Fables of the past : landscape (re-)constructions and the bias in the data

Prehistoric landscape reconstructions are still considered an unsolved methodological issue in archaeological research, and this includes the perception and transformation of an individual landscape in relation to situational and local ecosystem performances. Which parts of the landscape offered the potential for land-use and which areas were rather unsuitable due to a variety of environmental preconditions? The modern perception of the archaeological record that is distributed in the modern landscape does not necessarily represent a realistic dispersal of past human activity, but rather reflects the current state of archaeological research and modern land-use strategies. This contribution provides a critical assessment of spatial analyses of large and unstructured archaeological datasets and the non-reconstructibility of past, individually perceived palaeolandscape

Data-Driven Grasp Synthesis - A Survey

We review the work on data-driven grasp synthesis and the methodologies for sampling and ranking candidate grasps. We divide the approaches into three groups based on whether they synthesize grasps for known, familiar or unknown objects. This structure allows us to identify common object representations and perceptual processes that facilitate the employed data-driven grasp synthesis technique. In the case of known objects, we concentrate on the approaches that are based on object recognition and pose estimation. In the case of familiar objects, the techniques use some form of a similarity matching to a set of previously encountered objects. Finally for the approaches dealing with unknown objects, the core part is the extraction of specific features that are indicative of good grasps. Our survey provides an overview of the different methodologies and discusses open problems in the area of robot grasping. We also draw a parallel to the classical approaches that rely on analytic formulations.Comment: 20 pages, 30 Figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Robotic

The road more travelled: The differential effects of spatial experience in young and elderly participants

Our spatial mental representations allow us to give refined descriptions of the environment in terms of the relative locations and distances between objects and landmarks. In this study, we investigated the effects of familiarity with the everyday environment, in terms of frequency of exploration and mode of transportation, on categorical and coordinate spatial relations, on young and elderly participants, controlling for socio-demographic factors. Participants were tested with a general anamnesis, a neuropsychological assessment, measures of explorations and the Landmark Positioning on a Map task. The results showed: (a) a modest difference in performance with categorical spatial relations; (b) a larger difference in coordinate spatial relations; (c) a significant moderating effect of age on the relationship between familiarity and spatial relations, with a stronger relation among the elderly than the young. Ceteris paribus, the role of direct experience with exploring their hometown on spatial mental representations appeared to be more important in the elderly than in the young. This advantage appears to make the elderly wiser and likely protects them from the detrimental effects of aging on spatial mental representations

Healthy Designed Environments for Pre-school Children: Investigating Ways to Optimize the Restoration Experience in Nature-based Outdoor Play Environments

Current research points out that a safe, healthy, and supportive built environment is one factor that supports lifelong health (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2017). Additionally, an individual’s early childhood experiences deeply affect his/her brain development, learning capabilities, and health throughout his/her lifespan (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2010). However, 21st century designs of children’s playgrounds are facing challenges in terms of their positive impact on children’s physical fitness, health, as well their cognitive development and well-being (Frost & Wortham). Attention Restoration Theory (ART) (1989) and related studies suggest that the nature or natural elements in a built environment can provide a restorative experience that helps people recover from mental fatigue and stress and improve their overall health (Berto, Baroni, Zainaghi, & Bettella, 2010; Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan, 1993; Kaplan, 2001; Kuo, 2011; Mårtensson et al., 2009; van den Berg, Hartig, & Staats, 2007). Although a child’s restoration experience in childcare centers is critical for healthy development, few studies have linked children’s health and their restorative experience in a designed nature-based outdoor play environment. This cross-disciplinary research intends to fill this research gap, focusing especially on preschool children (four to five-year-old age group), and investigate the inter-relationships of children’s health, nature-based outdoor play environments at childcare centers, and the children’s restorative experience. A larger goal is to contribute to children’s healthy development and overall well-being in South Carolina’s outdoor play environments at licensed childcare centers and beyond. This study proposes a comparative case study approach. Primary data and empirical evidence of the physical environment, children - nature interaction, children’s use of outdoor play environment and restorative experience were collected through assessment of the physical environment’s spatial forms, field observations, interviews, and perceived restorative experience survey. The data analysis and synthesis reveal that nature-based outdoor play environment may provide higher level of children-nature interaction and indicate the significant role of outdoor play environment and natural elements on children’s restorative experience. This research helps expand on Attention Restoration Theory (1989) and contributes to our understanding of the significance of nature-based outdoor designed environments on children’s overall health and well-being

