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To solve the obstacle detection problem in robot autonomous obstacle negotiation, this paper aims to propose an obstacle detection system based on elevation maps for three types of obstacles: positive obstacles, negative obstacles and trench obstacles.

The system framework includes mapping, ground segmentation, obstacle clustering and obstacle recognition. The positive obstacle detection is realized by calculating its minimum rectangle bounding boxes, which includes convex hull calculation, minimum area rectangle calculation and bounding box generation. The detection of negative obstacles and trench obstacles is implemented on the basis of information absence in the map, including obstacles discovery method and type confirmation method.

The obstacle detection system has been thoroughly tested in various environments. In the outdoor experiment, with an average speed of 22.2 ms, the system successfully detected obstacles with a 95% success rate, indicating the effectiveness of the detection algorithm. Moreover, the system’s error range for obstacle detection falls between 4% and 6.6%, meeting the necessary requirements for obstacle negotiation in the next stage.

This paper studies how to solve the obstacle detection problem when the robot obstacle negotiation.

The chapter attempts to evaluate the utility of applying multi-level governance outside of the EU, and also outside of the group of democratic states, to states that have defied the third wave of democratization and that are characterized by a so-called new authoritarianism. The case is the People’s Republic of China, and the focus falls on policy-making and implementation in the field of hydropower with special attention to the issue area of environmental protection.

The chapter draws on the notion of scales and indigenous Chinese governance concepts and brings these into a conversation with the concept of multi-level governance. Case studies on hydropower decision-making in China contribute empirical data in order to investigate the utility of multi-level governance in the Chinese governance context.

The chapter argues that if multi-level governance is to have utility in other cultural contexts it needs to move away from a consideration of pre-given scales as locus of authority and consider indigenous governance concepts and notions of scale, and it crucially needs to map power relationships in the making and implementation of policies in order to reach analytical depth.

The case of China shows that authoritarian regimes can be analysed in terms of multiple levels as authoritarianism no longer automatically implies strict top-down entities. Instead, autocracies can be highly fragmented and subject to complex decision-making processes that can arise during processes of administrative reform. This can lead to vibrant and reflexive systems of governance that exhibit adaptive skills necessary to ensure regime survival amidst a continuously diversifying society and changing external circumstances. As a consequence, a research programme looking at the new authoritarianism from a multi-level governance perspective has the capacity to uncover and describe new forms of governance, by bringing the concept into a conversation with indigenous governance concepts.

In China, informal networks between the energy bureaucracy and hydropower developers determine the hydropower decision-making process. This is particularly detrimental at a time when the Chinese government emphasizes the importance of the rule of law and social stability. Informal networks in which key government agencies are involved actively thwart the attempt of creating reliable institutions and more transparent and accountable processes of decision-making within the authoritarian governance framework.

The findings show the dominance of informal networks versus the formal decision-making process. This sidelines the environmental bureaucracy and fails to fully realize the importance of public input into the decision-making process as one potential element of institutionalized conflict resolution.

The chapter builds on existing multi-level governance approaches and fuses them with notions of scales and indigenous Chinese governance concepts in order to enable the applicability of the concept of multi-level governance outside of its area of origin. This advances the explanatory depth and theoretical reach of multi-level governance.

This chapter aims to investigate and interpret China’s educational aid by analyzing its history, philosophies, and practices in Africa. The study is based on review and analysis of governmental documents, reports, academic papers, and news by Chinese and foreign scholars on China’s aid, particularly educational aid to Africa. The analysis unveils three transformations of China’s aid “from pro-ideology to de-ideology,” “from single area to multiple areas,” and “from pragmatic economy driven to sustainable and humane economy focused” in Africa. Meanwhile, it indicates a continuity of the philosophy of solidarity, morality, and reciprocity in China’s South-South cooperation with African educational development.

The analysis also shows China’s educational aid does not match well with the framework of the Western donors. China, under the FOCAC framework, is devoted to higher education cooperation, human resources training program, scholarship, and Chinese language education with African partners. With the growth of its economic and political influence, China will play multiple roles as the biggest developing country and as an active promoter and provider for South-South cooperation in the negotiation and construction of the post-2015 agenda. Nevertheless, we assume China will keep a pragmatic higher education cooperation with its developing country partners to inclusively link it with business, technology transfer, and people-to-people exchange.

This study delivers a comprehensive review and analysis of paradigm shift, philosophy, mechanism, and practice of China’s educational aid to Africa to fill up the literature gap in this field. It also timely presents China’s stance toward discussion on the post-2015 agenda.

The purpose of this chapter is to compile the expected scenarios of development of information economy in the global economic system, determine the role of scenario that envisages practical implementation of the new model of a well-balanced information economy among these scenarios according to the criterion of effectiveness and probability, and select and substantiate the optimal scenario.

Due to the absence of initial statistical information that allows characterizing the basic conditions for further development of information economy in the global economic system, the method of stochastic modeling is used for describing forecast scenarios in this chapter. This method is used due to its applicability for forecast analysis in the conditions of uncertainty. With the help of this method, qualitative description of the expected scenarios of development of information economy in the global economic system is accompanied by selected quantitative characteristics, which are conventional, that is, they are given for comparing various scenarios, not for specifying a precise value of estimate indicators. Comparison of the expected scenarios of development of information economy in the global economic system is conducted using comparative analysis method.

