Search

International audience; This article presents a new method for fitting a digital line or plane to a given set of points in a 2D or 3D image in the presence of noise by maximizing the number of inliers, namely the consensus set. By using a digital model instead of a continuous one, we show that we can generate all possible consensus sets for model fitting. We present a deterministic algorithm that efficiently searches the optimal solution with time complexity O(Nd log N) for dimension d, where d = 2,3, together with space complexity O(N) where N is the number of points.

International audience; Wearable robotic systems have been a mechanism which clearly drives the motive of bringing back paraplegics back on their feet as well as executing difficult task beyond human ability. The purpose of this research study is to design and investigate the efficacy of rehabilitative walking in patients with lower limb disorders using oscillators which may commonly be referred to as central pattern generators (CPGs). In order to achieve this, a rhythmic trajectory is designed using Van der Pol oscillators. This rhythmic trajectory commensurates with the movement pattern of the hips and knees for a normal walking gait of humans. The dynamical model of a five-link biped exoskeletal device having four actuated joints is computed with regard to the wearer using Lagrangian principles in the sagittal plane. A feedback linearization control technique is therefore utilized for tracking the rhythmic trajectory to achieve a proper following of the human walking gait. Matlab/Simulink is used to validate this proposed strategy in the presence of uncertainties with a view to implementing it practically in the laboratory with human in the loop. Results show that humans with the aid of the exoskeleton device will possess the ability to track this rhythmic trajectory representing the hip and knee joint movements. The controller proved robust enough against disturbance.

International audience; A reconfigurable assembly fixture is a major and important component of a reconfigurable assembly system. It is required for the assembly of a variety of press brake models in order to reduce the assembly time and overall production time. The stages and requirements for the design of an assembly fixture and understanding of the assembly process for press brake models were used to design a reconfigurable assembly fixture. A detailed design analysis of parts of the fixture and the hydraulic system is considered and presented in this article. The stress and displacement analysis of the parts is executed using Solidworks express simulation. The parameters of the hydraulic components were determined from force requirements, and the hydraulic system was modelled physically using Matlab Simscape hydraulics. The response of the hydraulic system was obtained for each actuator in the system in order to depict the output of the actuators from the spool displacement of the valves. Stress analysis conducted on parts of the fixture showed that it can withstand maximum stresses that are lesser than the yield strength of the material used for the part. It was also established that synchronization of hydraulic actuators can best be achieved by the use of a sine input to the electrohydraulic valve. An experimental investigation was done using FESTO hydraulic test bench in order to observe the synchronized extension and retraction of the hydraulic actuators. The simulation of the hydraulic system, electric system and the programmable logic controller was prepared using automation studio. The design is envisaged to provide the industries with relevant information on accurate location and gripping of press brake frames rather than turning and repositioning of the frame in order to fit other parts during assembly. The article provides relevant information on the design analysis of a reconfigurable assembly fixture for press brakes which is novel because articles on reconfigurable assembly fixtures have not considered its application to press brake assembly.

International audience; Multipath is one of the most serious sources of error in the Global Positioning System (GPS). Multipath distorts the correlation function used for carrier phase and code delay measurements, and therefore induces errors in these measurements and consequently in the calculated positioning solution. This paper aims at characterizing multipath induced tracking errors for a vector tracking loop (VTL). The paper contributes to the characterization of tracking and positioning errors for VTLs by deriving models that allow the analysis of both code and carrier tracking errors with respect to multipath delay, multipath phase and multipath fading frequency. The paper further provides a simple multipath detection technique based on correlator outputs, showing another advantage of the VTL over the scalar tracking loop (STL).

This paper analyses the kernel density estimation on spaces of Gaussian distributions endowed with different metrics. Explicit expressions of kernels are provided for the case of the 2-Wasserstein metric on multivariate Gaussian distributions and for the Fisher metric on multivariate centred distributions. Under the Fisher metric, the space of multivariate centred Gaussian distributions is isometric to the space of symmetric positive definite matrices under the affine-invariant metric and the space of univariate Gaussian distributions is isometric to the hyperbolic space. Thus kernel are also valid on these spaces. The density estimation is successfully applied to a classification problem of electro-encephalographic signals.

