7,242 research outputs found
Causality, Human Action and Experimentation: Von Wright's Approach to Causation in Contemporary Perspective
This paper discusses von Wright's theory of causation from Explanation and Understanding and Causality and Determinism in contemporary context. I argue that there are two important common points that von Wright's view shares with the version of manipulability currently supported by Woodward: the analysis of causal relations in a system modelled on controlled experiments, and the explanation of manipulability through counterfactuals - with focus on the counterfactual account of unmanipulable causes. These points also mark von Wright's departure from previous action-based theories of causation. Owing to these two features, I argue that, upon classifying different versions of manipulability theories, von Wright's view should be placed closer to the interventionist approach than to the agency theory, where it currently stands. Furthermore, given its relevance in contemporary context, which this paper aims to establish, I claim that von Wright's theory can be employed to solve present problems connected to manipulability approaches to causation
Manipulability analysis of a snake robot without lateral constraint for head position control
Two dynamic manipulability criteria of a snake robot with sideways slipping are proposed with the application to head trajectory tracking control in mind. The singular posture, which is crucial in head tracking control, is characterized by the manipulability and examined for families of typical robot shapes. Differences in the singular postures from those of the robot with lateral constraints, which have not been clear in previous studies, are clarified in the analysis. In addition to the examination of local properties using the concept of manipulability, we discuss the effect of isotropic friction as a global property. It is well known that, at least empirically, a snake robot needs anisotropy in friction to move by serpentine locomotion if there are no objects for it to push around. From the point of view of integrability, we show one of the necessary conditions for uncontrollability is satisfied if the friction is isotropic
The Manipulability Effect in Object Naming
Seeing objects triggers activation of motor areas. The implications of this motor activation in tasks that do not require object-use is still a matter of debate in cognitive sciences. Here we test whether motor activation percolates into the linguistic system by exploring the effect of object manipulability in a speech production task. Italian native speakers name the set of photographs provided by Gu\ue9rard, Lagac\ue8 and Brodeur (Beh Res Meth, 2015). Photographs varied on four motor dimensions concerning on how easily the represented objects can be grasped, moved, or pantomimed, and the number of actions that can be performed with them. The results show classical psycholinguistic phenomena such as the effect of age of acquisition and name agreement in naming latencies. Critically, linear mixed-effects models show an effect of three motor predictors over and above the psycholinguistic effects (replicating, in part, previous findings, Gu\ue9rard et al., 2015). Further research is needed to address how, and at which level, the manipulability effect emerges in the course of word production
Geometry-aware Manipulability Learning, Tracking and Transfer
Body posture influences human and robots performance in manipulation tasks,
as appropriate poses facilitate motion or force exertion along different axes.
In robotics, manipulability ellipsoids arise as a powerful descriptor to
analyze, control and design the robot dexterity as a function of the
articulatory joint configuration. This descriptor can be designed according to
different task requirements, such as tracking a desired position or apply a
specific force. In this context, this paper presents a novel
\emph{manipulability transfer} framework, a method that allows robots to learn
and reproduce manipulability ellipsoids from expert demonstrations. The
proposed learning scheme is built on a tensor-based formulation of a Gaussian
mixture model that takes into account that manipulability ellipsoids lie on the
manifold of symmetric positive definite matrices. Learning is coupled with a
geometry-aware tracking controller allowing robots to follow a desired profile
of manipulability ellipsoids. Extensive evaluations in simulation with
redundant manipulators, a robotic hand and humanoids agents, as well as an
experiment with two real dual-arm systems validate the feasibility of the
approach.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Intl. Journal of Robotics Research
(IJRR). Website: https://sites.google.com/view/manipulability. Code:
https://github.com/NoemieJaquier/Manipulability. 24 pages, 20 figures, 3
tables, 4 appendice
On the manipulability of dual cooperative robots
The definition of manipulability ellipsoids for dual robot systems is given. A suitable kineto-static formulation for dual cooperative robots is adopted which allows for a global task space description of external and internal forces, and relative velocities. The well known concepts of force and velocity manipulability ellipsoids for a single robot are formally extended and the contributions of the two single robots to the cooperative system ellipsoids are illustrated. Duality properties are discussed. A practical case study is developed
Learning Singularity Avoidance
With the increase in complexity of robotic systems and the rise in non-expert
users, it can be assumed that task constraints are not explicitly known. In
tasks where avoiding singularity is critical to its success, this paper
provides an approach, especially for non-expert users, for the system to learn
the constraints contained in a set of demonstrations, such that they can be
used to optimise an autonomous controller to avoid singularity, without having
to explicitly know the task constraints. The proposed approach avoids
singularity, and thereby unpredictable behaviour when carrying out a task, by
maximising the learnt manipulability throughout the motion of the constrained
system, and is not limited to kinematic systems. Its benefits are demonstrated
through comparisons with other control policies which show that the constrained
manipulability of a system learnt through demonstration can be used to avoid
singularities in cases where these other policies would fail. In the absence of
the systems manipulability subject to a tasks constraints, the proposed
approach can be used instead to infer these with results showing errors less
than 10^-5 in 3DOF simulated systems as well as 10^-2 using a 7DOF real world
robotic system
The Pareto Frontier for Random Mechanisms
We study the trade-offs between strategyproofness and other desiderata, such
as efficiency or fairness, that often arise in the design of random ordinal
mechanisms. We use approximate strategyproofness to define manipulability, a
measure to quantify the incentive properties of non-strategyproof mechanisms,
and we introduce the deficit, a measure to quantify the performance of
mechanisms with respect to another desideratum. When this desideratum is
incompatible with strategyproofness, mechanisms that trade off manipulability
and deficit optimally form the Pareto frontier. Our main contribution is a
structural characterization of this Pareto frontier, and we present algorithms
that exploit this structure to compute it. To illustrate its shape, we apply
our results for two different desiderata, namely Plurality and Veto scoring, in
settings with 3 alternatives and up to 18 agents.Comment: Working Pape
Extended Cognition, The New Mechanists’ Mutual Manipulability Criterion, and The Challenge of Trivial Extendedness
Many authors have turned their attention to the notion of constitution to determine whether the hypothesis of extended cognition (EC) is true. One common strategy is to make sense of constitution in terms of the new mechanists’ mutual manipulability account (MM). In this paper I will show that MM is insufficient. The Challenge of Trivial Extendedness arises due to the fact that mechanisms for cognitive behaviors are extended in a way that should not count as verifying EC. This challenge can be met by adding a necessary condition: cognitive constituents satisfy MM and they are what I call behavior unspecific
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