Diversity and inclusion in the technology sector is increasingly debated, specially in the context of equal opportunities for all and a shortage of experts in many tech related industries. The need to be more inclusive can refer to different age groups, people with diverse culturally and linguistically backgrounds or gender. All in all, ethnic, gender and socio-economic diversity is not yet at the forefront of fabrication laboratories (FabLabs) agendas for change. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of diversity and inclusion by primarily elaborating gender relations in FabLabs and, to a lesser extent, discussing age and socio-economic conditions of makers. Our analysis is based on 39 interviews and the analysis of 55,450 data points extracted from the log files of 3d-printers, CNC milling machines, laser cutters and cutting plotters. This combination of qualitative and quantitative data reveals that, indeed, some machines are used more frequently by men or women. However, the main difference is in absolute numbers, i.e. women are not joining FabLabs for a variety of reasons ranging from uninviting cultures to the lack of role models in technology driven areas in general.
We present an algorithm for long-term routing of autonomous sailboats with an application to the ASV Roboat. It is based on the A*-algorithm and incorporates changing weather conditions by dynamically adapting the underlying routing graph. We implemented our algorithm in the declarative rule-based programing language Constraint Handling Rules (CHR) (Frühwirth 2009). A comparison with existing commercial applications yields considerably shorter computation times for our implementation. It works with real-life wind and sea current forecasts, takes individual parameters of the sailboat into account, and provides a graphical user interface.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.