Reality Gaps Research Articles

Digital reconstruction of substation equipment and facility layout via LiDAR point cloud registration

Generating as-built Building information models (BIMs) is promising in power substation construction projects because they can reflect the actual conditions of facilities. However, traditional manual-designed BIMs are different from real-world scenarios due to reality gaps. In this paper, we present a new method of reconstructing the layout of power equipment and facilities in substations using LIDAR point clouds. The proposed method extracts electric equipment and facilities via object segmentation and model retrieval. In particular, we investigate PFH, FPFH and SHOT descriptors for the 3D-SIFT keypoints in the 3D shape retrieval of complex electric equipment and facilities. After the best-match model is retrieved from a model library, the layout of typical electric equipment and facilities is reconstructed by aligning the model to the scene point cloud via point cloud registration. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed method enhances the efficiency of generating 3D models of power substations.

Perceived and Real Water Competency and Drowning Risk Among Adults

Traditionally, public understanding of drowning survival has focused on swimming capacity, often measured by how far a person can swim. With respect to the high incidence of adult drowning in high-income countries, using the more inclusive concept of water competency may yield a more comprehensive explanatory framework for understanding the reasons behind these drownings. Any competency base required to survive a drowning situation is dynamic, complex, and multi-faceted. Furthermore, perceptions of risk and capacity to cope with that risk are likely to be pivotal to the avoidance of drowning. Adults’ perceived water competence was measured against their actual water competence in a pool environment. Adults were tested on their competence in entering and exiting water, floating, and swimming. Despite most adults (98%) being unable to swim more than 100 m in open water, more than half (59%) perceived themselves as good swimmers, and more than quarter (27%) thought they could swim more than 200 m at the post-survey. In conclusion, reality gaps were found in water competence among adult groups. Differences between perceived and actual competence suggest that many adults may underestimate the risk of drowning and overestimate their competency. This provides a plausible explanation as to why many adults drown.

Path Model of Reality Gap on the Mental Health of Novice School Nurses in Japan.

Mental health is a serious concern among novice school nurses in Japan. Numerous novice school nurses with various health problems experience high stress levels, affecting their mental health. They may be experiencing reality shock, a known risk factor for burnout and turnover, or its factor, the "reality gap." This study aimed to examine the hypothetical model by which the reality gap affects the mental health of novice school nurses. This cross-sectional study conducted a self-administered questionnaire survey, and responses were obtained from 102 novice school nurses. A path model was created based on a hypothetical model. After several revisions on the hypothesis model, a modified path model was generated (CFI = .98, TLI = .93, RMSEA = .06). The path model showed that reality gaps negatively affected work engagement, work engagement positively affected intention to stay, and intention to stay positively affected mental health. Reality gap was also directly negatively associated with mental health. Having various support networks reduced the effects of reality gaps on mental health. Additionally, social support in the workplace boosted work engagement. Unique from other studies, this study contributed to understanding the effects of reality gaps on mental health. School managers and administrators should establish a support system that enables school nurses to receive various supports from within and outside the school. In addition, novice school nurses should take advantage of networks and support inside and outside school to reduce reality gaps and grow as professionals.

ANALISIS PENGARUH CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT FOOD AND BEVERAGES SERVICE DEPARTMENT TERHADAP MINAT BELI PRODUK FOOD AND BEVERAGES INTERCONTINENTAL JAKARTA PONDOK INDAH

This study aims to provide a perspective on the effectiveness of implementing the concept of Customer Relationship Management for the company's business side, examine the benefits that guests can receive for purchasing products and services that have been made and explain whether or not there is a gap between expectations and reality felt by guests at InterContinental Jakarta Beautiful Cottage. The purposes of this study are 1) to provide an overview of the type and magnitude of the gap between guest expectations and the reality experienced in the field, 2) to determine the effectiveness of the role of Customer Relationship Management in building guest loyalty for the treatment or reward that has been provided by the company. The approach used in this study is the Quantitative Method, which obtains primary data from questionnaires as primary data and journals or books as secondary data. The results obtained in this study indicate that the dimensions used in Customer Relationship Management, namely Customer Orientation, Customer Relationship Management Organization and Knowledge Management are proven to be able to trigger Buying Interest which includes Attention, Interest, Desire and Action Dimensions of 43.4% for products Food and Beverages InterContinental Jakarta Pondok Indah. The conclusion of this study is that there are a number of expectations and reality gaps that cause the significance of the influence of the Customer Relationship Management Variable and the Purchase Intention Variable to be below 50% which indicates a not too strong influence. Besides that effectiveness of the type and amount of freebies to loyal members has a fairly good effectiveness, although it is not satisfactory.

