Learning to Look Around: Intelligently Exploring Unseen Environments for Unknown Tasks

It is common to implicitly assume access to intelligently captured inputs (e.g., photos from a human photographer), yet autonomously capturing good observations is itself a major challenge. We address the problem of learning to look around: if a visual agent has the ability to voluntarily acquire new views to observe its environment, how can it learn efficient exploratory behaviors to acquire informative observations? We propose a reinforcement learning solution, where the agent is rewarded for actions that reduce its uncertainty about the unobserved portions of its environment. Based on this principle, we develop a recurrent neural network-based approach to perform active completion of panoramic natural scenes and 3D object shapes. Crucially, the learned policies are not tied to any recognition task nor to the particular semantic content seen during training. As a result, 1) the learned "look around" behavior is relevant even for new tasks in unseen environments, and 2) training data acquisition involves no manual labeling. Through tests in diverse settings, we demonstrate that our approach learns useful generic policies that transfer to new unseen tasks and environments. Completion episodes are shown at https://goo.gl/BgWX3W

Motor (but not auditory) attention affects syntactic choice

Understanding the determinants of syntactic choice in sentence production is a salient topic in psycholinguistics. Existing evidence suggests that syntactic choice results from an interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and a speaker’s attention to the elements of a described event represents one such factor. Whereas multimodal accounts of attention suggest a role for different modalities in this process, existing studies examining attention effects in syntactic choice are primarily based on visual cueing paradigms. Hence, it remains unclear whether attentional effects on syntactic choice are limited to the visual modality or are indeed more general. This issue is addressed by the current study. Native English participants viewed and described line drawings of simple transitive events while their attention was directed to the location of the agent or the patient of the depicted event by means of either an auditory (monaural beep) or a motor (unilateral key press) lateral cue. Our results show an effect of cue location, with participants producing more passive-voice descriptions in the patient-cued conditions. Crucially, this cue location effect emerged in the motor-cue but not (or substantially less so) in the auditory-cue condition, as confirmed by a reliable interaction between cue location (agent vs. patient) and cue type (auditory vs. motor). Our data suggest that attentional effects on the speaker’s syntactic choices are modality-specific and limited to the visual and motor, but not the auditory, domain

NMDA-based pattern discrimination in a modeled cortical neuron

Compartmental simulations of an anatomically characterized cortical pyramidal cell were carried out to study the integrative behavior of a complex dendritic tree. Previous theoretical (Feldman and Ballard 1982; Durbin and Rumelhart 1989; Mel 1990; Mel and Koch 1990; Poggio and Girosi 1990) and compartmental modeling (Koch et al. 1983; Shepherd et al. 1985; Koch and Poggio 1987; Rall and Segev 1987; Shepherd and Brayton 1987; Shepherd et al. 1989; Brown et al. 1991) work had suggested that multiplicative interactions among groups of neighboring synapses could greatly enhance the processing power of a neuron relative to a unit with only a single global firing threshold. This issue was investigated here, with a particular focus on the role of voltage-dependent N-methyl-D-asparate (NMDA) channels in the generation of cell responses. First, it was found that when a large proportion of the excitatory synaptic input to dendritic spines is carried by NMDA channels, the pyramidal cell responds preferentially to spatially clustered, rather than random, distributions of activated synapses. Second, based on this mechanism, the NMDA-rich neuron is shown to be capable of solving a nonlinear pattern discrimination task. We propose that manipulation of the spatial ordering of afferent synaptic connections onto the dendritic arbor is a possible biological strategy for pattern information storage during learning

Optimizing Player and Viewer Amusement in Suspense Video Games

Broadcast video games need to provide amusement to both players and audience. To achieve this, one of the most consumed genres is suspense, due to the psychological effects it has on both roles. Suspense is typically achieved in video games by controlling the amount of delivered information about the location of the threat. However, previous research suggests that players need more frequent information to reach similar amusement than viewers, even at the cost of jeopardizing viewers' engagement. In order to obtain models that maximize amusement for both interactive and passive audiences, we conducted an experiment in which a group of subjects played a suspenseful video game while another group watched it remotely. The subjects were asked to report their perceived suspense and amusement, and the data were used to obtain regression models for two common strategies to evoke suspense in video games: by alerting when the threat is approaching and by random circumstantial indications about the location of the threat. The results suggest that the optimal level is reached through randomly providing the minimal amount of information that still allows players to counteract the threat.We reckon that these results can be applied to a broad narrative media, beyond interactive games

Is it ‘me’ or is it ‘mine’? The Mycenaean sword as a body-part.

This paper argues that material culture has the ability to change and shape our bodies by transforming and extending the boundaries of our body schema. To explore this argument I concentrate on the relationship between the Mycenaean body and the Mycenaean sword. Focusing on the early Mycenaean period I propose that the centre of consciousness and bodily awareness for the Mycenaean person, and for the warrior in particular, is not some ‘internal’ Cartesian ‘I’, but the tip of the sword. Through the tip of the sword the Mycenaean person is simultaneously reach out, makes sense of and apprehends the world. The sword as an enactive sign brings about a whole new semiotic field of embodied activity offering a new means of engaging the world and as such a novel understanding of what is to be a Mycenaean person and body

Application of an array of Metal-Oxide Semiconductor gas sensors in an assistant personal robot for early gas leak detection

This paper proposes the application of a low-cost gas sensor array in an assistant personal robot (APR) in order to extend the capabilities of the mobile robot as an early gas leak detector for safety purposes. The gas sensor array is composed of 16 low-cost metal-oxide (MOX) gas sensors, which are continuously in operation. The mobile robot was modified to keep the gas sensor array always switched on, even in the case of battery recharge. The gas sensor array provides 16 individual gas measurements and one output that is a cumulative summary of all measurements, used as an overall indicator of a gas concentration change. The results of preliminary experiments were used to train a partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) classifier with air, ethanol, and acetone as output classes. Then, the mobile robot gas leak detection capabilities were experimentally evaluated in a public facility, by forcing the evaporation of (1) ethanol, (2) acetone, and (3) ethanol and acetone at different locations. The positive results obtained in different operation conditions over the course of one month confirmed the early detection capabilities of the proposed mobile system. For example, the APR was able to detect a gas leak produced inside a closed room from the external corridor due to small leakages under the door induced by the forced ventilation system of the building

"Geological Setting/Cadre Géologique" in English and French Petrology Articles: Muted Indications of Explored Places

There has been considerable interest over the past 15 years in the scientific research article, its schematic structure and how it responds to discourse community expectations. While these features have been widely investigated in numerous disciplines, relatively scant attention has been paid to the important discipline of geology. Moreover, within the sub-discipline of petrology, we find a sub-section as yet unrecognized in the extensive literature on the research article. The 'Geological Setting' (GS), an introductory part-genre occurring before the onset of petrological analysis, is a multi-functional description which frames researchers' results within their geological context. Based on a corpus of 20 articles (10 in French and 10 in English), it is argued that this part-genre is not only a complex of the topography, geological history and characteristics of the research site, but also serves to establish the authors' credentials and authority as experts. This is accomplished not through agentive narratives marking the authors' presence on the site, but through more muted and indirect means. Similarities at the macro-level and general discourse structure are found in both the French and English texts, with important stylistic differences on a local level