49,982 research outputs found
The Whole World in Your Hand: Active and Interactive Segmentation
Object segmentation is a fundamental problem
in computer vision and a powerful resource for
development. This paper presents three embodied approaches to the visual segmentation of objects. Each approach to segmentation is aided
by the presence of a hand or arm in the proximity of the object to be segmented. The first
approach is suitable for a robotic system, where
the robot can use its arm to evoke object motion. The second method operates on a wearable system, viewing the world from a human's
perspective, with instrumentation to help detect
and segment objects that are held in the wearer's
hand. The third method operates when observing
a human teacher, locating periodic motion (finger/arm/object waving or tapping) and using it
as a seed for segmentation. We show that object segmentation can serve as a key resource for
development by demonstrating methods that exploit high-quality object segmentations to develop
both low-level vision capabilities (specialized feature detectors) and high-level vision capabilities
(object recognition and localization)
Being-in-the-world-with: Presence Meets Social And Cognitive Neuroscience
In this chapter we will discuss the concepts of “presence” (Inner Presence) and “social presence” (Co-presence) within a cognitive and ecological perspective. Specifically, we claim that the concepts of “presence” and “social presence” are the possible links between self, action, communication and culture. In the first section we will provide a capsule view of Heidegger’s work by examining the two main features of the Heideggerian concept of “being”: spatiality and “being with”. We argue that different visions from social and cognitive sciences – Situated Cognition, Embodied Cognition, Enactive Approach, Situated Simulation, Covert Imitation - and discoveries from neuroscience – Mirror and Canonical Neurons - have many contact points with this view. In particular, these data suggest that our conceptual system dynamically produces contextualized representations (simulations) that support grounded action in different situations. This is allowed by a common coding – the motor code – shared by perception, action and concepts. This common coding also allows the subject for natively recognizing actions done by other selves within the phenomenological contents. In this picture we argue that the role of presence and social presence is to allow the process of self-identification through the separation between “self” and “other,” and between “internal” and “external”. Finally, implications of this position for communication and media studies are discussed by way of conclusion
Explorations in engagement for humans and robots
This paper explores the concept of engagement, the process by which
individuals in an interaction start, maintain and end their perceived
connection to one another. The paper reports on one aspect of engagement among
human interactors--the effect of tracking faces during an interaction. It also
describes the architecture of a robot that can participate in conversational,
collaborative interactions with engagement gestures. Finally, the paper reports
on findings of experiments with human participants who interacted with a robot
when it either performed or did not perform engagement gestures. Results of the
human-robot studies indicate that people become engaged with robots: they
direct their attention to the robot more often in interactions where engagement
gestures are present, and they find interactions more appropriate when
engagement gestures are present than when they are not.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures, 3 table
Learning Robot Activities from First-Person Human Videos Using Convolutional Future Regression
We design a new approach that allows robot learning of new activities from
unlabeled human example videos. Given videos of humans executing the same
activity from a human's viewpoint (i.e., first-person videos), our objective is
to make the robot learn the temporal structure of the activity as its future
regression network, and learn to transfer such model for its own motor
execution. We present a new deep learning model: We extend the state-of-the-art
convolutional object detection network for the representation/estimation of
human hands in training videos, and newly introduce the concept of using a
fully convolutional network to regress (i.e., predict) the intermediate scene
representation corresponding to the future frame (e.g., 1-2 seconds later).
Combining these allows direct prediction of future locations of human hands and
objects, which enables the robot to infer the motor control plan using our
manipulation network. We experimentally confirm that our approach makes
learning of robot activities from unlabeled human interaction videos possible,
and demonstrate that our robot is able to execute the learned collaborative
activities in real-time directly based on its camera input
Materiality and human cognition
In this paper, we examine the role of materiality in human cognition. We address issues such as the ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause change in brain functions, and the spans of time required for brain functions to reorganize when interacting with material forms. We then contrast thinking through materiality with thinking about it. We discuss these in terms of their evolutionary significance and history as attested by stone tools and writing, material forms whose interaction endowed our lineage with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains
Property in the Moral Life of Human Beings
AbstractLiberal egalitarian political philosophers have often argued that private property is a legal convention dependent on the state and that complaints about taxation from entitlement theorists are therefore based on a conceptual mistake. But our capacity to grasp and use property concepts seems too embedded in human nature for this to be correct. This essay argues that many standard arguments that property is constitutively a legal convention fail, but that the opposition between conventionalists and natural rights theorists is outmoded. In doing this, the essay draws on recent literature in evolutionary biology and psychology. Even though modern property in a complex society involves legal conventions, those conventions should be sensitive to our natural dispositions concerning ownership.</jats:p
- …