Probabilistic sizing and scheduling co-optimisation of hybrid battery/super-capacitor energy storage systems in micro-grids

While established deterministic capacity planning models for single-component energy storage systems exist, little attention has been given to probabilistic sizing of hybrid energy storage systems (ESSs) using swarm-based meta-heuristic algorithms. This highlights two key research opportunities, namely: (1) studying the impact of preserving model-inherent characteristics and optimising daily system dispatch on narrowing reality gaps in hybrid ESS designs, and (2) the optimal integration of hybrid ESSs into grid-connected micro-grids based on their applications, with potentially significant financial implications for model designs. In response, this paper introduces a novel probabilistic hybrid ESS capacity planning optimisation model based on a state-of-the-art meta-heuristic algorithm. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the model within a community micro-grid scheme, a case study of an eco-village in Aotearoa New Zealand is presented. The simulation results indicate a ∼4 % and ∼36 % premium above the deterministic results respectively in the most likely case and worst-case probabilistic scenarios. On the other hand, the best-case stochastic estimate of the life-cycle cost of the hybrid ESS is found to be ∼39 % lower than that of the deterministic modelling. Additionally, the economics of temporal energy arbitrage using the battery bank is investigated, indicating that at the current capital cost of stationary LiFePO4 batteries and the present fixed feed-in-tariff (NZ$0.08/kWh), it is not economically viable to cycle the storage for arbitrage reasons alone. In conclusion, this paper highlights the critical need to incorporate probabilistic optimisation techniques and emphasises the importance of sizing and scheduling co-optimisation when designing hybrid ESSs for integration into grid-connected micro-grids.

Multidimensional design‐reality gaps in ICT in education projects in the Samoan aidscape

AbstractMotivationDuring the last decades, Samoa has received much aid to improve the use of information, communication, and technology (ICT) in education. However, the inequality gap in digital education between the global North and South remains wide, including in Samoa. This warrants further study of ICT in education projects in recipient countries.PurposeThis study examines the gap between ICT project design and the reality lived by schoolteachers in Samoa.Methods and approachEmpirical data were collected primarily through informal conversations with current and former teachers and ICT service providers. Their stories supported direct observation of ICT in schools garnered through working as a lecturer at an academic institution in Samoa.I use the concept of aidscape, which reflects the multidimensional nature of aid landscape, to explore the reality gaps across dimensions of the daily life of teachers and examines how these gaps are interrelated at multiple levels.FindingsThe reality of teachers shows interlinking challenges to the use of ICT in schools; challenges of accessing equipment, school culture, user perception, high staff turnover, and labour emigration. Enhancing the use of ICT by teachers requires material, technical, financial, sociocultural, and emotional support simultaneously from various aid actors who operate on different scales.Other challenges, including the high cost of technology and devices, the lack of funding for long‐term projects, the lack of ICT experts in the country and poor connectivity, also contribute to the less than satisfactory results of some ICT in education.Policy implicationsThe way forward lies in better co‐ordination among donors and more effective collaboration between different ministries of the recipient government to develop a combined project team dedicated to ICT in education. This team could work to unravel interconnected issues and tackle challenges one by one to find feasible solutions at the grassroots level, which could then be incorporated into viable national policies.

