Navigating Occluded Intersections with Autonomous Vehicles using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Providing an efficient strategy to navigate safely through unsignaled intersections is a difficult task that requires determining the intent of other drivers. We explore the effectiveness of Deep Reinforcement Learning to handle intersection problems. Using recent advances in Deep RL, we are able to learn policies that surpass the performance of a commonly-used heuristic approach in several metrics including task completion time and goal success rate and have limited ability to generalize. We then explore a system's ability to learn active sensing behaviors to enable navigating safely in the case of occlusions. Our analysis, provides insight into the intersection handling problem, the solutions learned by the network point out several shortcomings of current rule-based methods, and the failures of our current deep reinforcement learning system point to future research directions.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2018

A Two-Wheeled Vehicle Navigation System Based on a Fuzzy Logic Controller

The paper deals with a two-wheeled vehicle,namely ESG-2 (Extended Segway-like Generation- 2) navigation control system using a fuzzy logic controller. The vehicle employs two wheels left and right independently which are controlled independently using a fuzzy logic controller respectively. The controllers deal with a compact and implementable application for the normal using with a person (human with 60kg weight in average) loaded on the vehicle. A modified infrared-based range sensor system is applied to the vehicle as a tilt sensor and it is incorporated with an accelerometer to control its response in case of the dynamics disturbances. The fuzzy controller runs in tilt-mode while a reference tilt using a potentiometer (as steer system) is taken into account for navigating the vehicle. From the simulation using MATLAB @ and experiments it is obvious that the prototype of ESG-2 is quite challenging to be developed in the future

Conceptualisation and Operationalisation of the Personal Brand V.A.L.U.E. Career Development Tool

The purpose of our manuscript is to conceptualise and operationalise the Personal Brand V.A.L.U.E. Career Development Tool. The V.A.L.U.E. acronym stands for Vision, Ability, Love, Understanding, and Ecosystem. The paper adopts a case study design based on qualitative insights via an in-depth and semi-structured interview with an individual who has used the Personal Brand V.A.L.U.E. Career Development Tool over five years, initially in their final year of university (2018-2019) and subsequently as a graduate in the labour market (2019-2023). The lived experience provided through the case study provides insights into the operationalisation of the Personal Brand V.A.L.U.E. Career Development Tool for (i) preparing and navigating the university-to-work transition, (ii) navigating an unplanned career transition, and (iii) navigating a planned career transition. The theoretical contribution comes from conceptualising the Personal Brand V.A.L.U.E. Career Development Tool. The practical contribution comes from offering implications for (a) students and universities and (b) workers and organisations to operationalise the tool. A future research agenda is also presented

The System: Reimagining Richmond: Diversity at the University of Richmond

Research and Capstone projects for The System Building on the 2017 fall semester and insights from the trip to Los Angeles, student working groups will predict the future of a system or related issue for an audience of their peers, offering reflections on navigating that future. These projects might take the form of posters, video installations, original speculative fiction, or mixed media that will be incorporated into the atmosphere of a campus party, both to maximize the student audience, and to celebrate our determination for an exciting future.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/ssir-presentations-2018/1001/thumbnail.jp

The System: The Administration Presentation

Research and Capstone projects Building on the 2017 fall semester and insights from the Fall 2017 trip to Los Angeles, student working groups will predict the future of a system or related issue for an audience of their peers, offering reflections on navigating that future. These projects might take the form of posters, video installations, original speculative fiction, or mixed media that will be incorporated into the atmosphere of a campus party, both to maximize the student audience, and to celebrate our determination for an exciting future.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/ssir-presentations-2018/1002/thumbnail.jp

The System: Social Group

Research and Capstone projects Building on the 2017 fall semester and insights from the Fall 2017 trip to Los Angeles, student working groups will predict the future of a system or related issue for an audience of their peers, offering reflections on navigating that future. These projects might take the form of posters, video installations, original speculative fiction, or mixed media that will be incorporated into the atmosphere of a campus party, both to maximize the student audience, and to celebrate our determination for an exciting future.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/ssir-presentations-2018/1003/thumbnail.jp

