221 research outputs found
Transferring Embodied Concepts Between Perceptually Heterogeneous Robots
This paper explores methods and representations
that allow two perceptually heterogeneous robots, each of
which represents concepts via grounded properties, to transfer
knowledge despite their differences. This is an important issue,
as it will be increasingly important for robots to communicate
and effectively share knowledge to speed up learning as they
become more ubiquitous.We use GÓrdenforsâ conceptual spaces
to represent objects as a fuzzy combination of properties such as
color and texture, where properties themselves are represented
as Gaussian Mixture Models in a metric space. We then use
confusion matrices that are built using instances from each
robot, obtained in a shared context, in order to learn mappings
between the properties of each robot. These mappings are then
used to transfer a concept from one robot to another, where
the receiving robot was not previously trained on instances
of the objects. We show in a 3D simulation environment that
these models can be successfully learned and concepts can be
transferred between a ground robot and an aerial quadrotor
robot
A Conceptual Space Architecture for Widely Heterogeneous Robotic Systems
This paper describes the value of the conceptual space approach for use in teams of robots that have radically different sensory capabilities. The formal underpinnings and perceptual processes are described in the context of a biohazard detection task. The architecture is based on the conceptual spaces representation that GĂ€rdenfors suggested as an alternative to more traditional AI approaches
Embodiment and the senses in travelogue filmmaking
This practice-based research presents an analysis of the representation of embodied experience in the travelogue film genre. It reflects upon the embodied and synaesthesic nature of the cinematic experience by tracing a shift in travelogue filmmaking from the ocular realism characteristic of early travelogue films to the emergence and
proliferation of subjective approaches. Moreover, it analyses experimental travelogue films and the capacity of non-linear and non-narrative structures to express sensuous, embodied perception.
9 Meditations is the practice component of this thesis. It is an experimental travelogue film. Through its production this research explores the translation of embodied
experience as a multi-sensory process into filmmaking practice.
In the field of film studies, the travelogue has not been widely discussed outside historical approaches, and it has certainly never been discussed in relation to
phenomenology and embodied sensation. This research articulates a new conceptual framework for both the production and theorisation of the travelogue film, as a form that is intrinsically related to performance, subjectivity and embodied perception. Moreover, this research concerns both the production process in filmmaking practice and the cinematic experience as grounded in synaesthesic, embodied perception. This approach brings to the forefront the capacity of audiovisual practice to both encode and produce sensuous knowledge
Corporeal Returns: Theatrical Embodiment and Spectator Response in Early Modern Drama
Taking its cue from the many Renaissance playwrights who emphasized their spectatorsâ participation, this dissertation develops a model of audience response based on what texts from the period reveal about early modern spectatorsâ active engagements with staged bodies and stage space. Discussing plays by Shakespeare, Peele, Beaumont, Marston, Ford, Middleton, and Tourneur, I establish an analytical arc that travels gradually deeper into the body, moving from performances that depict the superficial violation of the body to those that represent its violent penetration onstage, thereby encouraging spectators to contemplate the bodyâs physiological recesses. Early modern anatomical science and its exploration of the body provide a historical backdrop for an analysis of the spectatorâs confrontation with the human bodyâs ontology, while a phenomenological approach to the experience of playgoing respects the importance Renaissance plays placed on the audienceâs ability to bring stage phenomena to life. Chapter One argues that the representational strategies of early modern drama encourage a metatheatrical awareness on the part of audiences, by highlighting the conflation of presentation and representation that underlies the theatrical delivery of fictional bodies and places. The distinction between the actorâs persona (which presents) and the characterâs persona (which is represented) fundamentally influences the spectatorâs engagement with what the body performsâthat is, how this dually invested body exists in space and time (the subject of Chapter Two) and what breaches of bodily integrity it can physically withstand within the performance arena (Chapters Three and Four). The drama of the time intimated that by imaginatively participating in the theatrical exploration of the bodyâs capabilities and limits, early modern spectators could attain the knowledge and power Renaissance culture so often invested in the physical human form
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What can a sonic assemblage do? A biopsychosocial approach to post-acousmatic composition
