94,987 research outputs found
Monte Carlo Localization in Hand-Drawn Maps
Robot localization is a one of the most important problems in robotics. Most
of the existing approaches assume that the map of the environment is available
beforehand and focus on accurate metrical localization. In this paper, we
address the localization problem when the map of the environment is not present
beforehand, and the robot relies on a hand-drawn map from a non-expert user. We
addressed this problem by expressing the robot pose in the pixel coordinate and
simultaneously estimate a local deformation of the hand-drawn map. Experiments
show that we are able to localize the robot in the correct room with a
robustness up to 80
Robot Navigation in Unseen Spaces using an Abstract Map
Human navigation in built environments depends on symbolic spatial
information which has unrealised potential to enhance robot navigation
capabilities. Information sources such as labels, signs, maps, planners, spoken
directions, and navigational gestures communicate a wealth of spatial
information to the navigators of built environments; a wealth of information
that robots typically ignore. We present a robot navigation system that uses
the same symbolic spatial information employed by humans to purposefully
navigate in unseen built environments with a level of performance comparable to
humans. The navigation system uses a novel data structure called the abstract
map to imagine malleable spatial models for unseen spaces from spatial symbols.
Sensorimotor perceptions from a robot are then employed to provide purposeful
navigation to symbolic goal locations in the unseen environment. We show how a
dynamic system can be used to create malleable spatial models for the abstract
map, and provide an open source implementation to encourage future work in the
area of symbolic navigation. Symbolic navigation performance of humans and a
robot is evaluated in a real-world built environment. The paper concludes with
a qualitative analysis of human navigation strategies, providing further
insights into how the symbolic navigation capabilities of robots in unseen
built environments can be improved in the future.Comment: 15 pages, published in IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and
Developmental Systems (http://doi.org/10.1109/TCDS.2020.2993855), see
https://btalb.github.io/abstract_map/ for access to softwar
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Landscapes and Sublime Memories: Revisiting Liang Xiaosheng's "A Land of Wonder and Mystery"
This essay suggests memory studies, ecocriticism, and trauma studies as new avenues for the study of rusticated youth narratives. Towards reaching this goal, I first introduce a meditation on memory by Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), especially his sketch of memory and imagination with classical Greek philosophy. His ideas on affective and practical memories are then telescoped into individual and communal memories. Onze Fleurs (Wo shiyi, 2011), directed by Wang Xiaoshuai (1966- ), and The River without Buoys (Meiyou hangbiao de heliu, 1984), directed by Wu Tianming (1939-2014) provide illustrative examples of each. Building upon these notions of personal memory I turn to the popular memory of rustication, especially that of the natural environment in Liang Xiaosheng's "A Land of Wonder and Mystery" ("Zhe shi yipian shenqi de tudi," 1985). More specifically I examine the evocation of the ghost marsh, narratives of departure, the family left in the city, and the menace of nature in Liang's short story to force not only a reconsideration of rustication, but also of nature in contemporary China. Moreover, in addition to noting the questioning of the sanitization of rusticated memories as a means of conforming to dominant state ideological discourses, I introduce a comparison of the story of doomed rusticated youth to the doomed youth in Sean Penn's Into the Wild, in order to force a comparison of youth and the environment often overlooked in rusticated youth studies. Finally, this essay concludes by suggesting that by more carefully considering the interplay between memory and place more nuanced and perhaps more ecologically and critically engaged assessments of rusticated youth fiction become possible
Virginia Woolf: moments of being
Put before the labyrinth and proliferation of critical perspectives,
studies and readings on Virginia Woolf, entangled in articulations of teleologies
and epistemologies, the critic faces a question: from where should she/he
start writing, on what and from which critical perspective? These were the
circumstances that dictated my choice of writing on “A Sketch of the Past”,
published in Moments of Being – A Collection of Autobiographical Writing, (1976,
1985) and of analysing the narrative strategies used by the author to tell herself,
to construct her identity and power, giving voice and authority to herself as a
discursive formation
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'“The result can scarcely fail to amuse even the most gloomy of war pessimists”: The Strand Magazine and the First World War'
A simple model for the evolution of molecular codes driven by the interplay of accuracy, diversity and cost
Molecular codes translate information written in one type of molecules into
another molecular language. We introduce a simple model that treats molecular
codes as noisy information channels. An optimal code is a channel that conveys
information accurately and efficiently while keeping down the impact of errors.
The equipoise of the three conflicting needs, for minimal error-load, minimal
cost of resources and maximal diversity of vocabulary, defines the fitness of
the code. The model suggests a mechanism for the emergence of a code when
evolution varies the parameters that control this equipoise and the mapping
between the two molecular languages becomes non-random. This mechanism is
demonstrated by a simple toy model that is formally equivalent to a mean-field
Ising magnet.Comment: Keywords: molecular codes, rate-distortion theory, biological
information channels, stochastic maps, genetic code, genetic network
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