Parting with Misconceptions about Learning-based Vehicle Motion Planning

The release of nuPlan marks a new era in vehicle motion planning research, offering the first large-scale real-world dataset and evaluation schemes requiring both precise short-term planning and long-horizon ego-forecasting. Existing systems struggle to simultaneously meet both requirements. Indeed, we find that these tasks are fundamentally misaligned and should be addressed independently. We further assess the current state of closed-loop planning in the field, revealing the limitations of learning-based methods in complex real-world scenarios and the value of simple rule-based priors such as centerline selection through lane graph search algorithms. More surprisingly, for the open-loop sub-task, we observe that the best results are achieved when using only this centerline as scene context (i.e., ignoring all information regarding the map and other agents). Combining these insights, we propose an extremely simple and efficient planner which outperforms an extensive set of competitors, winning the nuPlan planning challenge 2023.Comment: CoRL 202

Meaning in Architecture: Affordances, Atmosphere and Mood

Abstract: Meaning in Architecture: Affordances, Atmosphere and Mood, began as a public forum about human awareness of building, specifically speaking to the significance of affordances, embodied simulation theory, atmosphere and mood. It is herewith presented in copy form for broader distribution. An exchange between scientists and architects, this symposium was the inaugural Interface event of ANFA (the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture, Salk Institute) held 17 April 2018 in the Regnier Forum of APDesign, Kansas State University. The authors for Meaning in Architecture: Affordances, Atmosphere and Mood will escort you to the intersection of deep brain function, as studied by neuroscientists, and our built-environment the expertise of architects. Unmistakably, these subjects are no longer separate matters of analysis, rather a collective pursuit to discover the physiological framework when confronted with our natural and built environment. Or to borrow from Dr. Rooney’s “Introduction:” What benefit, if any, is there to gain by combining the efforts of architecture and neuroscience? The former profession lays claim to thousands of years of physically manifesting civilization, while the latter, whose own enlightenment is taking shape, has greatly expanded our conceptualization of how our minds operate. Did the ancient Greeks suffer from a lack of neuroscientific knowledge when building the Parthenon? Did early neuroscientist need to know about architecture in order to discover the relationship between lesions and motor activity? No. Although that answer is true, it seems to remove a very common element amongst both professions. The element of environments. Regardless of your position as an architect, a neuroscientist or as a lay philosopher, humans live in the world and that world is predominantly built by humans. Any study of neuroscience inevitably must ground its findings in our world if it is to say anything useful, and any built architecture must come forth through the use of imagination held together by the neurons firing across regions in the brain. Speaking to our body, brain, and environments agenda, Dr. Michael Arbib, a neuroscientist studying buildings and their design, discusses in “The Architecture-Neuroscience Conversation and the Action-Perception Cycle,” the makeup of our brain and its relevant purposes, specifically the significance of the hippocampus. With knowledge stretching beyond cognitive generalities, architects and neuroscientists alike can begin to join design intentions to the human’s subconscious need to create place and memory through cognitive mapping. Through “Place, Peripheral Vision, and Space Perception: a pilot study in VR.” Dr. Colin Ellard and Robert Condia demonstrate the consequences of our peripheral and central vision. Investigated were measured human physiological responses, using biofeedback technology for subjects in virtual reality settings of 2 urban squares one classical and one in glass modernism. The lesson learnt is that central vision has little to do with perceiving where we are in space. Similarly, Dr. Brent Chamberlain’s “The Physio-Affective Built Environment” explores the exchange of the body and space in a direct application to our urban environment in a real-world experiment. Exposing our bodies to different environmental characteristics allow for real time biological results when crossing a street or turning a corner; an action we perform in our daily lives without consideration for its effect on our physiology. Our contract with space is this, the environment (built and otherwise) directly effects how we feel at any particular moment and place in time. Necessarily, our conversation begins by exploring the brain and body’s physiological response to constructed environments. To wit. recent advances in the biological sciences confirm how we construct and imagine space, while opening new doors to understanding perception holistically within our experience of architecture and urban design. Architecture embodies our natural tendencies and potentials for actions, what we now know as affordances of space. Interestingly, what you expect of a place has much to do with what it will afford you. Comments \u27\u27This collection of research uncovers key findings--for one, that central, focused vision has little to do with how we experience the ambience of a city square, that peripheral vision is more suited to the richness of architectural experience and that expectation and imaginative perception condition what our surroundings might afford us. These findings confirm what the very best architects have long known through their embodied knowledge honed in many years of practice--making it available to young architects who are just entering the field. What is more--the process of this research underscores the value of interdisciplinary collaboration precisely because it brings the embodied methods and intuitions of the architect together with the biocultural constraints being discovered in neuroscience to bear on the crucial project of designing the settings in which our daily lives unfold. - Sarah Robinson, AIAhttps://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1033/thumbnail.jp

Évaluation et la représentation spatiotemporelle de l'accessibilité des réseaux piétonniers pour le déplacement des personnes à mobilité réduite

