2,060 research outputs found
Analysing change in international politics: a semiotic method of structural connotation
Processes such as internationalisation and privatisation bring along new challenges both for the conceptualisation and for the measurement of transformations of the state. This paper outlines a semiotic Method of Structural Connotation, which combines content- and network analysis, thus to model change in international politics. After an investigation of the methodical and epistemological chances and pitfalls a 5-step-toolbox is presented and illustrated with a current application: The Bologna-Process for a European Higher Education Area. -- Angesichts neuerer Entwicklungen wie Internationalisierung und Privatisierung stellen sich auch neue Herausforderungen für die Konzeptualisierung und Messung von Staatlichkeit im Wandel. In diesem Arbeitspapier wird eine semiotische Methode Struktureller Konnotation vorgestellt, die inhaltsanalytische und netzwerkanalytische Elemente zusammenführt, um den Wandel internationaler politischer Prozesse und Akteursfigurationen zu erfassen. Nach einer Betrachtung der methodischen und epistemologischen Herausforderungen und Chancen folgt ein konkreter Verfahrensvorschlag nach dem Baukastenprinzip. Am Beispiel des Bologna-Prozesses für einen Europäischen Hochschulraum wird das methodische Vorgehen Schritt für Schritt erläutert.
GNM: A General Navigation Model to Drive Any Robot
Learning provides a powerful tool for vision-based navigation, but the
capabilities of learning-based policies are constrained by limited training
data. If we could combine data from all available sources, including multiple
kinds of robots, we could train more powerful navigation models. In this paper,
we study how a general goal-conditioned model for vision-based navigation can
be trained on data obtained from many distinct but structurally similar robots,
and enable broad generalization across environments and embodiments. We analyze
the necessary design decisions for effective data sharing across robots,
including the use of temporal context and standardized action spaces, and
demonstrate that an omnipolicy trained from heterogeneous datasets outperforms
policies trained on any single dataset. We curate 60 hours of navigation
trajectories from 6 distinct robots, and deploy the trained GNM on a range of
new robots, including an underactuated quadrotor. We find that training on
diverse data leads to robustness against degradation in sensing and actuation.
Using a pre-trained navigation model with broad generalization capabilities can
bootstrap applications on novel robots going forward, and we hope that the GNM
represents a step in that direction. For more information on the datasets,
code, and videos, please check out
http://sites.google.com/view/drive-any-robot
Cultural background shapes spatial reference frame proclivity
Spatial navigation is an essential human skill that is influenced by several factors. The present study investigates how gender, age, and cultural background account for differences in reference frame proclivity and performance in a virtual navigation task. Using an online navigation study, we recorded reaction times, error rates (confusion of turning axis), and reference frame proclivity (egocentric vs. allocentric reference frame) of 1823 participants. Reaction times significantly varied with gender and age, but were only marginally influenced by the cultural background of participants. Error rates were in line with these results and exhibited a significant influence of gender and culture, but not age. Participants cultural background significantly influenced reference frame selection; the majority of North-Americans preferred an allocentric strategy, while Latin-Americans preferred an egocentric navigation strategy. European and Asian groups were in between these two extremes. Neither the factor of age nor the factor of gender had a direct impact on participants navigation strategies. The strong effects of cultural background on navigation strategies without the influence of gender or age underlines the importance of socialized spatial cognitive processes and argues for socio-economic analysis in studies investigating human navigation
Cultural background shapes spatial reference frame proclivity
Spatial navigation is an essential human skill that is influenced by several factors. The present study investigates how gender, age, and cultural background account for differences in reference frame proclivity and performance in a virtual navigation task. Using an online navigation study, we recorded reaction times, error rates (confusion of turning axis), and reference frame proclivity (egocentric vs. allocentric reference frame) of 1823 participants. Reaction times significantly varied with gender and age, but were only marginally influenced by the cultural background of participants. Error rates were in line with these results and exhibited a significant influence of gender and culture, but not age. Participants’ cultural background significantly influenced reference frame selection; the majority of North-Americans preferred an allocentric strategy, while Latin-Americans preferred an egocentric navigation strategy. European and Asian groups were in between these two extremes. Neither the factor of age nor the factor of gender had a direct impact on participants’ navigation strategies. The strong effects of cultural background on navigation strategies without the influence of gender or age underlines the importance of socialized spatial cognitive processes and argues for socio-economic analysis in studies investigating human navigation.This work was funded by the European research grant: ERC-
2010-AdG #269716 – MULTISENSE, together with the Cognition and Neuroergonomics/Collaborative
Technology Alliance #W911NF-10-2-0022
Analysis of the hands in egocentric vision: A survey
Egocentric vision (a.k.a. first-person vision - FPV) applications have
thrived over the past few years, thanks to the availability of affordable
wearable cameras and large annotated datasets. The position of the wearable
camera (usually mounted on the head) allows recording exactly what the camera
wearers have in front of them, in particular hands and manipulated objects.
This intrinsic advantage enables the study of the hands from multiple
perspectives: localizing hands and their parts within the images; understanding
what actions and activities the hands are involved in; and developing
human-computer interfaces that rely on hand gestures. In this survey, we review
the literature that focuses on the hands using egocentric vision, categorizing
the existing approaches into: localization (where are the hands or parts of
them?); interpretation (what are the hands doing?); and application (e.g.,
systems that used egocentric hand cues for solving a specific problem).
Moreover, a list of the most prominent datasets with hand-based annotations is
provided
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