82 Picard, Rosalind W.; Elias Vyzas; Jennifer Avicenna, taken from the article â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;A history

Healey:

of medicine. Primitive and archaic medicine.

Intelligence:

Vol.1.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Sigerist HE; New York. Oxford

Physiological State, IEEE Transactions on

University Press, 1951

Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,

Toward

Machine

Analysis

Emotional Affective

Vol. 23, No. 10. October (2001) Hajar R. The pulse in antiquity. Heart Views. 1999;1(3):89 - 94

Porges SW, Byrne EA. Institute for Child Study, College of

Hudson,

Richard.

The

Military

Education, University of Maryland, College

Applications of Remote Sensing by Infrared.

Park 20742.

(1975)

PMID: 1467397 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

K.H. Kim, S.W. Bang, S.R. Kim: Emotion recognition

system

using

short-term

R.Sinha O. Parsons: Multivariate response

monitoring of physiological signals, Medical

patterning of fear and anger, Cognition and

& Biological Engineering &Computing, Vol.

Emotion, Vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 173-198, (1996)

42, 419-427 (2004) Sun. K. Yoo et al,(2005) Neural Network Keisuke Yasuda, Koumin Takamura, Takumi

Based Emotion Estimation using Heart Rate

Masuda, Kazushige Magatani: A remote

Variability and Skin Resistance, ICNC 2005

measurement method of the human bio-

LNCS 3610, pp 818-824, 2005

signals. Tokai University, Kitakanamel117, Hiratuka, Kanagawa

Yasuaki Noguchi et al, Measurement Characteristics of the ultrasound Heart Rate

McCraty R, Atkinson M, Tiller WA, et al.

Monitor. Department of Applied Physics,

The effects of emotions on short term

National

heart rate variability using power spectrum analysis. American Journal of Cardiology.

Yasuda, Keisuke; Koumin Takamura, Takumi

1995;76:1089-1093.

Masuda, Kazushige Magatani, A remote measurement method of the human bio-

McCraty R, Atkinson M, Tomasino D, et

signals; Tokai University, Kitakanamel117,

al. The Electricity of Touch: Detection and

Hiratuka (2003)

measurement of cardiac energy exchange

between people. in The Fifth Appalachian

Zimmerman D.A. and Weider D.L. (1977) The

Conference on Neurobehavioral Dynamics:

Diary Interview Method, Urban Life,

Brain and Values. 1996. Radford VA:

5(4), 479-99

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Mahwah,

http://rick.mollprojects.com/hrm/index www.maxstream.net/about/

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

appendix I

Communication Xbee

Arduino

appendix II

Privacy Agreement

appendix III

Module Deliverable;

Quantitative Research Methods

appendix IV

Final Report, Master Class

Business Process Design

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Research Project | Open New Doors

Extend Your Senses ʹ A study on heart pulse awareness

Jing Wang & Laurens Doesborgh

General Introduction We connect to the world through our body, and we act and experience our world through our senses as an intricate interplay of movement and perception. Modern electronics and sensors that have become available offer the possibility to create tools or wearables which can sense various aspects of the physical world, and can mediate the information that they sense to users through different channels. Thus, if we can use these electronic sensors to create new sensing abilities of the body, we can not only change the experiences that are open to us, but we might be able to learn to interact with the world in novel ways.

Project Topic Wanting to sense new natural phenomena is nothing new for mankind. Think of complete comic strip-series like the ones from Marvell writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby who created superhero͛s that had x-ray vision, could sense danger or manipulate the magnetic field. These visions on new senses for human kind are to some degree unrealistic but nevertheless interesting as inspiration. Together with the interest of humans to one another, social interactions came to us as a hot topic for research. Research shows that only 7 percent of all human-to-human communication is done using words. The remaining part consists of voice tone (38%) and body language (55%) [1.]. During social conversations, with respect to these figures, many nuances are communicated that cannot be noticed when only looking at the words communicated. These figures also show that

contains abundance information to identify the state of the Autonomous Nervous System [4.] [5.] and is therefore the appropriate focus for our study.

there is a division between rational and emotional communication wherein emotional communication has a much higher bandwidth and is often complex to interpret. This study focuses on discovering a new level of communication by providing the user a more explicit way for psycho-physiological interpretation.

The Institute of HeartMath, a research centre dedicated to the study of the heart and the physiology of emotions, has conducted numerous studies identifying the relationship between emotions and the heart. A number of their studies have provided new insight into understanding how the activity of the heart is indeed linked to our emotions and our health, vitality and well-being.

In the field of ubiquitous computing, some research has been done when it comes to observing emotional states of humans. Rosalind W. Picard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology classified 8 different emotions using a portable device [2.] Her results are very accurate, it shows an accuracy-rate of 81%, but the classification of the chosen emotions is ambiguous, and the number of test people is too few. The high accuracy-rate Rosalind W. Picard shows are based on observations of many parameters. She investigated the following: Autonomous Nervous System (ANS), including Respiration, Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), Temperature, Blood Volume Pressure (BVP), and Electromyogram (EMG). Even though using these many parameters positively contribute to achieving high emotional identification accuracy, it also increased computational power and costs. R. Sinha opposed this method and tested only 2 emotions; fear and anger [3.] He used 6 parameters, namely Heart Rate, GSR, Finger Temperature, BVP, Electro-oculogram and Facial EMG. Sinha also showed high accuracy in his experiment, but used too many parameters, which resulted in a very complicated bio-signal measurement.

Psychologists once maintained that emotions were purely mental expressions generated by the brain alone. The Institute of HeartMath says ͞this is not true Ͷ emotions have as

much to do with the heart and body as they do with the brain. Of the bodily organs, the heart plays a particularly important role in our emotional experience. The experience of an emotion results from the brain, heart and body acting in concert.͟ It must be noticed that the proposed research is not aimed at classifying emotions; it is merely aimed at trying to find the most natural mediation of another level of personal information. Social interaction has a lot of overlapping surfaces with regards to communicating emotions which explains the previously discussed orientation. Detecting Heart Rate Variability can be done in 4 ways. Using infrared light, Radar, Thermal Imaging and using electrodes [6.] [7.] [8.]. A necessity for our research is that the device is portable. A first superficial comparison shows that radar is capable of detecting HRV from a range up to 10 meters, contactless. Contactless would be ideal for the research proposed since it doesn͛t limit

With respect to the research to be conducted, it is absolutely necessary to find an acceptable parameter to classify various inner states. Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

the user because of practical issues at the other party. Unfortunately, after a more thorough examination of the method, it turns out that the radar technique uses the Doppler effect to detect displacements of the heart (the heart pulse), but these very small shifts can only be detected if the person is in a fixed position and surrounding sounds are limited to almost zero. These conditions cannot be dealt with in the social study that is part of the proposed research. Thermal Imaging is not an option since it requires high computational powers to constantly analyze the dynamic images. Using the electrodes technology gives a very high accuracy in measurements, but the attachment of the sensors is to some degree invasive. The use of Passive Infrared Reflection has our prevalence. Passive Infrared Reflection, which falls under the category of Photoplethysmography (a volumetric measurement of an organ), is based on the principle of blood pulsating through the body at the same pace the heart pulsates. Blood absorbs infrared light, so at every pulse, the compactness of the blood increases, reducing the amount of infrared light reflection. This amount can be detected and is an indicator for the heart rate [6.]. Problem Statement The overall research question is:

How can we connect people to the world using artificial sensory tools in such a way that these tools feel like an actual extension of the body. This research question can have many different implementations in different fields of applications for various user groups. It͛s a rich environment both to do research and to design for. To give direction for this project

Research Project | Open New Doors

Extend Your Senses ʹ A study on heart pulse awareness

Jing Wang & Laurens Doesborgh

we will focus on a particular user group in the medical field where knowledge on heart rate variability already exists. The likelihood for acceptance of the extended heart rate sense here is more plausible regarding the usability and added value of the sense. The researcher sees this user group of medical practitioners as a safe direction for orientation to explore profound characteristics of the sense. The outcomes of this research can serve as a stepping stone for other designs and researches other then the medical world.

Qualitative: How valuable is the mediated information in relation to the context at hand?

The design challenge here is to connect and mediate the extended sensorial tool for medical practitioners so they can become more in tune with their patients, both on physical and psychological level. Due to their knowledge and understanding of the heart from a physical perspective their mechanism in learning and applying the extended sense is therefore more credible. This sensory tool might offer possibilities for medical practitioners to develop not only physical awareness, but also emotional awareness.

Main Objective:

Three major challenges for the acceptance of the sensory tool are the usability, the added value and the pleasure when using the extended sense. In this study, the researcher should keep in mind that the learning curve of using and interpreting the extended sense is a long-term effect. Research Approach

Quantitative: Which kind of mediation is most appropriate for the particular sense? Quantitative: To what degree of accuracy must the heart rate signal be translated? Qualitative: How does the extended sense become meaningful for medical practitioners?

Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model is a framework that can be used to validate the acceptance for innovative technologies. The UTAUT framework formulates a unified model that integrates elements across eight different technology acceptance models [8.]. It is formulated with four core determents of intentions and usage:

To cover the missed out relevant information from the quantitative research the researcher will execute qualitative research because of its exacting nature and to pin down the details of research.

Performance Expectance (degree of expected enhancement in performance in the medical context and expected usefulness)

Objectives

Effort Expectance (degree of expected effort they should invest in using/learning the extended sense)

Assessing the probability for acceptance of the extended sensory tool as an actual extension of the body.

Social Influence (degree to which the user perceives that others believe he/she should use the extended sense)

Sub-objectives: -

Determine a research model based on adapting the UTAUT model [8.]

Obtain quantitative and qualitative data on: Performance Expectancy, Effort Expectancy, Social influence and Pleasure Expectancy.

Facilitating Condition (degree to which an individual believes that an organizational and technical infrastructure exists to support use of the system) The test with the participants will be approached on a passive and an active level of co-operation. First of all they will get an introduction to the design that will be tested. Then for the passive approach the participants will be informed thoroughly on the purpose of the research and given a list of prescribed statements related to the proposal. Individually they will be asked to check these statements a long a day of practice. For the active approach the researcher will join several practice sessions to observe the sense in use, because of privacy issues these sessions must be conducted in accordance with the patients and medical practitioners. Afterwards the total experience will be discussed and

Study Design The study is mainly designed to obtain information about how to mediate heart rate perception to the human body in a natural way, in order to gain expectations on the use of the extended sense. This information can be obtained by performing a test on a crosssection of the population who are potential specialist-users (medical practitioners). The outcomes of this experiment can provide the researcher with a clear overview of which properties can contribute to the acceptance of the extended sense. The Unified Theory of

assessed with each participant for information on the probability for acceptance of the sense. Contact with the participants will be reached by contacting hospital doctors and nurses and possible family doctors.

Measurement Procedure To obtain data for each of the four determents from the adapted unified model, the researcher will set up statements for assessment for both the passive and active part of the study design. The statements will be processed into the questionnaires for the passive study and the same statements will be used as guidelines for the observation sessions (active). The participants are asked to rate each statement according to a predefined scale. This rating will be done according to the Likert Scale. [9.] The determent ³Facilitating Conditions´ is not relevant from our study¶s perspective because the extended sensory tool is independent to the infrastructure and the organization.

Sampling The study͛s sample will be the proposed user group of medical practitioners like doctors, nurses and other people working in the medical sector. An estimation of the population will be made possibly supported with additional research on the medical practitioners areas of specializations and tasks. Due to limitations in the amount of time the researcher will take

Research Project | Open New Doors

Extend Your Senses ʹ A study on heart pulse awareness

Jing Wang & Laurens Doesborgh

a total of 6 participants as the sample size. The sampling will be done taking age, gender, experience/skill-level and the variations of the patient͛s characteristics. Both male and female participants will be selected wherein the emotional capabilities of the gender will be taken into account.

Analysis of Data To assess the probability of the acceptance of the design proposal, the researcher will draw data from both the active and passive part of the study. The researcher will use this data to estimate if a sequential study will be interesting. A long term user test could provide the researcher with more in-depth information on the learning curve and subsequentially the level of acceptance of the proposed design. If the researcher concludes to do so, the current state of the design proposal might need some adaptations. If not, the data should be used to obtain an indication where possible problems are, then the researcher decides if these problems can be solved within the design proposal or should be incorporated in the next research phase.

References

size might not be adequate to cover the study͛s full potential.

[1.] Albert Mehrabian, The Three Elements of Communication

Yet, since the area of research is relatively unexplored any scientifically based data provides reasonable return of investment.

[2.] Rosalind W. Picard, Elias Vyzas, Jennifer Healey: Toward Machine Emotional Intelligence: Analysis of Affective Physiological State, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 23, No. 10. October (2001)

- Chosen method: The link the researcher sees between the research done in the field of technology acceptance and this specific research might be less appropriate than expected. This might raise questions about the validity. Though the research expects to find helpful results, with respect to supporting the decision making.