Offline Time-Independent Multiagent Path Planning

This study examines a novel planning problem for multiple agents that cannot share holding resources, named <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Offline Time-Independent Multiagent Path Planning (OTIMAPP)</i> . Given a graph and a set of start-goal pairs, the problem to be addressed is assigning a path to each agent, such that every agent eventually reaches its destination without blocking others, regardless of when each agent starts and finishes each own action. This motivation stems from timing uncertainties, including the reality gaps between planning and robot execution. In contrast to conventional solution, concepts of multirobot path planning that rely on timings, once OTIMAPP solutions are obtained, they can be executed without any synchronization between robot actions. Moreover, there is a theoretical guarantee that all robots eventually reach their destinations, provided they avoid interrobot collisions. This study attempts to establish OTIMAPP both theoretically and practically. Specifically, we present a formalization of the problem, solution conditions based on a categorization of deadlocks, computational complexities showing that OTIMAPP is computationally intractable, practical relaxation of the solution concept, two algorithms to solve OTIMAPP based on multiagent pathfinding algorithms, empirical results showing large OTIMAPP instances can be solved to some extent, as well as robot demonstrations of asynchronous OTIMAPP execution.

Digital Twin (DT)-CycleGAN: Enabling Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Transfer of Visual Grasping Models

Deep learning has revolutionized the field of robotics. To deal with the lack of annotated training samples for learning deep models in robotics, Sim-to-Real transfer has been invented and widely used. However, such deep models trained in simulation environment typically do not transfer very well to the real world due to the challenging problem of “reality gap”. In response, this paper presents a conceptually new Digital Twin (DT)-CycleGAN framework by integrating the advantages of both DT methodology and the CycleGAN model so that the reality gap can be effectively bridged. Our core innovation is that real and virtual DT robots are forced to mimic each other in a way that the gaps or differences between simulated and realistic robotic behaviors are minimized. To effectively realize this innovation, visual grasping is employed as an exemplar robotic task, and the reality gap in zero-shot Sim-to-Real transfer of visual grasping models is defined as grasping action consistency losses and intrinsically penalized during the DT-CycleGAN training process in realistic simulation environments. Specifically, first, cycle consistency losses between real visual images and simulation images are defined and minimized to reduce the reality gaps in visual appearances during visual grasping tasks. Second, the grasping agent's action consistency losses are defined and penalized to minimize the inconsistency of the grasping agent's actions between the virtual states generated by the DT-CycleGAN generator and the real visual states. By jointly penalizing both the cycle consistency losses and the grasping agent's action consistency losses in DT-CycleGAN, the reality gaps in both visual appearance and grasping action states in simulated and real environments are minimized, thus significantly contributing to the effective and robust zero-shot Sim-to-Real transfer of the trained visual grasping models. Extensive experiments demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of our novel DT-CycleGAN framework for zero-shot Sim-to-Real transfer. Our code and models are released on GitHub to facilitate other researchers' works in this promising direction <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{4}$</tex-math></inline-formula> .

“I Thought It Would Have Been More about Only the Fun Stuff”—Exploring the Expectation–Reality Gap among the Novice Solo Self-Employed

Research on the career expectations of employees and the potential (mis)match with their lived reality is abundant, yet the research field has paid less attention to the expectation–reality gap of the self-employed. Self-employed people’s attitudes towards work are, however, important for determining business success and persistence. Therefore, research is needed to examine their expectations as well as how self-employed people’s expectations materialize in their experiences. By analyzing in-depth interviews with 19 self-employed workers without employees in Belgium, both desired and undesired career expectations were revealed. After becoming self-employed, these expectations sometimes materialized in reality, in both a positive (e.g., independence and doing what you love) and a negative (e.g., risk and insecurity) sense. Our results also imply that expectation–reality gaps going in two directions exist. We identified positive expectations being met by less-positive experiences (e.g., loneliness, increased responsibility, being unable to do what you like, overestimated financial success, and unavailable or expensive formal support), as well as negative expectations being met by better experiences (e.g., social support between self-employed colleagues). The study signals that the social environment of the solo self-employed (SSE) merits policy attention. Efforts need to be made to create self-employed networks, where professional and social ties can be formed.

