Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) face unique challenges since it must achieve a double bottom line— outreach and sustainability. So is microfinance worthwhile or worthless? The proper performance measurement framework here is a better way to judge this than a simple measure of numbers. This paper seeks to present, to MFIs, a new rigorous performance measurement framework that incorporates the b...

Humans have always been the vital components of complex operations, notably including aviation. They remain so even as sophisticated automation systems are introduced, changing – but not eliminating – the role of the human relative to the collective work required to achieve mission performance. Automation designers and certification agencies are interested in methods to predict and model how co...

Being able to detect and recognize human activities is important for making personal assistant robots useful in performing assistive tasks. The challenge is to develop a system that is low-cost, reliable in unstructured home settings, and also straightforward to use. In this paper, we use a RGBD sensor (Microsoft Kinect) as the input sensor, and present learning algorithms to infer the activiti...

Being able to detect and recognize human activities is important for making personal assistant robots useful in performing assistive tasks. The challenge is to develop a system that is low-cost, reliable in unstructured home settings, and also straightforward to use. In this paper, we use a RGBD sensor (Microsoft Kinect) as the input sensor, and present learning algorithms to infer the activiti...