Deploying the NASA Valkyrie Humanoid for IED Response: An Initial Approach and Evaluation Summary

As part of a feasibility study, this paper shows the NASA Valkyrie humanoid robot performing an end-to-end improvised explosive device (IED) response task. To demonstrate and evaluate robot capabilities, sub-tasks highlight different locomotion, manipulation, and perception requirements: traversing uneven terrain, passing through a narrow passageway, opening a car door, retrieving a suspected IED, and securing the IED in a total containment vessel (TCV). For each sub-task, a description of the technical approach and the hidden challenges that were overcome during development are presented. The discussion of results, which explicitly includes existing limitations, is aimed at motivating continued research and development to enable practical deployment of humanoid robots for IED response. For instance, the data shows that operator pauses contribute to 50\% of the total completion time, which implies that further work is needed on user interfaces for increasing task completion efficiency.Comment: 2019 IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robot

Compliance-based Affordance Templates for remote mobile manipulation

This thesis details the implementation of Affordance Templates with a compliance controller to pseudo-autonomously perform complex contact tasks in industrial environments. Multiple action planning methods were evaluated, and ATs were chosen as the best option for industry use due to their intuitive user interface. Two Affordance Template packages were implemented and evaluated to determine the package best suited for use by novice operators. That package was then implemented in conjunction with a compliance controller in the form of a remote demonstration to showcase reduction in operator cognitive burden by automatically managing contact forces and significant command latency (approx 250 ms) during task performance. The results showed that ATs greatly reduced task execution time and number of errors compared to manual control, with added compliance reducing AT set up time. Finally, this thesis introduces Affordance Primitives, which were created to increase the flexibility of Affordance Templates and present a path for future development in the field of automated task planning.Mechanical Engineerin

Infobesity: How Does Information Overload From Digital Technologies Affect Our Relationship With Jesus

My research project is based on the NPO of how information overload from digital technologies affects our relationship with Jesus, according to Mark 12:30-31, and how followers of Jesus can redeem digital spaces. My key insights of the research led me to the conclusion digital information overload is based on the lack of moderation and regulation of digital technologies as followers of Jesus. Furthermore, my research led me to the effects of information overload to five categories Jesus speaks of in Mark 12:30-31 of our hearts (emotions), soul (identity), mind (cognitive reasoning), strength (physical), and relationships (social skills) according to the level of digital consumption per day. I call this phenomenon Infobesity. In response, this led me to design a spiritual faith-based self-assessment resource for followers of Jesus called the Infobesity Assessment. The Infobesity Assessment is designed to empower digital users to understand their digital practices, increase their digital awareness, and how to redeem digital spaces as followers of Jesus. The design of the assessment has specialized assessments for students, parents, pastors, and the general public. As the former Next Generation Director for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, I was able to use an action-based research approach with the Infobesity Assessment to access various feedback loops across the nation. This led to further data and study of digital technologies and redemptive practices. In addition, the research has allowed me to confirm a book contract to resource the broader Christian community living in a digital world

Sonic utopia and social dystopia in the music of Hendrix, Reznor and Deadmau5

Twentieth-century popular music is fundamentally associated with electronics in its creation and recording, consumption, modes of dissemination, and playback. Traditional musical analysis, placing primacy on notated music, generally focuses on harmony, melody, and form, with issues of timbre and postproduction effects remaining largely unstudied. Interdisciplinary methodological practices address these limitations and can help broaden the analytical scope of popular idioms. Grounded in Jacques Attali's critical theories about the political economy of music, this dissertation investigates how the subversive noise of electronic sound challenges a controlling order and predicts broad cultural realignment. This study demonstrates how electronic noise, as an extra-musical element, creates modern soundscapes that require a new mapping of musical form and social intent. I further argue that the use of electronics in popular music signifies a technologically-obsessed postwar American culture moving rapidly towards an online digital revolution. I examine how electronic music technology introduces new sounds concurrent with generational shifts, projects imagined utopian and dystopian futures, and engages the tension between automated modern life and emotionally validating musical communities in real and virtual spaces. Chapter One synthesizes this interdisciplinary American studies project with the growing scholarship of sound studies in order to construct theoretical models for popular music analysis drawn from the fields of musicology, history, and science and technology studies. Chapter Two traces the emergence of the electronic synthesizer as a new sound that facilitated the transition of a technological postwar American culture into the politicized counterculture of the 1960s. The following three chapters provide case studies of individual popular artists' use of electronic music technology to express societal and political discontent: 1) Jimi Hendrix's application of distortion and stereo effects to narrate an Afrofuturist consciousness in the 1960s; 2) Trent Reznor's aggressive industrial rejection of Conservatism in the 1980s; and 3) Deadmau5's mediation of online life through computer-based production and performance in the 2000s. Lastly, this study extends existing discussions within sound studies to consider the cultural implications of music technology, noise politics, electronic timbre, multitrack audio, digital analytical techniques and online communities built through social media

Urban environments and new media : redefining a fitness facility through a technologically mediated space

Tese de mestrado. Multimédia. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Advanced automation for space missions: Technical summary

Several representative missions which would require extensive applications of machine intelligence were identified and analyzed. The technologies which must be developed to accomplish these types of missions are discussed. These technologies include man-machine communication, space manufacturing, teleoperators, and robot systems

The OODA loop and Salafi-Jihadi inspired home-grown terrorism: a tactic of asymmetric warfare

This thesis applied John Boyd’s Observe-Orientate-Decide-Act loop as an adaptable strategic model of terrorism to case study research methodology, to test the theory that Salafi-Jihadi inspired home-grown terrorism is a tactic of asymmetric warfare. The case studies examined al Qaeda’s adaptation into a dynamic, regenerative brand and its ability to penetrate Western moral boundaries. The concept of manoeuvring exploiting Western moral boundaries while simultaneously inspiring new followers is described as moral manoeuvrability

Missional Leadership

The purpose and aim of this book is to develop an appropriate leadership model for missional churches. This implies a positioning of this book within the broader theology of mission and a consensus on the theology of the Missio Dei, originating at the 1952 conference of the International Missionary Council in Willingen, Germany. In this approach to the theology of mission, mission is understood as the work of the Trinitarian God, and the church is privileged to participate in God’s mission. It is against this background that the growing consensus on missional ecclesiology challenges leadership models developed for a different time and a different kind of church (with less or no emphasis on the missional character of the church). The aim is to reflect theologically on the role of leadership in the missional church. What kind of ideas about power, authority and leadership are appropriate for a missional church? New missional challenges demand new ideas about missional leadership. Church organisation and leadership reflects a theological position – there is a strong relation between ecclesiology and church organisation. The nature of the church provides the framework to understand the character of the church. What the church is determines what the church does. The church organises what it does and agrees on rules that regulate ministries and organisation. Issues such as the way the church organises and governs what it does, and thus church leadership, need to be answered against this background and understanding. Church polity and organisation, as well as leadership, must reflect the identity, calling, life and order of the church. This book, therefore, addresses life in the Trinity, participation in the Missio Dei and contours of the missional church as the point of entry to develop leadership insights. It contributes towards the development of an appropriate model of leadership for missional churches, because although recent developments in the theology of mission comprehensively addressed the area of missional ecclesiology, there is a gap in the development of a leadership model based on the concept of authority in the missional church