Thinking and sounding are two terms which complicate one another, hence this thesis follows two trajectories each of which make an original contribution to knowledge. Part 1 (thinking sound) proposes to reground composition away from historically authoritative humanist models, instead suggesting a biopsychosocial approach for a post-acousmatic music. I elaborate a set of models and key concepts, chiefly an eliminativist account of the listener-sound relation; neurocognitively discrete musical domains and dimensions of the Kmatrix; model-based reasoning through a Reception-Interpretation-Action helix; and, mentalizing listening stances based upon dual-process cognition models. This is combined with an art-activist stance where composition is concerned with the effects that a sonic artobject exerts in its vicinity. I propose composition as experimentally concerned with generating new epistemic things through a process of assemblage and heterogeneous engineering. Part 2 (sounding thinking) discusses fixed and live compositions which initiated and respond to my proposed approach. In my practice, I focus on the disruption of specific aesthetic regimens to bring listening into attentional focus, engaging the specificity of the mnemonic traces that sound leaves. The pieces are largely concerned with sonic cultures related to Islam and the MENASA region
The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact (A philosophical reflection for graphic design)
Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.The Multidimensional Depth of the Image: Body-Environment-Artefact
Current discourses within cultural studies are re-iterating the limitations of language to adequately describe the affective domains of corporeality and materiality in the study of cultural artefacts. Within the discourse of graphic design, however, there remains an enduring focus placed upon models of language and communication to understand the meaning of designed materials. Rather than upholding a focus upon language, this thesis undertakes a theoretical investigation to extend the literature available to the discourse of graphic design to better understand how visual materials âcome to meanâ within the experience of an embodied subject coupled to an affective environment. This thesis proposes an ontology of images that is emergent as a part of what, within the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, is describes as a mind-body-world system through which the âmeaningâ of visual materials should be grounded.
This thesis asks not âwhatâ visual materials mean but rather âhowâ visual materials come to mean in terms of a complex relationship involving the embodied perceptual experience of the maker and the viewer that is immersed within an affective environment, what the thesis terms the multidimensional depth of the image. A phenomenological theory of art is extended to include a range of materials of popular visual culture to frame a study of how form and style come to mean qua the gestures of an embodied experience as coupled to an environment â a meaning that reciprocally emerges through the embodied experience of the work by the viewer. The environmental processes of which an embodied subjectâs movements are coupled are brought into focus through enactive conceptions of mind within the cognitive sciences, describing how mind and meaning are emergent within an autopoietic organism-environment system. This provides a framework in which the affective dimensions of matter can be more fully understood as having a cognitive efficacy. Within this context, Material Engagement Theory (an approach within cognitive archaeology) is utilized to include a more focussed discussion of the affective domains of materials, objects, and artefacts and their role in the emergence of mind and meaning.HER
Fuzzy optimisation based symbolic grounding for service robots
A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophySymbolic grounding is a bridge between task level planning and actual robot sensing and actuation. Uncertainties raised by unstructured environments make a bottleneck for integrating traditional artificial intelligence with service robotics. In this research, a fuzzy optimisation based symbolic grounding approach is presented. This approach can handle uncertainties and helps service robots to determine the most comfortable base region for grasping objects in a fetch and carry task. Novel techniques are applied to establish fuzzy objective function, to model fuzzy constraints and to perform fuzzy optimisation. The approach does not have the short comings of othersâ work and the computation time is dramatically reduced in compare with other methods. The advantages of the proposed fuzzy optimisation based approach are evidenced by experiments that were undertaken in Care-O-bot 3 (COB 3) and Robot Operating System (ROS) platforms
Variety, flexibility, and use of abstract concepts. A multiple grounded perspective.
The nature of concepts is a matter of intense debate in cognitive sciences. While traditional views claim that conceptual knowledge is represented in a unitary symbolic system, recent Embodied and Grounded Cognition theories (EGC) submit the idea that conceptual system is couched in our body and influenced by the environment (Barsalou, 2008).