International audience; Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) based on electroencephalog-raphy (EEG) rely on multichannel brain signal processing. Most of the state-of-the-art approaches deal with covariance matrices , and indeed Riemannian geometry has provided a substantial framework for developing new algorithms. Most notably , a straightforward algorithm such as Minimum Distance to Mean yields competitive results when applied with a Riemannian distance. This applicative contribution aims at assessing the impact of several distances on real EEG dataset , as the invariances embedded in those distances have an influence on the classification accuracy . Euclidean and Riemannian distances and means are compared both in term of quality of results and of computational load .

International audience; Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) try to interpret brain signals , such as EEG , to issue some command or to characterize the cognitive states of the subjects. A strong limitation is that BCI tasks require a high concentration of the user , de facto limiting the length of experiment and the size of the dataset. Furthermore , several BCI paradigms depend on rare events , as for event-related potentials , also reducing the number of training examples available. A common strategy in machine learning when dealing with scarce data is called data augmentation ; new samples are generated by applying chosen transformations on the original dataset. In this contribution , we propose a scheme to adapt data augmentation in EEG-based BCI with a Riemannian standpoint : geometrical properties of EEG covariance matrix are taken into account to generate new training samples. Neural network are good candidates to benefit from such training scheme and a simple multi-layer perceptron offers good results . Experimental validation is conducted on two datasets : an SSVEP experiment with few training samples in each class and an error potential experiment with unbalanced classes (NER Kaggle competition) .

Challenges for the next generation of Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) are to mitigate the common sources of variability (electronic, electrical, biological) and to develop online and adaptive systems following the evolution of the subject's brain waves. Studying electroencephalographic (EEG) signals from their associated covariance matrices allows the construction of a representation which is invariant to extrinsic perturbations. As covariance matrices should be estimated, this paper first presents a thorough study of all estimators conducted on real EEG recording. Working in Euclidean space with covariance matrices is known to be error-prone, one might take advantage of algorithmic advances in Riemannian geometry and matrix manifold to implement methods for Symmetric Positive-Definite (SPD) matrices. Nonetheless, existing classification algorithms in Riemannian spaces are designed for offline analysis. We propose a novel algorithm for online and asynchronous processing of brain signals, borrowing principles from semi-unsupervised approaches and following a dynamic stopping scheme to provide a prediction as soon as possible. The assessment is conducted on real EEG recording: this is the first study on Steady-State Visually Evoked Potential (SSVEP) experimentations to exploit online classification based on Riemannian geometry. The proposed online algorithm is evaluated and compared with state-of-the-art SSVEP methods, which are based on Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA). It is shown to improve both the classification accuracy and the information transfer rate in the online and asynchronous setup.

International audience; MATLAB computations and experimental measurements of the magnetic fields between two filamentary circular (FC) coils are presented in this paper. In order to achieve accurate computations, the induced voltage and current in the secondary side of the coil are determined and validated with measured values. The findings are obtained by formulating the models for computing the total magnetic flux through the secondary coil and mutual inductance between the two FC coils. Based on a more efficient and general model available in the literature, the model for computing the magnetic fields between the coils is derived. The comparison of the superimposed computed magnetic fields results and measured values show that the model formulated and experimental measurements implemented in the laboratory are accurate.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to develop a new mathematical model and an exact solution method for an assembly line rebalancing problem. When an existing assembly line has to be adapted to a new production context, the line balancing, resources allocation and component management solutions have to be revised. The objective is to minimize the number of modifications to be done in the initial line in order to reduce the time and investment needed to meet new production requirements. The proposed model is evaluated via a computational experiment. The obtained results the efficacy of the proposed method. Design/methodology/approach – This paper develops a new mathematical model and an exact solution method for an assembly line rebalancing problem with the objective to minimize the number of modifications to be done in the initial line to reduce the time and investments needed to meet new production requirements. Findings – The computational experiments show the efficacy of the proposed method. Originality/value – These reconfiguration costs were analysed for different part-feeding policies that can be adopted in an assembly line.

