11,308 research outputs found

    Key technologies for safe and autonomous drones

    Get PDF
    Drones/UAVs are able to perform air operations that are very difficult to be performed by manned aircrafts. In addition, drones' usage brings significant economic savings and environmental benefits, while reducing risks to human life. In this paper, we present key technologies that enable development of drone systems. The technologies are identified based on the usages of drones (driven by COMP4DRONES project use cases). These technologies are grouped into four categories: U-space capabilities, system functions, payloads, and tools. Also, we present the contributions of the COMP4DRONES project to improve existing technologies. These contributions aim to ease drones’ customization, and enable their safe operation.This project has received funding from the ECSEL Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 826610. The JU receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and Spain, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands. The total project budget is 28,590,748.75 EUR (excluding ESIF partners), while the requested grant is 7,983,731.61 EUR to ECSEL JU, and 8,874,523.84 EUR of National and ESIF Funding. The project has been started on 1st October 2019

    Towards Autonomous Selective Harvesting: A Review of Robot Perception, Robot Design, Motion Planning and Control

    Full text link
    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

    The Metaverse: Survey, Trends, Novel Pipeline Ecosystem & Future Directions

    Full text link
    The Metaverse offers a second world beyond reality, where boundaries are non-existent, and possibilities are endless through engagement and immersive experiences using the virtual reality (VR) technology. Many disciplines can benefit from the advancement of the Metaverse when accurately developed, including the fields of technology, gaming, education, art, and culture. Nevertheless, developing the Metaverse environment to its full potential is an ambiguous task that needs proper guidance and directions. Existing surveys on the Metaverse focus only on a specific aspect and discipline of the Metaverse and lack a holistic view of the entire process. To this end, a more holistic, multi-disciplinary, in-depth, and academic and industry-oriented review is required to provide a thorough study of the Metaverse development pipeline. To address these issues, we present in this survey a novel multi-layered pipeline ecosystem composed of (1) the Metaverse computing, networking, communications and hardware infrastructure, (2) environment digitization, and (3) user interactions. For every layer, we discuss the components that detail the steps of its development. Also, for each of these components, we examine the impact of a set of enabling technologies and empowering domains (e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Security & Privacy, Blockchain, Business, Ethics, and Social) on its advancement. In addition, we explain the importance of these technologies to support decentralization, interoperability, user experiences, interactions, and monetization. Our presented study highlights the existing challenges for each component, followed by research directions and potential solutions. To the best of our knowledge, this survey is the most comprehensive and allows users, scholars, and entrepreneurs to get an in-depth understanding of the Metaverse ecosystem to find their opportunities and potentials for contribution

    Towards Reuse and Recycling of Lithium-ion Batteries: Tele-robotics for Disassembly of Electric Vehicle Batteries

    Full text link
    Disassembly of electric vehicle batteries is a critical stage in recovery, recycling and re-use of high-value battery materials, but is complicated by limited standardisation, design complexity, compounded by uncertainty and safety issues from varying end-of-life condition. Telerobotics presents an avenue for semi-autonomous robotic disassembly that addresses these challenges. However, it is suggested that quality and realism of the user's haptic interactions with the environment is important for precise, contact-rich and safety-critical tasks. To investigate this proposition, we demonstrate the disassembly of a Nissan Leaf 2011 module stack as a basis for a comparative study between a traditional asymmetric haptic-'cobot' master-slave framework and identical master and slave cobots based on task completion time and success rate metrics. We demonstrate across a range of disassembly tasks a time reduction of 22%-57% is achieved using identical cobots, yet this improvement arises chiefly from an expanded workspace and 1:1 positional mapping, and suffers a 10-30% reduction in first attempt success rate. For unbolting and grasping, the realism of force feedback was comparatively less important than directional information encoded in the interaction, however, 1:1 force mapping strengthened environmental tactile cues for vacuum pick-and-place and contact cutting tasks.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures, Submitted to Frontiers in Robotics and AI; Human-Robot Interactio

    TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH

    Get PDF
    Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on people’s lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)

