Small scale implementation of a robotic urban search and rescue network

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2012With the advancement of robotics technologies, it is now possible to use robots for high risk jobs that have historically been accomplished by humans. One such example is the use of robots for Urban Search and Rescue (USR): finding chemical spills, fires, or human survivors in disaster areas. With the ability to include inexpensive wireless transceivers, it is possible to network numerous robots as part of a swarm that can explore an area much more expeditiously than a single robot can. With the inclusion of wireless capabilities comes the necessity to create a protocol for the communication between robots. Also necessary is the creation of an exploration protocol that allows the network of robots to explore such a building or search area in as little time as possible yet as accurately as possible. This thesis covers the development of such a network of robots, starting with the hardware/software co-design, the individual robots' control mechanisms, and their mapping and communications protocols

Role of smartphone devices in motivation to study in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Aims The sudden COVID-19 pandemic experienced globally has caused many schools and institutions of higher learning to resort to fully online teaching and learning throughout the world. Since online teaching is essentially a student-centered learning approach, students’ motivational level plays an important role in making teaching protocols effective. This study aimed to know the level of motivation to study using a smartphone in the COVID-19 pandemic. Instrument & Methods This descriptive study was carried out in 2020 on 75 Indonesian Academy of Administrative Management College students who have smartphones. These students were selected by random sampling method. Data were collected using a researcher�made questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS 17 software using Pearson correlation coefficient and simple linear regression test. Findings There was a positive and significant correlation between the mean score of smartphone usage and the mean score of study motivation (r=0.84; p=0.0001). The effect of smartphone uses on the study motivation in the Covid-19 pandemic was 61.7% (R2=0.617). Conclusion With the increasing use of smartphones, the motivation to learn during pandemic COVID-19 also increased

Towards a cyber physical system for personalised and automatic OSA treatment

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a breathing disorder that takes place in the course of the sleep and is produced by a complete or a partial obstruction of the upper airway that manifests itself as frequent breathing stops and starts during the sleep. The real-time evaluation of whether or not a patient is undergoing OSA episode is a very important task in medicine in many scenarios, as for example for making instantaneous pressure adjustments that should take place when Automatic Positive Airway Pressure (APAP) devices are used during the treatment of OSA. In this paper the design of a possible Cyber Physical System (CPS) suited to real-time monitoring of OSA is described, and its software architecture and possible hardware sensing components are detailed. It should be emphasized here that this paper does not deal with a full CPS, rather with a software part of it under a set of assumptions on the environment. The paper also reports some preliminary experiments about the cognitive and learning capabilities of the designed CPS involving its use on a publicly available sleep apnea database

Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics

Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.publishe

A study on the ephemeral nature of knowledge shared within multiagent systems

Achieving knowledge sharing within an artificial swarm system could lead to significant development in autonomous multiagent and robotic systems research and realize collective intelligence. However, this is difficult to achieve since there is no generic framework to transfer skills between agents other than a query-response-based approach. Moreover, natural living systems have a "forgetfulness" property for everything they learn. Analyzing such ephemeral nature (temporal memory properties of new knowledge gained) in artificial systems has never been studied in the literature. We propose a behavior tree-based framework to realize a query-response mechanism for transferring skills encoded as the condition-action control sub-flow of that portion of the knowledge between agents to fill this gap. We simulate a multiagent group with different initial knowledge on a foraging mission. While performing basic operations, each robot queries other robots to respond to an unknown condition. The responding robot shares the control actions by sharing a portion of the behavior tree that addresses the queries. Specifically, we investigate the ephemeral nature of the new knowledge gained through such a framework, where the knowledge gained by the agent is either limited due to memory or is forgotten over time. Our investigations show that knowledge grows proportionally with the duration of remembrance, which is trivial. However, we found minimal impact on knowledge growth due to memory. We compare these cases against a baseline that involved full knowledge pre-coded on all agents. We found that knowledge-sharing strived to match the baseline condition by sharing and achieving knowledge growth as a collective system.Comment: In Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics 2022 (SWARM 5th 2022

