Search results

This study aims to present details of the development and validation of the multicopter modelling code (MMC), a tool for the analysis of small-scale multicopters based on flight physics.

The development effort involved the study of aircraft dynamics and translating the equations of motion into MATLAB code. The authors also developed several auxiliary functions, so that the tool could trim the aircraft about a steady state, linearize the dynamic equations to produce a model that could be used for control systems design and carry out flight simulation.

MMC proved to be of good accuracy, producing results similar to those of other software such as AcuSolve, Overflow and the Rensselaer Multicopter Analysis Code (RMAC), which served as the motivation for this study.

The tool presented here provides an alternative to the aforementioned software, which are not freely available, programmed in MATLAB, a language well known to engineers and scientists.

This article aims to discuss challenges to Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID)-based services from a user perspective located within sociology, anthropology and science and technology studies.

Two cases of toll/ticketing RFID technologies are explored: the mature AutoPASS (tolling on public roads) and the newly implemented Flexus/Ruter Travelcard (public transport) in Norway. A methodologically triangulation of qualitative data is applied to trace the history of RFID implementation, and to compare the benefits proclaimed by suppliers with the hands-on experience of users.

The RFID benefits proclaimed by suppliers were, to a large extent, shared by users in the case of AutoPASS, but to a lesser extent in the case of Flexus/Ruter Travelcard. The cases illustrate that RFID applications are heterogeneous products with different levels of maturity and complexity, applied to fields and services with varied user-groups, functional requirements and privacy concerns. Vital to the success of RFID-based services is good management, compliance with Data Protection Regulations and providing user’s an experience of greater ease-of use and added-value in their everyday lives in comparison to previous systems.

Future research should broaden perspectives and methodologies to better grasp the complex interplay among RFID applications, users and the environment. This entails moving beyond a focus on discursive adoption to ethnographic studies of appropriation and how technology affects social practice.

RFID is undergoing an extremely expansive usability phase – commercially and socially. Research on RFID is scare and fragmented with few contributions from social science. Studies that privilege user perspectives tend to address the needs and concerns of business rather than of users.

Despite still being younger than a decade, the theory of multisided markets has offered numerous valuable insights for the analysis of industries in which a supplier serves two distinct customer groups that are indirectly interrelated by externalities. Examples include payment systems, matching agencies, commercial media, and software platforms. However, professional sports markets have largely been neglected so far in this kind of research although they possess the characteristics of multisided markets. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by describing the platform elements of professional suppliers of sports events and by conceptually outlining issues where an application of this theoretical framework is likely to provide valuable insights and to add to the existing knowledge. Among these problems are integrative pricing strategies of sports clubs towards such different customer groups as attendees, broadcasters, sponsors, etc., including their welfare and antitrust implications, and design decisions of sports associations, in order to promote positive feedback loops among the customer groups as well as management strategies to reinforce positive externalities among customer groups and alleviate negative ones.

The paper applies the theory of multisided markets to sports markets. It analyses whether the participants and their interrelations can be described as facing a multisided market context and briefly outlines the strategy implications for sports business.

The paper finds that the multisided market framework offers a promising framework for analysing sports business and adds insights to several problems of sports markets that “traditional” analysis cannot fully solve.

This is the first paper to systematically discuss the applicability of the multisided market framework to sports markets. As a conceptual paper, it hopes to stimulate further research in this area and open a promising avenue for scientific progress in the field.