Finding Your Way Back: Comparing Path Odometry Algorithms for Assisted Return.

We present a comparative analysis of inertial-based odometry algorithms for the purpose of assisted return. An assisted return system facilitates backtracking of a path previously taken, and can be particularly useful for blind pedestrians. We present a new algorithm for path matching, and test it in simulated assisted return tasks with data from WeAllWalk, the only existing data set with inertial data recorded from blind walkers. We consider two odometry systems, one based on deep learning (RoNIN), and the second based on robust turn detection and step counting. Our results show that the best path matching results are obtained using the turns/steps odometry system

Learning Sequential Acquisition Policies for Robot-Assisted Feeding

A robot providing mealtime assistance must perform specialized maneuvers with various utensils in order to pick up and feed a range of food items. Beyond these dexterous low-level skills, an assistive robot must also plan these strategies in sequence over a long horizon to clear a plate and complete a meal. Previous methods in robot-assisted feeding introduce highly specialized primitives for food handling without a means to compose them together. Meanwhile, existing approaches to long-horizon manipulation lack the flexibility to embed highly specialized primitives into their frameworks. We propose Visual Action Planning OveR Sequences (VAPORS), a framework for long-horizon food acquisition. VAPORS learns a policy for high-level action selection by leveraging learned latent plate dynamics in simulation. To carry out sequential plans in the real world, VAPORS delegates action execution to visually parameterized primitives. We validate our approach on complex real-world acquisition trials involving noodle acquisition and bimanual scooping of jelly beans. Across 38 plates, VAPORS acquires much more efficiently than baselines, generalizes across realistic plate variations such as toppings and sauces, and qualitatively appeals to user feeding preferences in a survey conducted across 49 individuals. Code, datasets, videos, and supplementary materials can be found on our website: https://sites.google.com/view/vaporsbot

Export expansion and diversification in Central and Eastern Europe : what can be learnt from East and Southeast Asia?

The outstanding world market success of East and Southeast Asian countries (ESAEs) provides lessons for Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) striving to penetrate Western markets, even though starting conditions were strikingly different between these country groups. While ESAEs enjoyed the reputation of stable domestic policies, CEECs had to deal with institution building, macroeconomic stabilization and privatization at the same time. First of all, sound macroeconomic policies and an unrestricted access to domestic and imported inputs are absolutely vital for exporters. These factors cannot be substituted for by specific export incentives. Furthermore, Asian experience suggests that such incentives should be granted on a temporary basis in order to discourage rent-seeking and minimize the budgetary burden. Export processing zones are ineffective if they do not exert competitive pressure on the rest of the economy via input and output linkages. Stimulating exports through direct export subsidies has become less important in ESAEs over time because of inconsistency with the GATT and the retaliatory actions of trading partners. Using such subsidies is further constrained in the case of CEECs: Subsidies would conflict with the Europe Agreements, which require that state aid and competition rules harmonize with EU regulations. Foreign direct investment can play an important role in enhancing export growth and diversification, especially if such investment is attracted by favourable market prospects rather than tax holidays. Export promotion by governments should preferably concentrate on institutional support aimed at reducing the information costs faced by local suppliers and foreign importers. Asia's world market success was accompanied by increasing diversification and technological sophistication of exports. Intra-regional networking in terms of trade and investment helped this process considerably. For CEECs, it is thus essential to enhance local technological capabilities in order to enable exporters to apply new technologies. Furthermore, the prospects for a market-driven integration between CEECs can be improved to the extent that mobility of goods and factors of production is allowed for. Economic transformation in CEECs involves policy challenges which clearly go beyond export promotion as in Asia. Moreover, CEECs are facing an uphill struggle against established suppliers on Western markets. Under such conditions, CEECs are well advised not to follow the Asian way of maintaining national sovereignty in trade-related policies. Rather, they had to commit themselves to internationally binding trade liberalization in order to enhance the credibility of their transformation policies. Such commitments were made on a regional basis within the EU framework of Eastern enlargement as well as on a multilateral basis within the GATT/WTO. The contribution of this approach of tying one's own hands to stabilizing expectations should be enhanced by the EU by offering CEECs stable conditions for market access. --

Progress toward multi‐robot reconnaissance and the MAGIC 2010 competition

Tasks like search‐and‐rescue and urban reconnaissance benefit from large numbers of robots working together, but high levels of autonomy are needed to reduce operator requirements to practical levels. Reducing the reliance of such systems on human operators presents a number of technical challenges, including automatic task allocation, global state and map estimation, robot perception, path planning, communications, and human‐robot interfaces. This paper describes our 14‐robot team, which won the MAGIC 2010 competition. It was designed to perform urban reconnaissance missions. In the paper, we describe a variety of autonomous systems that require minimal human effort to control a large number of autonomously exploring robots. Maintaining a consistent global map, which is essential for autonomous planning and for giving humans situational awareness, required the development of fast loop‐closing, map optimization, and communications algorithms. Key to our approach was a decoupled centralized planning architecture that allowed individual robots to execute tasks myopically, but whose behavior was coordinated centrally. We will describe technical contributions throughout our system that played a significant role in its performance. We will also present results from our system both from the competition and from subsequent quantitative evaluations, pointing out areas in which the system performed well and where interesting research problems remain. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/93532/1/21426_ftp.pd

Proceedings of the OECD/PACIOLI Workshop on Information Needs for the Analysis of Farm Household Income Issues

The assessment of agricultural policies depends more and more on micro-economic data sets. This is especially true for policies with an income objective in a situation where farm households have different income sources. Among others the OECD has stressed this point in recent years with analytical reports. The PACIOLI network yearly brings together data managers and researchers interested in the innovation of data collection in this area. In April 2004 a joint workshop was organised at the OECD in Paris to bring experts together to exchange best practices. This report contains the proceedings of that workshop.Farm Management,

Introduction: The Diffusion of Liberalization

The worldwide spread of economic and political liberalism was one of the defining features of the late twentieth century. Free-market oriented economic reforms – macroeconomic stabilization, liberalization of foreign economic policies, privatization, and deregulation – took root in many parts of the world. At more or less the same time, a "third wave" of democratization and liberal constitutionalism washed over much of the globe. Most economists believe the gains to developing countries from the liberalization of economic policies to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But they also acknowledge the instability and human insecurity sometimes left in liberalization’s wake.GovernmentSociolog