    Post-Millennial Queer Sensibility: Collaborative Authorship as Disidentification in Queer Intertextual Commodities

    Get PDF
    This dissertation is examining LGBTQ+ audiences and creatives collaborating in the creation of new media texts like web shows, podcasts, and video games. The study focuses on three main objects or media texts: Carmilla (web series), Welcome to Night Vale (podcast), and Undertale (video game). These texts are transmedia objects or intertextual commodities. I argue that by using queer gestures of collaborative authorship that reaches out to the audience for canonical contribution create an emerging queer production culture that disidentifies with capitalism even as it negotiates capitalistic structures. The post-millennial queer sensibility is a constellation of aesthetics, self-representation, alternative financing, and interactivity that prioritizes community, trust, and authenticity using new technologies for co-creation. Within my study, there are four key tactics or queer gestures being explored: remediation, radical ambiguity and multi-forms as queer aesthetics, audience self-representation, alternative financing like micropatronage & licensed fan-made merchandise, and interactivity as performance. The goal of this project is to better understand the changing conceptions of authorship/ownership, canon/fanon (official text/fan created extensions), and community/capitalism in queer subcultures as an indicator of the potential change in more mainstream cultural attitudes. The project takes into consideration a variety of intersecting identities including gender, race, class, and of course sexual orientation in its analysis. By examining the legal discourse around collaborative authorship, the real-life production practices, and audience-creator interactions and attitudes, this study provides insight into how media creatives work with audiences to co-create self-representative media, the motivations, and rewards for creative, audiences, and owners. This study aims to contribute towards a fuller understanding of queer production cultures and audience reception of these media texts, of which there is relatively little academic information. Specifically, the study mines for insights into the changing attitudes towards authorship, ownership, and collaboration within queer indie media projects, especially as these objects are relying on the self-representation of both audiences and creatives in the formation of the text

    GENDERED EMBODIMENT, STABILITY AND CHANGE: WOMEN’S WEIGHTLIFTING AS A TOOL FOR RECOVERY FROM EATING DISORDERS

    Get PDF
    This thesis explores the everyday embodied experiences of women who use amateur weightlifting as a vehicle for recovery from eating disorders. Within online spaces and on social media, women frequently share their experiences of using weightlifting to overcome issues relating to disordered eating, body image, and mental health. In particular, women with a history of eating disorders credit weightlifting to be integral to their recovery journey. However, there is a dearth of research on women’s experiences with exercise during eating disorder recovery and no research that identifies weightlifting as beneficial to this process. To the contrary, discursive links are drawn between the practices of self-surveillance exercised by both eating disorder sufferers and weightlifters alike. In this regard, engagement with weightlifting during eating disorder recovery may signal the transferal of pathology from one set of behaviours to another. That is, from disordered eating to rigid and self-regulatory exercise routines. This thesis examines how women subjectively navigate and make sense of this pathologisation. The data for this research comes from longitudinal semi-structured interviews and photo elicitation with 19 women, living in the United Kingdom, who engaged in weightlifting during their eating disorder recovery. In addition, to build up a holistic picture and to explore how this phenomenon also ‘takes place’ online, I conducted a netnography of the overlapping subcultures of female weightlifting and eating disorder recovery on Instagram. Women’s standpoint theory and interpretative phenomenological analysis are combined to form the underpinning theoretical and analytical tools used to engage with these three rich data sets. Moreover, throughout I draw on an eclectic range of disciplinary perspectives, in order to bring together multiple fields of research and develop novel theoretical frameworks. In the findings, I argue that women’s experiences using weightlifting as a tool for recovery from eating disorders manifests in an embodied sense of multiplicity. In this sense, understandings of the body that are often viewed as ontologically distinct (muscularity/thinness/fatness) hang-together at once in the lived experience of a single individual. I argue that women, particularly those who have previously struggled with an eating disorder, are too readily positioned as vulnerable to media and representation. To theoretically combat these ideas regarding women’s assumed passivity, I develop the concept of ‘digital pruning’ to account for women’s agency in relation to new media. I contend that weightlifting offers women in recovery from eating disorders a new framework for approaching eating and exercise. Specifically, weightlifting’s norms and values legitimate occupying a larger body, which gives women in recovery permission to eat and gain-weight in a way that is both culturally sanctioned and health-promoting. Finally, I explore identity transformation as a specific tenet of recovery from eating disorders. I argue that, on social media, recovery identities are characterised by personal empowerment, resilience, and independence. While offline, quieter and less culturally glorified aspects of recovery (such as relationships of care) are central to women’s accounts of developing a new sense of self as they transition away from an eating disorder identity. In summary, this thesis is an examination of the ways in which women strategically navigate pathology in relation to their bodies, social media, food/exercise practices, and identity. I argue that women develop a set of ‘DIY’ recovery practices that allow them to consciously channel and draw on their negative experiences with eating disorders, to develop new ways of living that serve their overall wellbeing. Weightlifting is integral to this process, as it provides women transitioning out of this difficult phase in their lives with new ways of relating to their bodies and of being in the world. I situate this phenomenon within a neoliberal socio-political climate in which individuals are required to take personal responsibility for their mental health and wellbeing, despite living within conditions which are not conducive to recovery

