Electrophysiologic assessment of (central) auditory processing disorder in children with non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate

Session 5aPP - Psychological and Physiological Acoustics: Auditory Function, Mechanisms, and Models (Poster Session)Cleft of the lip and/or palate is a common congenital craniofacial malformation worldwide, particularly non-syndromic cleft lip and/or palate (NSCL/P). Though middle ear deficits in this population have been universally noted in numerous studies, other auditory problems including inner ear deficits or cortical dysfunction are rarely reported. A higher prevalence of educational problems has been noted in children with NSCL/P compared to craniofacially normal children. These high level cognitive difficulties cannot be entirely attributed to peripheral hearing loss. Recently it has been suggested that children with NSCLP may be more prone to abnormalities in the auditory cortex. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether school age children with (NSCL/P) have a higher prevalence of indications of (central) auditory processing disorder [(C)APD] compared to normal age matched controls when assessed using auditory event-related potential (ERP) techniques. School children (6 to 15 years) with NSCL/P and normal controls with matched age and gender were recruited. Auditory ERP recordings included auditory brainstem response and late event-related potentials, including the P1-N1-P2 complex and P300 waveforms. Initial findings from the present study are presented and their implications for further research in this area —and clinical intervention—are outlined. © 2012 Acoustical Society of Americapublished_or_final_versio

Kinematics and Robot Design IV, KaRD2021

This volume collects the papers published on the special issue “Kinematics and Robot Design IV, KaRD2021” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/robotics/special_issues/KaRD2021), which is the forth edition of the KaRD special-issue series, hosted by the open-access journal “MDPI Robotics”. KaRD series is an open environment where researchers can present their works and discuss all the topics focused on the many aspects that involve kinematics in the design of robotic/automatic systems. Kinematics is so intimately related to the design of robotic/automatic systems that the admitted topics of the KaRD series practically cover all the subjects normally present in well-established international conferences on “mechanisms and robotics”. KaRD2021, after the peer-review process, accepted 12 papers. The accepted papers cover some theoretical and many design/applicative aspects

Self-initialization and recovery for uninterrupted tracking in vision-guided micromanipulation

In this paper, we propose a workflow algorithm for timely tracking of the tool tip during cell manipulation using a template-based approach augmented with low level feature detection. Doing so addresses the problem of adverse influences on template-based tracking during tool-cell interaction while maintaining an efficient track-servo framework. This consideration is important in developing autonomous robotic vision-guided micromanipulators. Our method facilitates vision-guided micromanipulation autonomously without manual interventions even during tool-cell interaction. This is done by decomposing the process to four scenarios that operate on their respective mode. The self-initializing mode is first used to localize and focus a region of interest (ROI) which the tip lies in. Once in focus, the tip is manipulated using a unified visual track-servo template-based approach. A reinitialization mechanism will be triggered to prevent tracking from being interrupted by partial cell occlusion of the tracking ROI. This mechanism uses the self-initializing concept combining motion cue and low-level feature detection to localize the needle tip. Following the reinitialization, we further recover tracking of the needle tip using a mechanism that updates the base template. This adaptive approach ensures uninterrupted tracking even when the cell is interacting with the tool and under deformation. Results demonstrated that with the newly incorporated mechanisms, the localized position improved from an error of more than 50% to less than 10% of the specimen size. When there is no specimen in the scene the new workflow shows no adverse effect on the localization through 270 tracked frames. By incorporating reinitialization and recovery to this workflow algorithm, we hope to initiate the first step towards uncalibrated autonomous vision-guided micromanipulation process

First Annual Workshop on Space Operations Automation and Robotics (SOAR 87)

Several topics relative to automation and robotics technology are discussed. Automation of checkout, ground support, and logistics; automated software development; man-machine interfaces; neural networks; systems engineering and distributed/parallel processing architectures; and artificial intelligence/expert systems are among the topics covered