Using an expert deviation carrying the knowledge of climate data in usual clustering algorithms

In order to help physicists to expand their knowledge of the climate in the Lesser Antilles, we aim to identify the spatio-temporal configurations using clustering analysis on wind speed and cumulative rainfall datasets. But we show that using the L2 norm in conventional clustering methods as K-Means (KMS) and Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC) can induce undesirable effects. So, we propose to replace Euclidean distance (L2) by a dissimilarity measure named Expert Deviation (ED). Based on the symmetrized Kullback-Leibler divergence, the ED integrates the properties of the observed physical parameters and climate knowledge. This measure helps comparing histograms of four patches, corresponding to geographical zones, that are influenced by atmospheric structures. The combined evaluation of the internal homogeneity and the separation of the clusters obtained using ED and L2 was performed. The results, which are compared using the silhouette index, show five clusters with high indexes. For the two available datasets one can see that, unlike KMS-L2, KMS-ED discriminates the daily situations favorably, giving more physical meaning to the clusters discovered by the algorithm. The effect of patches is observed in the spatial analysis of representative elements for KMS-ED. The ED is able to produce different configurations which makes the usual atmospheric structures clearly identifiable. Atmospheric physicists can interpret the locations of the impact of each cluster on a specific zone according to atmospheric structures. KMS-L2 does not lead to such an interpretability, because the situations represented are spatially quite smooth. This climatological study illustrates the advantage of using ED as a new approach.

Robots in the Danger Zone: Exploring Public Perception through Engagement

Public perceptions of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (RAI) are important in the acceptance, uptake, government regulation and research funding of this technology. Recent research has shown that the public's understanding of RAI can be negative or inaccurate. We believe effective public engagement can help ensure that public opinion is better informed. In this paper, we describe our first iteration of a high throughput in-person public engagement activity. We describe the use of a light touch quiz-format survey instrument to integrate in-the-wild research participation into the engagement, allowing us to probe both the effectiveness of our engagement strategy, and public perceptions of the future roles of robots and humans working in dangerous settings, such as in the off-shore energy sector. We critique our methods and share interesting results into generational differences within the public's view of the future of Robotics and AI in hazardous environments. These findings include that older peoples' views about the future of robots in hazardous environments were not swayed by exposure to our exhibit, while the views of younger people were affected by our exhibit, leading us to consider carefully in future how to more effectively engage with and inform older people.