International audience; In this paper the authors discuss the modelling and design of an augmented reality platform for disabled wheeled mobility studies. This design consists of a virtual environment with two degrees of freedom motion platform and integrated ground contact force feedback. Differential drive mobility users continue to be in touch with reality on their own mobility aid while interacting with virtual objects. The major domain related to the differential drive mobility of the disabled members of society which coincides with the use of manual wheelchairs, electric wheelchairs and mobility scooters. In order to account for environmental and dynamic effects, the wheeled mobility user needs to map the intended trajectory into the virtual world. Motion and inertia force feedback produced on the augmented simulator give the users a haptic sensory stimulus input regarding spatial movement and ground contact forces. The main objective is to model and design an augmented reality platform with real world kinematic and dynamic properties to place a wheeled mobility user closer to real world encounters. The use of the designed augmented reality platform will be beneficial to disabled wheeled mobility users in need of occupational therapist training and evaluation.

A lot of information on the web is geographically referenced. Discovering and retrieving this geographic information to satisfy various users needs across both open and distributed Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) poses eminent research challenges. However, this is mostly caused by semantic heterogeneity in users query and lack of semantic referencing of the Geographic Information (GI) metadata. To addressing these challenges, this paper discusses ontology based semantic enhanced model, which explicitly represents GI metadata, and provides linked RDF instances of each entity. The system focuses on semantic search, ontology, and efficient spatial information retrieval. In particular, an integrated model that uses specific domain information extraction to improve the searching and retrieval of ranked spatial search results., Comment: 7 pages, 9 figures

International audience; In the context of assistive technologies, it is important to design systems that adapt to the user specificities, and to rely as much as possible on the residual capacities of each user. We define a new methodology in the context of assistive robotics: it is an hybrid approach where a physical interface is complemented by a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). An implementation of such methodology is proposed, using a 3D touchless interface for continuous control and a steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP)-based BCI for triggering specific actions. We describe a novel algorithm for classification of SSVEP signals based on Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). Its reliability and robustness are assessed in an online setup and its results are compared to existing algorithms. Finally, an experimental evaluation of the proposed system is performed with a 3D navigation task in a Virtual Environment (VE). The system is also embedded on an assistive robotic arm exoskeleton to validate its feasibility.

International audience; This paper presents the mechatronic design of the Gyrolift chair, a new type of wheelchair associated with a personal transporter and equipped with a verticalization system. The verticalization system is designed to help users to reach a standing posture. This module allows disabled people to move from the seated position to the standing position. Thanks to this system people can stand safely and interact with objects in the environment that cannot be reached from the seated postion. The major contribution of this research is the design of a mechatronic system, defined by the morphology of the user, to enable suitable verticalization. A biomechanical model is also detailed to define morphological trajectories for the embedded verticalisation system. Experiments were carried out to evaluate and validate the system.

Part 5: Research in Progress; International audience; Telecommunications is increasingly vital to the society at large, and has become essential to business, academic, as well as social activities. Due to the necessity to have access to telecommunications, the deployment requires regulations and policy. Otherwise, the deployment of the infrastructures would contribute to environment, and human complexities rather than ease of use.However, the formulation of telecommunication infrastructure deployment regulation and policy involve agents such as people and processes. The roles of the agents are critical, and are not as easy as it meant to belief. This could be attributed to different factors, as they produce and reproduce themselves overtime.This paper presents the result of a study which focused on understanding how non-technical factors enable and constrain the development and implementation of telecommunications infrastructure sharing regulations. In the study, the interactions that take place amongst human and non-human agents were investigated. The study employed the duality of structure, of Structuration Theory as lens to understand the effectiveness of interactions in the formulation of regulations, and how policy is used to facilitate the deployment of telecommunications infrastructure in the South African environment.