A Deformation Force Monitoring Method for Aero-Engine Casing Machining Based on Deep Autoregressive Network and Kalman Filter

Aero-engine casing is a kind of thin-walled rotary part for which serious deformation often occurs during its machining process. As deformation force is an important physical quantity associated with deformation, the utilization of deformation force to control the deformation has been suggested. However, due to the complex machining characteristics of an aero-engine casing, obtaining a stable and reliable deformation force can be quite difficult. To address this issue, this paper proposes a deformation force monitoring method via a pre-support force probabilistic decision model based on deep autoregressive neural network and Kalman filter, for which a set of sophisticated clamping devices with force sensors are specifically developed. In the proposed method, the pre-support force is determined by the predicted value of the deformation force and the equivalent flexibility of the part, while the measurement errors and the reality gaps are reduced by Kalman filter via fusing the predicted and measured data. Both computer simulation and physical machining experiments are carried out and their results give a positive confirmation on the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results are as follows. In the simulation experiments, when the confidence is 84.1%, the success rate of deformation force monitoring is increased by about 30% compared with the traditional approach, and the final impact of clamping deformation of the proposed method is less than 0.003 mm. In the real machining experiments, the results show that the calculation error of deformation by the proposed method based on monitoring the deformation force is less than 0.008 mm.

Paddy farmers in Kerala are willing to pay more for a modified crop insurance product

We study paddy farmers in Kerala and analyse the factors affecting their willingness to pay for crop insurance and for a hypothetical crop insurance product. The farmers are willing to pay higher premium rates if claims are settled based on the procurement price, instead of cultivation cost, and promptly; and individual losses are accounted for. A farmer's willingness to pay more is influenced positively by their landholding size and negatively by age. Infrastructural support, and efficient implementation, will help to resolve the design--reality gaps in insurance schemes. Designing popular schemes will reduce the subsidy burden on the public exchequer.

Open e-learning platforms and the design–reality gap: an affordance theory perspective

PurposeThe dropout rates of open e-learning platforms are often cited as high as 97%, with many users discontinuing their use after initial acceptance. This study aims to explore this anomaly through the lens of affordances theory, revealing design–reality gaps between users' diverse goals and the possibilities for action provided by an open IT artefact.Design/methodology/approachA six-month case study was undertaken to investigate the design implications of user-perceived affordances in an EU sustainability project which developed an open e-learning platform for citizens to improve their household energy efficiency. Thematic analysis was used to reveal the challenges of user continuance behaviour based on how an open IT artefact supports users in achieving individual goals (e.g. reducing energy consumption in the home) and collective goals (lessening the carbon footprint of society).FindingsBased on the findings, the authors inductively reveal seven affordances related to open e-learning platforms: informing, assessment, synthesis, emphasis, clarity, learning pathway and goal-planning. The findings centre on users' perception of these affordances, and the extent to which the open IT artefact catered to the goals and constraints of diverse user groups. Open IT platform development is further discussed from an iterative and collaborative perspective in order to explore different possibilities for action.Originality/valueThe study contributes towards research on open IT artefact design by presenting key learnings on how the designers of e-learning platforms can bridge design–reality gaps through exploring affordance personalisation for diverse user groups. This can inform the design of open IT artefacts to help ensure that system features match the expectations and contextual constraints of users through clear action-oriented possibilities.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Pitch Control under Delay Using Deep Reinforcement Learning with Continuous Action in Wind Tunnel Test

Nonlinear flight controllers for fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can potentially be developed using deep reinforcement learning. However, there is often a reality gap between the simulation models used to train these controllers and the real world. This study experimentally investigated the application of deep reinforcement learning to the pitch control of a UAV in wind tunnel tests, with a particular focus of investigating the effect of time delays on flight controller performance. Multiple neural networks were trained in simulation with different assumed time delays and then wind tunnel tested. The neural networks trained with shorter delays tended to be susceptible to delay in the real tests and produce fluctuating behaviour. The neural networks trained with longer delays behaved more conservatively and did not produce oscillations but suffered steady state errors under some conditions due to unmodeled frictional effects. These results highlight the importance of performing physical experiments to validate controller performance and how the training approach used with reinforcement learning needs to be robust to reality gaps between simulation and the real world.