Death, the Wintersmith and Dorfl : The Human in the Non-Human – Exploring Characters and Themes in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) oli Iso-Britannian menestyneimpiä kirjailijoita. Elämänsä aikana hän julkaisi 41 romaania, jotka sijoittuvat hänen Discworld-fantasiasarjaansa ja samannimiseen fantasiamaailmaan. Lisäksi hän kirjoitti useita teoksia kyseisen sarjan oheiskirjallisuudeksi, ja myös muita romaaneja ja tarinoita. Uransa aikana Pratchett tuli tunnetuksi Alzheimerin tautiin sairastuneiden puolestapuhujana kerrottuaan diagnoosistaan julkisuudessa vuonna 2007. Hän oli humanisti, mikä näkyy myös hänen romaaneissaan ja niiden teemoissa. Tutkielmassani käsittelen Pratchettin ihmiskuvaa kolmen hänen Discworld-sarjansa hahmon avulla. Hahmot, joita tutkimuksessa tarkastelen ovat Death, kuoleman henkilöitymä; wintersmith [sic], talven henkilöitymä; ja golem Dorfl. Golem on juutalaisessa kansanperinteessä esiintyvä savesta muotoiltu olento. Tutkielmani luo katsauksen Pratchettin romaanien teemoihin ja hahmoihin, sekä siihen, miten niissä kohdataan ihmiselämän kysymyksiä ja niiden mahdollisia vastauksia. Tutkimukseni aineisto koostuu neljästä Discworld-sarjan romaanista: Mort (1987), Reaper Man (1992), Feet of Clay (1997) ja Wintersmith (2006). Hahmoja ja romaanien teemoja tarkastellaan lähiluvun ja hahmo- sekä kirjallisuusanalyysin avulla. Piirteitä, joita hahmoissa tutkitaan, ovat ulkonäkö, ääni, suhde muihin hahmoihin, hahmopiirteet ja pronominit. Hahmojen tarkastelussa hyödynnettävät kategoriat ja tutkimuksen käyttämä määritelmä hahmosta pohjautuvat Uri Margolinin luonnehdintaan fiktiivisistä hahmoista epätodellisina henkilöinä (non-actual persons). Tutkittavien romaanien teemat ja tarkasteltavien hahmojen inhimilliset piirteet taustoittuvat Terry Pratchettin humanistiseen vakaumukseen. Deathin, wintersmithin ja Dorflin hahmojen avulla romaaneissa pohditaan ihmisyyttä ja inhimillisyyttä. Tutkimuksestani käy ilmi, että romaaneissa, joissa Death on päähenkilönä (Mort ja Reaper Man), korostuu ihmiselämän rajallisuus, sekä ajatus oikeuden ja armon sidoksellisuudesta yksilöön ja hänen tekoihinsa. Pratchett tuo esiin näiden käsitteiden inhimillisen alkuperän vastoin käsitystä niistä korkeamman olennon asettamina voimina. Wintersmith-romaanissa puolestaan näytetään, että ihminen on muutakin kuin keho ja aivot. Romaanin ja wintersmithin hahmon kautta Pratchett korostaa, että ihmiset tarvitsevat toisia ihmisiä ja tarinoita kasvaakseen tasapainoisiksi henkilöiksi. Feet of Clay -romaanissa Dorflin hahmon kautta pohditaan yksilön oikeuksia ja velvollisuuksia, sekä valinnanvapauden mukanaan tuomaa moraalista vastuuta. Golemeita kohdellaan orjina ja niiden on noudatettava käskyjä, joita ne saavat omistajiltaan ja paperiliuskoista (chem), jotka pohjautuvat uskonnollisiin teksteihin. Romaanissa Dorfl saa vapaan tahdon ja ryhtyy korostamaan omien valintojen ja tekojen moraalista vastuuta. Tutkimuksen kohteena olevat hahmot ja romaanit heijastavat Pratchettin humanistisia arvoja. Discworld-romaaneissa käsitellyt teemat ohjaavat lukijoiden ajattelua kohti pohdintaa yksilön vapauksista ja oikeuksista, sekä ihmisenä olemisen vahvuuksista ja heikkouksista. Hahmoanalyysi työkaluna mahdollistaa teemojen syvällisen käsittelyn ja näin kiinnostavan näkökulman teoksiin ja Pratchettin arvoihin

Reflex assisted walking for a hexapod robot

Abstract: This paper describes the performance of a hexapod robot that uses low level leg reflexes to aid in walking over uneven terrain, and is currently being developed at the University of Johannesburg. The goal of this research is a robot able to deploy in both the inspection and search and rescue roles, within an underground mine environment. The robot has six legs with three degrees of freedom per leg, and is equipped with a two degree of freedom arm with a sensor payload attached to a pan-tilt system. Throughout the development of this new robot the Design Science Research Methodology was used to guide the decision making process. This paper presents an overview of the robot, including the control architecture, and the testing conducted to verify the robot’s performance when walking over a laboratory test field

Review on Odor Localization

In this paper, the importance of odor localization isexplained. The researchers that investigated the experimentsand applications of odor localization using static sensors, mobilesensors (that were integrated in single robot, multi robot, andswarm robot) are described. However, there are some difficultiesfaced by the researchers in applying the mobile robots in the realsituation, such as: the speed of mobile robots are not as fast asthe odor patches transporting and the use of more than onesensor in mobile robot can make noises or errors. In the future,the plume finding in the uncertain environment and thechallenges mentioned above will be the authors’ consideration