International audience; Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) rely on brain waves signal, such as electro-encephalogram (EEG) recording, to endow a disabled user with non-muscular communication. Given the very low signal-to-noise ratio of EEG, a signal enhancement phase is crucial for ensuring decent performances in BCI systems. Several methods have been proposed for EEG signal enhancement, such as Independent Component Analysis, Common Spatial Pattern, and Principal Component Analysis. We show that Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA), initially introduced to SSVEP-based BCI as a feature extraction method, is a good candidate for such preprocessing state. Evaluation is performed on a recording from 5 subjects during a BCI task based on Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEP). We demonstrate that CCA significantly improves classification performances in SSVEP-based BCIs.

Part 6: Theory and Methods; International audience; Empirically or experimental, in every research, methodology (method, approach and technique) are employed. The methodology guides the study from the beginning to the end. What is even more important is how the researcher views and deduces the outcome through his or her analytical lens. Information systems studies are increasingly challenging, primarily because of human interactions with computing. This is mainly due to the fact that human beings are unpredictable, which has impact and influence on how systems are developed, implemented and used.In the last two decades, researchers of information systems (IS) have begun to employ socio-technical theories (lenses) in their studies. This includes younger and aspiring researchers who strive to understand the importance, as well as the application of the lenses in information systems studies. Selecting appropriate theory to underpin a study is therefore critical, primarily because it shapes and defines the results.In this article, the factors which influence and determine the selection of theories in IS studies are examined. The aim was not to compare theories that are used to underpin IS studies, rather to understand how the socio-technical theories could provide a systematic method for data analysis in the field. The article also highlights some underpinning theories used in IS studies and their usefulness to researchers seeking to identify a theoretical basis for their arguments.

Part 7: Shorter Papers; International audience; The main components of information systems include people, process and technology infrastructure. In many studies, these components are often viewed and examined from socio-technical perspectives. This is primarily because of the criticality of human actions. The complexities and the difference which humans bring in the development and implementation of information systems are not getting easier. Hence the increase studies in the field of information systems.Many approaches such as using the lens of Actor Network Theory (ANT) has been explored to understand the socio-technical factors in the information systems. Although ANT has been employed in many studies, it is of significant important to establishes and clarifies the factors, from the social perspective, which influences the development and implementation of information systems in organisations.

Geospatial applications are becoming indispensible part of information systems, they provides detailed informations regarding the attribute data of spatial objects in real world. Due to the rapid technological developments in web based geographical information systems, the uses of web based geospatial application varies from Geotagging to Geolocation capabilities. Therefore, effective utilization of web based information system can only be realized by representing the world in its original view, where attributes data of spatial objects are integrated with spatial object and available for the user on the web, using integrated Google API and Google Earth API. In this study a city in the south-western part of Nigeria called EDE is examined and used as a case study. Using Google Map API and Google Earth API, the attribute data of the study area stored in XML databases will be integrated with the corresponding existing spatial data of the study area; to create a web based 3D geospatial application. We envisage that this system will enhance the effectiveness of web-based Geographical Information System (GIS) and the overall user experience., Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures

International audience; Detecting change-points in time series is at the heart of numerous applications, as abrupt changes in signal properties are quite common in natural and industrial processes. In this paper we propose an algorithm for a particular change- point detection problem where the frequency band of the signal changes at some points in the time axis. Apart from detecting the change-points, the proposed algorithm is also able to estimate the frequency bands. The main idea of the algorithm is to consider a simple local bandlimited model to represent the input signal in each sliding time window. The local model consists of a sum of two exponentials that, in the frequency domain, reads as the transfer function of a second order bandpass filter. Relying on the operational calculus, we obtain an explicit estimation of the parameters, that indicate the cut-off frequencies associated to each time window. The implementation is done in discrete time domain where the cut-off frequencies are computed as a combination of outputs of several FIR filters, providing a low computational cost online estimation. Experimental results show the efficiency and the stability of this algorithm even in presence of a moderate amount of noise.; La détection de ruptures dans les séries chronologiques est un problème important dans de nombreuses applications étant donné que l'occurrence de tels phénomènes représente souvent une information pertinente. Dans cet article, nous proposons un algorithme pour un problème de détection de ruptures correspondant à des changement brusque de bande de fréquence du signal observé. En plus de détecter les instants de ruptures, l'algorithme proposé est aussi en mesure d'estimer les bandes de fréquences. L'idée principale de l'algorithme est de considérer un modèle à bande limitée, local, simple pour représenter le signal dans chaque fenêtre temporelle glissante. Le modèle local consiste en une somme de deux exponentielles qui, dans le domaine fréquentiel, se lit comme la fonction de transfert d'un filtre passe-bande du second ordre. S'appuyant sur le calcul opérationnel, on obtient une estimation explicite des paramètres, qui indiquent les fréquences de coupure associé à chaque fenêtre de temps. La mise en oeuvre se fait en ligne, dans le domaine temporel, avec une charge de calcul faible. Les résultats expérimentaux illustrent les performances de cet algorithme, en présence de bruit.