[3.] R.Sinha O. Parsons: Multivariate response patterning of fear and anger, Cognition and Emotion, Vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 173-198, (1996)

Monitor. Department of Applied Physics, National Defense Academy, Yokosuka, 239, Japan

[8.] Venkatesh, V. et al. (2003) User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View. MIS Quarterly, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 425-478.

[9.] Likert, R. (1932), A Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes. Archives of Psychology 140, 55

[4.] K.H. Kim, S.W. Bang, S.R. Kim: Emotion recognition system using short-term monitoring of physiological signals, Medical & Biological Engineering &Computing, Vol. 42, 419-427 (2004)

[5.] Sun. K. Yoo et al,(2005) Neural Network Based Emotion Estimation using Heart Rate Variability and Skin Resistance, ICNC 2005 LNCS 3610, pp 818-824, 2005

Problems and Limitations The problems the researcher should anticipate on in advance of executing the study, which are mainly decisions due to limitations in various fields, are:

[6.] Keisuke Yasuda, Koumin Takamura, Takumi Masuda, Kazushige Magatani: A remote measurement method of the human bio-signals. Tokai University, Kitakanamel117, Hiratuka, Kanagawa

- Sample size: For a thorough analysis of the impact of a system proposed, a large scale experiment should be executed. Due to limitations in time and facilities the sample

[7.] Yasuaki Noguchi et al, Measurement Characteristics of the ultrasound Heart Rate

Eindhoven University of Technology Department of Industrial Design Masters Course 2007-2008

Masterclass Business Process Design

Lecturer: Prof. dr. ir. A.C. Brombacher Students: Admiraal, E.A.M Doesborgh, L Karsmakers, N Kersteman, W.F.C Megens, C.J.P.G. Wang, J

s030623 s030674 s020987 s021467 s010853 s031799

Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

| Master Class | Business Process Design |

“

ABSTRACT This business plan proposes a development process of a new and innovative product: The GoBot. The business plan starts with a market research from which the concept derived. To realize this product in a global market we defined target markets and made a value proposition with external parties. An important aspect of the success of the New Product Development (NPD) process is the Return on Investment (ROI). Therefore extra attention has been paid to chart the profit dynamics. Next, there is a description of the different phases in the product creation process. These phases include a dynamic feedforward and feed back information flow in order to incorporate customer needs and ensure customer satisfaction. This optimizes the process to stay ahead of the competition. The last important aspect which is attended is the Mature Index of Reliability by Sander and Brombacher (2000). This means how information is collected that derives from the use phase; how this information is processed and where this information can serve as valuable input for the different stages of the next generation product development process to ensure quality and reliability.

<< the Sony AIBO (Artiﬁcial Intelligence roBOt, homonymous with “companion” in Japanese) is one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony; there have been several different models since their introduction in 1999. Able to walk, “see”

its environment via camera, and recognize spoken commands, they are considered to be autonomous robots, since they are able to learn and mature based on external stimuli from their owner or environment, or from other AIBOs.

“ Page 3

| Master Class | Business Process Design |

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Index 1

Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

Page 4

Introduction 1.1 Context of New Product Development 1.2 Global optimization 1.3 Maturity Index on Reliability (MIR) Market Research 2.1 Concept Development 2.1.1 Trends 2.1.2 Opportunities 2.1.3 The GoBot concept 2.2 Value Proposition 2.3 Risk Analysis 2.3.1 Liability and security 2.3.2 Competitor analysis 2.3.2.1 Industry Competition 2.3.3 Competitor Response ProďŹ le 2.4 Market strategy 2.4.1 Promotion 2.4.2 Target Market 2.4.3 Analysis of early adopters Relationship planning 3.1 Collaboration Point of Interests 3.2 Hardware Development Partner 3.2.1 Selection Process 3.2.2 Partner Analysis 3.2.3 Conclusion Finance 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Costs 4.3 Revenues 4.3.1 Revenues from controlling the robot 4.3.2 Revenues from special events 4.3.3 Revenues from advertisements 4.4 Cost - Revenue Diagram

6 7 7 8 9 12 14

16 16 16 17 20 20

25 26 27

Product Development 5.1 Co-Design 5.1.1 Hardware Concept Development 5.1.2 Software Concept Development 5.2 System Level Design 5.3 Prototyping 5.4 Testing and ReďŹ nement

33 33 33 34

Engineering & Production 6.1 Engineering 6.2 Production Plan 6.3 Production

38 38 39

Software Development 7.1 Software process models 7.2 Software Development for GoBot 7.3 Software release

42 43 44

Use & Service

References 9.1 Literature 9.2 Other

52 53

Appendices 10.1 Appendix I: Toyota to buy Sony Robotics division 10.2 Appendix II: MobileRobots Inc company description 10.3 Appendix III: Correspondence with MobileRobots Inc 10.4 Appendix IV: Requirements per Points of Interest

55 55 55 56

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| Master Class | Business Process Design | Semester Report Laurens Doesborgh

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Introduction

Nowadays, new product development appears to focus mainly on the increasing complexity of products and processes, the increasing pressure on the time to market and the increasing customer demands.

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Page 6

1.1 Context of New Product Development Minderhoud and Fraser (2005) state that New Product Development (NPD) processes are increasingly disintegrated. Production and development activities are outsourced or done in partnerships. Because of that, NPD is done on a global basis, in which each party in the development chain focuses on its core competence within that chain. Highly innovative companies are operating in a very competitive environment. The last couple of years this has resulted in increasingly lowering the time-to-market by shortening their product creation cycle according to Minderhoud and Fraser (2005) and Minderhoud (1999). Under the constant inﬂux of new technology and the pace at which it is introduced (Moore’s law), customer demands force companies to fasten their innovations and develop more complex technologies. Particularly this is the case for companies producing innovative, high-volume consumer products and services as stated by Petkova (2003). Resulting from this increasing product complexity, an increasing gap can be seen between product speciﬁcations and the requirements of the customers. Additionally, customers become more demanding with regard to the quality of products according to Berden et al (2000).

1.2 Global optimization In order to be able to cope with uncertainties of the new product development process, a highly efﬁcient feed-forward and feedback system is required. Global optimization can be reached by anticipating in the current process to the subsequent process and verifying the results (ﬁgure 1 by Berden et al (2000).

in the whole realization process to the customer requirements and the customer user environment as stated by Berden et al (2000).

1.3 Maturity Index on Reliability (MIR) In order to realize global optimization, it will be necessary to develop a process which is able to respond to unexpected events. The Maturity Index on Reliability (MIR) was developed by Sander and Brombacher (2000) to analyze the response of a business process on disturbances in order to be able to improve the business process. MIR measures the quality of the response on a five step scale (zero-four) where steps one-four relate to the four levels of the response. The complex character of the new product development process induces us to develop an iterative product creation process (PCP). The process has to be developed in such a way that reoccurrence of problems can be prevented. Information flows, feedback from the process and communication between all departments involved are very important to create a successful product and to reach the targeted MIR level of four. Especially, customer feedback has to be communicated within the organization to the relevant departments. Figure 2 gives an overview of the MIR model. With MIR4 we should be able to have quantitative evidence of the field behavior, know the origin of the problems, and know what actually causes them and what to do about it. The level of knowledge is such that we not only know root causes of problems (technical and organizational) but are also able to anticipate and prevent similar problems in the future.

Everywhere in the process, the model of global optimization has to be applied. For instance, anticipate in the development process to the requirements and constraints of the production process and anticipate

Figure 1: Feedforward and feedback loops

Figure 2: The MIR model by Sander and Brombacher (2000)

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Market Research This paragraph describes current and upcoming trends. Looking at the market in order to spot emerging trends is what every company has to do in order to innovate and survive. Trends emerge in a majority of ﬁelds (think of technology, but also from a social perspective the world is very active). In many cases it is a combination of areas that can create a trend. For us, trend watching was mainly to broaden our vision on the global market and discover what is already there, but more importantly, what will be there at the time of the ﬁrst product launch.

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2.1 Concept Development The concept development is not included in the product creation process in the traditional manner, because this part of the process has already been done by the team of young Google entrepreneurs. This paragraph provides an overview of various trends that played a driving role in the development of the actual ﬁnal concept: GoBot.

2.1.1

Trends

Trends Directions As young entrepreneurs of the company Google we see several trends emerging. The platform on which Google operates is the World Wide Web also known as the internet. The trend is that there is an ever growing need for richer experiences, the need for online experiences and exchange of information whenever and wherever. Trends in the technology ﬁeld Internet: the top 10 future web-trends consists of a number of very interesting phenomena. On top of the list it says ‘the Semantic Web’, this means that internet will become more intelligent, since computers learn to efﬁciently communicate to each other. For example, by creating meta-data, computers will be able to understand the meaning of a certain piece of text, music or picture.

Virtual Anthropology is a trend watching process of collecting data, and especially visual artifacts, posted to the web by consumers. Online sharing of information has become an on growing market for customers and businesses. There is now the web of organizations, and the web of people. The consumer trends are shifting from consumers being members of the audience to active participants. Tens of millions of consumers are proactively telling and showing each other, what they’re feeling and doing in the broadest sense of the word. All in a centralized online arena arises, in real time, whether it’s on blogs or on picture and video sites. In addition there is a continuing development of digital social network services like Facebook, Hyves (Dutch version of Facebook), MySpace, et cetera. These sources are very valuable and should be taken into account. 2.1.2

The opportunity for Google emerges from the need for the increasing market of rich online experiences. This opportunity is based on several technologies like the availability of high-end video capturing and streaming technologies. Another technology market that is growing and rising up is the market of robotics. Since it is an innovative service there are currently no direct competitors which gives Google a unique market position. 2.1.3

Another very interesting direction is that of Virtual Worlds/Augmented Reality. Programs like Second Life get a lot of mainstream media attention as a future Web system, but there are also many other virtual world trends. Looking at Korea as an example, as the ‘young generation’ grows up and infrastructure is built out; virtual worlds will become a vibrant market all over the world over the next 10 years. It should also be said that it is not just about digital life, but also making our real life more digital. On one hand we have the rapid rise of Second Life and other virtual worlds. On the other we are beginning to annotate our planet with digital information, via technologies like Google Earth. Rich Internet Applications As the current trend of hybrid web/desktop apps continues, expect to see Rich Internet Applications (RIA) continue to increase in use and functionality. Adobe’s AIR platform (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is one of the leaders, along with Microsoft with its Windows Presentation Foundation. Another trend is the internationalization of the Web. As of 2007, the US is still the major market in the Web. But 10 years later, things might be very different. China is often touted as a growth market, but other countries with big populations will also grow. For example, India and African nations. Page 10

Opportunities

The GoBot Concept

Google Earth™ combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to put the world’s geographic information at your fingertips [5]. Currently it also allows people to walk around a variety of areas using 360 degrees panoramic images [7] and view high resolution photography of specific hot spots in the world. A shortcoming to the system is that the user is always watching in the past, due to the fact that the core content is provided by still imagery. GoBot goes a step further. It provides people the possibility to have an interactive and real-time experience of visiting a Point Of Interest (POI) online. The real-time experience can be offered by providing live video streams. In order to maintain the accustomed freedom of movement, the people can look around 360 degrees in all directions and zoom in and out. By using a special 360 degree camera, the entire shot is captured at once. This generates one complete video stream, which can be accessed by many clients at once. The resolution of the video feed is in High Definition, which is currently becoming the new standard in video. Communication of this type of feed can be possible due to the ever growing network of broadband internet access.

Process Flowchart 1: Market Research

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To keep the system dynamic, the camera is placed on a moving robot. This robot has an autonomous behavior which seeks out interesting spots by itself (e.g., move to less crowded areas for a better view). Additionally, it can respond to user input. Think of democratic voting for moving to a new location or paying a fare to have full control for a speciﬁc amount of time. Next to being a free-roaming 360 degree live camera, GoBot has even more interaction possibilities. Using image recognition, combined with GPS data, GoBot has the ability to project interactive links on top of speciﬁc landmarks. For instance, think of a clickable Eiffel Tower. The interactive links which are projected over the live video feed provide users many new and interesting possibilities, ranging from links to access in-depth information to the purchase of items from an online store. With GoBot, Google Earth™ is taken from the PAST into the NOW. People can access and experience the many cultural hot spots the world is rich anytime, anywhere, and without the need of being physically there.

