Monocular Vision as a Range Sensor

One of the most important abilities for a mobile robot is detecting obstacles in order to avoid collisions. Building a map of these obstacles is the next logical step. Most robots to date have used sensors such as passive or active infrared, sonar or laser range finders to locate obstacles in their path. In contrast, this work uses a single colour camera as the only sensor, and consequently the robot must obtain range information from the camera images. We propose simple methods for determining the range to the nearest obstacle in any direction in the robot’s field of view, referred to as the Radial Obstacle Profile. The ROP can then be used to determine the amount of rotation between two successive images, which is important for constructing a 360º view of the surrounding environment as part of map construction

Directed Exploration using a Modified Distance Transform

Mobile robots operating in unknown environments need to build maps. To do so they must have an exploration algorithm to plan a path. This algorithm should guarantee that the whole of the environment, or at least some designated area, will be mapped. The path should also be optimal in some sense and not simply a "random walk" which is clearly inefficient. When multiple robots are involved, the algorithm also needs to take advantage of the fact that the robots can share the task. In this paper we discuss a modification to the well-known distance transform that satisfies these requirements

The Internet and youth engagement: An exploration of how youth spend their time online and its relation to civic involvement

A study was conducted to investigate the relationship between Internet use and civic involvement in youth. Participants consisted of 378 youth between the ages of 16 and 25 from across Canada. Participants completed an online questionnaire consisting of a measure called the Youth Inventory of Involvement, designed to assess civic involvement in youth. Brief measures of introversion/extraversion and depression were also completed. Participants then completed questions designed to assess the amount of time they spend online in an average week, as well as for what they use the Internet. Results indicate that there may be a non-linear relationship between amount of time spent online and involvement, with individuals at the extremes in terms of very low or very high Internet use showing lower levels of involvement than more moderate users. Different types of Internet users were identified and also differed in involvement. Contrary to some previous research a link between Internet use and depression was found. This study provides important evidence that a link between Internet use and involvement in youth does in fact exist and also identifies specific types of online activities that were found to be related to both involvement and psychological well-being

Strengthening Disaster Risk Reduction Across the Americas Summit - Simulated Exercise

Fil: Luis Bermudez. Open Geospatial ConsortiumFil: Asato, Carlos Gabriel. Open Geospatial Consortium y SEGEMAR; Argentina. ORCID: 0000-0002-1968-7741Fil: Taylor, Trevor. Open Geospatial ConsortiumDisasters are responsible for major socioeconomic damages. Global initiatives call for the improvement of information technology infrastructure to better share data and advance multinational collaboration. The "Strengthening Disaster Risk Reduction Across the Americas: A Regional Summit on the Contributions of Earth Observations" held on September 3-8 in 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina strengthened the collective ability to share the many challenges of disaster risk reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) while promoting the awareness and better use of earth observations (EO). A simulation exercise took place during the summit. The exercise brought together government, emergency managers, earth observation data providers, academics, nongovernmental organizations, and commercial companies. The participants assessed the capabilities and needs of policymakers, regional and on-the-ground decision makers, and learned what information products can be produced, and when and how such products are available. This ER describes the description and results of the simulated scenario including the postexercise activity that captured the lessons learned from the participants

Career progression and destinations, comparing men and women in the NHS: postal questionnaire surveys

Objective To study the career progression of NHS doctors, comparing men and women

Five Ekmousikés for Solo Piano

Title from PDF of title page, viewed April 19, 2017Thesis advisor: Chen Yi,VitaThesis (M.M.)--Conservatory of Music and Dance. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2016“Five Ekmousikés” is a multi-movement work composed for solo piano, dedicated to and to be premiered by my grandmother, Dr. Janet Bass Smith. Each movement in this work is programmatically tied to a piece of extra-musical art by Dr. Smith, consisting of three oil paintings and two poems. Chronologically, the movements are ordered “Sunset on Barren River Lake”, “Alone in Mammoth Cave”, “The Color of Death”, “Winter Peace”, and “Trifid Nebula”. As a child, I was often struck by paintings of my grandmother. I remember examining them with a sense of wonder - their use of color, substance, and texture leaving a deep impression on me at a young age. In “Five Ekmousikés”, I strove to celebrate the artistic achievements of my grandmother (musical and otherwise), acknowledge her influence on my own aesthetic, and attempt to capture the qualities of her art in musical form. The word “ekmousikés” is my own adaptation from the term “ekphrasis”, a literary technique used to create a verbal or rhetorical description of another work of art, typically from the visual medium. Each movement is intended as a musical analogue its corresponding work, as opposed to simply existing as music that was inspired by those works. This may be most obvious in the movement “Winter Peace”. The painting depicts an inhabited cabin, situated in a valley within a range of mountains. The cabin appears to be a small and meek human element in comparison to its rather looming surroundings, and a snowstorm blurs the landscape. I depicted this musically by writing a simple melody, representing the human element, and placing that melody “inside” of a louder and more harmonically volatile texture, symbolizing the overbearing landscape. The sustain pedal remains down the entire movement to blur the resulting sonorities in the same way the snowstorm blurred the mountainside in her painting. My thought processes in composing the other four movements of “Five Ekmousikés” were similar in manner. The texts for “Alone in Mammoth Cave” and “The Color of Death” are included prior to each movement in the score.Performance notes -- Score. Sunset on Barren River Lake ; Alone in Mammoth cave ; The color of death ; Winter peace ; Trifid Nebul