International audience; The classification of subscriber types in mobile cellular networks is valuable for network service providers since it provides a mechanism to plan network services by better understanding subscriber behaviour in a network. Mobile networks contain vast repositories of data that store valuable information regarding subscriber behaviour. In this paper, a new approach for subscriber classification in mobile cellular networks is proposed. The proposed approach considers network traffic generated from a mobile cellular network operator in South Africa. The proposed approach makes use of a difference histogram approach for feature extraction and a fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm to classify traffic data into subscriber classes. To validate the proposed approach, a comparative analysis of two different multi-resolution feature extraction approaches, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) approach and the discrete wavelet packet transform (DWPT) are compared with results obtained with the difference histogram (DH) approach. It is shown that the difference histogram provides better clustering results when compared to the two multi-resolution approaches demonstrating the potential of the difference histogram approach.

National audience; The use of open protocols combined with fast and cheaper Internet connections will ensure continuous growth of the Internet services and applications in the next decade. The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) was introduced by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in 2002 to enable mobile systems to provide ubiquitous cellular access to all the services that the Internet provides, with improved QoS, appropriate charging and integration of different services. IMS is a promising candidate to drive the telecommunication network towards Next Generation Networks. This book presents the development of IMS Client compliant to the 3GPP Standard. While similar work has been going on for the development of the IMS Client by other researchers, such clients were found not to address memory and processing power which is limited in mobile devices. The IMS Client was developed using the Java 2 Micro-Edition environment, which is the most suitable development platform for smart mobile devices. The developed IMS client should be useful to the telecommunication or ICT students and engineers who may be interested in the exploration of next generation applications for smart mobile devices

International audience; This paper presents a new method for fitting a digital line to a given set of points in a 2D image in the presence of noise by maximizing the number of inliers, namely the consensus set. By using a digital line model instead of a continuous one, we show that we can generate all possible consensus sets for digital line fitting. We present a deterministic algorithm that efficiently searches the optimal solution with the time complexity O(N2 logN) and the space complexity O(N) where N is the number of points.

International audience; This paper describes the LIDAR for atmosphere research over Africa and current initiatives being undertaken in South Africa. A mobile LIDAR system is being developed at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) National Laser Centre (NLC), Pretoria (25°5 ′ S;28°2 ′ E), South Africa, for remote sensing the atmosphere. The initial results conclude that the system is capable of providing aerosol/cloud backscatter measurements for the height region from ground to 40 km with a 10 m vertical height resolution.

International audience; This paper describes the importance of LIDAR for atmosphere research over Africa and the initiatives being undertaken to foster such research. A mobile LIDAR system is to be employed for field campaign measurements over different locations around South Africa and Africa.

International audience; IP multimedia subsystem was introduced by the third generation partnership project (3GPP) to enable 3G mobile systems to provide ubiquitous cellular access to all the services that the Internet provides, with improved quality of service, appropriate charging and integration of services. For users to access the IMS services, IMS capable User Equipments are required. In this paper we present an IMS Client compliant to 3GPP, European telecommunications standards institute and Internet engineering task force (IETF) specifications. Though some work has been done in the development of the IMS Client, such clients cannot be deployed in the mobile devices. Our IMS client is developed under Java 2 micro-edition (J2ME) platform so it can be deployed in the mobile devices. The implementation and demonstration of the IMS client on the IMS Testbed are presented. Our proposed IMS client could perform the user registration and Instant messaging communication.