2.2 Value Proposition Since the GoBot has a high number of stakeholders, it is important that each of these stakeholders will be informed of their value proposition. There are several definitions of what value proposition is. A conventional view of the value proposition is given by Knox et al.(2000) in their review of approaches to customer relationship management. They say a value proposition is: “an offer defined in terms of the target customers, the benefits offered to these customers, and the price charged relative to the competition.” Adapting this vision to (our) more complex high-tech product, this definition can be adjusted to: “the value proposition describes the total customer experience with the firm and in its alliance partners over time, rather than (being limited to) that communicated at the point of sale”. Chaffrey (2006) Similarly, Smith and Wheeler (2002) consider that designing what they refer to as a ‘branded customer experience’ is vital to delivering an effective value proposition. The different value propositions can be displayed in a value proposition diagram. In order to keep the diagram orderly, only the 4 main stakeholders are displayed in Figure 3. Furthermore this paragraph gives a short explanation of the value propositions for each of the main stakeholders. Hardware supplier The value proposition for the hardware supplier is profits from supplying hardware to a new global scale Google-project. This company in question will function as a supplier and will directly profit from Google’s Page 12

product launch and deployment all over the globe. Since Google has a name in developing very high quality products and services, and who’s target market is worldwide, this project is also a very good reference for the company. This value proposition can also be checked by analyzing the annual revenue figures of the hardware company. Point of interest Since a majority of the possible POI’s are non-profit their number-one interest will be to get their name spread across as many people as possible. This means they want a very broad brand recognition. Google is now known all over the world as one of the youngest companies with an immense growth (since its market entrance in 1999, Google’s enterprise value is now over 200 Billion US Dollars [6]. To give an impression of Google’s range of reaching customers, in June 2006, a year after the introduction of Google Earth, the program was already downloaded over 100 million times. For the POI, the value proposition of global brand recognition starts as from their decision to buy the GoBot system. Ways of checking this value proposition are through interviews with target groups, and checking the level of recognition of the brand. The proposed system should fulfill a two-sided purpose; it gives customers, from all over the world, a platform for international cultural heritage. This makes the POI accessible anytime and anywhere. Besides, it also creates a teaser for the actual experience; you get an impression of the point of interest, which teases you to go there for the real-life experience. An increase in ticket-sales is a way to substantiate this value proposition. The coupling of external data to and from actual collections/POI’s indicates the interest of the main public and can be used to improve customer demand.

End user The most important stakeholder in this diagram is deﬁnitely the end user. The proposed concept creates value for this customer in the following ways: since one of the major trends is user created- and/or- controlled content, this tool gives this user the opportunity to interactively access POI (anything) at anytime, in anyplace, and get a real time impression of the collection, event or ambiance of this speciﬁed POI. This is not only done through live video and audio feeds from the POI, but the customer is able to actually control the robot and explore the POI like he or she is there. Furthermore, additional information of actual items is displayed; this can be for example commercial ads, but also background information et cetera. As with Google’s Adware, the additional information is always relevant to actual item the customer is observing. Creating this system opens up many new possibilities for customers; imagine experiencing the northern light live from behind your desktop, walking through the terracotta army, or maybe even walking around on the moon.

Google Google’s value proposition is that it can facilitate access to cultural high-lights or other POI. This is in line with Google’s vision of making everything ‘ﬁndable’. Furthermore Google will maintain its leading innovative market position over for example Microsoft (see ‘Gathering Competitive Advantage p14). As a way to get a return of investment, new places for advertisements are also created. Many POI have a huge merchandise department, since the customer is now virtually present, new opportunities for on-line sales can be used. As a domed stakeholder, sustainability can also be mentioned as an important one. Since less tourists have to physically travel to the POI, using fuel-consuming transportations methods, the value proposition for this stakeholder consists of a great deal of eco friendly sightseeing. Therefore this concept will also contribute to the global environment.

Figure 3: Value Proposition Diagram GoBot

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2.3 Risk Analysis Launching a high tech innovative product into a global market exposes it to several external risks from which competition is an apparent one. In the case of the GoBot there are also additional risks involving liability and security issues. In the paragraphs below we discuss the identified risks and propose solutions how to deal with these, by building additional steps in the product creation process including the use phase. 2.3.1 Liability and Security The GoBot will stream live video from multiple POI’s around the world to any internet user. Since the 360 degrees camera enables the user to view the POI’s at any angle he wants it is impossible to know what every user is looking at, or what his intentions are with the streaming video-feed. Privacy There are several risks that have to be taken into account in the design of the GoBot. First of all there is a privacy issue. When designing a product like the GoBot privacy of other real visitors of the landmarks, surrounding environments, local residents, employees, etc has to be taken in account. Privacy is becoming an important factor for design, especially in ubiquitous computing. The GoBot has several similarities with this field of research, and implications concerning privacy are the same. Designing for privacy is however often in a trade-off with designing for usability as stated by Lahlou et al. (2005). Many companies have a explicit company privacy policy, but few do so at a design level. This is a significant issue in the early stages of development, as design decisions have far reaching consequences for the future costs of privacy protection within the system. This can only be solved if privacy related issues are methodically approached in the early development of the system.

are however an important first step for building privacy-aware intelligent systems which European citizens can trust. A more practical approach applicable to the GoBot is discussed by Boyle et al. Here Boyle et al. (2000) evaluate the relation between different levels of filtered video on privacy. They test situations where the video stream can be filtered to mask out potentially sensitive information. In case of the GoBot this can range from people’s faces to onsite guards and security measurements. In their paper Boyle et al. make a strong case that the filter and its level at which it is operated have an impact on privacy and awareness. It is possible to filter a scene so that some aspects are discernible, but others are not. This is precisely what a privacypreserving distortion filter would need to accomplish. With the help of a good live feed video recognition algorithm, Google could be able to do this in real-time, providing a good solution for maintaining privacy and taking security measurements against possible terrorist threats. 2.3.2 Competitor Analysis 2.3.2.1 Industry Competition The essence of formulating competitive strategy is relating a company to its environment according to Porter (1980). Forces that drive industry competition are given in figure 4.

National security Related to these privacy issues are vulnerabilities due to terrorism as described by Apostolakis and Lemon (2005). By streaming visual information of popular landmarks live on the web, controllable by the user, a lot of information is made available to those planning a terrorist attack on locations with dense populations. A systematic approach to the identiﬁcation of the signiﬁcant relevant risks from terrorism has to be done in order to take effective measures for managing them. Privacy and anti-terrorism are hot research topics these days. Several research papers address this issue, and even the European Union Information Society Technologies Programme has produced “design guidelines for the disappearing computer”. Lahlou and Jegou state that in these guidelines privacy is one of the subjects that is addressed and are meant to help designers implement privacy within their designs. The guidelines still require more feedback from real-world deployments. They

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Figure 4: Forces (Porter, 1980)

Driving

Industry

Competition

While considering the industry that GoBot will compete in and taking the different forces into account, the following can be concluded.

Suppliers The bargaining power of small part suppliers is negligible. There is a wide range of potential suppliers / partners to work with. As will be described in chapter 3.2, MobileRobots Inc., the global leader in the design and manufacturing of intelligent mobile bases, autonomous navigation systems will be the hardware supplier. The combination of MobileRobots and Google will form a powerful partnership in the industry. Substitutes There might be a threat of substitute products or services. A virtual museum can be considered as a competing alternative. However, existing ‘virtual museum’-companies do not have large powerful networks. Furthermore, technology is not yet ready to deliver the same quality and in particular the same experience as high-deﬁnition technology. Still, developments in the virtual museum industry have to be monitored. Buyers Two different kinds of buyers can be identiﬁed for GoBot: end users and POI’s. End users are able to visit landmarks with the GoBot service; this

is only possible whenever POI’s have bought/installed the GoBot product (robot). If end users do not like the POI’s that are offered, they will not use GoBot. On the other hand, POI’s must buy/install the robots in order to make it available for the online service. This makes the bargaining power of POI’s very large. Therefore, Google will have to invest in these relationships, which will be discussed in chapter 3. Potential Entrants The threat of new entrants is small. Industry’s existing ﬁrms are very powerful and have loyal customers. Additionally, knowledge within the industry is huge and potential new entrants have to overcome large barriers to make GoBot technology possible. Industry Competitors Rivalry among existing ﬁrms is enormous. Especially the rivalry between Microsoft and Google is intense. Both companies do not think they are inferior to each other. Both companies have strengths and weaknesses, but concerning Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth they are

Figure 5 Porters Competitor Analysis

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comparable. If Google will launch a new product or technology, Microsoft will deﬁnitely counter it. Therefore, Microsoft Virtual Earth can be considered as greatest threat for GoBot. As described in the previous section, Microsoft Virtual Earth can be considered as main competitor for GoBot. In this section a competitor response proﬁle for Microsoft Virtual Earth will be drawn up. Competitor analysis has two primary activities, (1) obtaining information about important competitors, and (2) using that information to predict competitor behavior. The goal of competitor analysis is to understand: -

with which competitors to compete competitors’ strategies and planned actions how competitors might react to a firm’s actions how to influence competitor behavior to the firm’s own advantage.

Porter (1980) presented a framework for analyzing competitors. This framework is based on the following four key aspects of a competitor: -

Competitor’s Competitor’s Competitor’s Competitor’s

objectives assumptions strategy capabilities

Objectives and assumptions are what drive the competitor, and strategy and capabilities are what the competitor is doing or capable of doing. These components can be depicted as shown in figure 5. Looking at the Microsoft Virtual Earth response profile, it can be concluded that Microsoft will aggressively respond to GoBot. This underlines the importance of the feed forward and feedback loops incorporated in the MIR4 model. This enables Google to be ahead of Microsoft. 2.4 Market Strategy 2.4.1 Promotion The first generation of the GoBot serves as a promotion for the total concept of experiencing a POI on a richer basis. The (expected) news attention and the promotion via Google and Mobile Robots have to take care of the familiarity of the GoBot in order for more people to make use of this service. We assume that there will be a hype around the GoBot, since everything that is launched by Google will become an immediate hype; this because of the fact that Google has an immense customer network of people using their product every day. There are 233 million hits a day on Google web-sites [8] so if they will announce a new product on their web-site this will be a great way of advertisement. They also

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have immense brand awareness and everywhere they put their brand on, people will recognize this brand. This first generation of the GoBot can be seen as a technology push promotional strategy, where subsequent generations are considered to be market pull, if there is a high enough interest for the GoBot. Promotion of the GoBot will be done through various channels; first of all the application is promoted through the Google website and all of Google’s other applications. Since Google is the world’s second most visited webpage [15], this is the ultimate marketing tool. Advertisements about the GoBot have to be placed on the various web-sites and applications of Google in order to get attention for the GoBot. Also advertisements on the web-site of MobileRobots can contribute to the promotion of the GoBot. Furthermore, the emergence of the social networks such as blogs, MySpace, etc. are also very good ways for promotion [17]. Because the biggest part of the GoBot product consist of a service that is offered via the internet these blogs, etc. can have a big influence on the use of the GoBot service. The third way of promotion is through the POI’s themselves. Local visitors see the GoBot robot and are interested in what it is, how it functions, etc. Therefore more information also has to be available at the POI, like a web-site address where the visitors can find more information about the GoBot, or a short explanation at the POI’s to inform the visitors instantly. 2.4.2 Target Market In order to determine the size of the market of end users, the number of internet users has to be determined. Since GoBot wants to provide end users with a high definition video feed, only broadband subscribers are able to receive this with acceptable quality level. The number of broadband subscribers is annually investigated by the OECD [2]. In December 2006, almost 200 million broadband subscribers were registered. European countries turned out to have the highest broadband rates. Over the past year, the number of broadband subscribers in the OECD increased 26% from 157 million in December 2005 to 197 million in December 2006. OECD expects that rates will increase the next years as well. In addition to the expected growth, every single broadband subscriber provides several users internet access. For instance, The Netherlands consists of 8.7 million broadband internet users [11]; if we compare this with the 5.9 million subscribers we can conclude that every subscriber has 1.7 users. Therefore, the maximum market size for GoBot is about 340 million users. Google Earth already has more than 200 million subscribers [12]. This implies that a large extent of the potential customers are already in the Google network and therefore, relatively easy to approach.

2.4.3 Analysis of Early Adopters Since GoBot is a product for users all over the world, it is increasingly important to understand values of national cultures and their impact on consumer behavior. Marketing strategies for one country cannot be extended to other countries without adaptation. Hofstede’s model of national culture can be applied to understand differences in consumer behavior across countries.

Thus, a long-term orientation suggests less receptivity to e-commerce. Applying this fact to the GoBot concept, it can be concluded that longterm orientation is also less receptive to GoBot. De Mooij and Hofstede (2002) also state that internet is basically an unstructured means of communication. This is more difﬁcult to accept in cultures of strong uncertainty avoidance than in cultures of weak uncertainty avoidance. Therefore, cultures with low levels of uncertainty avoidance are more likely to adopt GoBot.

