Shaped-based IMU/Camera Tightly Coupled Object-level SLAM using Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filtering

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is a decades-old problem. The classical solution to this problem utilizes entities such as feature points that cannot facilitate the interactions between a robot and its environment (e.g., grabbing objects). Recent advances in deep learning have paved the way to accurately detect objects in the image under various illumination conditions and occlusions. This led to the emergence of object-level solutions to the SLAM problem. Current object-level methods depend on an initial solution using classical approaches and assume that errors are Gaussian. This research develops a standalone solution to object-level SLAM that integrates the data from a monocular camera and an IMU (available in low-end devices) using Rao Blackwellized Particle Filter (RBPF). RBPF does not assume Gaussian distribution for the error; thus, it can handle a variety of scenarios (such as when a symmetrical object with pose ambiguities is encountered). The developed method utilizes shape instead of texture; therefore, texture-less objects can be incorporated into the solution. In the particle weighing process, a new method is developed that utilizes the Intersection over the Union (IoU) area of the observed and projected boundaries of the object that does not require point-to-point correspondence. Thus, it is not prone to false data correspondences. Landmark initialization is another important challenge for object-level SLAM. In the state-of-the-art delayed initialization, the trajectory estimation only relies on the motion model provided by IMU mechanization (during the initialization), leading to large errors. In this thesis, two novel undelayed initializations are developed. One relies only on a monocular camera and IMU, and the other utilizes an ultrasonic rangefinder as well. The developed object-level SLAM is tested using wheeled robots and handheld devices, and an error (in the position) of 4.1 to 13.1 cm (0.005 to 0.028 of the total path length) has been obtained through extensive experiments using only a single object. These experiments are conducted in different indoor environments under different conditions (e.g. illumination). Further, it is shown that undelayed initialization using an ultrasonic sensor can reduce the algorithm's runtime by half

Maine Dance Curriculum Guide

Maine Dance Curriculum Guide by Dance Education in Maine Schools Department of Education, Augusta, Maine 1994. Contents: Message from the Commissioner / Forward / Acknowledgements / Preface - Maine Dance Heritage / Introduction / Pedagogy / Students with Special Needs / Major Premises / Evaluation / Scope and Sequence / App.A: Glossary of Terms / App.B: How to Establish Your School Dance Program / App.C: Complimentary Movement Disciplines / App.D.: Resource List / App.E.: Dance Education in Maine Schoolshttps://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/me_collection/1056/thumbnail.jp

Neuron-level dynamics of oscillatory network structure and markerless tracking of kinematics during grasping

Oscillatory synchrony is proposed to play an important role in flexible sensory-motor transformations. Thereby, it is assumed that changes in the oscillatory network structure at the level of single neurons lead to flexible information processing. Yet, how the oscillatory network structure at the neuron-level changes with different behavior remains elusive. To address this gap, we examined changes in the fronto-parietal oscillatory network structure at the neuron-level, while monkeys performed a flexible sensory-motor grasping task. We found that neurons formed separate subnetworks in the low frequency and beta bands. The beta subnetwork was active during steady states and the low frequency network during active states of the task, suggesting that both frequencies are mutually exclusive at the neuron-level. Furthermore, both frequency subnetworks reconfigured at the neuron-level for different grip and context conditions, which was mostly lost at any scale larger than neurons in the network. Our results, therefore, suggest that the oscillatory network structure at the neuron-level meets the necessary requirements for the coordination of flexible sensory-motor transformations. Supplementarily, tracking hand kinematics is a crucial experimental requirement to analyze neuronal control of grasp movements. To this end, a 3D markerless, gloveless hand tracking system was developed using computer vision and deep learning techniques. 2021-11-3

Between Air and Electricity

After the sound reproduction industry had claimed “perfect high fidelity” for sound recordings already at the beginning of the twentieth century, composers and sound artists challenged this perfection by tweaking microphones and loudspeakers to make them act as a musical instrument instead of a mere sound reproduction device. This book explores the instrumental use of microphones and loudspeakers in music beginning in the 1950s. The popular noise musician Merzbow, over-minimalist classic Alvin Lucier, cult instrument inventor Hugh Davies, and contemporary visual artist Lynn Pook made audible what was supposed to remain silent