La mobilité des personnes à mobilité réduite (PMR) joue un rôle important dans leur inclusion sociale. Les PMR ont besoin de se déplacer de manière autonome pour effectuer leurs routines quotidiennes comme aller à l'école, au travail, au centre de remise en forme ou faire du magasinage. Cependant, celles-ci ne sont pas entièrement exécutées en raison de la conception non-adaptée des villes pour ces personnes. En effet, la mobilité est une habitude de vie humaine qui est le résultat d'interactions entre les facteurs humains (par exemple, les capacités) et les facteurs environnementaux. Au cours des dernières années, la mise au point de technologies d’aide technique s'est développée progressivement pour permettre aux PMR d’améliorer leur qualité de vie. En particulier, ces technologies offrent une variété de caractéristiques qui permettent à ces personnes de surmonter divers obstacles qui réduisent leur mobilité et contribuent à leur exclusion sociale. Cependant, malgré la disponibilité des technologies d’aide à la navigation et à la mobilité, leur potentiel est mal exploité pour les PMR. En effet, ces technologies ne considèrent pas les interactions « humain-environnement » adéquatement pour ces utilisateurs. L'objectif général de cette thèse est d'utiliser les potentiels des méthodes et des technologies de science de l'information géographique (SIG) afin d’aider à surmonter les problèmes de mobilité des PMR en créant un cadre d'évaluation de l'accessibilité et en développant une approche personnalisée de routage qui prend en compte les profils de ces personnes. Pour atteindre ce but, quatre objectifs spécifiques sont considérés: 1) développer une ontologie de mobilité pour les PMR qui considère les facteurs personnels et environnementaux, 2) proposer une méthode de l’évaluation de l'accessibilité du réseau piétonnier pour la mobilité des PMR en considérant spécifiquement les interactions entre les facteurs humains (la confiance) et les facteurs environnementaux, 3) étudier le rôle des facteurs sociaux dans l'accessibilité des zones urbaines et, finalement, 4) affiner les algorithmes existants pour calculer les itinéraires accessibles personnalisés pour les PMR en considérant leurs profils. En effet, tout d'abord pour développer une ontologie pour la mobilité des PMR, la dimension sociale de l'environnement ainsi que la dimension physique sont intégrées et une nouvelle approche basée sur une perspective « nature-développement » est présentée. Ensuite, une approche fondée sur la confiance des PMR est développée pour l'évaluation de l'accessibilité du réseau piétonnier, compte tenu de l'interaction entre les facteurs personnels et les facteurs environnementaux. De plus, dans une perspective de considération des facteurs sociaux, le rôle des actions politiques sur l'accessibilité du réseau piétonnier est étudié et l'influence de trois politiques potentielles est analysée. Enfin, une nouvelle approche pour calculer des itinéraires personnalisés pour les PMR en tenant compte de leurs perceptions, de leurs préférences et de leurs confidences est proposée. Les approches proposées sont développées et évaluées dans le quartier Saint-Roch à Québec, et ce, en utilisant une application d'assistance mobile et multimodale développée dans le cadre du projet MobiliSIG.Mobility of people with motor disabilities (PWMD) plays a significant role in their social inclusion. PWMD need to move around autonomously to perform their daily routines such as going to school, work, shopping, and going to fitness centers. However, mostly these needs are not accomplished because of either limitations concerning their capabilities or inadequate city design. Indeed, mobility is a human life habit, which is the result of interactions between people and their surrounded environments. In recent years, assistive technologies have been increasingly developed to enable PWMD to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life. In particular, these technologies provide a variety of features that allow these individuals to overcome diverse obstacles that reduce their mobility and contribute to their social exclusion. However, despite increasing availability of assistive technologies for navigation and mobility, their potential is poorly exploited for PWMD. Indeed, these technologies do not fully consider the human-environment interactions. The overall goal of this dissertation is to benefit from the potentials of methods and technologies of the Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) in order to overcome the mobility issues of PWMD by creating an accessibility-assessing framework and ultimately by developing a personalized routing approach, which better considers the humanenvironment interaction. To achieve this goal, four specific objectives were followed: 1) develop a mobility ontology for PWMD that considers personal factors as well as environmental factors, 2) propose a method to evaluate the accessibility of the pedestrian network for the mobility of PWMD considering the interactions between human factors (confidence) and the environmental factors, 3) study of the role of social factors in the accessibility of urban areas, and finally, 4) refine the existing algorithms to calculate accessible routes for PWMD considering their profile. First, to develop an adapted ontology for mobility of the PWMD, the social dimension of the environment with the physical dimension were integrated and a new approach based on a “Nature-Development” perspective was presented. This perspective led to the development of useful ontologies, especially for defining the relationships between the social and physical parts of the environment. Next, a confidence-based approach was developed for evaluation of the accessibility of pedestrian network considering the interaction between personal factors and environmental factors for the mobility of PWMD. In addition, the role of policy actions on the accessibility of the pedestrian network was investigated and the influence of three potential policies was analyzed. Finally, a novel approach to compute personalized routes for PWMD considering their perception, preferences, and confidences was proposed. The approaches proposed were implemented in the Saint-Roch area of Quebec City and visualized within the multimodal mobile assistive technology (MobiliSIG) applicatio