Robot Localization Using Visual Image Mapping

One critical step in providing the Air Force the capability to explore unknown environments is for an autonomous agent to be able to determine its location. The calculation of the robot\u27s pose is an optimization problem making use of the robot\u27s internal navigation sensors and data fusion of range sensor readings to find the most likely pose. This data fusion process requires the simultaneous generation of a map which the autonomous vehicle can then use to avoid obstacles, communicate with other agents in the same environment, and locate targets. Our solution entails mounting a Class 1 laser to an ERS-7 AIBO. The laser projects a horizontal line on obstacles in the AIBO camera\u27s field of view. Range readings are determined by capturing and processing multiple image frames, resolving the laser line to the horizon, and extract distance information to each obstacle. This range data is then used in conjunction with mapping a localization software to accurately navigate the AIBO

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC

Spinoff, 1992

This publication is intended to foster the aim of the NASA Technology Transfer Program by heightening awareness of the NASA technology available for reapplication and its potential for public benefit. The publication is organized in three main sections. Section 1 outlines NASA's mainline effort, the major programs that generate new technology and therefore replenish and expand the bank of knowledge available for transfer. Section 2 contains a representative sampling of spinoff products that resulted from secondary application of technology originally developed to meet mainline goals. Section 3 describes the various mechanisms NASA employs to stimulate technology transfer and lists, in an appendix, contact sources for further information about the Technology Transfer Program

Sea Mines and Countermeasures: A Bibliography

This compilation was prepared for the Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA

The Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century, volume 2

These 92 papers comprise a peer-reviewed selection of presentations by authors from NASA, the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI), industry, and academia at the Second Conference on Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century. These papers go into more technical depth than did those published from the first NASA-sponsored symposium on the topic, held in 1984. Session topics included the following: (1) design and operation of transportation systems to, in orbit around, and on the Moon; (2) lunar base site selection; (3) design, architecture, construction, and operation of lunar bases and human habitats; (4) lunar-based scientific research and experimentation in astronomy, exobiology, and lunar geology; (5) recovery and use of lunar resources; (6) environmental and human factors of and life support technology for human presence on the Moon; and (7) program management of human exploration of the Moon and space

The Architecture of Soft Machines

This thesis speculates about the possibility of softening architecture through machines. In deviating from traditional mechanical conceptions of machines based on autonomous, functional and purely operational notions, the thesis proposes to conceive of machines as corporeal media in co-constituting relationships with human bodies. As machines become corporeal (robots) and human bodies take on qualities of machines (cyborgs) the thesis investigates their relations to architecture through readings of William S. Burroughs’ proto-cyborgian novel The Soft Machine (1961) and Georges Teyssot’s essay ‘Hybrid Architecture: An Environment for the Prosthetic Body’ (2005) arguing for a revision of architecture’s anthropocentric mandate in favour of technologically co-constituting body ideas. The conceptual shift in man-machine relations is also demonstrated by discussion of two installations shown at the Venice Biennale, Daniel Libeskind’s mechanical Three Lessons in Architecture (1985) and Philip Beesely’s responsive Hylozoic Ground (2010). As the purely mechanical model has been superseded by a model that incorporates digital sensing and embedded actuation, as well as soft and compliant materiality, the promise of softer, more sensitive and corporeal conceptions of technology shines onto architecture. Following Nicholas Negroponte’s ambition for a ‘humanism through machines,’ stated in his groundbreaking work, Soft Architecture Machines (1975), and inspired by recent developments in the emerging field of soft robotics, I have developed a series of practical design experiments, ranging from soft mechanical hybrids to soft machines made entirely from silicone and actuated by embedded pneumatics, to speculate about architectural environments capable of interacting with humans. In a radical departure from traditional mechanical conceptions based on modalities of assembly, the design of these types of soft machines is derived from soft organisms such as molluscs (octopi, snails, jellyfish) in order to infuse them with notions of flexibility, compliance, sensitivity, passive dynamics and spatial variability. Challenging architecture’s alliance with notions of permanence and monumentality, the thesis finally formulates a critique of static typologisation of space with walls, floors, columns or windows. In proposing an embodied architecture the thesis concludes by speculating about architecture as a capacitated, sensitive and sensual body informed by reciprocal conditioning of constituent systems, materials, morphologies and behaviours