Hollywood location shooting in San Francisco and the aesthetics of urban decline, 1945-1975

This dissertation traces the impact of Hollywood’s widening practice of location shooting on the representation of San Francisco between 1945 and 1975. Over these three decades, location shooting evolved from an ancillary practice to the dominant method of Hollywood feature filmmaking and throughout this period, San Francisco remained a key urban location on the forefront of this shift in production practice. For location shooting to expand so extensively required a combination of economic, technological, logistical, and aesthetic developments that made shooting in San Francisco a viable strategy in comparison to the established method of shooting primarily on the sound stages and back lots of Los Angeles studios. New location production techniques intersected with a fundamental postwar shift in America’s image of its cities. Despite San Francisco’s marked stability compared to other U.S. urban centers, Hollywood depictions of the city grew bleaker as the urban crisis degraded the image of the city in American popular thought. This dissertation relies on archival research into the production history of several American feature films and television series shot partially or entirely in San Francisco, drawn from The Margaret Herrick Library, University of Southern California’s Warner Brothers Archives, University of California-Los Angeles Special Collections, and the San Francisco History Center of The San Francisco Public Library. Additional research in Variety and American Cinematographer provides a larger context for changes in Hollywood filmmaking practices as well as the production, critical reception, and box office success of specific features. Each chapter examines how major shifts in Hollywood production methods shaped urban location shooting, particularly in San Francisco. The chapters conclude with case studies of films shot in San Francisco that reveal how specific location production methods approached the challenges and aesthetic choices encountered in San Francisco. These film and television texts construct an urban paradigm indicative of both filmmaking practices and cultural perceptions of the city.Radio-Television-Fil

Between Air and Electricity

After the sound reproduction industry had claimed “perfect high fidelity” for sound recordings already at the beginning of the twentieth century, composers and sound artists challenged this perfection by tweaking microphones and loudspeakers to make them act as a musical instrument instead of a mere sound reproduction device. This book explores the instrumental use of microphones and loudspeakers in music beginning in the 1950s. The popular noise musician Merzbow, over-minimalist classic Alvin Lucier, cult instrument inventor Hugh Davies, and contemporary visual artist Lynn Pook made audible what was supposed to remain silent

Learning How to Listen\u27: Analyzing Style and Meaning in the Music of Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson

Learning How to Listen\u27: Analyzing Style and Meaning in the Music of Abbey Lincoln, Nina Simone and Cassandra Wilson examines the similarities of singing styles and core narrative traits in the original songs of three African American women vocalist-composers celebrated within the jazz idiom. Drawing on years of ethnographic research, including over 150 hours of personal interviews with musicians, attendance of jazz concerts and festivals both domestic and abroad, and a three-year listening journal (based on live performances and recordings), \u27Learning How to Listen\u27 is an Africana cultural studies product informed by vibrant multidisciplinary scholarship that bridges Jazz studies, Linguistics and African American history and literary studies. The latter especially extends the project\u27s close relationship to twentieth-century black literary traditions found in poetry, prose, and as witnessed here, also song lyrics. The introduction highlights the significance of Lincoln (1930-2010), Simone (1933-2003) and Wilson (b. 1955) to the American music canon, and articulates the dissertation\u27s distinctive contribution to the field of black music studies, addressing the work\u27s methodology and the scope of primary chapters which provide an analysis of the: a) singing voice; b) philosophical authorial voice and c) performance style specifically in relation to \u27Re-memory\u27 songs which bear witness to an African heritage. Chapter Two engages two distinct modes of discourse generated on Lincoln, Simone and Wilson by jazz critics and jazz musicians. Chapter Three proves the applicability and efficacy of linguistics to the music of Lincoln, Simone and Wilson by examining the collective approach to melorhythm and tonal semantics and the phonological style markers employed by each: Lincoln\u27s phonosemantics; Simone\u27s microtonality; and Wilson\u27s polytonality. Since a significant portion of the original songs by these artists engage a plethora of black women\u27s socio-political issues, Chapter Four analyzes lyrics that demonstrate a gendered philosophical outlook I refer to as womanist autoethno-graphy. Chapters Five and Six examines the creative impulse shared by these artists to bear witness to their African heritage in \u27Re-memory\u27 (a term coined by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison) songs that both invoke and re-imagine an African past and celebrate an African present and future. It is my contention that the cultural study of black music is uniquely positioned to delineate the principles and mechanisms by which African diasporic music is connected by similar aesthetic philosophies. Thus, in the seventh and final chapter my project ultimately suggests a model for expanding discourses about black women\u27s music. My term Afrodiasporic \u27Voicing,\u27 introduced in the conclusion, is shorthand for the aural and authorial cultural elements that uniquely characterize black women\u27s music across genres and nations. It implies that black American women singer-songwriters and their musical sisters in the African diaspora share conceptual approaches to music-making processes in spite of geographic or linguistic differences