Acceptance of the internet services varies across cultures. The varying success across countries can be predicted given knowledge of cultural differences described by Hofstede (2001). Cultural characteristics such as the degree of uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation in particular would seem to be potentially useful when segmenting countries as to the potential of internet services. For instance, according to De Mooij and Hofstede (2002), a consequence of long-term orientation is variation in willingness to pay for convenience, which is likely to be of importance for e-commerce. A key value of longterm orientation is being sparing with resources, and a high score on this dimension implies that consumers prefer to go to a store and pick up merchandise rather than having merchandise delivered at home.

Moreover, education/science and leisure purposes are similar with respect to their relationship with low masculinity. De Mooij and Hofstede (2002) explain this with the quality of life. People enjoy using the Internet as much in their private lives as in their working lives. This is reflected in the extensive use of the Internet for leisure and personal purposes in the (feminine) Scandinavian countries (figure 6). These countries can be considered as early adopters of GoBot. In conclusion, cultures which score low on long-term orientation, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance are more likely to be the early adopters of GoBot. Thus, it is important to focus on these cultures while implementing generation 1 and 2. The Dutch also fit in the range of potential early adopters (figure 7).

Figure 6: Cultural dimensions Scandinavian Countries

Figure 7: Cultural dimensions The Netherlands

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Relationship Planning This product creation process for the GoBot requires the involvement of external parties. Google does not have all the resources to develop this type of product in-house and should therefore collaborate with hardware providers. Secondly the product is released in a global market; therefore agreements need to be made with the locations where the robots are deployed. Throughout the report we refer to these as: “Places of Interest”, or in short: POI’s A crucial factor for this project to succeed is establishing collaborations with the POI’s. Naturally it’s essential to have participating locations, but it’s equally important to learn about the attributes of these locations. This information provides valuable feed forward before the production process even starts. In case the POI’s do not want to participate in this stadium of the process, Google suffers little financial consequences and there is time for the development of new strategies. Therefore we discuss this collaboration first. When the collaboration with the POI’s is rounded up, it is time to talk with the hardware suppliers. A selective analysis of possible partners has been done in advance. The choice is not to collaborate with the global market leaders in robotics: Japanese hardware providers such as Toyota and Honda, because the cultural difficulties pose a big issue. The choice is to collaborate with a specialized company, which is best suited to fulfill the demands. Together with the input from the POI’s we can set up constructive meetings with this hardware provider and also make agreements for the entire roadmap of multiple generations.

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3.1 Collaboration Points Of Interest The most important partners in this business model are the POI’s where the GoBots are going to be deployed. There are a couple of important aspects when establishing these relationships. The cultural and demographical aspects by Hofstede (2001) play an important part in determining the agreement conditions which Google has to meet in order to place a GoBot in that POI. Think of privacy, censoring and national security. These conditions could result in blocking or blurring out certain parts of the video feed; restrict the area in which the GoBot can move; restrict users from a speciﬁc culture or country. These risks are described more thoroughly in paragraph 2.3: Risk Analysis. Therefore it is important that representatives of Google have meetings with the owners or responsibles of a POI and sign a contract where the mutual agreements are stated. Such a contract ensures that there are no unwanted surprises from either side which can be compromise the success of this project. In collaboration with the POI the location is charted according to a series of attributes. These attributes determine for a great deal the requirements of the GoBot. An example of this is given in appendix 4.

first generation with a possible absence of the compensation agreement in the compensation. The third generation In the third generation we aim to reach a standardized protocol where the POI can subscribe to be taken into the GoBot community. The POI needs to fit the specifications as set by Google to become a member of the community. The GoBots are still property of Google, but flexible constructions are a possibility. An example of such a construction could be that the POI buys the robot including service and receives a percentage of the advertisement revenue generated by the robot.

3.2 Hardware Development Partner The most essential part of the GoBot concept is the robot vehicle that is able to move around a POI. Development of this type of hardware cannot be done internally; Google doesn’t have the knowledge nor the facilities. For the hardware development we need to look at external solutions. 3.2.1

The first generation For the first generation of GoBots there are five GoBots deployed per POI and one is provided as a spare, making a total of 30 GoBots. The aim is to convince the POI to participate by offering them a unique opportunity make their location globally accessible for the users of Google Earth as well as taking part in this innovative project. There will be a compensation agreement for the expenses that need to be made by a POI to make the location suitable for the GoBot to work properly. These include adjustments before and during the use phase to increase the accessibility for the GoBot. There is a budget of $200.000 per place of interest in the first generation. From this budget also expenses for service, maintenance and storage are paid. Additionally there is also room for payment of a fee to the POI as a reward for using the POI. This depends on the POI and the agreement that can be made. Typical for the first generation is that Google keeps the ownership over the GoBots. Google makes the arrangements with the different parties to keep the GoBot operational. In order to ensure the reliability there will be continuous feedback provided by the GoBots logging ability as well as an operator from Google who will be present full time during the first generation and slowly cut back over time. More on these information flows is described in chapter 8: Use and Service. The second generation In the second generation we aim that the first generation has created such hype that the POI’s approach Google to become participants of the project. There are still funds available to compensate and/or reward the POI’s to deal with the uncertainty of reaching the target of 100 new locations. In the contracts the same conditions remain as described for the Page 20

Selection Process

In the field of robotics there are two major players in the world: Toyota and Honda. These Japanese companies are the largest in the world in this field and have extensive research and development of various kinds of robots in various fields such as mobility, health care and entertainment. Next to these large companies there are also smaller companies that develop/offer solutions for applying robotics in different industrial contexts like hospitals or storage facilities. Below we state a list of potentially interesting hardware suppliers and provide argumentation for the one we propose to work with and in which construction. Honda A big player in the field of robotics is the Honda Motor Group, which is, like Toyota, also a Japanese Car manufacturer. For the last 21 years they are developing the ASIMO [10] in Honda’s Research & Development robotics program. Honda’s primary focus is to build and develop these type Humanoid Robots. These types of robots are very advanced in mimicking human intelligence and mechanics, such as recognizing faces and walking up and down stairs. Considering the requirements of the robot we would like to develop for the GoBot concept, these types of humanoid robots would be too expensive and valuable to place as walking cameras in public spaces. Toyota Toyota has the capabilities to be the right partner for setting up this business. The robotics department excellences in both the hardware and the software aspects of robotics; especially the “intelligence” part has

taken a big step forward by the recent purchase of Sony’s Robotics division (Appendix III). Their knowledge and capabilities are sufﬁcient to develop a robot that ﬁts the requirements without investing too much effort. It can take Toyota’s Robotics department to the next level by releasing one of their products into the global market and establish an even stronger brand name. MobileRobots Inc MobileRobots Inc can also be considered as an interesting partner. MobileRobots Inc has grown to be a global leader in the design and manufacture of intelligent mobile bases, autonomous navigation systems and software for robot developers and programmers. 3.2.2

Partner Analysis

Two of the three proposed hardware suppliers are located in Japan. For Google as an American company, working together with Eastern companies requires that the cultural differences are taken into account. Although international partnering seems very promising, there are several serious risks; prominent among them are the impact of cross-cultural factors.

cultural differences. Hofstede’s ﬁndings show that: People from different countries have very different views of what is fair, reasonable and proper behavior. These differences can be explained to a large extent by the following key factors. 1. Power Distance (PDI). This indicates the extent to which a society accepts and expects that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally 2. Individualism (IDV). This is the opposite of collectivism and describes the extent to which individuals are integrated into groups. 3. Masculinity (MAS). This is a measure of the clarity of social gender roles. It is the extent to which the dominant values in society are ‘male’ – values such as assertiveness, the acquisition of money and goods, and not caring for others. 4. Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI). This factor measures the extent to which people in a society feel threatened by ambiguous situations and the extent to which they try to avoid unstructured situations. In other words, the level of tolerance of uncertainties in life. 5. Long-Term Orientation (LTO). This indicates the perceived value of long-term commitments

Hofstede [9] conducted one of the most comprehensive analyses of

Figure 8: Japan

Figure 9: United States of America

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Looking at figures 8 and 9, differences between Japan and USA and therefore Toyota and Google can be identified. The high Individualism (IDV) ranking for the United Staltes indicates a society with a more individualistic attitude and relatively loose bonds with others. Individualism could inversely affect solidarity. Since highly individualistic members are more willing to pursue their personal objectives, they tend to have weak team working relationships according to Ramingwong and Sajeev (2007). Furthermore, the USA scores low, whereas Japan scores high on Long Term Orientation (LTO). Ramingwong and Sajeev (2007) also state that Long-term orientation appears to have a direct effect on solidarity and has a direct relationship to fear of consequences, since cultures with long-term orientation fear the consequence of breaking their long-term plans by actions that do not fit into the plan. Also a large gap exists in the uncertainty avoidance factor (UAI). This implies that Google might be more flexible and willing to take risks than Toyota. These contradictions should be taken into account while establishing the alliance. The long-term orientation and uncertainty avoidance gap might cause difficulties in the negotiation phase and strategic management of the alliance. Google is probably more flexible and willing to take risks than Toyota. Much time and effort has to be spent to establish consensus on essential matters. Concerning the co-development of GoBot, the factor individualism should be taken into consideration. Toyota’s engineers might be more group oriented than Google’s engineers; this has implications for management, teamwork, and reward systems. For instance, Toyota’s engineers could better be rewarded in groups and Google’s engineers individually. The previous paragraph described potential difficulties, for the alliance, based on cultural differences between Japan and the USA. However, both Google and Toyota stand out because of their specific company culture. Therefore, taking a closer look to both company cultures is recommended. Google Though growing rapidly, Google still maintains an informal and small company feel. There's little in the way of corporate hierarchy and everyone wears several hats. Development teams consist of cross-cultural members. Additionally, Google allows its engineers to spend one day, each week, on projects not related to Google; this to stimulate creativity and innovation [4]. Overall, Google creates a culture that allows teamwork and creativity, which leads to innovation. Toyota Toyota has its own specific way of working, Toyota’s Production System (TPS), is globally praised for its success. TPS is based on “lean” principles including a customer focus, constant improvement and quality through waste reduction, and closely integrated downstream and upstream as part of a lean value chain. Despite most manufacturing companies have Page 22

adopted some type of lean initiative, most of these efforts did not pay off according to Liker and Morgan (2006). TPS only flourishes in specific cultures such as the Japanese according to Mehri (2006). The darker side of TPS is being discussed by Mehri (2006). The culture does not allow the free flow of ideas, which makes collaboration very difficult. Scholars use the work of Japanese engineers as an example of good teamwork, but the discussion states that this is simply not true. Toyota engineers work together on the same product on different parts, without interacting with each other. There is a supervising chief engineer, but the high competition between the different divisions within the organization prevents team work. The management style is very hierarchical and employees have to think and act the way managers want and tell them to. Mehri (2006) describes “lean work” as a regression of the old practices of Taylorism. With lean, Toyota is unable to be creative. Toyota’s engineers do not “engineer innovation” but “innovatively engineer”. In other words, espionage and benchmarking instead of brainstorming is their way of engineering and designing. Difficulties As can be noticed from the descriptions of the Google and Toyota culture, collaboration might cause difficulties. Google’s culture stimulates, whereas Toyota’s culture prevents creativity and teamwork. Also the difference in long-term orientation might be a problem, especially in the negotiation phase. Since Japanese based companies tend to commit to long-term relationships, before closing the deal, they want to know partners very well. Therefore, the negotiation phase may also include long meetings just to get to know each other, which is quite unfamiliar for American based companies. Additionally, Google should watch out for espionage. 3.2.3

Conclusion

Establishing a long-term and cross-cultural relation, based on a product with a high level of uncertainty, will take a lot of effort from both sides. Secondly there is also time needed to negotiate a partnership and discuss the responsibilities and proﬁt division, which can also take a fair amount of time. Therefore this partnership does not seem to be the best solution. Another reason to abandon such an alliance is that the product needs to be developed from scratch. Naturally there is a lot of in-house knowledge, but the end result still needs to be tested and evaluated extensively before it passes the quality control. The cultural differences in these information ﬂows will also affect these feedback loops and feed forward loops, which can result in a low MIR. The best solution is to work with a hardware supplier such as MobileRobots Inc, which is located in the USA and does not suffer from the cultural differences stated above. As a company, Mobile Robots has much experience in making the type of robots we need for the concept and

offer a high degree of flexibility in their products. The relation with Google would consist out of a customer supplier relation; Google provides product specifications and orders the robots readymade. This relation also includes a service contract which contains a monthly service for each robot. The customer in this case is the place of interest where the robot is deployed. Since MobileRobots has a customer base in six continents of the world they are able to provide global service. Additional to a regular sales deal it is necessary to make agreements on sharing the customer feedback information flow. In order to make this line as short and efficient as possible it is advised to equip the robot with logging abilities. The logs contain up to date information about the robots current activities and hold statistics of the total operation time. These logs can be sent directly to Google without having to go via MobileRobots. During the monthly maintenance the customer can be asked for feedback about the operation of the robot. This information can be fed back into the PCP for the next generation. See Chapter 8: Use and Service

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Finance For the first two generations, there will be a 6 month term, after these six months the robots will be replaced by a newer generation. Starting from generation 3, there will be a 1-year term. The first generation will be placed at 6 locations, in which each location has 5 robots to fully cover the interesting areas and create extra bandwidth for customers. To cover hardware failures of the robots, an extra 20% of the total number of robots will be bought by Google and therefore be manufactured by MobileRobots Inc. Correspondence with MobileRobots Inc. gave us an insight in the costs of the robots (APPENDIX III). These costs were estimated at around 35,000 USD. But since the eventual order of this project is very big, Google and MobileRobots Inc will jointly develop a new robot that meets all the specification of this project. These development costs will be shared by both Google and MobileRobots Inc.

