In this paper we describe error detection and error recovery methods applicable to large scale unstructured environmental navigation. We relax our prior assumption of error-free following of topological landmarks; the navigator is “permitted” to make mistakes during its journey. The error detection method involves the navigator observing its immediate environmental surroundings, and checking fo...

We present CAREY, an alert system notification for regions in state of emergency. CAREY implements the mediator-wrapper architecture on top of the Geospatial Web to visualize risky regions in terms of their weather conditions. We illustrate the formalization of the problem of detecting risky regions as a two-fold problem that relies on annotations of sensor data with the ontology of Observation...

This paper presents an approach to building plans using partially observable Markov decision processes. The approach begins with a base solution that assumes full observability. The partially observable solution is incrementally constructed by considering increasing amounts of information from observations. The base solution directs the expansion of the plan by providing an evaluation function ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate user satisfaction with psychosocial healthcare services. METHODS Qualitative and quantitative study conducted in psychosocial healthcare services in the states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, Southern Brazil, in 2006. The study combined quantitative and qualitative methods. Quantitative epidemiological data from a cross-sectional study including 1,162 us...

Collecting and analyzing data lies at the basis of the scientific method: findings about nature usher new ideas, and experimental results support or refute theories. All this is not very prevalent in computer science, possibly due to the fact that computer systems are man made, and not perceived as a natural phenomenon. But computer systems and their interactions with their users are actually c...

BACKGROUND Hospitals in Pakistan produce about 250,000 tons of waste per year. Hospital waste has been reported to be poorly handled and managed by the hospital staff and administration respectively. This leads to environmental and health consequences within hospitals as well as to outside population. Our study aimed to describe the qualitative results of observations of ten large private and p...

In recent years, the emergence of a new trend in contemporary philosophy has been observed in the increasing usage of empirical research methods to conduct philosophical inquiries. Although philosophers primarily use secondary data from other disciplines or apply quantitative methods (experiments, surveys, etc.), the rise of qualitative methods (e.g., in-depth interviews, participant observatio...