Samuel Kernan Freire, Mina Foosherian, Chaofan Wang, Evangelos Niforatos
As agile manufacturing expands and workforce mobility increases, the importance of efficient knowledge transfer among factory workers grows. Cognitive Assistants (CAs) with Large Language Models (LLMs), like GPT-3.5, can bridge knowledge gaps and improve worker performance in manufacturing settings. This study investigates the opportunities, risks, and user acceptance of LLM-powered CAs in two factory contexts: textile and detergent production. Several opportunities and risks are identified through a literature review, proof-of-concept implementation, and focus group sessions. Factory representatives raise concerns regarding data security, privacy, and the reliability of LLMs in high-stake environments. By following design guidelines regarding persistent memory, real-time data integration, security, privacy, and ethical concerns, LLM-powered CAs can become valuable assets in manufacturing settings and other industries.
The potential of automatic code generation through Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) frameworks has yet to be realized. Beyond their ability to help software professionals write more accurate, reusable code, MDE frameworks could make programming accessible for a new class of domain experts. However, domain experts have been slow to embrace these tools, as they still need to learn how to specify their applications' requirements using the concrete syntax (i.e., textual or graphical) of the new and unified domain-specific language. Conversational interfaces (chatbots) could smooth the learning process and offer a more interactive way for domain experts to specify their application requirements and generate the desired code. If integrated with MDE frameworks, chatbots may offer domain experts with richer domain vocabulary without sacrificing the power of agnosticism that unified modelling frameworks provide. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of integrating chatbots within MDE frameworks and then examine a specific application: the auto-generation of smart contract code based on conversational syntax. We demonstrate how this can be done and evaluate our approach by conducting a user experience survey to assess the usability and functionality of the chatbot framework. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the potential benefits of leveraging Language Models (LLMs) in this context.
Marco Francesco MazzĂč, Rumen Pozharliev, Alberto Andria, Angelo Baccelloni
Abstract Blockchain technology has been designed to improve the transmission of transparent information across a variety of industries and products. Yet, consumers tend to perceive product information provided by blockchain technology (vs. humans) as less credible. As this may not apply to all consumers, it becomes critical for companies to understand how to improve blockchain perceived credibility. This work investigates how individual differences and marketing actions shape consumer responses to product information provided by blockchain technology (vs. humans). Four controlled experiments demonstrate that consumers perceive the information provided by blockchain technology (vs. humans) as having less credibility, which in turn decreases wordâofâmouth and intention to share information about the product on social media (Study 1). This effect is stronger for consumers with lower need for cognition (Study 2a), which in turn affects willingness to buy and actual behavior (Study 2b). Providing social proofâthat is, the number of satisfied customers who recommend blockchain technologyâincreases blockchain perceived credibility (Study 3). These insights deepen the understanding of how individual differences shape consumer's responses to product information provided by blockchain technology and offer actionable insights on how to boost technology credibility.
Anna Sheremetieva, Ihor Romanovych, Sam Frish, Mykola Maksymenko · 5 authors
This paper describes an interactive multimodal and multisensory fortune-telling experience for digital signage applications that combines digital human agents along with touchless haptic technology and gesture recognition. For the first time, human-to-digital human interaction is mediated through hand gesture input and mid-air haptic feedback, motivating further research into multimodal and multisensory location-based experiences using these and related technologies. We take a phenomenological approach and present our design process, the system architecture, and discuss our gained insights, along with some of the challenges and opportunities we have encountered during this exercise. Finally, we use our singular implementation as a paradigm as a proxy for discussing complex aspects such as privacy, consent, gender neutrality, and the use of digital non-fungible tokens at the phygital border of the metaverse.