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4.2 Costs Using the available information, development costs of the software and the hardware can be calculated. For the internet application, which is Google’s responsibility, there will be a total of 10 software developers that will work on the software, this number can be reduced after the 1st generation. Most work has to be done in the first phases of the project, of which the biggest part consists of development and integration of the application and the robot. After deployment of the 1st generation, customer feedback will become available and can be implemented for the first time in generation 3. This means after generation 2, the number of Google developers can be further decreased. The total development costs of Google are estimated on $1.5 mln. This is based on a monthly salary of the 10 engineers of $3000,-; for two years this is $ 3000,- x 10 engineers x 24 months. Furthermore a $780.000 is reserved for other supplemental costs (housing, hardware, et cetera). The development costs of MobileRobots Inc are calculated into the price per robot. In the correspondence with MobileRobots they indicate that most of the costs can be derived to hardware costs. We will assume this segmentation will be 75% hardware and 25% software and development costs. The price of $35.000 is therefore sufficient to also cover the development costs MobileRobots Inc. An overview of the costs on the robots, including development, service contract, and training factory software, per generation is displayed in table 1. Generation 1 = 30 deployed robots, 5 robots per Point Of Interest. Generation 1 uses 6 POIs. Generation 1 has 20% room for repair/replacement, 6 extra robots. 36 robots 33% extra development costs The Grand Total of G1 Robots

36x35.000

$1.260.000 $ 420.000 $1.680.000

Table 1

For generation 2, the costs are displayed in table 2. Generation 2 will have a runtime of 6 months. Generation 2 = 125 deployed robots, 5 robots per Point Of Interest. Generation 2 uses 25 POIs. Generation 2 has 15% room for repair/replacement, 20 extra robots. 145 robots 33% extra development costs residual value G1 The Grand Total of G2 Table 2

145x35.000

$5.075.000 $1.674.750 $ 415.800 $7.165.550

And the development costs of generation 3 are displayed in table 3. The generation 3 will have a runtime of one year. Most of the failures are now captured because the feedback loop of the generation 1 are implemented and improved in this generation. Generation 3 = 3125 deployed robots, 5 robots per Point Of Interest. Generation 3 uses 625 POIs. Generation 3 has 10% room for repair/replacement, 312 extra robots. 3437 robots 28% extra development costs residual value G1 The Grand Total of G2

$68.740.000 $22.684.200 $ 1.811.964 $93.236.164

Table 3

As from generation 2, the generation Gn-1 will be replaced, but parts can be re-used/recycled. This is calculated in the tables as residual value. Parts like batteries, charging docks, cameras et cetera are placed under this denominator. When a new generation is introduced, the quantity of the robots increments, this means the price of the robot will decrease. The remainder of these calculations will be used for further development of the technologies. Therefore these are not separately listed in the tables. Another major expense will be facilitating high bandwidth connection. Forbes reports that the online video service YouTube pays rich content deliverer LimeLight Networks $1 million per month or $12 million per year. [19] Since YouTube streams to millions of users at the same time, we estimate the costs of our service are comparable. This means the 3rd generation bandwidth costs are set at $12 million. An estimated $6 million is saved for bandwidth costs during generation 1 & 2. The total costs for the ﬁrst 3 generations, in other words the ﬁrst two years are calculated in table 4. Generation 1 Bandwidth costs MobileRobot Inc. costs Google Development Costs Grand Total G1:

$6.000.000 $1.680.000 $1.050.000 $8.730.000

Generation 2 Bandwidth costs MobileRobot Inc. costs Google Development Costs Grand Total G2:

$6.000.000 $7.165.550 $ 225.000 $ 13.390.550

Generation 3 Bandwidth costs MobileRobot Inc. costs Google Development Costs Grand Total G3:

$ 12.000.000 $ 93.236.164 $ 225.000 $105.461.164

Total Costs G1+G2+G3: Table 4

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3437x20.000

$127.581.714

4.3 Revenues Revenues will come from 3 sources; one is control of the robots, one is from advertisements and one is from broadcasting special events through the robots. Calculations can be made for each of these revenue sources. 4.3.1 Revenues from controlling the robot The robot can be controlled for 5 minutes for the payment of $1,-. This means the robot can be controlled by a maximum of 12x24=288 people per 24 hour, which equals 288x365,25=105.192 people per year. Since the robot has to be charged and serviced, we introduce a margin of 12,5% ‘dead-time’ per robot. Subtracting this from the 100% functional time, for generation G1 (half year) we come to a 1.577.880 times usage. Since it is not realistic to say that the robot will be used for 100%, we say that the robot will be used 50% of the time. This means that all the robots of generation 1 can be controlled at least 621.290 times. Applying the same calculation for Generation G2, which has 125 robots, we come to a number of 2.876.344 times. For generation G3 this is 71.908.594 times. Control Times per Generation: G1 (half year, 30 controllable robots) G2 (half year, 125 controllable robots) G3 (one year, 3125 controllable robots)

690.323 3.195.937 79.898.438

Table 5

Customers are able to log into any robot for free, and for 1 dollar per 5 minutes they can also control the robot and move it around from behind their computer. The outcome of the calculations above give the numbers the robots can be controlled, when using the 5 minute-control time. Therefore the total revenue from this option equals the numbers displayed in table 5.

4.3.2

Revenues from special events

In the beginning of this paragraph we presented 3 sources of revenue of which one is broadcasting special events. During these special events, the control of the robot will be shut down and people are only able to watch from a predeﬁned position. Even though the robot is in a ﬁxed position, customers are still able to look around with the camera. The video feed of these robots will be available to all customers. As said, during these special events the controls of the robot are shut down, this means the previous calculations have to be corrected with an ‘special event’ factor. For this factor we calculated that we need a 10% decrease in the capacity of control of the robots. The 10% is based on the fact that there can be 365x0.10=37 days of special events. It has to be noticed that this is only an indication, this number might vary during concretization of the project.

Interpublic group created a top ten of most viewed events worldwide, resulting in the World Soccer Tournament to be the number one event with over 260 million simultaneous viewers, followed by the Super Bowl with 98 million viewers and the Winter Olympics with an average of 87 million viewers. These special events will be charged with $1,- per event per customer/viewer. We estimate that during the first 2 generations, were there are not many POIs, 1% of the total Google Earth subscribers will view these special events. This will increase to 10% during generation 3, when robots are available on a global scale, and are therefore able to facilitate more special events. 4.3.3 Revenues from advertisements Since its release in June 2005, Google Earth has 250 million subscribers nowadays. The concept we present is an extra feature of Google Earth, so in order to calculate the expected use of the concept, we use the figures available of Google Earth. The 250 million subscribers can be divided into 2,5 years, which equals a customer-use of 100 million per year. To deal with reality, we divide the users into 4 classes of use frequency. 5% of the total 250 million will keep using Google Earth every week, another 7% will keep using it monthly, 38% keeps using it once every quarter and 50% will only use it one time. A constant factor of 5.46 was calculated from these figures to make further calculations easier. The number derives from (0,5 x 52)+(0,7 x 12)+(0,38 x 4)+(0,50 x 1)=5.46. This number equals the average times the customer uses the application. So for generation 1, the total use of the application is 250 million x 5.46 divided by 2 since G1 has a runtime of half a year (this equals 682.500.000 page views). We expect an increase of user after the first generation of 10%, and 30% after the second generation. Generation 2 can be calculated by G2=(G1+10%) = 750.750.000. And generation 3 is calculated by G3=(G1+G2) + 30% = 1.433.250.000. Statistics of Facebook [18] say it collects approx. $1.5 million per week on advertisements. This equals $78 million a year. Facebook has over 65 billion page views per month. This means Facebook collects $0,0001 per page view per month, or $1,2 per 1000 page views per year. One estimation is the number of pages viewed during actual use of the online application; we estimate a user will view (at least) 10 different pages (therefore 10 different advertisements) of the application before exiting the application in the first generation, 20 different page views during G2 and 40 page views during generation 3. The total revenues of normal advertisements of the first 2 years will therefore be as described in table 6 & 7.

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Generation 1 Page views Multiplication Factor 682.500.000 10

Revenue/1000 pageviews Total Revenue 0,6 $4.095.000

Generation 2 Page views Multiplication Factor 750.750.000 20

Revenue/1000 pageviews Total Revenue 0,6 $9.009.000

Generation 3 Page views Multiplication Factor 1.433.250.000 40 Table 6

GENERATION Advertisements Control Total Revenues G2 Costs of G2

TOTAL

$-1.185.613

GENERATION Advertisements Control Special Events Total Revenues G3 Costs of G3

Revenue/1000 pageviews Total Revenue 0,6 $34.398.000

$9.009.000 $3.195.937 $12.204.937 $13.390.550

TOTAL

$34.398.000 $79.898.438 $25.000.000 $139.296.438 $105.461.164

$33.835.274

Table 7, part 2

GENERATION Advertisements Control Total Revenues G1 Costs of G1

TOTAL

$4.095.000 $690.323 $4.785.323 $8.730.000

If we put these figures into a graph, we have a good overview of the costs and revenues and can say something about the Return of Investment (ROI) period. Figure 10 shows the costs and revenues for the first two years. The green line displays the profit. As it can be seen, after 12.5 months, investment costs are earned back and as from this point, profit is made.

$-3.944.677

Table 7, part 1 Proﬁr Dynamics for the ﬁrst two years

Month Generation 1 Generation 2 Generation 3

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Figure 10 Costs and revenues, ROI, ďŹ rst 24 months

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Product Development For the development of the GoBot product an iterative development process will be used in order to be able to respond to uncertainties, which are evident in the product creation process of a high-tech innovative product. The front-end activities of the development process contain many interrelated activities which do not proceed in a purely sequential manner, but are often overlapping one another. Due to this high uncertain nature of the process wherein at any time new information becomes available, iterations are necessary as described by Ulrich and Eppinger (2004). According to Minderhoud and Fraser (2005), it is important that modular design architecture is used in combination with the iterative development process, because this reduces the development time. The beneďŹ t of using modular design architecture is that problems and failures can clearly be pointed out, so improvements can be implemented quickly throughout the iterative process and the different generations of a product.

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Page 31

Process Flowchart 2: Product Development

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The product development process has as input a list of product requirements, obtained from the market research, attributes of the points of interest, and capabilities of the company MobileRobots Inc.. The product will be developed by a co-design approach, which will run through a process of concept development, system level design, prototyping, testing and reﬁnement: - Concept development phase: development of hardware and software components - System level design phase: set up the products architecture for prototyping - Prototyping phase: construct prototypes ready for testing - Testing phase: testing and evaluation of the prototypes

experiences at the POIs can be captured according to the requirements. First, the attributes for the speciﬁc landmark must be deﬁned, for instance, their typical environmental characteristics and variations in sight of views. Next, these attributes must be incorporated in the development of the robot. Other requirements may contribute to the hardware development as well, for example, safety, durability, etc.. The hardware of the robot must be tested collectively and evaluated on a hypothetical level in order to anticipate on the feasibility of the concept. Failures or adjustments must be looped back in the development process of the hardware robot. Additionally, progression must at all times be communicated to the software development track of the product process. 5.1.2 Software Concept Development

The problems and deﬁciencies that are discovered will then be looped back in the process and to the knowledge centre from which the next iteration step will continue.