International audience; Communication about LIDAR for atmosphere Research over Africa (LARA) : A trilateral research programme

This paper deals with early cartographic representations (both cosmographic and chorographic) of the presence of Khoikhoi at the Cape of Good Hope. While the boundaries of the Dutch settlement at Table Bay and the land allotted to farmers were professionally drawn by land surveyors, the locations of the dwellings of Khoikhoi communities on early colonial maps of the Cape are distributed in various ways. However, the vast majority of maps simply ignore their presence. A second group of maps locate the dwellings as if in a fixed position. Finally, and these are the most interesting, some maps tend to take account of the transitional status of Khoikhoi locations by using a variety of graphic means. The attitude towards the concept of land ownership held by the Cape settlers, who appropriated specific locations, and that of the indigenous Khoikhoi communities, who were nomadic herders, are widely divergent. The purpose of the article is to explain the cultural context of the selected cartographers which motivated them to evolve various cartographic conventions to represent a previously unknown territory and its nomadic peoples., Cet article étudie les premières représentations cartographiques (cosmographiques et chorographiques) témoignant de la présence des Khoikhoi au Cap de Bonne-Espérance. Alors que les limites de la colonie hollandaise dans la baie de la Table et les terres attribuées aux fermiers étaient délimitées professionnellement par des arpenteurs, les implantations des communautés Khoikhoi suivent différents modes de localisation sur les premières cartes coloniales du Cap. Cependant, la grande majorité des cartes ignore simplement leur présence. Un second groupe de cartes localise leurs habitats comme s'ils étaient fixes dans l'espace. Enfin, d'autres, et ce sont les plus intéressantes, tendent à rendre compte du caractère itinérant des Khoikhoi en employant différents moyens graphiques. Les colonisateurs, qui s'appropriaient des lieux spécifiques et les tribus indigènes Khoikhoi, éleveurs nomades, entretenaient des rapports au concept de propriété terrienne fondamentalement divergents. L'objet de cet article est d'expliquer comment le contexte culturel dans lequel évoluent certains cartographes les a conduits à faire évoluer plusieurs ressources cartographiques pour représenter un territoire antérieurement inconnu et ses peuples nomades.

International audience; The evolutionary path taken by cellular standards to the current and future standards is incomplete without fully understanding the older standards. The comprehension of the GSM standard, specifically the procedures for protocols exchange over the air interface will help students understand radio resource allocation procedures in GPRS and UMTS, and will ultimately assist future communication engineers to be able to design and solve problems related to these cellular standards. In this paper we describe the novel architecture of our teaching software, developed and programmed in Java. We present all the user interfaces and show how it can be used to assist in teaching, by presenting how the Mobile station and the GSM/GPRS network exchange data frames over the air interface with their associated protocols. Finally the uniqueness of this teaching tool was proved from the stand point of our modular architecture.

International audience; Wireless power transfer system is a modern technology which allows the transfer of electric power between the air-cored coils of its transformer via high frequency magnetic fields. However, due to its coil separation distance and misalignment, maximum power transfer is not guaranteed. Based on a more efficient and general model available in the literature, rederived mathematical models for evaluating the mutual inductance between circular coils with and without lateral and angular misalignment are presented. Rather than presenting results numerically, the computed results are graphically implemented using MATLAB codes. The results are compared with the published ones and clarification regarding the errors made are presented. In conclusion, this study shows that power transfer efficiency of the system can be improved if a higher frequency alternating current is supplied to the primary coil, the reactive parts of the coils are compensated with capacitors and ferrite cores are added to the coils.

