1,372 research outputs found
Reconfigurable Autonomy
This position paper describes ongoing work at the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield and Surrey in the UK on developing hybrid agent architectures for controlling autonomous systems, and specifically for ensuring that agent-controlled dynamic reconfiguration is viable. The work outlined here forms part of the Reconfigurable Autonomy research project
Defining a Novel Meaning of the New Organic Architecture
Starting an overall investigation by categorizing current bio-inspired architectural design developments into âMaterialâ, âMorphologicalâ, and âBehavioralâ to explore a novel definition of the âNew Generation Organic Architectureâ.
At present, people are confronting the unprecedented unification of machine and biology which has been revealed by the means of advancing industrial processes towards the organic model. In his remarkable publication, âOut of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic Worldâ (Kelly, 1995), Kevin Kelly makes an interesting observation that âMachines are becoming biological and the biological is becoming engineeredâ. In other words, the clear boundary of machine vs biology is blurring through current technological developments. In âOut of Controlâ, Kevin Kelly has further made several explicit points to support his views, that Industry will inevitably adopt bio-inspired methods:
It takes less material to do the same job better.
The complexity of built things now reaches biological complexity.
Nature will not move, so it must be accommodated.
The natural world itselfâgenes and life formsâcan be engineered (and patented) just like industrial systems.
All the crucial points described above can be easily observed in the architectural industry as well. Each statement corresponds with material optimization, multidisciplinary technologies, evolutionary processes, and genetic engineering which are all involved in current digital architectural design developments. After years of evolution, the developments of âOrganic Architectureâ have been now separated into various research focuses which are distant from the original idea coined by the well-known American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. A group of followers still insist on maintaining Wrightâs original idea to develop buildings which are green and sustainable, they fit or even blend into the surrounding environment as a whole. But since the power of personal computers and sophisticated modeling software has become relatively easy to access and is employed in all aspects of architectural design, various experiments have been conducted in the last decade, which try to outline a number of new definitions pertaining to âwhat are the essential ideas/principles of âOrganic Architectureâ?â. Nature has undoubtedly always been the greatest inspiration for the manmade industry, technology, and architecture. This development has only escalated with the assistance from computational technology over the last few decades. The thesis will preview the pros and cons of current design developments under the big umbrella of digital organic/bio-inspired architecture. This discussion will be categorized into three major divisions: âMorphologicalâ, âMaterialâ, and âBehavioralâ owing to the different focus of computational applications within each one of them
Symbol Emergence in Robotics: A Survey
Humans can learn the use of language through physical interaction with their
environment and semiotic communication with other people. It is very important
to obtain a computational understanding of how humans can form a symbol system
and obtain semiotic skills through their autonomous mental development.
Recently, many studies have been conducted on the construction of robotic
systems and machine-learning methods that can learn the use of language through
embodied multimodal interaction with their environment and other systems.
Understanding human social interactions and developing a robot that can
smoothly communicate with human users in the long term, requires an
understanding of the dynamics of symbol systems and is crucially important. The
embodied cognition and social interaction of participants gradually change a
symbol system in a constructive manner. In this paper, we introduce a field of
research called symbol emergence in robotics (SER). SER is a constructive
approach towards an emergent symbol system. The emergent symbol system is
socially self-organized through both semiotic communications and physical
interactions with autonomous cognitive developmental agents, i.e., humans and
developmental robots. Specifically, we describe some state-of-art research
topics concerning SER, e.g., multimodal categorization, word discovery, and a
double articulation analysis, that enable a robot to obtain words and their
embodied meanings from raw sensory--motor information, including visual
information, haptic information, auditory information, and acoustic speech
signals, in a totally unsupervised manner. Finally, we suggest future
directions of research in SER.Comment: submitted to Advanced Robotic
UB Breakthroughs Fall 2012
The UB Breakthroughs newsletter for fall of 2012. This issue contains articles discussing Dr. Sobh's robotics research in the Robotics, Intelligence Sensing and Control (RISC) Laboratory, Dr. Elleithy's and UB's involvement in developing a camera system for a new small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), professor Noe's research in Cherokee healing practices and indigenous plant use for cancer and HIV treatment, professor Gary Munch's creation of fonts for the Cherokee Nation's written language, how UB's new transmission electron microscope (TEM) is helping UB collaborate with other research institutions, research projects in biomedical engineering, Dr. Queenan's research on the incorporation of science content and reading comprehension instruction, Dr. Kongar's research on the recycling and remanufacturing of electronic components, Dr. Engelmann's research into plant genetic variation in thermal tolerance, professor Funk's research examining the link between proprioception and pain, Dr. Benjamin's research into international corruption, Director Brett's study in an integrated team treating patients across health disciplines, Dr. Zhang's work in renewable energy and the creation of the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory at UB, Dr. Wu's research analyzing the differences between the US and Chinese financial markets, professor Risom's study in the use of video tutorials to supplement the instruction of instrument skills, and UB's CTech IncUBator program for incubating the creation of high-tech start-up companies
From rituals to magic: Interactive art and HCI of the past, present, and future
The connection between art and technology is much tighter than is commonly recognized. The emergence of aesthetic computing in the early 2000s has brought renewed focus on this relationship. In this article, we articulate how art and HumanâComputer Interaction (HCI) are compatible with each other and actually essential to advance each other in this era, by briefly addressing interconnected components in both areasâinteraction, creativity, embodiment, affect, and presence. After briefly introducing the history of interactive art, we discuss how art and HCI can contribute to one another by illustrating contemporary examples of art in immersive environments, robotic art, and machine intelligence in art. Then, we identify challenges and opportunities for collaborative efforts between art and HCI. Finally, we reiterate important implications and pose future directions. This article is intended as a catalyst to facilitate discussions on the mutual benefits of working together in the art and HCI communities. It also aims to provide artists and researchers in this domain with suggestions about where to go next
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