It is concluded that the most effective and optimal scenario is the one that supposes implementation of the offered new model of a well-balanced information economy – despite its lower probability as compared to the other scenarios.

The set optimal expected scenario of development of information economy, which envisages application of its new well-balanced model, is recommended for practical implementation in the modern economic systems.

This research aims to establish an index system and a grey comprehensive evaluation model for analyzing the sustainability of urban tourism.

The sustainability evaluation of urban tourism is regarded as a multi-level and multi-index evaluation problem in this study. The evaluation index system of urban tourism sustainable development is constructed based on the ideas of holism and systems thinking. Then based on grey system correlation analysis theory, a new evaluation model is proposed to effectively solve the complex and uncertain problems in the sustainability evaluation system of urban tourism. An actual example of the five cities (Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Wuxi and Suzhou) in Southern Jiangsu Province of China is adopted to demonstrate the feasibility and practicability of the proposed model.

The grey comprehensive evaluation model can effectively convert the complex indices into comprehensive optimal membership degrees which are easy to be understood. The empirical study on the urban tourism sustainable development of South of Jiangsu found that: Suzhou, Nanjing and Wuxi were in the basic stage of sustainable development; Changzhou and Zhenjiang were in the preliminary stage of sustainable development. The social responsibility fulfillment of urban tourism in five cities fails to reach a satisfactory level, especially Zhenjiang and Changzhou remain in a low level in fulfillment of social responsibility.

Due to the difficulty of data collection, the authors can only use the data on 2010 to do a static evaluation in this study. If the authors can have more data on different years, it is feasible to develop a dynamic evaluation model to analyze the evolution law of the sustainability of urban tourism.

The evaluation results provide the necessary support to assist the tourism management departments of the five cities with their policy making.

This study not only supplements the evaluation modelling methods widely used in the area of tourism management, but also promotes the development of the grey systems theory itself.

Over the past three decade, China has established a housing finance system that borrows from the collective experiences of advanced economies. After examining the evolution of China’s housing finance system, the paper focuses on analyzing its challenges and recent changes. The paper argues that China’s highly-centralized financial system prefers financial stability but neglects financial liberalization, and then resulted in severe financial repression, which hurts the efficiency and equality of the housing finance service. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis via high-cost financial intervention, China took some policy innovations to promote a decentralized finance mechanism, expand finance resources, and support affordable housing financing, through which China hopes to provide a more stable, affordable, and equal housing finance service to help more households own homes.

Studying Chinese higher education internationalization policy-making requires paying attention to the political ontology of China's top-designed policy-making system before proceeding to methodological approaches. The ontology is two-fold: a fixed reality grounded in the structure and agency of the one-party state, and an emergent reality that derives from the pervasive practice of using policy documents to govern. A two-pronged epistemology is proposed to uncover these realities: interpretative and poststructural problematization. Interpretative problematization helps discern how policy-makers frame a problem–solution discourse in policy documents to achieve predetermined strategic objectives. Contrastingly, poststructural problematization views policy documents as prescriptive texts that offer rules on how to behave. The potential methodologies drawn from the tradition of critical policy sociology can be employed to study these two problematizations, thereby unpacking the fixed and emergent realities.

Some papers have investigated the complex factors impacting building information modeling (BIM) application in prefabricated buildings (PBs), but few paid attention to their interaction relationships. Ignoring the fact that different factors are not isolated may lead to some key factors being overlooked without appropriate improvement strategies being proposed. This paper aims to analyze those factors and their inter-relationships, with the view to identify the critical factors and their interaction relationships so as to derive constructive strategies that would effectively facilitate BIM adoption in Chinese prefabrication.

First, factors influencing BIM application in prefabrication are extracted and collated by literature review, expert interview and analysis of PBs characteristics. Thereafter, an evaluation laboratory (decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory) and interpretive structural modeling are used to explore the relationships and hierarchy among the factors. Based on the degree of cause and centrality, critical factors are extracted and the interaction relationship are investigated.

The results show that BIM policies and standards for PBs are the main causal factors. The maturity of BIM software and BIM data interface for PBs, willingness to share data, the strategic goals of the enterprise, BIM law and BIM input and benefit are the main transitional factors while BIM staff and workflow, enterprise attitude, distribution of BIM liability and cooperation of participants are the main direct factors.

Based on the above findings, corresponding improvement strategies are proposed so as to promote BIM application in prefabrication and the rapid development of China’s PBs efficiently.

Discusses housing reform and its impact on the governance of housing in China. The roles of the state and work units have been shifted from providers to enablers in the market of housing supply after the introduction of privatisation and the market mechanism. However, the role of work units in housing distribution remains almost intact. The scope of work units’ influence is more extensive than before reform. The involvement of work units as mediators in the housing market affects the performance of the market and contributes to the fluctuations and uncertainty of the market. In order to tackle the new problems arising from reform, the role of work units needs to be redefined.