International audience; This article deals with a VOC map and its copy by an anonymous French cartographer of Governor Simon van der Stel=s expedition to Namaqualand in1685. The original map of the journey, drawn between late 1685 and early 1686, is not only a document of the expedition to the Copper Mountains, but has specific visual qualities which were modified in the copy. We consider that a thorough comparison of the two maps, their visual display, the relationship of the image to the text, and the background information on which both of them are based may lead to interesting observations on how an unknown territory was represented and why. L=expédition au Namaqualand du gouverneur Simon van der Stel (1685): recherche sur les qualités visuelles d=une carte et de sa copie Cet article traite d=une VOC carte et de sa copie, réalisée par un cartographe français anonyme, de l=expédition du Gouverneur Simon van der Stel au Namaqualand en 1685. La carte originale du voyage, dessinée entre la fin 1685 et le début 1686, ne constitue pas seulement un document nécessaire à l=expédition pour la découverte des montagnes de cuivre, mais possède certaines qualités visuelles qui ont été modifiées à travers la copie. Nous estimons qu=une comparaison minutieuse des deux cartes, leur organisation visuelle, la relation de l=image au texte, et le contexte dans lequel chacune d=entre elles a été réalisée apporte d=intéressantes observations sur la manière et les raisons pour lesquelles on représentait un territoire inconnu. artography usually reflects accredited geographic realities, but more specifically it is a documentary re-elaboration of information to which something new is added. However, expedition maps start from almost vestigial geographic information and are the first documents depicting what was previously unknown. This procedure gives them a very specific place in cartographic history and requires of the cartographer an exceptional ability and graphic skills to collate all kinds of available information derived from sea charts and coast descriptions, on-site calculations, and of course, indigenous knowledge. The map of the journey made by the Cape Governor Simon van der Stel to Namaqualand from late 1685 to early 1686 is such a document (figure 1, foldout). 1 Although it is likely that other copies circulated inside the VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie; Dutch East India Company) network, no other version to which it could be compared was known until the authors came across a cartographic item of particular interest in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. The legend on that unsigned map reads: Aplan de la route suivie en 1688 par le gouverneur du Cap de Bonne Esperance dans les terres du Nord de ce Cap@ (figure 2, foldout). 2 We established that it is a version of the Dutch map drawn by a VOC cartographer whose identity could not be established. We consider that a detailed comparison of the two versions, their visual display, the relationship of the image to the text, and the background information on which both of them are based, may lead to interesting discoveries concerning how unknown territory was represented and why the chosen representational techniques were used. Like any work of visual art, a map reveals the Aintelligence of sight@ (a phrase coined by Barbara Stafford) 3 of a cultural period and exemplifies its visuality and manner of pictorial conceptualisation. Furthermore, the examination of two visual artefacts representing the same reality in different ways will reveal the dissimilar purposes for which they were made and the divergent intentions, cultural background and training of the draftsmen. It follows that the purpose of a map cannot be confined within the bounds of a mere sign system since it can have multiple C

Part 3: Creating Value through Applications; International audience; Patients seek attention and treatments to various types of diseases and symptoms. Diseases infection and symptoms are often not predictive. Normally, there is a spread and movement of people across the geographical locations, of both the rural and urban communities, in countries including Namibia. As such, healthcare could be needed at any location, and at anytime. There is significant mobility of individuals and groups within a country. Unfortunately, the healthcare services are not always as mobile at the level and speed that individuals and groups does in Namibia. Hence, there is need for the mobility of healthcare services at both primary and secondary healthcare levels, particularly in the developing countries, such as Namibia.The population of Namibia is scantly spread among its towns and cities. The major towns and cities are situated, in the average of 175km far apart from each other, in the country’s 825, 418km square landscape. The spread necessitates movements of individuals and groups, particularly the old, poor, and nomadic people. Unfortunately, healthcare records in the country are not centralised and virtualised, making accessibility into patients’ records difficult or impossible, from any location. As a result, healthcare service delivering is challenged. This study therefore explored and examined the possibility of mobility of healthcare services to those who live in the country.The study employed the qualitative research method, within which data was gathered from primary healthcare service providers, using open-ended questionnaires. The Moments of Translation from the perspective of actor network theory (ANT) was used as a lens in the analysis of the data, to examine and understand the power and factors, which influences mobility of healthcare service in Namibia. Categorisation of Patients, Response Time, Understanding the Actors, Actors’ participatory to service delivery, and Actors’ Alliance were found to be the influencing factors in the provision of mobility of healthcare services.