    Behavior prediction of traffic actors for intelligent vehicle using artificial intelligence techniques: A review

    Full text link
    Intelligent vehicle technology has made tremendous progress due to Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. Accurate behavior prediction of surrounding traffic actors is essential for the safe and secure navigation of the intelligent vehicle. Minor misbehavior of these vehicles on the busy roads may lead to an accident. Due to this, there is a need for vehicle behavior research work in today's era. This research article reviews traffic actors' behavior prediction techniques for intelligent vehicles to perceive, infer, and anticipate other vehicles' intentions and future actions. It identifies the key strategies and methods for AI, emerging trends, datasets, and ongoing research issues in these fields. As per the authors' knowledge, this is the first systematic literature review dedicated to the vehicle behavior study examining existing academic literature published by peer review venues between 2011 and 2021. A systematic review was undertaken to examine these papers, and five primary research questions have been addressed. The findings show that using sophisticated input representation that includes traffic rules and road geometry, artificial intelligence-based solutions applied to behavior prediction of traffic actors for intelligent vehicles have shown promising success, particularly in complex driving scenarios. Finally, the paper summarizes the most widely used approaches in behavior prediction of traffic actors for intelligent vehicles, which the authors believe serves as a foundation for future research in behavior prediction of surrounding traffic actors for secure and accurate intelligent vehicle navigation

    Freelance subtitlers in a subtitle production network in the OTT industry in Thailand: a longitudinal study

    Get PDF
    The present study sets out to investigate a subtitle production network in the over-the-top (OTT) industry in Thailand through the perspective of freelance subtitlers. A qualitative longitudinal research design was adopted to gain insights into (1) the way the work practices of freelance subtitlers are influenced by both human and non-human actors in the network, (2) the evolution of the network, and (3) how the freelance subtitlers’ perception of quality is influenced by changes occurring in the network. Eleven subtitlers were interviewed every six months over a period of two years, contributing to over 60 hours of interview data. The data analysis was informed by selected concepts from Actor-Network Theory (ANT) (Law 1992, 2009; Latour 1996, 2005; Mol 2010), and complemented by the three-dimensional quality model proposed by Abdallah (2016, 2017). Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2019a, 2020b) was used to generate themes and sub-themes which address the research questions and tell compelling stories about the actor-network. It was found that from July 2017 to September 2019, the subtitle production network, which was sustained by complex interrelationships between actors, underwent a number of changes. The changes affected the work practices of freelance subtitlers in a more negative than positive way, demonstrating their precarious position in an industry that has widely adopted the vendor model (Moorkens 2017). Moreover, as perceived by the research participants, under increasingly undesirable working conditions, it became more challenging to maintain a quality process and to produce quality subtitles. Finally, translation technology and tools, including machine translation, were found to be key non-human actors that catalyse the changes in the network under study
    • 

    corecore