5.1 Co-Design The GoBot concept has three aspects which are related to one another: GoBot hardware, GoBot software, and attributes at the points of interest. The development of the GoBot hardware and software will depend on the many distinctive characteristics at the different points of interest and will be translated into a rich online experience. The hardware will be developed by MobileRobots Inc.. The required software will be developed by Google and can be divided into three parts: front-end application in Google Earth, communication between front-end and GoBot’s firmware (API), and the indexing algorithm. For the development of the hardware and the software components for the GoBot design, we will use a co-design approach instead of an independent development approach. According to Kumar and Aylor (2003), a codesign approach helps in to prevent integration problems and to reduce modifications later in the development process. Integration problems, such as the premature selection of hardware whose inadequacies the software must attempt to correct, often result in potential significant cost increases, schedule overruns, or performance losses. The co-design approach is a much more unified method, which considers both hardware and software options. Co-design is a concurrent and cooperative design approach that includes the capability to explore hardware and software trade-offs as a fundamental component. This capability leads to more efficient implementations and improves overall system performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness (Kumar and Aylor, 2003). 5.1.1 Hardware Concept Development The hardware for the GoBot must be developed in such a way that the

The software development of the GoBot concept concerns the design of the online service and its background architecture. To develop this concept, a clear structure of different layers of information must be set up. Requirements for each of the software development parts must be determined and their correlation within the system must be deﬁned. While developing the software of the concept, through different design iterations, decisive decisions must be communicated to the hardware part of the GoBot concept in order to achieve coherency. When certain parts of the system are established, they must be tested and evaluated. Afterwards, errors and failures must be looped back in process.

5.2 System Level Design It will become clear what is needed to create the GoBot system, whenever the concept development phase progresses. The type of hardware and software will be defined and interaction will be mapped out. Gradually the first conceptual prototypes can be constructed for testing and evaluation at system level of design. Here, the concept will be elaborated at a technical and practical level. The product architecture and the decomposition of the product will be defined into subsystems and components. This phase can be interpreted as a bridge between the concept, the prototype, and the specifications.

5.3 Prototyping In this phase of the product development process, a prototype will be made to test various aspects of the design on conceptual level. This will be done for both hardware and software. The purpose of this prototype is to illustrate the ideas and features behind the design and to gather early feedback. Prototyping is an integral part of the system design process and is meant to reduce project risks and costs. Every prototype that is made in this iterative process will have influence on the next iteration. In this way, problems or deficiencies in design can be corrected. When the prototype is sufficiently refined and meets the functionality, robustness, Page 33

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manufacturability and other design goals, the product is ready for production (Haag et al., 2006). Prototyping here is an integral part of the system design process and is meant to reduce project risks and costs. Every prototype that is made in this iterative process will have influence on the next iteration, in this way problems or deficiencies in design can be corrected. According to Haag et al. (2006), when the prototype is sufficiently refined and meets the functionality, robustness, manufacturability and other design goals, the product is ready for production.

5.4 Testing and Refinement In this phase of the development process, hardware and software components will be integrated. This phase involves the evaluation of the concept with its prototypes and is meant to improve design flaws through feedback loops and iterations. In this way, the prototype can be tested on whether it’s a correct translation of the concept. If so, then the specifications for the hardware and software can be defined. If not, then information must be looped back to the point where adjustments can be made. If problems concern the design on conceptual level it must be looped back to the knowledge centre which deals with soft issues as well. There, requirements for the concept can be checked and alterations can be made that will have influence in the whole product development cycle.

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Engineering & Production

The engineering and production step of a product creation process can, for simple products, be really easy and straightforward. However, when products get more complex, the engineering and production phase become more complex as well. This can be explained with a couple of reasons. First, when the product’s shape, amount of parts, assembly and packaging get more complex, the engineering of the whole product gets more complex. Whenever speaking of interactive or intelligent products, a combination of external and internal hardware and software is made. This makes the process even more complex. It almost becomes impossible to produce every part of an intelligent product within the company boundaries. Therefore, decisions between ‘make or buy’ have to be made. Buying speciﬁc parts can shorten the time for the total engineering phase when the production knowledge is not within the company. Buying components can also be cheaper than making them. Additionally, globalization has added a cost pressure and has resulted in further disintegration of traditionally integrated companies. GoBot is an innovative and intelligent robot, therefore, knowledge spillover must be prevented and only the core competencies of the company will be used to produce the critical components. Since Google is specialized in building web applications and indexing algorithms, Google will mainly focus on that part. As already mentioned earlier in the process, MobileRobots Inc. will be partner in this project, due to their experience in robotics. In this way, strengths of these companies can be combined into one product. However, working together can also make the engineering and production phase a bit more complex, which is why we integrate MobileRobots Inc. early in the process in order to make sure, before starting to think of engineering and production, that both companies know what is being created. In this section, the process of engineering and production will be discussed. Potential hurdles, will be highlighted and models and plans will be presented.

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6.1.1

Engineering

Process Flowchart 3: Engineering process

Engineering is the discipline of acquiring and applying scientiﬁc and technical knowledge of the design, analysis, and production of works for practical purposes [3]. Google and MobileRobots Inc. will work closely together in the engineering phase to ensure that the GoBot will be produced in a way that will suit both companies’ expertise. As the ﬁgure x shows, the engineering phase consists of a number of important steps. The most important step that should be made is ‘make or buy’. The biggest decision in this, buying the robot from MobileRobots Inc. has already been made, however, the new robot is made in cooperation with Google. Certain parts, like the camera will be bought. Buying parts of a product can shorten the time for the total engineering phase when production knowledge is not within the company according to Smith and Reinertsen (1991). Since the GoBot is a very innovative product, a good balance between the competencies of MobileRobots, Google and external companies must exist. If a part has to be produced within the company a capacity check has to be done. If capacity is too low more capacity will have to be bought in.

A product can be thought of in both functional and physical terms; The functional elements of a product, the individual operations and the transformations that contribute to the overall performance of the product. Physical elements of a product are the parts, components and subassemblies that ultimately implement the product’s functions. The physical elements of a product are typically organized into several major physical building blocks, called chunks. Each chunk is then made up of a collection of components that implement the functions of the product. The architecture of a product is the scheme by which the functional elements of the product are arranged into physical chunks and by which chunks interact. The most important characteristic of the architecture is its modularity. We can subdivide the modularity of the architecture into three types: slot-modular, bus-modular and sectional-modular as stated by Ulrich and Eppinger (2004). Slot-modular: each of the interfaces between a chunk is of a different type cannot be interchanged. Bus-modular: there is a common bus, on which different chunks all connect through the same interface.

With the use of production, buying and acquiring parts, the production plan can be made.

Sectional-modular: all interfaces are of the same type, but there is no single element to which all chunks attach.

6.1.2

For the GoBot we will use probably several modular architectures. As said it will provide a better way to cooperate once the interfaces are agreed upon. Next to that it will enhance concurrent manufacturing, since each chunk can be engineered and produced separately. Smith and Reinertsen (1991) state that in respect to that, small changes can be made throughout the whole engineering and even production phase, without having to redesign the whole product. When, after production, it shows through a quality check that a certain chunk is malfunctioning, it can easily be replaced by a better one.

Production Plan

In the production plan the whole product and all it’s details is described, as well as the all the details of it’s production. Important in this step is also to select a proper product architecture. Page 38

The engineering phase will take the most time for generation 1 and generation 2, where almost the whole robot will be designed from scratch. Generation 2 and probably 4 will be iterations of generation 1 and 3. In the 3rd generation the ﬁrst feedbacks from Knowledge Center/ MobileRobots Database (see chapter Use and Service) will be used for incremental improvements.

6.1.3

Production

to the production plan. When the modules are of good quality it is transported to the final assembly line where the module is assembled in the final product. After the complete assembly the product will be checked on quality again. Now the complete assembly will be checked for faults. If none, the product is ready for packaging and distribution. If there are faults, these are again translated by the Knowledge center to adapt the production plan to alter the final assembly. By building these two loops into the process Google and MobileRobots Inc. are capable of identifying, investigating, and solving the products very fast. This will enlarge the quality and reliability of the GoBot.

Process Flowchart 4: Production Process

In Figure x, production diagram can be seen. In this diagram you can see, as discussed in the engineering phase some parts are produced in the company, while others are bought. These parts are then assembled into the different modules. Here you can see that the different modules that ﬁt the product architecture can be produced simultaneously. In this way time can be saved which places the product earlier on the market according to Smith and Reinertsen (1991). After each module has been created a quality test will be done to check whether the module is produced well. If errors occur, these will be transferred to the Knowledge center of MobileRobots, which will translate the errors into alterations Page 39

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Software Development

Google will produce 3 software applications. The first application is a dual application that makes communication possible between the GoBot robot and its communication protocol, and the Google database. Here a newly developed image recognitions application, based on a search algorithm, will scan the video-feed and link internet information to the viewed images and it will block or blur sensitive information. This is then all transported to the end-user application who gets to see the video-feed online. The end-user however can, for a fee, control the GoBot robot to some extend. This data is transported from the enduser application through the internet towards the Google interface. In this way Google also keeps control over controlling the GoBot, and no direct connection from the end-user exists directly to the GoBot. (See Liability and security chapter). In the next chapters we will explain the engineering and production of both the software and the robot. From the concept development phase the requirements are, after being tested with the product requirements, communicated with the software development department. After this the software process, a coherent set of activities for software production, is started. These activities can involve the development of software from scratch in a standard language. Increasingly however new software is developed by extending and modifying existing systems and by configuring and integrating ‘off-the-shelf’ software. In case of the GoBot it will be a mixture of all this. Google is extremely experienced in building complex indexing algorithms and end-user software. For this part they will be able to adapt their current software in ways that makes it suited for the GoBot product. For the communication interfaces however this will differ. Here they will have to bridge the communication between their own services and the robot’s communication protocol. This can either be based on ‘off-the-shelf’ software, delivered by MobileRobot Inc. or Google can start from scratch. While ‘off-the-shelf’ software will fit the GoBot robot’s protocol well, it might not fit to Google’s own services. In this case starting from scratch will be the best option.

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techniques.

7.1 Software Process models. There is no ideal software process available, and many organizations have developed their own approach to software development. Processes have evolved to exploit the capabilities of the people in an organization and the specific characteristics of the systems that are being developed. Although there are many software processes, some fundamental activities are common to all software processes according to Sommerville (2006): Software Specification: the functionality of the software and constraints on its operation must be defined. Software design and implementation: the software to meet the specification must be produced Software validation: the software must be validated to ensure that it does what the customer wants. Software evolution: the software must evolve to meet changing customer needs. Although there is no ideal software process, there is scope for improving the software process in many organizations by standardization, where the diversity in software processes across an organization is reduced according to Sommerville (2006). This leads to an improved communication and a reduction in training time, and makes automated process support more economical. Standardization is also an important ant step in introducing new software engineering methods and

For Google it will be important to select a suited software process or combination of processes to streamline the development of the three applications in a way that they can all communicate with each other. A software process model is an abstract representation of a software process. They are process frameworks that may be extended and adapted to create a more specific software engineering process. Some known software processes are: Waterfall model: The Waterfall model is a sequential software development model in which development is seen as flowing steadily downwards through the phases of requirements specification, design, implementation, testing, integration and maintenance. After each step is finished, the process proceeds to the next step. This model works best when the requirements freeze upfront and are well-documented with no uncertainty in the scope. It is usually used to execute small scale projects. Evolutionary or Iterative development: Iterative and Incremental development is a product development and management methodology that permits iterative project development and cyclic progress assessment. It prescribes the construction of initially small but ever larger portions of a software project to help all those involved to uncover important issues early before problems or faulty assumptions can lead to disaster. Fast development

Figure 20: Iterative development model

processes are built on the foundation of iterative development processes. This method uses less time to program more functional higher quality software. Figure 19: Waterfall model

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Software Development for GoBot

For Google and MobileRobots Inc. it is important to develop a process that enables them to work closely together, making sure that numerous feedback loops will check the software programmed and the communication between the 3 applications and the robot. An iterative development process will then suit best, since it allows a fast development process. In a complex set of applications like in this case, the requirements are not clear enough to use a Waterfall like process, and a continuous loop of setting specifications, building, testing, evaluating and setting new requirements will enable Google and MobileRobots Inc. to tackle this. In the model above this is described. From the development process/phase the specifications are delivered in UML. The software development team will analyze the specifications and will first design the functions separately from the specifications. These functions are then grouped into different modules which all encompass part of the software package. These modules can be developed and coded simultaneously. This way time can be saved. After this the modules are implemented into the software package. Now it is time to test the software. First on specifications; does the developed software meet the specifications as set by the concept development? If this is correct, then the software is tested for its quality. If there are any major bugs these will be addressed first by the debugging phase. Above you see the implementation of the Knowledge Center of

Google into the software development process. This way, software failures will be led back from Use and Services into the development of the software of next generations. This way the development of the software will also improve over the generations. In a complex set of applications like in this case, the requirements are not clear enough to use a Waterfall like process, and a continuous loop of setting specifications, building, testing, evaluating and setting new requirements will enable Google and MobileRobots Inc. to tackle this. In the model above this is described. From the development process/phase the specifications are delivered in UML. The software development team will analyze the specifications and will first design the functions separately from the specifications. These functions are then grouped into different modules which all encompass part of the software package. These modules can be developed and coded simultaneously. This way time can be saved. After this the modules are implemented into the software package. Now it is time to test the software. First on specifications; does the developed software meet the specifications as set by the concept development? If this is correct, then the software is tested for its quality. If there are any major bugs these will be addressed first by the debugging phase. Above you see the implementation of the Knowledge Center of Google into the software development process. This way, software failures will

Process Flowchart 5: Software development process

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7.3

Software release

A software release is the distribution, private or public, of an initial or new and upgraded version of a computer software product [13]. The software release life cycle is composed of different stages that describe the stability of a piece of software and the amount of development it requires before ﬁnal release. Each major version of a product goes through a stage when new features are added which we call the Alpha stage. In this stage the different modules and functions can still be added, deleted or modiﬁed. In the Beta stage, debugging is the main actively of the software development team. No new features are added anymore, only errors are correcting. When all important bugs are removed and the software is stable it is declared as a

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be led back from Use and Services into the development of the software of next generations. This way the development of the software will also improve over the generations.