Clinicians Experience Using the Family as a Unit of Treatment for Black HIV-Positive Men Who Have Sex with Men

The present study examines the experiences of five licensed clinicians as they attempted to integrate the family as a unit of treatment into the treatment of Black HIV-positive men who have sex with men (BHPMSM). A single 90-minute focus group study using an interpretive phenomenological approach (IPA) was conducted with five clinicians from diverse backgrounds. The results of the study show that clinicians attempting to integrate the family into the treatment of BHPMSM shared common experiences in the areas of building community through encouraging client self-determination, navigating religion, navigating HIV stigma, feelings of incompetence, and feelings of gratification after successful integration of the family into treatment. These five main themes were further nuanced by the Black and queer identities of BHPMSM and the gender of their family members. Overall, the results show that the family does play an essential role in the treatment of BHPMSM. Further results are discussed in association with existing research, as well as family systems theory and implications for future research are offered

Fault-Tolerant, but Paradoxical Path-Finding in Physical and Conceptual Systems

We report our initial investigations into reliability and path-finding based models and propose future areas of interest. Inspired by broken sidewalks during on-campus construction projects, we develop two models for navigating this "unreliable network." These are based on a concept of "accumulating risk" backward from the destination, and both operate on directed acyclic graphs with a probability of failure associated with each edge. The first serves to introduce and has faults addressed by the second, more conservative model. Next, we show a paradox when these models are used to construct polynomials on conceptual networks, such as design processes and software development life cycles. When the risk of a network increases uniformly, the most reliable path changes from wider and longer to shorter and narrower. If we let professional inexperience--such as with entry level cooks and software developers--represent probability of edge failure, does this change in path imply that the novice should follow instructions with fewer "back-up" plans, yet those with alternative routes should be followed by the expert?Comment: 8 page

Bioinspired engineering of exploration systems for NASA and DoD

A new approach called bioinspired engineering of exploration systems (BEES) and its value for solving pressing NASA and DoD needs are described. Insects (for example honeybees and dragonflies) cope remarkably well with their world, despite possessing a brain containing less than 0.01% as many neurons as the human brain. Although most insects have immobile eyes with fixed focus optics and lack stereo vision, they use a number of ingenious, computationally simple strategies for perceiving their world in three dimensions and navigating successfully within it. We are distilling selected insect-inspired strategies to obtain novel solutions for navigation, hazard avoidance, altitude hold, stable flight, terrain following, and gentle deployment of payload. Such functionality provides potential solutions for future autonomous robotic space and planetary explorers. A BEES approach to developing lightweight low-power autonomous flight systems should be useful for flight control of such biomorphic flyers for both NASA and DoD needs. Recent biological studies of mammalian retinas confirm that representations of multiple features of the visual world are systematically parsed and processed in parallel. Features are mapped to a stack of cellular strata within the retina. Each of these representations can be efficiently modeled in semiconductor cellular nonlinear network (CNN) chips. We describe recent breakthroughs in exploring the feasibility of the unique blending of insect strategies of navigation with mammalian visual search, pattern recognition, and image understanding into hybrid biomorphic flyers for future planetary and terrestrial applications. We describe a few future mission scenarios for Mars exploration, uniquely enabled by these newly developed biomorphic flyers

A Swiss army knife?:How science challenges our understanding of mindfulness in the workplace

While mindfulness has demonstrated many advantages in the workplace, this paper addresses important issues around the future of mindfulness at work. We begin by clarifying our understanding of mindfulness in the workplace. This is followed by a discussion on the problematic nature of mindfulness-based interventions in workplaces and potential guidance is provided for those who intend to undertake interventions. Finally, we examine how workplaces are naturalistic settings that differ in how they can nurture mindfulness in employees. Ultimately this paper provides organizations and practitioners insight into potential issues in navigating mindfulness at work, while also providing cautionary optimism around the future of mindfulness in the workplace