Personalised Integrated Healthcare Monitoring System (PIHMS) has received major attention from the healthcare industry. With large population and strong growth of Indonesian middle class, PIHMS is certainly a big market for major healthcare providers. Although Indonesia has strong growth of middle-class, ironically, it is not supported with adequate physician ratio. Indonesian Ministry of Health (MoH) reported in 2020 the ratio of physicians per 1.000 patients is 0,62, far below WHO standard. As consequence, many Indonesian patients prefer to go abroad to have better healthcare services. The article supports the government's initiative to develop PIHM design by implementing IoT devices and blockchain networks. The use of PIHMS is essential to reach large patients that spread in remote areas, that suits to Indonesian condition. The article proposes PIHM based on blockchain solution (MedDApp) that enables to utilise IoT devices to carry out remote monitoring and medical consultation. The article examines the use of blockchain architecture to support developing data interchange between patients, healthcare providers and third parties such insurances and ministry of health (MoH). Data gatherings from respective stakeholders from Data and Information Centre division (Pusdatin), MoH and state-own hospitals to support developing smart health care architecture (MedDApp). The MedDApp design is expected to provide secure access between patients with healthcare professionals and third parties (national insurance companies and researchers in MoH). The outcome of the article is expected to be used as a reference for major healthcare providers to provide better services for their large patients.
Nowadays, traditional payment methods such as cash, cheques, credit/debit cards, and bank transfers are commonly used for financial transactions across a wide range of industries, including healthcare, real estate, supply chain, gaming, music, finance, retail, agriculture, tourism, pharmaceuticals, and the education sector too. However, these methods often involve transaction fees, potential delays, and security concerns. These methods lack transparency and traceability features, making tracking, authenticating, and verifying payments and their associated records difficult. To overcome these issues, we propose a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) based online payment system that leverages blockchain technology (BT) features and security to revolutionize financial expenses in the education sector. We also present wallet generation, fee tokenization and NFT generation processes. These processes utilize Ethereum and an interplanetary file system (IPFS) to store metadata information associated with fee payment details securely. We use Remix IDE, MetaMask wallet, and Sepolia test network to deploy and analyze the proposed system's results. We have also used the JMeter simulation toolkit to conduct comprehensive experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed system in terms of throughput, latency, and response time. Our assessment identifies the increase in performance parameters with the number of users. This initiative will positively contribute towards addressing the issues of financial transactions in the education sector.
The Metaverse will have a variety of effects on marketing. Businesses need to maintain their identities in the Metaverse realm. Generation Z and Generation alpha will have an easier time adjusting to virtual realms. The augmented reality environment allows buyers to interact with products without leaving the comfort of their own homes. Realization of in-store experiences is possible in the universe of the Metaverse. In addition, there will be an increase in the number of options for branding in the Metaverse. Virtual billboards and the virtual clothing consumers choose to wear will also influence brand awareness. Additionally, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) will be used to produce branded virtual content for end users. Examining the influence that technologies powered by artificial intelligence have had on digital marketing and branding will be the primary focus of this research project. In addition, research will be conducted into the applications of the Metaverse, artificial intelligence, and other digital technologies in the marketing field and studies about these subject areas. The research investigated several digital technologies, including the Metaverse, artificial intelligence, blockchain, virtual reality, and augmented reality. It is of the utmost importance for businesses to be able to compete in digital and virtual environments within the context of digital transformation to thrive in an increasingly competitive world. Companies need to invest in the Metaverse, artificial intelligence, and various other forms of digital technology to expand their marketing awareness in virtual environments, expand their customer portfolios, and become brands to take the lead in their respective markets.
Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) use decentralized, AI-driven decision-making processes to providing material handling capabilities in industrial settings. Essay 1 examines how firms organize and engage to mitigate uncertainty during external technology integration (ETI), using an abductive approach with dyadic customer-supplier data to extend prior ETI models by exploring firm engagement, organizational adaptation, and distinct uncertainty types in AMR ETI projects. Essay 2 applies a grounded theory approach to examine AMR integration, using constant comparison and theoretical sampling to develop core categories explaining how suppliers, customers, and users exchange knowledge impacting AMR integration and project performance. Finally, Essay 3 is a conceptual paper examining the importance of end-user adoption by integrating ETI and technology acceptance model (TAM) frameworks, exploring important relationships between managerial interventions, cognitive constructs, user acceptance, and project success in AMR ETIs. As a whole, these essays contribute to the body of knowledge by extending the breadth and depth of current ETI models, emerging a substantive theory of AMR AIU, and extending TAM by grounding managerial interventions and individual cognitive constructs in an AMR context. Managers can use these frameworks to differentiate AMRs and other autonomous collaborative technology from traditional automation, and develop strategies enabling timely and effective AMR implementation.