Figure 21: Overview software release stages

release candidate. It has the potential of being the ﬁnal product, ready to release unless fatal bugs emerge. The Gold release is the ﬁnal version of a particular product.

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Use & Services The Use and Services phase describes the phase after the product service launch. From this moment on, ﬁeld data can be gathered. This information has to be analyzed and distributed to the different departments. This means ‘ Use & Services’ is a really important phase in the product creation process. Different priorities will be given to different kind of information from the ﬁeld, since different actions have to be taken. This paragraph describes a way to obtain a MIR level 4 quality and reliability .

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Process Flowchart 6 Use & Services

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GoBot is a product that, in its first generation, will be released and distributed at 6 POI’s all over the world. We assume the service of GoBot will be widely adopted, which makes it extra important that the GoBot works well. Potential problems of the GoBot need to be fixed in a short time period. In order to make sure that these problems and faults will not occur again, these problems and faults need to be communicated with all the different phases in the development and production process of GoBot. MIR level 4 of feedback and feedforward loops in the whole process is the overall goal. Since a company is only able to take action, whenever there is relevant information on process output available according to Boersma et al. (2004), it is important that this information is generated in several ways after and also during the market launch of the product. The user/customer has a big part in this, because they have to give feedback on what goes wrong and/or right. The product has to fit the users’ needs because the user is becoming more central in the whole product process; there is a shift of the center of attention from the product to the customer according to Moore (2002). Self Diagnostic System As Caccavale and Walker (1997) already describe, adoption of efficient on-line fault detection and isolation tools is becoming of the utmost importance for robots, especially for those operating in remote or hazardous environments, where a high degree of safety and selfdiagnostics capabilities are required. Therefore, the GoBot will be developed to detect, isolate and cluster faults itself. Hardware/firmware and software failures As can be seen in flowchart 6, three different databases will be used to log failures. Two of the databases are in constant contact with all the GoBots. In order to reach MIR level 4, the data will not only be captured, but will also be analyzed and action will be taken whenever needed. The data of each database will be used as direct input for different departments, which are responsible for different phases of the process. Hardware and firmware failures will only be useful input for the engineering and manufacturing department of MobileRobots, whereas software failures will only be relevant for the development team of Google. Soft failures The third database will capture soft failures. Soft failures are the most valuable information to capture from the field, since this will be the best indicator to verify whether the project is a success or not and what causes affect this. Despite perfect performance of hardware and software, soft failures can turn the project into a disaster. Unfortunately, soft failures are very difficult to capture. It is a relatively new concept and therefore, little research has been done on soft failures. Nevo and Wade (2007) have paid attention to soft failures. They state that soft failures depend to a great extent on expectations of users. Therefore, a key to satisfying

customers is to match their expectations with performance. Additionally, they describe that disconfirmation is most often measured by asking respondents whether something is “better than/worse than expected.” Failure Priorities Hardware related problems are relatively easy to identify and solve and mostly affect individual GoBots. Many scholars have studied how to deal with hardware failures. Data on hardware/firmware failures can be directly trusted to MobileRobots. However, statistical analysis has to be done in order to define failure percentages that lead to action and adaptations in the development process. Software failures are also relatively easy to identify, however, they affect the entire service. Therefore, whenever software problems occur, a total market recall has to be initiated or a complete software update. The problems have to be solved as soon as possible. Recent communication technologies such as the wireless technology make it possible to quickly respond and solve the failures remotely. This again underlines the importance of continuous monitoring the performance of the service. As described earlier, soft failures are very hard to identify and extremely important for the success of the project. Therefore, this sort of failures is highest priority. Different techniques have to be developed in order to deal with soft failures. Soft failures already have to be revealed before the product and service launches, therefore, expectations of customers have to be mapped out in early stage.

Integration of POI’s in failures feedback loops As described earlier, the data from the databases will be analyzed by different departments of Google or MobileRobots. Integration of POI’s in the analysis teams is very important. Many failures might be caused by the POI’s and therefore, POI’s should solve the problems themselves. Google should make it the POI’s easy to obtain data about the failures. This will help both Google and the POI’s to serve customers best. Surveillance During the ﬁrst generation, GoBot will be under full-time surveillance of a Google employee, who will constantly check the GoBot on errors. All information from this surveillance will directly be communicated to Mobile Robots and Google in order to prevent errors in future generations and to serve as input for the current generation. This information then Page 49

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can also be communicated and implemented in the product process of the second generation. The second (and improved) generation of the GoBot will also be under constant surveillance of a Google employee in order to communicate errors directly, so they can be implemented in the product process immediately. MobileRobots provides a service of a monthly check [16] on all the GoBot robots from which the information also has to be communicated to Google. For the first two generations we want to make use of this monthly checkup and after the first two generations we want to reduce this to a checkup every quarter of a year. In the first generations (generation 1 and 2) of GoBot the customer feedback from the field is extra important, although this feedback cannot be used in the current product; it can give feedback for future generations of the GoBot in order to improve these to the whishes of the customers/users according to Sander and Brombacher (1999). Information about the product/service can be gathered by enquiries and polls on the web-site of Google. So there can be a poll for the users to vote for what kind of new POI they would like to be added tot the GoBot network; we can get an impression where there might need to be more GoBot robots and services. In this way we can get information about first impressions and about things the users might also want in the product. This kind of information, that also will be stored in the knowledge center, only gives suggestions and does not say anything about the origin of problems, but only gives a very basic view of the users (MIR level 1). Online questionnaires When problems occur when the user/customer is using the service (via the internet) they can report these problems and errors on a forum of Google. They can also chat about these problems with Google employees in order to get more information about the problems and how they can solve these. In this way Google can get more detailed information about the problems and errors then just letting the users filling in a form. Indirectly you can compare this way of communication with the user, with the information flow that is generated by making use of a call-center. The information that will be generated has to be logged and stored in the knowledge center of the production process of GoBot. When information about the root causes of the problems is also send to the relevant phases in the development process you have a MIR level 4.

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Call-center Another way to get information about the failures of GoBot is making use of a call-center (when the internet is not working anymore, because otherwise it is plausible to think that the users will make use of the chat function first). When there are problems with the product or service the user can call the call-center and explain their problems (MIR level 3 has to be reached according to Boersma et al. (2002). All information gathered in the call-center has to be stored in the knowledge center of the production process of GoBot. From this knowledge center the root causes of the problems can be found which can lead to a MIR level 4 when the data is also actually send to the relevant phases in the development process. Repairing and using spare GoBots If a problem will occur with the GoBot that can not be fixed by the POIs themselves the GoBot will be picked-up at the POI and will be shipped back at Mobile Robots in Manchester, USA. Here the robot will be fixed and updated with the latest software to make sure it will work properly again. In the mean time a spare GoBot, available on each POI, will be used. After that the robot will be shipped back to the POI for further use.

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Literature 1. Apostolakis, G.E., Lemon, D.M. (2005). ‘A screening methodology for the identiﬁcation and ranking of infrastructure vulnerabilities due to terrorism’. Risk Analysis, Vol. 25, No2, 2005 p361376 2. Berden T.P.J., Brombacher A.C., Sander P.C. (2000). ‘The building bricks of product quality: an overview of some basic concepts and principles’. Eindhoven University of Technology, Faculty of Technology Management/Section Product and Process Quality. Int. J. Production Economics 67, 2000 p3-15 3. Boersma, J., Loke, G., Petkova, V.T., Sander, P.C., Brombacher, A.C. (2004). ‘Quality of information ﬂow in the backend of a product development process: a case study’. Quality and reliability engineering international, Vol. 20, p255-263 4. Boyle, M., Edwards, C., Greenberg, S. (2000). ‘The Effects of Filtered Video on Awareness and Privacy’. Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work CSCW ‘00

8. Haag, S., Cummings M., Pinsonneault, A., Donovan, R. (2006). ‘Management Information Systems for the Information Age’, 3rd Canadian ed. McGraw-Hill Ryerson Higher Education

16. Mehri, D. (2006). ‘The darker side of lean: an insider’s perspective on the realities of the Toyota production system.’ Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 20 (2), p21-42

9. Hofstede, G. (2001). ‘Geert Hofstede culture’s consequences’ (2nd ed.), Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA

17. Minderhoud, S. (1999). ‘Quality and Reliability in product creation – extending the traditional approach.’ Quality and Reliability Engineering, Vol. 15, p417-425

10. Knox, S., Maklan, S. and Thompson, K. E. (2000). ‘Building the unique organizational value proposition’. In Schultz, M., Hatch, M.J. and Holten Larsen, M. (Eds), The Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation, and the Corporate Brand. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p138–153. 11. Kumar, S., Aylor, J.H., Johnson, B.W., Wulf, Wm. A. (1993). ‘A Framework for Hardware/Software Codesign.’ IEEE Computer, Vol. 26 , Issue 12 (December 1993), p39-45 12. Lahlou, S. and Jegou, F. (2003). ‘European Disappearing Computer Privacy Design Guidelines V1.0.’ Ambient Agoras Report D15.4. Disappearing Computer Initiative (Oct. 2003)

5. Chaffrey, D. (2006). ‘Internet Marketing.’ Prentice Hall

13. Lahlou, S., Langheinrich, M., Röcker, C. (2005). ‘Privacy and trust issues with invisible computers.’ Communications Of The ACM March 2005/Vol. 48, No. 3, p59-60

6. De Mooij, M. & Hofstede, G. (2002). ‘Convergence and divergence in consumer behavior: implications for international retailing.’ Journal of Retailing, Vol. 1, p61-69

14. Liker, J. K., Morgan, J. M. (2006). ‘The Toyota way in services: the case of lean product development.’ Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 20 (2), p5-20

7. Djajadiningrat, J.P., Gaver, W.W. and Frens, J.W. (2000). ‘Interaction Relabelling and extreme characters: Methods for exploring aesthetic interactions’. Proceedings of DIS ’00, Designing Interactive Systems. ACM, New York, p66-71

15. Medvidovic, N., Robbins, J. E., Rosenblum, D.S. and Redmiles, D.F. (2002). ‘Modelling Software Architectures in the Uniﬁed Modelling Language.’ ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Vol.11, Issue 1 (January 2002), p2-57

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18. [REFJ02] Minderhoud, S., Fraser, P. (2005). ‘Shifting paradigms of product development in fast and dynamic markets.’ Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Vol. 88, p127-135 19. Moore, C. (2002). ‘The new heart of your brand: transforming your business through customer experience.’ Design Management Journal, Vol. 30 (1), p39 20. Petkova, V.T. (2003). ‘An analysis of ﬁeld feedback in consumer electronics industry.’ PhD thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology 21. Porter, M.E. (1980). ‘Competitive Strategy.’ The Free Press, New York 22. Ramingwong, S., Sajeev, A.S.M. (2007). ‘Offshore outsourcing: the risk of keeping mum: breaking the code of silence.’ Communication of the ACM, Vol. 50 (8), p101-103 23. Sander, P.C., Brombacher, A.C. (2000). ‘Analysis of quality information ﬂows in the product creation process of high-volume consumer products.’ International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 67, p37-52

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24. Sander, P.C., Brombacher, A.C. (1999). ‘MIR: The use of reliability information ﬂows as a maturity index for quality management.’ Qual. Reliab. Engng. Int. 15: p439–447

25. Smith, P.G. and Reinertsen, D.G. (1991). ‘Developing Products in Half the Time.’ Wiley, p83 and p246 26. Smith, S. and Wheeler, J. (2002) Managing the Customer Experience. FT-Prentice Hall. Harlow, UK. 27. Sommerville, I. (2006). ‘Software Engineering.’ Addison Wesley, p63-91 28. Ulrich, K.T., Eppinger, S.D. (2004). ‘Product Design and Development’, 3rd Edition. McGrawHill Ryerson, p11-32 and p163-167

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7. Google Maps: Street View (2007), retrieved from: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/ streetview, last accessed 14-12-2007

17. Why are companies buying autonomous robots? (2007), retrieved from: http://www.mobilerobots.com/commercial.html, last accessed 14-12-2007

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18. Wikipedia, Blog (2007), retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/blog, last accessed at 14-12-2007

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19. Wikipedia, Facebook (2007), retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/facebook, last accessed at 14-12-2007

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20. vYouTube serves 100m videos each day (2006), retrieved from: http://www.techcrunch. com/2006/07/17/youtube-serves-100m-videoseach-day, last accessed 14-12-2007

Other

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1. About MobileRobots Inc. (2007), retrieved from: http://www.mobilerobots.com/corporate. html, last accessed at 14-12-2007

12. Second Earth (2007), retrieved from: http:// www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=18911, last accessed at 14-12-2007

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3. Engineering (2007), retrieved from: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering, last accessed 14-12-2007

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4. Google (2007), retrieved from: http://www. google.com/corporate, last accessed at 14-122007 5. Google Earth (2007), retrieved from: http:// earth.google.com, last accessed 14-12-2007 6. Yahoo Finance: Google Inc. (2007), retrieved from: http://ﬁnance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=GOOG,

15. Toyota-Sony article translation (2007), retrieved from: http://getrobo.typepad.com/ getrobo/2007/08/toyota-sony-art.html, last accessed at 14-12-2007 16. Website top 10 (1996-2007), retrieved from: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500, last accessed at 14-12-2007

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Appendices This chapter is an overview of the documents that were used in the process of creating this report on product creation processes. It includes extra information on subjects not directly relevant for the key-audience of this report, but nonetheless they were interesting enough to be attached to this report.