One of the major challenges for EGC is constituted by abstract concepts (ACs), like fantasy. Recently, some EGC proposals addressed this criticism, arguing that the ACs comprise multifaced exemplars that rely on different grounding sources beyond sensorimotor one, including interoception, emotions, language, and sociality (Borghi et al., 2018). However, little is known about how ACs representation varies as a function of life experiences and their use in communication.
The theoretical arguments and empirical studies comprised in this dissertation aim to provide evidence on multiple grounding of ACs taking into account their varieties and flexibility. Study I analyzed multiple ratings on a large sample of ACs and identified four distinct subclusters. Study II validated this classification with an interference paradigm involving motor/manual, interoceptive, and linguistic systems during a difficulty rating task. Results confirm that different grounding sources are activated depending on ACs kind. Study III-IV investigate the variability of institutional concepts, showing that the higher the law expertise level, the stronger the concrete/emotional determinants in their representation. Study V introduced a novel interactive task in which abstract and concrete sentences serve as cues to simulate conversation. Analysis of language production revealed that the uncertainty and interactive exchanges increase with abstractness, leading to generating more questions/requests for clarifications with abstract than concrete sentences.
Overall, results confirm that ACs are multidimensional, heterogeneous, and flexible constructs and that social and linguistic interactions are crucial to shaping their meanings. Investigating ACs in real-time dialogues may be a promising direction for future research
Horizontal asymmetries derived from script direction : consequences for attention and action
Tese apresentada para cumprimento dos requisitos necessĂĄrios Ă obtenção do grau de Doutor em Psicologia na ĂĄrea de especialização de Psicologia Social apresentada no ISPA - Instituto UniversitĂĄrio, no ano de 2021.A direção de leitura e escrita estabelecem uma trajetĂłria preferencial de exploração do espaço que Ă© reforçada por diversas regularidades culturais consistentes com essa direccionalidade. A correlação espaço-movimento cria um esquema para a ação que enviesa a representação da agĂȘncia humana, estendendo-se Ă representação de outros conceitos abstratos que nĂŁo possuem bases sensoriomotoras. A dimensĂŁo horizontal Ă© recrutada para melhor compreender estes conceitos, sendo ancorados de acordo com a direção de escrita e leitura da nossa lĂngua. A assimetria espacial que esta direccionalidade induz constitui um contributo crucial para a ĂĄrea do embodiment, tendo sido demonstrado que afeta processos sociais e cognitivos. Contudo, os processos especĂficos que estas assimetrias ativam permanecem pouco explorados. Em sete estudos, esta dissertação investiga de que forma as assimetrias espaciais afetam inferĂȘncias sociais e a performance visuo-motora para com estĂmulos ancorados na dimensĂŁo horizontal.
O primeiro estudo indica que inferĂȘncias sociais relacionadas com agĂȘncia sĂŁo preferencialmente atribuĂdas a faces de perfil orientadas para a direita (versus esquerda). Em duas experiĂȘncias, o segundo estudo mostra que faces orientadas para a direita servem como pistas para a orientação de atenção. Faces orientadas para a direita, que traduzem a direção utilizada para representar a agĂȘncia humana, facilitam a atenção para e deteção de alvos no campo visual direito, comparativamente a faces orientadas para a esquerda no campo visual esquerdo. No terceiro estudo, as faces foram substituĂdas por palavras temporais auditivas e visuais, que se sabe serem ancoradas horizontalmente. A assimetria espacial foi testada em duas experiĂȘncias em comunidades com direçÔes de leitura e escrita opostas (PortuguĂȘs e Ărabe). Observou-se uma ancoragem contrĂĄria do conceito abstrato âtempoâ entre as duas amostras (PortuguĂȘs: passado-esquerda/futuro-direita; Ărabe: passado-direita/futuro-esquerda). Adicionalmente, uma performance assimĂ©trica reversa entre as duas comunidades linguĂsticas confirma que o mapeamento do tempo Ă© enviesado pelos hĂĄbitos ortogrĂĄficos e pela representação cultural da agĂȘncia humana. Isto Ă©, palavras temporais que coincidem com a direção induzida por ambos os sistemas de escrita (i.e., palavras relacionadas com futuro), dĂŁo origem a vantagem Ă direita na amostra Portuguesa, e vantagem Ă esquerda na amostra Ărabe. O quarto estudo estendeu estes resultados Ă categoria da polĂtica, tipicamente representada atravĂ©s de coordenadas de esquerda e de direita. Respostas manuais e atencionais foram mais rĂĄpidas para alvos localizados Ă direita apĂłs terem sido apresentadas termos polĂticos de direita (versus alvos Ă esquerda apĂłs termos polĂticos de esquerda), que correspondiam Ă direção em que habitualmente se representa movimento. O quinto e Ășltimo estudo demonstrou que a apresentação de palavras temporais simultaneamente com um tom auditivo nĂŁo-espacial impede os efeitos de emergirem. Estas pistas bimodais revelaram as condiçÔes limitativas dos efeitos da assimetria espacial.
