A Comparison of Visualisation Methods for Disambiguating Verbal Requests in Human-Robot Interaction

Picking up objects requested by a human user is a common task in human-robot interaction. When multiple objects match the user's verbal description, the robot needs to clarify which object the user is referring to before executing the action. Previous research has focused on perceiving user's multimodal behaviour to complement verbal commands or minimising the number of follow up questions to reduce task time. In this paper, we propose a system for reference disambiguation based on visualisation and compare three methods to disambiguate natural language instructions. In a controlled experiment with a YuMi robot, we investigated real-time augmentations of the workspace in three conditions -- mixed reality, augmented reality, and a monitor as the baseline -- using objective measures such as time and accuracy, and subjective measures like engagement, immersion, and display interference. Significant differences were found in accuracy and engagement between the conditions, but no differences were found in task time. Despite the higher error rates in the mixed reality condition, participants found that modality more engaging than the other two, but overall showed preference for the augmented reality condition over the monitor and mixed reality conditions

Bridges Structural Health Monitoring and Deterioration Detection Synthesis of Knowledge and Technology

INE/AUTC 10.0

Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs

Tethers in space: Birth and growth of a new avenue to space utilization

The evolution of the ideas of tether applications in space are traced from its origin in the last century past a dormant period of sixty-five years to the mid-seventies. At that time as a consequence of major revival efforts, NASA entered into serious investigations of the theoretical and practical feasibility of a large number of tethered concepts in space. These efforts culminated in the establishment of the Tethered Satellite System Project now at NASA in the advanced development phase. Extensive planning efforts are described, first, through a Tether Applications in Space Workshop which generated additional concepts and provided overall assessments and recommendations to NASA, and then through a NASA inter-center Tether Applications in Space Task Group which generated a four year program plan in the areas of further studies, technology, work and science and applications of tethers in space. An outlook into the future of tether applications that approaches some of the goals of the early visionaries is offered

On design of a scalable video data placement strategy for supporting a load balancing video-on-demand storage server.

by Kelvin Kwok-wai Law.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-68).Abstract --- p.iAcknowledgments --- p.iiiChapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Background --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- Motivation --- p.2Chapter 1.3 --- Scope --- p.3Chapter 1.4 --- Dissertation Outline --- p.4Chapter 2 --- Background and Related Researches --- p.6Chapter 2.1 --- Interactive Services --- p.6Chapter 2.2 --- VOD Architecture --- p.7Chapter 2.3 --- Video Compression --- p.10Chapter 2.3.1 --- DCT Based Compression --- p.11Chapter 2.3.2 --- Subband Video Compression --- p.12Chapter 2.4 --- Related Research --- p.14Chapter 3 --- Multiple Resolutions Video File System --- p.16Chapter 3.1 --- Physical Disk Storage System --- p.16Chapter 3.2 --- Multi-resolution Video Data Placement Scheme --- p.17Chapter 3.3 --- Example of our Video Block Assignment Algorithm --- p.23Chapter 3.4 --- An Assignment Algorithm for Homogeneous Video Files --- p.26Chapter 4 --- Disk Scheduling and Admission Control --- p.33Chapter 4.1 --- Disk Scheduling Algorithm --- p.33Chapter 4.2 --- Admission Control --- p.40Chapter 5 --- Load Balancing of the Disk System --- p.43Chapter 6 --- Buffer Management --- p.49Chapter 6.1 --- Buffer Organization --- p.49Chapter 6.2 --- Buffer Requirement For Different Video Playback Mode --- p.51Chapter 7 --- Conclusions --- p.63Bibliography --- p.6