5,897 research outputs found
Ecosystem-Oriented Distributed Evolutionary Computing
We create a novel optimisation technique inspired by natural ecosystems,
where the optimisation works at two levels: a first optimisation, migration of
genes which are distributed in a peer-to-peer network, operating continuously
in time; this process feeds a second optimisation based on evolutionary
computing that operates locally on single peers and is aimed at finding
solutions to satisfy locally relevant constraints. We consider from the domain
of computer science distributed evolutionary computing, with the relevant
theory from the domain of theoretical biology, including the fields of
evolutionary and ecological theory, the topological structure of ecosystems,
and evolutionary processes within distributed environments. We then define
ecosystem- oriented distributed evolutionary computing, imbibed with the
properties of self-organisation, scalability and sustainability from natural
ecosystems, including a novel form of distributed evolu- tionary computing.
Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the apparent compromises resulting
from the hybrid model created, such as the network topology.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1112.0204, arXiv:0712.4159, arXiv:0712.4153, arXiv:0712.4102,
arXiv:0910.067
Human-robot Interaction For Multi-robot Systems
Designing an effective human-robot interaction paradigm is particularly important for complex tasks such as multi-robot manipulation that require the human and robot to work together in a tightly coupled fashion. Although increasing the number of robots can expand the area that the robots can cover within a bounded period of time, a poor human-robot interface will ultimately compromise the performance of the team of robots. However, introducing a human operator to the team of robots, does not automatically improve performance due to the difficulty of teleoperating mobile robots with manipulators. The human operator’s concentration is divided not only among multiple robots but also between controlling each robot’s base and arm. This complexity substantially increases the potential neglect time, since the operator’s inability to effectively attend to each robot during a critical phase of the task leads to a significant degradation in task performance. There are several proven paradigms for increasing the efficacy of human-robot interaction: 1) multimodal interfaces in which the user controls the robots using voice and gesture; 2) configurable interfaces which allow the user to create new commands by demonstrating them; 3) adaptive interfaces which reduce the operator’s workload as necessary through increasing robot autonomy. This dissertation presents an evaluation of the relative benefits of different types of user interfaces for multi-robot systems composed of robots with wheeled bases and three degree of freedom arms. It describes a design for constructing low-cost multi-robot manipulation systems from off the shelf parts. User expertise was measured along three axes (navigation, manipulation, and coordination), and participants who performed above threshold on two out of three dimensions on a calibration task were rated as expert. Our experiments reveal that the relative expertise of the user was the key determinant of the best performing interface paradigm for that user, indicating that good user modiii eling is essential for designing a human-robot interaction system that will be used for an extended period of time. The contributions of the dissertation include: 1) a model for detecting operator distraction from robot motion trajectories; 2) adjustable autonomy paradigms for reducing operator workload; 3) a method for creating coordinated multi-robot behaviors from demonstrations with a single robot; 4) a user modeling approach for identifying expert-novice differences from short teleoperation traces
SoundSpaces 2.0: A Simulation Platform for Visual-Acoustic Learning
We introduce SoundSpaces 2.0, a platform for on-the-fly geometry-based audio
rendering for 3D environments. Given a 3D mesh of a real-world environment,
SoundSpaces can generate highly realistic acoustics for arbitrary sounds
captured from arbitrary microphone locations. Together with existing 3D visual
assets, it supports an array of audio-visual research tasks, such as
audio-visual navigation, mapping, source localization and separation, and
acoustic matching. Compared to existing resources, SoundSpaces 2.0 has the
advantages of allowing continuous spatial sampling, generalization to novel
environments, and configurable microphone and material properties. To our
knowledge, this is the first geometry-based acoustic simulation that offers
high fidelity and realism while also being fast enough to use for embodied
learning. We showcase the simulator's properties and benchmark its performance
against real-world audio measurements. In addition, we demonstrate two
downstream tasks -- embodied navigation and far-field automatic speech
recognition -- and highlight sim2real performance for the latter. SoundSpaces
2.0 is publicly available to facilitate wider research for perceptual systems
that can both see and hear.Comment: Camera-ready version. Website: https://soundspaces.org. Project page:
https://vision.cs.utexas.edu/projects/soundspaces
Collaborative signal and information processing for target detection with heterogeneous sensor networks
In this paper, an approach for target detection and acquisition with heterogeneous sensor networks through strategic resource allocation and coordination is presented. Based on sensor management and collaborative signal and information processing, low-capacity low-cost sensors are strategically deployed to guide and cue scarce high performance sensors in the network to improve the data quality, with which the mission is eventually completed more efficiently with lower cost. We focus on the problem of designing such a network system in which issues of resource selection and allocation, system behaviour and capacity, target behaviour and patterns, the environment, and multiple constraints such as the cost must be addressed simultaneously. Simulation results offer significant insight into sensor selection and network operation, and demonstrate the great benefits introduced by guided search in an application of hunting down and capturing hostile vehicles on the battlefield
Dynamic Path Planning and Replanning for Mobile Robots using RRT*
It is necessary for a mobile robot to be able to efficiently plan a path from
its starting, or current, location to a desired goal location. This is a
trivial task when the environment is static. However, the operational
environment of the robot is rarely static, and it often has many moving
obstacles. The robot may encounter one, or many, of these unknown and
unpredictable moving obstacles. The robot will need to decide how to proceed
when one of these obstacles is obstructing it's path. A method of dynamic
replanning using RRT* is presented. The robot will modify it's current plan
when an unknown random moving obstacle obstructs the path. Various experimental
results show the effectiveness of the proposed method
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