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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) epitomize a macro-perspective on work as they apply to all societies regardless of their economic, political, or geographic considerations. From this perspective, work is no longer just about being efficient for the benefit of an employing organization (meso-level) or indeed about individuals “coping” with organizational stressors (micro-level). More fundamentally, it serves as a means to meet individuals’ daily aspirations for a decent quality of life and work life. A key concept that centrally bridges – and theoretically connects – these three levels of analysis (macro, meso, micro) is sustainable livelihood. Originally developed with respect to low-income rural communities, it resonates with most workers (and students) today. This chapter illustrates how the concept of sustainable livelihood is relevant to macropsychology and can be a figure-ground reversal in conventional work psychology. Like donning a reversible jacket, a focus on sustainable livelihood adds a fresh perspective, new ideas, and real solutions for specific global humanitarian challenges. It requires for work psychology to consider the macro-level in addition to micro- and meso-level issues. With specific reference to SDG-8 (Decent Work for All), we outline in this chapter how macro-policy related to income (working poverty, income inequality), labour mobility (from precarious informality to inclusive diversity), and the future of work afford work psychologists prime opportunities to contribute towards decent work for all.

In the challenging and resource scarce South African context, characterized by its cultural diversity, the deliberate combination of adventure therapy and positive psychology holds significant promise to address a number of the criticisms levelled against so-called ‘traditional’ modes of therapy. This chapter introduces the deliberate and strategic combination of adventure therapy and positive psychology as one possible answer to the World Health Organization’s call for the development of novel, integrated interventions that develop with populations, strive to both prevent disease and facilitate mental health, and make optimal use of resources within the person and his/her environment. As a new branch of psychology, it is important that positive psychology continues designing innovative interventions and incorporating interventions from other therapeutic fields that support the psychological well-being of individuals. Since the majority of positive psychology interventions are written- and verbal-based, this chapter invites clinicians and researchers from the field of positive psychology to expand their toolbox by incorporating nature-based adventure therapy intervention. Results from a number of recent South African studies, using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, show significant increases in self-reported levels of a number of well-being indicators after conducting interventions in an adventure and nature-based context. These constructs include character strengths, resilience, self-regulation and grit. When integrated into the therapeutic space by positive psychologists and psychotherapists, adventure therapy can help build resilience in individuals and groups within non-clinical settings. This will represent an additional tool to prevent stress-related pathology in relatively healthy populations, and will positively impact the reach, scalability and affordability of health-promotion interventions delivered in resource-scarce contexts like South Africa.

One of the issues associated with programming a VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) robot for the autonomous period is providing it with enough information regarding its environment so that it can move about the field intelligently. As such, an objective of our research was to develop a series of machine vision tools so that a VRC robot could identify VRC field elements, other robots, and field perimeters; responding appropriately. We have carried out a review of relevant literature and identified a number of algorithms, image processing tools, and control paradigms, as well as, developed our own approaches, which we have implemented in C++ using the OpenCV library. Here we present the results of our initial efforts, namely our implemented colour identification, connected-object separation, and multiple connected-objects separation methodologies.

A jaw exoskeleton is proposed in this paper to assist the exercise for the purpose of practical rehabilitation of temporomandibular disorder (TMD). The jaw, attached to the skull by muscles and pivoted at the condyle via the temporomandibular joint (TMJ), can be simplified as moving in the two-dimensional sagittal plane. Based on the in-vivo recording the jaw movement from the healthy subject, the motion pattern is justified to be the primary specification to design the jaw exoskeleton. A planar four-bar linkage is synthesized to reproduce the specified normal jaw motion in terms of incisor and condyle trajectory on the coupler point to meet the kinematic specification. Adjustable lengths of the links are used to achieve a group of trajectories of any possibility.