5,303 research outputs found
An Evaluation Schema for the Ethical Use of Autonomous Robotic Systems in Security Applications
We propose a multi-step evaluation schema designed to help procurement agencies and others to examine the ethical dimensions of autonomous systems to be applied in the security sector, including autonomous weapons systems
Space Station Freedom automation and robotics: An assessment of the potential for increased productivity
This report presents the results of a study performed in support of the Space Station Freedom Advanced Development Program, under the sponsorship of the Space Station Engineering (Code MT), Office of Space Flight. The study consisted of the collection, compilation, and analysis of lessons learned, crew time requirements, and other factors influencing the application of advanced automation and robotics, with emphasis on potential improvements in productivity. The lessons learned data collected were based primarily on Skylab, Spacelab, and other Space Shuttle experiences, consisting principally of interviews with current and former crew members and other NASA personnel with relevant experience. The objectives of this report are to present a summary of this data and its analysis, and to present conclusions regarding promising areas for the application of advanced automation and robotics technology to the Space Station Freedom and the potential benefits in terms of increased productivity. In this study, primary emphasis was placed on advanced automation technology because of its fairly extensive utilization within private industry including the aerospace sector. In contrast, other than the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), there has been relatively limited experience with advanced robotics technology applicable to the Space Station. This report should be used as a guide and is not intended to be used as a substitute for official Astronaut Office crew positions on specific issues
Intelligent machines work in unstructured environments by differential neuromorphic computing
Efficient operation of intelligent machines in the real world requires
methods that allow them to understand and predict the uncertainties presented
by the unstructured environments with good accuracy, scalability and
generalization, similar to humans. Current methods rely on pretrained networks
instead of continuously learning from the dynamic signal properties of working
environments and suffer inherent limitations, such as data-hungry procedures,
and limited generalization capabilities. Herein, we present a memristor-based
differential neuromorphic computing, perceptual signal processing and learning
method for intelligent machines. The main features of environmental information
such as amplification (>720%) and adaptation (<50%) of mechanical stimuli
encoded in memristors, are extracted to obtain human-like processing in
unstructured environments. The developed method takes advantage of the
intrinsic multi-state property of memristors and exhibits good scalability and
generalization, as confirmed by validation in two different application
scenarios: object grasping and autonomous driving. In the former, a robot hand
experimentally realizes safe and stable grasping through fast learning (in ~1
ms) the unknown object features (e.g., sharp corner and smooth surface) with a
single memristor. In the latter, the decision-making information of 10
unstructured environments in autonomous driving (e.g., overtaking cars,
pedestrians) is accurately (94%) extracted with a 40*25 memristor array. By
mimicking the intrinsic nature of human low-level perception mechanisms, the
electronic memristive neuromorphic circuit-based method, presented here shows
the potential for adapting to diverse sensing technologies and helping
intelligent machines generate smart high-level decisions in the real world.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
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