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10.3 Appendix I: Toyota to buy Sony Robotics division

team.

Toyota has bought the Sony Robotics division [14]

In 1980, Jeanne Dietsch was hand-picked by Pat McGovern, founder of IDG and ComputerWorld, to lead a PC market-research start-up. After quadrupling sales and selling that firm, she partnered in a venture that developed award-winning game software. In 1995, she founded ActivMedia Research, the first e-commerce market research firm in the world. Dietsch has led MobileRobots Inc from a kitchen-table start-up to a manufacturer of thousands of intelligent mobile robots and a global leader in robotic bases for commercial and industrial robotic applications. As CEO, she provides strategic leadership, handles business development, oversees sales, marketing and administration and watches the bottom line. Ms. Dietsch is US Chair of IEEE Robotics & Automation Society's Industrial Activities Board. As CTO, Dr. Kennedy oversees technology, documentation and technical services of MobileRobots. Kennedy has led the company since start-up to design and build its current fleet of robotic systems. He has been the driving force behind MobileRobots' ethos of strong customer support. Before helping found MobileRobots Inc, Dr. Kennedy quadrupled robot sales for Real World Interface prior to its merger with iRobot. In earlier careers, Kennedy taught computing at Loyola University of Chicago for two years and led A+ Publishing as editor-in-chief. At IDG, he ran ten publications, including MacWorld. He first worked with Unix-like systems as Senior Editor of SunWorld magazine. Kennedy is co-author of O’Reilly’s HTML/XHTML: the Definitive Guide, which has sold almost 1 million copies in 15 languages over six editions. As chief of production since 1998, Mr. Fischer may have overseen the manufacture of more intelligent wheeled robots than anyone else in the world. Mr. Fischer was formerly chief of manufacturing for Real World Interface before its merger with iRobot. Mr. Fischer manages mission-critical purchasing and R&D productization, as well as robot fabrication and assembly.

“Toyota aims to strengthen its robotics business” “The origin of Toyota's robotics business is the industrial robots that it developed for use in its own factories. The Partner Robot Development Division was born out of the multi-joint robots that are used in welding and coating. The fact that the Partner Robot group belongs to the Manufacturing Technology Headquarters shows how Toyota had positioned its robotics business until now.” “The company is thinking of 4 areas to which its robotics technologies can be applied: household chores, assistance in nursing and medical care, manufacturing and personal mobility.” Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe talks about his ﬁrm's robotics business in the following way: “Toyota's technologies should be utilized not just in manufacturing but in other areas such as nursing care. We have the best technologies when it comes to moving hands and feet. But if you want to decide (who's the best) by the (robot's) brain, it seems we are still not that good. So I've told the employees involved in this to thoroughly examine how we need to collaborate.” “There is a reason for Toyota - which is famous for its sound management practices - to rush into the robotics business. It needs a breakthrough for further growth” “Toyota has been working on robots for a while but a Toyota executive in the Nikkei Business article willingly admits that it's work in the "intelligence" does not meet its strength in mechanics. Purchasing Sony's division will ﬁll that gap.”

10.4 Appendix II: MobileRobots Inc company description MobileRobots Inc [1] Founded in 1995, with the first Pioneer robot, MobileRobots Inc has grown to be a global leader in the design and manufacture of intelligent mobile bases, autonomous navigation systems and software for robot developers and programmers. MobileRobots Inc has sold thousands of robots on six continents, with dealers, VARS and OEMs in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America. Their flexible MOBILEROBOTSinside control technology is revolutionizing the way materials and processes are handled in hospitals, labs, offices and factories. Since 2006, robots using MOBILEROBOTSinside each have logged as much as 250 miles per month in installations ranging from one to 35 robots. In 2007, the company released its alpha version of MOBILEROBOTSoutdoors, the MobileRobots Outdoor Guidance System, for researchers. Customers Their thousands of robots are used on six continents and by leading organizations around the world, such as: Intel, John Deere, Microsoft, Siemens & US Army. Facilities MobileRobots Inc operates from a 25,000 sq. ft facility in Amherst, NH, center for administration, R&D and final assembly of MobileRobots platforms. Management team Jeanne Dietsch CEO & co-founder, William Kennedy, PhD, CTO & co-founder, and Gary Fisher, MBA, director of Manufacturing are leading the mobilerobots

Staff The R&D staff includes graduates of the world's leading institutions in robotics and engineering, with extensive experience in applying theory to real-world problems and productization. The production team is dedicated to high-quality assembly, good test procedures and careful packing for shipment. The support staff is technically experienced and reﬂects the strong value MobileRobots places on customer support.

10.5 Appendix III: Correspondence with MobileRobots Inc Hello, Niek. Our robots already do most of this out-of-the-box, knowing where they are and how to get somewhere else. What you would need to add to a P3-DX or PatrolBot to do this would be the choice of view software and the zoom capability (doing some data extrapolation? I'm not sure how you would expect to zoom from a ﬁxed 360 omni-cam). The links to advertising and so on are already being done by various Global Information System companies such as Google or Everyscape. The main factor in determining the cost will be the cost of your robot hardware and sensors. The list price of a PatrolBot to perform these functions would be about $35,000. US, including a good omni-cam, a SICK laser, the robot, charging dock and our Training Factory software for installation and control. There would be extra charges for electronic door and elevator op Page 55

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eration. You can see details of this at www.mobilerobots.com/wireless.html and www. mobilerobots.com/TrainingFactory.html and at our GIS partner http://www.penobscotbaymedia.com/solutions/spatial_robotic_solutions. htm Good luck with your project! Best wishes, Jeanne Dietsch CEO MobileRobots Inc. [N.Karsmakers@student.tue.nl - Thu Nov 22 04:44:14 2007]: Dear sir/madam, As a group of Master's students of Eindhoven University of Technology, we have the assignment to fictitiously develop a robot including AIBO technology, which has commercial potential. The concept is as followed. The Concept: We would like to develop a robot, GooBot, which provides people the possibility to have an interactive and real-time experience of visiting a point of interest online. The real-time experience can be offered by providing live-video streams. In order to maintain the accustomed freedom of movement, the people can look around 360 degrees in all directions and zoom in and out. By using a special 360 degree camera, the entire shot is captured at once. This generates one complete video stream, which can be accessed by many clients at once. The resolution of the video feed is in High Definition, which is currently becoming the new standard in video. Communication of this type of feed can be possible due to the ever growing network of broadband internet access. To keep the system dynamic, the camera is placed in a moving robot. This robot has an autonomous behavior which seeks out interesting spots by itself (e.g., move to less crowded areas for a better view). Additionally, it can also react on user behavior. Think of democratic vote for moving to a new location or perhaps paying a fare to have full control for a specific amount of time. Next to being a free-roaming 360 degree live camera, GooBot has even more interaction possibilities. Using image recognition, combined with GPS data, GooBot has the ability to project interactive links on top of specific landmarks. For instance, think of a clickable Eiffel Tour. The interactive links which are projected over the live video feed provide users many new and interesting possibilities, ranging from links to access in-depth information to the purchase of items from an online store.

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With GooBot, people can access and experience the many cultural hot spots the world is rich anytime, anywhere, and without the need of being physically there. Currently we are considering possible partners for the development of this innovative technology. As well as Google, we consider Mobilerobots Inc as one of the potential partners for the development of the technology. We have information about possible earnings, however, insight in development and manufacturing costs, and therefore, costs per unit is very hard to obtain. We would like to ask you whether you would like to help us by providing insight in the costs for developing and manufacturing a robot like GooBot. Compared to the robots Mobilerobots Inc is selling, what would be a reasonable price? In return for your help we would like to send our ﬁnal report. Looking forward to your reply and thanking you in advance. Kind regards, Niek Karsmakers Master student Innovation Management Eindhoven University of Technology

10.6 Appendix IV: Requirements per Points of Interest By defining the attributes per point of interest (POI) we can make a valid choice for a pilot market to test and evaluate prototypes of the first generation. Secondly it can also help in defining the various configuration possibilities. The attributes can be handled as variables which can be built in the software to facilitate the installation/calibration when a robot is placed in a particular POI. For the pilot market we want to enter the GooBot at a big and popular landmark which is known worldwide. This way the attention and interest for GooBot will be big, and it will give the GooBot as a product a head start. By choosing a single big landmark it gives us the opportunity to fully test the GooBot first on one dedicated location. This way it is easier to gather feedback on location for the second generation(moet dit erbij?). The first set of attributes is all about the popularity of the landmark. We determined 3 attributes in this category, being popularity, visitors per day/ week/month/year, and capacity. Next to this the accessibility of the landmark and it's terrain is important for the GooBot. If the terrain or the landmark is hard to access for a robot, it might not be suited for a first generation GooBot. Also the climate conditions have to taken into account, when the landmark location is outdoors. Also it's important to look at the cultural implications that might occur when placing the GooBot at the possible landmark. Will it not offend the local population in any way, nor the visiting population? What can we change to the

design of the GooBot to make it blend in it’s current environment. This makes the attributes list into the following: • Popularity • Visitors per day/week/month/year • Capacity • Dimensions of the area • Open location/Closed location • Public/Private • Number of highlights in POI area • Climate conditions • Location • Ranking and Status • Cultural implications From the landmarks we selected earlier, we chose the Eiffel Tower to be the best location to start off with the GooBot. It is the world's most visited monument with almost 6,8 million visitors in 2006, and 200 million visitors since it's construction.(referentie wikipedia) And this is just the amount of visitors that actually entered the tower, people that just visited the tower but didn't enter it are for obvious reasons not counted. This incredible popularity, and the worldwide recognition of the tower makes it a perfect place to introduce the GooBot. The Eiffel tower is both a public and private landmark. The plazas and parks around and under the tower are public, the tower itself is private access and an entrance fee has to be payed to enjoy the view. The plaza underneath the tower is 15625 square meters (125m x 125m). On each side of the tower there are parks and plazas that offer a great view on the tower. This makes the surroundings of the tower a great spot for the GooBot for viewing the tower, as if you were really visiting Paris. The terrain isn't steep, and most of it is either grass or tiled. This implies that the GooBot must be handle at least a part of this terrain. This will be implemented in the design of the GooBot.

Fig. XX The surroundings of the tower

The weather conditions in Paris vary each season. The highest temperature recorded is 40.4 degrees Celsius, the lowest -23,9 degrees Celsius. Rainfall can occur at any time of the year. Snowfall is a rare occurrence, usually appearing in January and almost never accumulates enough to make a covering that will last more than a day. The GooBot will have to be able to resist these weather conditions, so it has to be waterproof in order to operate outside, and operate in these temperatures. Also it has to taken into account whether or not the GooBot will be able to handle a snow-covered terrain. The Eiffel Tower, and the Eiffel Tower site have changed a lot over the many years since it's build in 1889. In the early days the tower has been used for billboards, and during the change of the millennium ﬁreworks and light-shows were mounted on the tower. The light-show is even still in operation each night. This all shows the openness for change round the tower, and the acceptance for the GooBot is likely higher than any other landmark. If the GooBot succeeds at the Eiffel tower, it might open up possibilities elsewhere. The above mentioned list of attributes clearly ﬁts well with the choice of the Eiffel Tower. It will be therefore a good location to introduce the GooBot, and see whether it can be made into a success on other landmarks as well.

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