With the growing need of technology into varied fields, dependency is getting directly proportional to ease of userâfriendly smart systems. The advent of artificial intelligence in these smart systems has made our lives easier. Several Internet of Thingsâ (IoTâ) based smart refrigerator systems are emerging which support selfâmonitoring of contents, but the systems lack to achieve the optimized run time and data security. Therefore, in this research, a novel design is implemented with the hardware level of integration of equipment with a more sophisticated software design. It was attempted to design a new smart refrigerator system, which has the capability of automatic selfâchecking and selfâpurchasing, by integrating smart mobile device applications and IoT technology with minimal human intervention carried through Blynk application on a mobile phone. The proposed system automatically makes periodic checks and then waits for the ownerâs decision to either allow the system to repurchase these products via Ethernet or reject the purchase option. The paper also discussed the machine level integration with artificial intelligence by considering several features and implemented stateâofâtheâart machine learning classifiers to give automatic decisions. The blockchain technology is cohesively combined to store and propagate data for the sake of data security and privacy concerns. In combination with IoT devices, machine learning, and blockchain technology, the proposed model of the paper can provide a more comprehensive and valuable feedbackâdriven system. The experiments have been performed and evaluated using several information retrieval metrics using visualization tools. Therefore, our proposed intelligent system will save effort, time, and money which helps us to have an easier, faster, and healthier lifestyle.
The revolutionary potential of automatic code generation tools based on Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) frameworks has yet to be realized. Beyond their ability to help software professionals write more accurate, reusable code, they could make programming accessible for a whole new class of non-technical users. However, non-technical users have been slow to embrace these tools. This may be because their concrete syntax is often patterned after the operations of textual or graphical interfaces. The interfaces are common, but users would need more extensive, precise and detailed knowledge of them than they can be assumed to have, to use them as concrete syntax. Conversational interfaces (chatbots) offer a much more accessible way for non-technical users to generate code. In this paper, we discuss the basic challenge of integrating conversational agents within Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) frameworks, then turn to look at a specific application: the auto-generation of smart contract code in multiple languages by non-technical users, based on conversational syntax. We demonstrate how this can be done, and evaluate our approach by conducting user experience survey to assess the usability and functionality of the chatbot framework.
The healthcare system in the Indian subcontinent is plagued with numerous issues related to the access, transfer, and storage of patient's medical records. The lack of infrastructure to properly communicate and track records between all key participants has allowed the distribution of counterfeit drugs, dependency on unsafe methods of communication, and lack of trust between patients and providers. During the global COVID-19 pandemic, the need for a robust communication and record tracking system has been further emphasized. To facilitate efficient communication and mitigate the mentioned issues, a nationwide EHR (electronic health record) system must be introduced to bring the healthcare system into digital space. To further enhance security, efficiency, and cost, the innovation of Blockchain is introduced. Blockchain is a decentralized data structure that allows secure transactions between untrusted parties without needing a central authority. In this paper, a Hyperledger fabric-based Blockchain Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) system is proposed. The system is integrated with technologies such as NLP (Natural Language Processing), and Machine Learning to provide users with practical features.
This paper discusses supporting collaborative care of elderly through a reward system based on distributed ledger technologies. The design and implementation of such a reward system that connect elderly and volunteers by mutual agreements involve technologies such as smart contracts and blockchains. The work is motivated by the demographic change, where an aging population consequently increases the need for care. This causes a great tension in our society, as care resources become increasingly constrained, both regarding costs and availability of care staff. Much of the daily care of the elderly is today done by family members (spouses, children) and friends, often on a voluntarily basis, which adds to the tension. The core idea of this work is to help broaden the involvement of people in caring for our elderly, enabled by a system for collaborative care. The proposed system benefits from recent advances in distributed ledger technologies, which similarly to digital currencies, are build on the ability for mutual agreements between people who do not know each other. The system also benefits from recent gamification techniques to motivate people to collaborate on a larger scale through performing simple daily tasks. The proposed system benefits from inherent distributed ledger technologies advantages, such as a high level of decentralization, thus a high availability, and strong data consistency. These advantages make it interesting to develop the possible links between blockchains and the outside world to allow for a higher level of automation and distribution of services such as collaborative care. New models for distributed ledger technologies, such as Iota tangles or the Swirld platform, may however scale and perform better than blockchains. These should thus be considered for a full implementation and test of the system. In summary, this paper presents a novel framework and prototype implementation of a reward system supporting collaborative care of elderly, that is based on distributed ledger technologies.