Assistance systems should be able to adapt to individual task-related skills and knowledge. Structural-dimensional analysis of mental representations (SDA-M) is an established method for retrieving human memory structures related to specific activities. For this purpose, SDA-M involves a semi-automatized survey of users (the “split procedure”), which yields data about users’ associations between action representations in long-term memory. Up to now this data about associations has commonly been clustered and visualized by SDA-M software in the form of dendrograms that can be used by human experts as a tool to (manually) assess users’ individual expertise and identify potential issues with respect to predefined action sequences. This article presents new algorithmic approaches for automatizing the process of assessing task-related memory structures based on SDA-M data to predict probable errors in action sequences. This automation enables direct integration into technical systems, e.g. user-adaptive assistance systems. An evaluation study has compared the automatized computational assessments to predictions made by human scholars based on visualizations of SDA-M data. The different algorithms’ outputs matched human experts’ manual assessments in 84% to 86% of the test cases.

Frequently in engineering research, problems involving a large number of variables (factors) are encountered. A traditional method of interpretation is for the project engineer to present his results in the form of families of curves obtained by varying factors one at a time. When several values (called levels) are required to characterize each variable properly the number of test points necessary may become prohibitive. It is possible under certain conditions to test only a portion of all of the combinations of the factors and still draw reliable conclusions. This paper describes and demonstrates the use of a powerful statistical method for handling problems of this type. The accurate and fairly inexpensive solution to the laborious calculations was made possible by the use of an electronic data processing machine. The first part of the paper deals with the method of analysis in sufficient detail so that its application in general engineering research problems can be seen. The second part describes the actual application to a study of gun perforating methods. Introduction One of the most perplexing problems faced by engineers is that of properly interpreting the results of experiments involving large numbers of supposedly independent variables. Reservoir engineers are constantly attempting to evaluate the effect that the various phases of well completion have upon oil production. Research engineers design laboratory experiments to evaluate various factors in as economic a manner as possible. The classical method of studying the effect of controllable factors is to vary a single factor at a time. This "single-factor-at-a-time" method is extremely inefficient when compared to the technique called factorial design. For a simple experiment involving two factors, each at two values (levels), the use of factorial design results in an increase in precision of 50 per cent over that in the equivalent single-factor-at-a-time experiment and, as the example becomes more complicated, the difference in efficiency between the two methods increases markedly. This advantage of factorial experiments, sometimes called "hidden replication," is based on the fact that all of the observations contribute to the determination of the effect of each factor. In the single-factor method, on the other hand, only a small proportion of the total number of observations is used. When factors do not operate independently the are said to interact. An example of interaction between factors can be seen in PVT studies where the effect of varying the temperature is dependent upon the pressure of the system.

Abstract-The connected chair is part of the Supportive Personal Coach in the KogniHome project, which offers guided fitness training, relaxation, and assistive functions. The chair comes with integrated sensors, actuators, control logic and wireless transceiver. The sensors are able to measure respiration and heart rate as well as the user's actions. The actuators are used to adjust the chair to the actual user's needs and the transceiver is used to connect wireless sensor nodes and to exchange data with a base station. Additional value is generated by connecting the chair to the smart home environment, which enables and expands novel features and applications.

This work is devoted to segmentation and tracking of structures undergoing large deformation in an image sequence. The overall goal is the modeling of complex moving and deforming structures that simultaneously brings compression of data, segmentation and tracking on temporal sequences of images. Deforming entities are approximated by implicit templates, defined as level sets of some particular implicit functions. Implicit functions provide interesting tools for the modeling of visco-elastic objects. Structures are approximated using an energy minimization process ; the energy functional carries information about position, tangent and curvature. The implicit functions are defined by some control points, their radius of injuence, and an iso-value. Once the structures are segmented, tracking is modeled using the displacements of the control points and the variation of the radii of influence. The method is$rst applied on a sequence of images displaying a vortex formation, and we show that such a vortex structure can be segmented and tracked with implicit functions.

Process System Engineering. Thoughts on the need for and curriculum of an academic course of instruction. The raw material, energy, and environmental situation, international competition, and the decline in product innovation are increasingly casting doubts on conventional processes and their realization. Hence, in the future-training of chemical engineers a reasonable amount of time should be devoted to the study of system facets, i. e. to thinking and acting in complex systems of interrelationships. Under the general leading ,,Process System Engineering" those activities are discussed which are relevant to the design and planning of chemical engineering systems (process synthesis) and the mathematical analysis of a given system (process analysis). Process synthesis is the creative facet of project planning involving several methodologies. Process analysis embraces steady-state and non-steady state mass-and energy-balancing and the mathematical evaluation of various process alternatives on the basis of operating costs and investment as well as the simulation of operational behaviour and optimization of process configurations using mathematical models. The following article discusses a selection of points which should play an important part in the teaching of process synthesis and process analysis and considers some examples by way of illustration.