American transcendental vision: Emerson to Chaplin

Ralph Waldo Emerson\u27s publication of Nature in 1836 began a process of creating a new condition of American thinking, severed from European cultural and intellectual influences. The subsequent lectures The American Scholar and The Divinity School Address furthered this process, calling for an original American literature. Emerson\u27s writing called consistently for poets with the ability to see past the material, apparent world to the world of eternal forms, which shaped nature in accordance with a divine moral imperative. Through this connection, man-as-poet would discover God in himself. In short, Emerson effectively transferred divinity from Unitarian doctrine to the individual, thereby asserting each individual as the center of his own moral universe. Emerson\u27s prose utilizes visual metaphors to express ideas which escape conventional language usage. The poet, according to Emerson, would have the ability to trace words back to their original associations with things, and thus reveal the true world of facts. His emphasis on seeing (in all aspects of that term) dominates Emerson\u27s writing and determines an aesthetic which is as much visual as it is verbal. Emerson\u27s theories found disciples in Thoreau and Whitman, but the most interesting extension of his aesthetic came with the development of the motion picture. In the early twentieth century, D. W. Griffith singlehandedly changed the status of films from sideshow amusements to narrative art. Griffith\u27s techniques for creating visual narrative were intuitive and inspired from his imagination, an essential quality of the Emersonian poet. Griffith\u27s own moral imperative was similar to Emerson\u27s; he envisioned a medium which could educate more effectively than language. Charles Chaplin was, from 1920 through 1936, the most recognizable figure in the world because of his unique screen comedies. Chaplin\u27s enduring character, the Tramp, evokes much of Emerson\u27s qualities of the poet in that he envisioned the world beyond the apparent, and creatively reconstituted this world in the way Emerson had done with visual metaphor. Chaplin combined the humanism of Emerson with the democratic possibilities of Whitman to create a uniquely American cinema with universal appeal. Chaplin\u27s body of work remains America\u27s most logical extension of Emersonian philosophy

Concert and disconcertion: the music of relationality in the cinema of Claire Denis

This thesis argues that the interest which the films of Claire Denis display in the ever-shifting modes of relations between people is illustrated through analysis of how music is used throughout her corpus of feature films. Denis draws on an extremely eclectic palette of musical styles, and the thesis proposes that these varying musical modalities are central to her treatment of relational issues, as are the ways in which she deploys her chosen musical selections. In this thesis, I develop a number of analytical tools. I draw on the thinking of Jacques Rancière and Jean-Luc Nancy with regard to questions of relationality, community and the dissensual elements which inform both interpersonal relationships and artistic creativity. I adapt the work of Kathryn Lachman on concepts of polyphony and counterpoint in literature for application to the oeuvre of Denis, as I do the writings of Michel Chion on music in film, especially his conceptualization of empathetic modes of cinematic music. The thesis concludes that music in the work of Claire Denis operates in a mode which diverges significantly from the tenets of existing film music theory. Music in a Denis film is at the same time far more fragmentary and yet much more thoroughly integrated than allowed for by standard conceptualizations. It plays hand-in-hand with the challenges and invitations which are a feature of the cinema of Denis