Ghana’s ICT4AD policy: between policy and reality

PurposeNearly at the end of its lifespan, the Ghana ICT4AD policy is in a position for a holistic view, especially through the eyes of the intended beneficiaries. This paper aims to fill that gap. The paper measures the gap between what was intended and what has been realised and, based on that, makes recommendations for stakeholders.Design/methodology/approachThe research used the design reality gap analysis approach to numerically examine the deviation or otherwise of the ideals of the Ghana ICT4AD policy from or to the reality on the ground. It required the breaking down of the problem into dimensions and subdimensions and involved interviewing office holders, academics, practitioners and students over a three-year period. The recommendations include a review of the policy before it expires and an explicit designation of an agency responsible for coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the various stages of the policy.FindingsThe chief finding is that Ghana’s ICT4AD policy might miss the targets totally, or might well be a partial failure unless action is taken to close the design–reality gaps identified by the research. As the policy is almost at the end of its lifespan, recommendations are even more useful when the recommended revision takes place.Research limitations/implicationsThe major limitation of the is that it looks only at the implementation success or failure without a probe into the causal factors and/or the impact on society.Practical implicationsThe policy runs full term at end 2022, with large gaps between the plans of the framers and the reality on the ground. An immediate revision of the policy is most recommended.Originality/valueBesides this study, the authors have not come across any such comprehensive study of the Ghana ICT4AD policy, especially with the amount of data now available after two decades. There is a similarity with a Pakistani study, which has been acknowledged in this study, but the two works differ greatly in methodology, context and style.

Why Health Care Information Systems Succeed or Fail

Some health care information systems (HCIS) do succeed, but the majority are likely to fail in some way. To explain why this happens, and how failure rates may be reduced, this paper describes the ‘ITPOSMO’ model of conception — reality gaps. This argues that the greater the change gap between current realities and the design conceptions (i.e. requirements and assumptions) of a new health care information system, the greater the risk of failure. Three archetypal large design — reality gaps affect the HCIS domain and are associated with an increased risk of failure: • Rationality — reality gaps: that arise from the formal, rational way in which many HCIS are conceived, which mismatches the behavioural realities of some health care organisations. • Private — public sector gaps: that arise from application in public sector contexts of HCIS developed for the private sector. • Country gaps: that arise from application in one country of HCIS developed in a different country. Some generic conclusions can be drawn about successful approaches to HCIS development. Examples include the need for more reality-oriented techniques and applications, and greater use of participative approaches to HCIS. More specifically, techniques can be identified for each of the seven ITPOSMO dimensions that will help close the gap between conception and reality. This can include the freezing of one or more dimensions of change. Such techniques will help improve the contribution that information systems can make in health care organisations. Overall, then, this paper will provide readers with an understanding and model of why health care information systems succeed or fail, and with general guidance on how to avoid HCIS failure.

Understanding e-Governance for Development

New information and communication technologies can make a significant contribution to the achievement of good governance goals. This 'e-governance' can make governance more efficient and more effective, and bring other benefits too. This paper outlines the three main contributions of e-governance: improving government processes (e-administration); connecting citizens (e-citizens and e-services); and building external interactions (e-society). Case studies are used to show that e-governance is a current, not just future, reality for developing countries. However, most e-governance initiatives fail. Countries therefore face two challenges. First, the strategic challenge of e-readiness: preparing six identified pre-conditions for e-governance. Second, the tactical challenge of closing design — reality gaps: adopting best practice in e-governance projects in order to avoid failure and to achieve success. A vision for change is therefore outlined of which more details are given in a related paper.

Failure, Success and Improvisation of Information Systems Projects in Developing Countries

Most information systems — including current ICT projects — in developing countries fail either totally or partially. This paper develops a model which explains those high rates of failure. The model is based on the notion of design — reality gaps: the match or mismatch between IS designs and local user reality. It helps identify three high risk archetypes that affect IS projects in developing countries: country context gaps, 'hard — soft' gaps and private — public gaps. The model explains the ways in which these gaps can be reduced through local improvisations in developing countries. It therefore provides guidance on generic ways in which the success rates of IS projects in developing countries can be increased.