Em conclusĂŁo, esta dissertação demonstra que existe uma propriedade genĂ©rica de movimento que deriva da direção ortogrĂĄfica e que Ă© transversal Ă representação de estĂmulos distintos, em vĂĄrias tarefas e modalidades sensoriais. Estes resultados oferecem uma perspetiva mais abrangente sobre o impacto prevalente que uma caracterĂstica da lĂngua aparentemente irrelevante tem em processos cognitivos fundamentais de perceção, atenção, e julgamento.The directional activities of reading and writing have been shown to ground a preferential trajectory when scanning space. This horizontal directional formation is further reinforced by other cultural regularities that overlap with it. This space-movement correlation creates a left-right (or vice-versa) schema for action that biases the representation of human agency and extends to the representation of other abstract concepts lacking experiential sensorimotor bases. Consequently, the horizontal dimension is recruited to reason about abstract concepts that are mapped congruently with oneâs dominant reading and writing or script direction. The spatial asymmetry that this combined directionality induces is a core finding in the embodiment area and has been shown to affect important social and cognitive processes. However, the specific processes activated by these asymmetries remain unclear. A series of seven experiments are outlined to investigate how spatial asymmetries affect social inferences and visuomotor performance to stimuli anchored in the horizontal dimension.
The first study indicated that a range of agency-related social inferences are preferentially assigned to face profiles oriented rightward (versus leftward). Across two experiments, the second study showed that right oriented faces serve as attention-orienting primes. Rightward faces, which are in line with the direction used to represent human agency, facilitate attention to and detection of targets on the right hemifield, relative to leftward faces and targets on the left hemifield. In the third study, face primes were replaced by visual and auditory time words known to ground horizontally in space. Spatial asymmetries were tested in two experiments with communities holding opposite writing scripts (Portuguese and Arabic). We observed the mapping of time to be reversed between the two samples (Portuguese: past-left/future-right; Arabic: past-right/future-left). Further, a mirrored asymmetric performance between the two linguistic communities confirmed that the mapping of time is biased by orthographic habits and the cultural representation of human agency. That is, time words that coincide with the direction induced by both writing systems (i.e., future-related) gave rise to right-side advantage in the Portuguese sample and left-side advantage in the Arabic sample. The fourth study extended these results to the category of politics, commonly represented through coordinates of left and right. Manual and gaze responses were faster to targets embedded on the right following conservatism-related words (versus the left following socialism-related words) that embody the habitualized rightward movement direction. The fifth and final study demonstrated that presenting time words synchronously with an auditory nonspatial tone impaired cueing effects. These bimodal cues revealed the boundary conditions of the spatial agency bias.
Overall, this dissertation underscores that a generic property of movement that is derived from orthographic direction underlies the representation of very distinct stimuli across tasks and sensory modalities. These findings offer a broader perspective on the pervasive impact a seemingly irrelevant feature of language has on fundamental cognitive processes of perception, attention, and judgment
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