7,754 research outputs found
UltraSwarm: A Further Step Towards a Flock of Miniature Helicopters
We describe further progress towards the development of a
MAV (micro aerial vehicle) designed as an enabling tool to investigate aerial flocking. Our research focuses on the use of low cost off the shelf vehicles and sensors to enable fast prototyping and to reduce development costs. Details on the design of the embedded electronics and the
modification of the chosen toy helicopter are presented, and the technique used for state estimation is described. The fusion of inertial data through an unscented Kalman filter is used to estimate the helicopter’s state, and this forms the main input to the control system. Since no detailed dynamic model of the helicopter in use is available, a method is proposed for automated system identification, and for subsequent controller design based on artificial evolution. Preliminary results obtained with a dynamic simulator of a helicopter are reported, along with some encouraging results for tackling the problem of flocking
Growing the use of Virtual Worlds in education : an OpenSim perspective
The growth in the range of disciplines that Virtual Worlds support for educational purposes is evidenced by recent applications in the fields of cultural heritage, humanitarian aid, space exploration, virtual laboratories in the physical sciences, archaeology, computer science and coastal geography. This growth is due in part to the flexibility of OpenSim, the open source virtual world platform which by adopting Second Life protocols and norms has created a de facto standard for open virtual worlds that is supported by a growing number of third party open source viewers. Yet while this diversity of use-cases is impressive and Virtual Worlds for open learning are highly popular with lecturers and learners alike immersive education remains an essentially niche activity. This paper identifies functional challenges in terms of Management, Network Infrastructure, the Immersive 3D Web and Programmability that must be addressed to enable the wider adoption of Open Virtual Worlds as a routine learning technology platform. We refer to specific use-cases based on OpenSim and abstract generic requirements which should be met to enable the growth in use of Open Virtual Worlds as a mainstream educational facility. A case study of a deployment to support a formal education curriculum and associated informal learning is used to illustrate key points.Postprin
Neural Task Programming: Learning to Generalize Across Hierarchical Tasks
In this work, we propose a novel robot learning framework called Neural Task
Programming (NTP), which bridges the idea of few-shot learning from
demonstration and neural program induction. NTP takes as input a task
specification (e.g., video demonstration of a task) and recursively decomposes
it into finer sub-task specifications. These specifications are fed to a
hierarchical neural program, where bottom-level programs are callable
subroutines that interact with the environment. We validate our method in three
robot manipulation tasks. NTP achieves strong generalization across sequential
tasks that exhibit hierarchal and compositional structures. The experimental
results show that NTP learns to generalize well to- wards unseen tasks with
increasing lengths, variable topologies, and changing objectives.Comment: ICRA 201
Intelligent Management and Efficient Operation of Big Data
This chapter details how Big Data can be used and implemented in networking
and computing infrastructures. Specifically, it addresses three main aspects:
the timely extraction of relevant knowledge from heterogeneous, and very often
unstructured large data sources, the enhancement on the performance of
processing and networking (cloud) infrastructures that are the most important
foundational pillars of Big Data applications or services, and novel ways to
efficiently manage network infrastructures with high-level composed policies
for supporting the transmission of large amounts of data with distinct
requisites (video vs. non-video). A case study involving an intelligent
management solution to route data traffic with diverse requirements in a wide
area Internet Exchange Point is presented, discussed in the context of Big
Data, and evaluated.Comment: In book Handbook of Research on Trends and Future Directions in Big
Data and Web Intelligence, IGI Global, 201
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