The Origins of Failure: Seeking the Causes of Design–Reality Gaps

The theory of design–reality gaps is an extant framework to explain failure of information systems in developing nations. This paper problematizes the nature of failure, with a particular focus on situations in which well-implemented systems, apparently corresponding to users’ views of reality, still fail to meet the expectations of their key stakeholders. To extend existing theory on this phenomenon, I advance a diagnostic model to identify the root causes of design–reality gaps. The model is illustrated through a case study of the Ration Card Management System in Kerala, South India: by capturing the causal chains underlying design–reality gaps, the model sets to trace the origins of failure, and the processes through which it is ultimately determined. The model I propose is both explanatory and normative, as it elicits causes of failure and serves as a basis to combat them.

Rethinking the cross-cultural interaction architecture

The paper is an exploration for a conceptual framework for cross-cultural interfacing. The roots of this exploration lie in my personal, functional, social and cultural experiences, and cross-cultural encounters. These encounters in many ways reflect the networking journey of AI & Society, promoting and stimulating the human-centred debate in cross-cultural settings. As a ‘cross-cultural holon’, AI & Society has been questioning the given orthodoxy of the ‘one best way’ and the culture of the ‘exact language’ since its inception 21 years ago. My observation is that even though we now live in a world of multimodal interactive media technologies, some how the interface design has not moved much beyond the functional (observed reality) worldview of our interactions. Even at the functional level, the design perspective remains bounded by the observed reality. It is thus no surprise that when it comes to designing interaction technologies for social and cultural domains such as health care, work, employment, life long learning, the design mainly hovers around the functional skill training, mechanical feedback and objectified evaluation. When we move beyond the functional worldview, and explore our interactions within social and cultural domains, we encounter both the reality (objectified world) and actuality (experienced world) of interactions. At this level, the challenge of the interface is not just coping with the interaction spaces of reality and actuality but also with the ‘in-between’ space of actuality–reality gaps. We explore how the concept of symbiosis enables the interaction in the gaps between actuality and reality, how the concept of the ‘culture of the artificial enables the sharing and pooling experiences, how the concept of valorisation’ enables to find a coherence (commonality) between interactions, and how the concept of cultural holon is used to conceptualise the network architecture of cross-cultural interactions. It is proposed that the way forward to designing cross-cultural interfaces is to first seek a conceptual framework for cross-cultural interaction spaces, and then use this framework to design interfacing systems and tools.

The unique story of a high-tech polymer

Man has always dreamt of making a strong, diamond-like fiber. The hardness of diamond is due to its unique structure with only C-C single bonds. It is presumed that long straight chain of C-C bonds may produce the fiber which could have super-strength. Most polymers, due to random orientation of the back-bone chain, produce fibers of weak strength. It is realized from molecular modeling that rigidity of the chain may introduce the directional orientation. The invention of textile fibers such as nylon was aimed at producing super-fibers having outstanding mechanical properties. The initial thrust was to develop fibers with the heat-resistance of asbestos and the stiffness of glass. Molecular modeling indicated that stiff aromatic polyamides could be the suitable materials. But their extreme insolubility and intractability baffled the researchers. The story of Kevlar provides an excellent example of innovation through molecular engineering needed by modern technologies. Fibers of Kevlar, an aromatic polyamide, consist of long molecular chains produced from poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide. The amide groups in Kevlar are separated by para-phenylene groups, that is, they are attached to the phenyl rings at carbons 1 and 4. The chains are highly oriented with strong inter-chain bonding which results in a unique combination of properties. Kevlar para-aramid fiber possesses a remarkable combination of properties that has led to its adoption in a variety of end-uses since its commercial introduction in the early 1970’s. The whole process started in 1960s and by 1982 full commercialization was reached. Several reality gaps and tough hurdles were encountered during the period from discovery to full commercialization. In 1965 a breakthrough was achieved by Stephanic Kwolek of Du-Pont [1] who found that para-amino benzoic