19,567 research outputs found
Data-Driven Approach to Simulating Realistic Human Joint Constraints
Modeling realistic human joint limits is important for applications involving
physical human-robot interaction. However, setting appropriate human joint
limits is challenging because it is pose-dependent: the range of joint motion
varies depending on the positions of other bones. The paper introduces a new
technique to accurately simulate human joint limits in physics simulation. We
propose to learn an implicit equation to represent the boundary of valid human
joint configurations from real human data. The function in the implicit
equation is represented by a fully connected neural network whose gradients can
be efficiently computed via back-propagation. Using gradients, we can
efficiently enforce realistic human joint limits through constraint forces in a
physics engine or as constraints in an optimization problem.Comment: To appear at ICRA 2018; 6 pages, 9 figures; for associated video, see
https://youtu.be/wzkoE7wCbu
Learning a Unified Control Policy for Safe Falling
Being able to fall safely is a necessary motor skill for humanoids performing
highly dynamic tasks, such as running and jumping. We propose a new method to
learn a policy that minimizes the maximal impulse during the fall. The
optimization solves for both a discrete contact planning problem and a
continuous optimal control problem. Once trained, the policy can compute the
optimal next contacting body part (e.g. left foot, right foot, or hands),
contact location and timing, and the required joint actuation. We represent the
policy as a mixture of actor-critic neural network, which consists of n control
policies and the corresponding value functions. Each pair of actor-critic is
associated with one of the n possible contacting body parts. During execution,
the policy corresponding to the highest value function will be executed while
the associated body part will be the next contact with the ground. With this
mixture of actor-critic architecture, the discrete contact sequence planning is
solved through the selection of the best critics while the continuous control
problem is solved by the optimization of actors. We show that our policy can
achieve comparable, sometimes even higher, rewards than a recursive search of
the action space using dynamic programming, while enjoying 50 to 400 times of
speed gain during online execution
Classification of sporting activities using smartphone accelerometers
In this paper we present a framework that allows for the automatic identification of sporting activities using commonly available smartphones. We extract discriminative informational features from smartphone accelerometers using the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). Despite the poor quality of their accelerometers, smartphones were used as capture devices due to their prevalence in todayās society. Successful classification on this basis potentially makes the technology accessible to both elite and non-elite athletes. Extracted features are used to train different categories of classifiers. No one classifier family has a reportable direct advantage in activity classification problems to date; thus we examine classifiers from each of the most widely used classifier families. We investigate three classification approaches; a commonly used SVM-based approach, an optimized classification model and a fusion of classifiers. We also investigate the effect of changing several of the DWT input parameters, including mother wavelets, window lengths and DWT decomposition levels. During the course of this work we created a challenging
sports activity analysis dataset, comprised of soccer and field-hockey activities. The average maximum F-measure accuracy of 87% was achieved using a fusion of classifiers, which was 6% better than a single classifier model and 23% better than a standard SVM approach
Real-Time Human Motion Capture with Multiple Depth Cameras
Commonly used human motion capture systems require intrusive attachment of
markers that are visually tracked with multiple cameras. In this work we
present an efficient and inexpensive solution to markerless motion capture
using only a few Kinect sensors. Unlike the previous work on 3d pose estimation
using a single depth camera, we relax constraints on the camera location and do
not assume a co-operative user. We apply recent image segmentation techniques
to depth images and use curriculum learning to train our system on purely
synthetic data. Our method accurately localizes body parts without requiring an
explicit shape model. The body joint locations are then recovered by combining
evidence from multiple views in real-time. We also introduce a dataset of ~6
million synthetic depth frames for pose estimation from multiple cameras and
exceed state-of-the-art results on the Berkeley MHAD dataset.Comment: Accepted to computer robot vision 201
Aerospace Medicine and Biology: a Continuing Bibliography with Indexes (Supplement 328)
This bibliography lists 104 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during September, 1989. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance
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