17,630 research outputs found
Towards Autonomous Selective Harvesting: A Review of Robot Perception, Robot Design, Motion Planning and Control
This paper provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in selective
harvesting robots (SHRs) and their potential for addressing the challenges of
global food production. SHRs have the potential to increase productivity,
reduce labour costs, and minimise food waste by selectively harvesting only
ripe fruits and vegetables. The paper discusses the main components of SHRs,
including perception, grasping, cutting, motion planning, and control. It also
highlights the challenges in developing SHR technologies, particularly in the
areas of robot design, motion planning and control. The paper also discusses
the potential benefits of integrating AI and soft robots and data-driven
methods to enhance the performance and robustness of SHR systems. Finally, the
paper identifies several open research questions in the field and highlights
the need for further research and development efforts to advance SHR
technologies to meet the challenges of global food production. Overall, this
paper provides a starting point for researchers and practitioners interested in
developing SHRs and highlights the need for more research in this field.Comment: Preprint: to be appeared in Journal of Field Robotic
H-TSP: Hierarchically Solving the Large-Scale Travelling Salesman Problem
We propose an end-to-end learning framework based on hierarchical
reinforcement learning, called H-TSP, for addressing the large-scale Travelling
Salesman Problem (TSP). The proposed H-TSP constructs a solution of a TSP
instance starting from the scratch relying on two components: the upper-level
policy chooses a small subset of nodes (up to 200 in our experiment) from all
nodes that are to be traversed, while the lower-level policy takes the chosen
nodes as input and outputs a tour connecting them to the existing partial route
(initially only containing the depot). After jointly training the upper-level
and lower-level policies, our approach can directly generate solutions for the
given TSP instances without relying on any time-consuming search procedures. To
demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed approach, we have conducted extensive
experiments on randomly generated TSP instances with different numbers of
nodes. We show that H-TSP can achieve comparable results (gap 3.42% vs. 7.32%)
as SOTA search-based approaches, and more importantly, we reduce the time
consumption up to two orders of magnitude (3.32s vs. 395.85s). To the best of
our knowledge, H-TSP is the first end-to-end deep reinforcement learning
approach that can scale to TSP instances of up to 10000 nodes. Although there
are still gaps to SOTA results with respect to solution quality, we believe
that H-TSP will be useful for practical applications, particularly those that
are time-sensitive e.g., on-call routing and ride hailing service.Comment: Accepted by AAAI 2023, February 202
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Ensuring Access to Safe and Nutritious Food for All Through the Transformation of Food Systems
A family of total Lagrangian Petrov-Galerkin Cosserat rod finite element formulations
The standard in rod finite element formulations is the Bubnov-Galerkin
projection method, where the test functions arise from a consistent variation
of the ansatz functions. This approach becomes increasingly complex when highly
nonlinear ansatz functions are chosen to approximate the rod's centerline and
cross-section orientations. Using a Petrov-Galerkin projection method, we
propose a whole family of rod finite element formulations where the nodal
generalized virtual displacements and generalized velocities are interpolated
instead of using the consistent variations and time derivatives of the ansatz
functions. This approach leads to a significant simplification of the
expressions in the discrete virtual work functionals. In addition, independent
strategies can be chosen for interpolating the nodal centerline points and
cross-section orientations. We discuss three objective interpolation strategies
and give an in-depth analysis concerning locking and convergence behavior for
the whole family of rod finite element formulations.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2301.0559
Sensitivity analysis for ReaxFF reparameterization using the Hilbert-Schmidt independence criterion
We apply a global sensitivity method, the Hilbert-Schmidt independence
criterion (HSIC), to the reparameterization of a Zn/S/H ReaxFF force field to
identify the most appropriate parameters for reparameterization. Parameter
selection remains a challenge in this context as high dimensional optimizations
are prone to overfitting and take a long time, but selecting too few parameters
leads to poor quality force fields. We show that the HSIC correctly and quickly
identifies the most sensitive parameters, and that optimizations done using a
small number of sensitive parameters outperform those done using a higher
dimensional reasonable-user parameter selection. Optimizations using only
sensitive parameters: 1) converge faster, 2) have loss values comparable to
those found with the naive selection, 3) have similar accuracy in validation
tests, and 4) do not suffer from problems of overfitting. We demonstrate that
an HSIC global sensitivity is a cheap optimization pre-processing step that has
both qualitative and quantitative benefits which can substantially simplify and
speedup ReaxFF reparameterizations.Comment: author accepted manuscrip
Atypical developmental trajectories of white matter microstructure in prenatal alcohol exposure: Preliminary evidence from neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging
IntroductionFetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), a life-long condition resulting from prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE), is associated with structural brain anomalies and neurobehavioral differences. Evidence from longitudinal neuroimaging suggest trajectories of white matter microstructure maturation are atypical in PAE. We aimed to further characterize longitudinal trajectories of developmental white matter microstructure change in children and adolescents with PAE compared to typically-developing Controls using diffusion-weighted Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI).Materials and methodsParticipants: Youth with PAE (n = 34) and typically-developing Controls (n = 31) ages 8–17 years at enrollment. Participants underwent formal evaluation of growth and facial dysmorphology. Participants also completed two study visits (17 months apart on average), both of which involved cognitive testing and an MRI scan (data collected on a Siemens Prisma 3 T scanner). Age-related changes in the orientation dispersion index (ODI) and the neurite density index (NDI) were examined across five corpus callosum (CC) regions defined by tractography.ResultsWhile linear trajectories suggested similar overall microstructural integrity in PAE and Controls, analyses of symmetrized percent change (SPC) indicated group differences in the timing and magnitude of age-related increases in ODI (indexing the bending and fanning of axons) in the central region of the CC, with PAE participants demonstrating atypically steep increases in dispersion with age compared to Controls. Participants with PAE also demonstrated greater increases in ODI in the mid posterior CC (trend-level group difference). In addition, SPC in ODI and NDI was differentially correlated with executive function performance for PAE participants and Controls, suggesting an atypical relationship between white matter microstructure maturation and cognitive function in PAE.DiscussionPreliminary findings suggest subtle atypicality in the timing and magnitude of age-related white matter microstructure maturation in PAE compared to typically-developing Controls. These findings add to the existing literature on neurodevelopmental trajectories in PAE and suggest that advanced biophysical diffusion modeling (NODDI) may be sensitive to biologically-meaningful microstructural changes in the CC that are disrupted by PAE. Findings of atypical brain maturation-behavior relationships in PAE highlight the need for further study. Further longitudinal research aimed at characterizing white matter neurodevelopmental trajectories in PAE will be important
Loop Closure Detection Based on Object-level Spatial Layout and Semantic Consistency
Visual simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) systems face challenges
in detecting loop closure under the circumstance of large viewpoint changes. In
this paper, we present an object-based loop closure detection method based on
the spatial layout and semanic consistency of the 3D scene graph. Firstly, we
propose an object-level data association approach based on the semantic
information from semantic labels, intersection over union (IoU), object color,
and object embedding. Subsequently, multi-view bundle adjustment with the
associated objects is utilized to jointly optimize the poses of objects and
cameras. We represent the refined objects as a 3D spatial graph with semantics
and topology. Then, we propose a graph matching approach to select
correspondence objects based on the structure layout and semantic property
similarity of vertices' neighbors. Finally, we jointly optimize camera
trajectories and object poses in an object-level pose graph optimization, which
results in a globally consistent map. Experimental results demonstrate that our
proposed data association approach can construct more accurate 3D semantic
maps, and our loop closure method is more robust than point-based and
object-based methods in circumstances with large viewpoint changes
Simulations of quantum dynamics with fermionic phase-space representations using numerical matrix factorizations as stochastic gauges
The Gaussian phase-space representation can be used to implement quantum
dynamics for fermionic particles numerically. To improve numerical results, we
explore the use of dynamical diffusion gauges in such implementations. This is
achieved by benchmarking quantum dynamics of few-body systems against
independent exact solutions. A diffusion gauge is implemented here as a
so-called noise-matrix, which satisfies a matrix equation defined by the
corresponding Fokker--Planck equation of the phase-space representation. For
the physical systems with fermionic particles considered here, the numerical
evaluation of the new diffusion gauges allows us to double the practical
simulation time, compared with hitherto known analytic noise-matrices. This
development may have far reaching consequences for future quantum dynamical
simulations of many-body systems
Path integrals and stochastic calculus
Path integrals are a ubiquitous tool in theoretical physics. However, their
use is sometimes hindered by the lack of control on various manipulations --
such as performing a change of the integration path -- one would like to carry
out in the light-hearted fashion that physicists enjoy. Similar issues arise in
the field of stochastic calculus, which we review to prepare the ground for a
proper construction of path integrals. At the level of path integration, and in
arbitrary space dimension, we not only report on existing Riemannian
geometry-based approaches that render path integrals amenable to the standard
rules of calculus, but also bring forth new routes, based on a fully
time-discretized approach, that achieve the same goal. We illustrate these
various definitions of path integration on simple examples such as the
diffusion of a particle on a sphere.Comment: 96 pages, 4 figures. New title, expanded introduction and additional
references. Version accepted in Advandes in Physic
Neuroanatomical and gene expression features of the rabbit accessory olfactory system. Implications of pheromone communication in reproductive behaviour and animal physiology
Mainly driven by the vomeronasal system (VNS), pheromone
communication is involved in many species-specific fundamental innate socio-sexual behaviors such as mating and
fighting, which are essential for animal reproduction and survival. Rabbits are a unique model for studying
chemocommunication due to the discovery of the rabbit mammary pheromone, but paradoxically there has been a
lack of knowledge regarding its VNS pathway. In this work, we aim at filling this gap by approaching the system
from an integrative point of view, providing extensive anatomical and genomic data of the rabbit VNS, as well as
pheromone-mediated reproductive and behavioural studies. Our results build strong foundation for further
translational studies which aim at implementing the use of pheromones to improve animal production and welfare
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