36,151 research outputs found
View management for lifelong visual maps
The time complexity of making observations and loop closures in a graph-based
visual SLAM system is a function of the number of views stored. Clever
algorithms, such as approximate nearest neighbor search, can make this function
sub-linear. Despite this, over time the number of views can still grow to a
point at which the speed and/or accuracy of the system becomes unacceptable,
especially in computation- and memory-constrained SLAM systems. However, not
all views are created equal. Some views are rarely observed, because they have
been created in an unusual lighting condition, or from low quality images, or
in a location whose appearance has changed. These views can be removed to
improve the overall performance of a SLAM system. In this paper, we propose a
method for pruning views in a visual SLAM system to maintain its speed and
accuracy for long term use.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
(IROS), 201
Continual Reinforcement Learning in 3D Non-stationary Environments
High-dimensional always-changing environments constitute a hard challenge for
current reinforcement learning techniques. Artificial agents, nowadays, are
often trained off-line in very static and controlled conditions in simulation
such that training observations can be thought as sampled i.i.d. from the
entire observations space. However, in real world settings, the environment is
often non-stationary and subject to unpredictable, frequent changes. In this
paper we propose and openly release CRLMaze, a new benchmark for learning
continually through reinforcement in a complex 3D non-stationary task based on
ViZDoom and subject to several environmental changes. Then, we introduce an
end-to-end model-free continual reinforcement learning strategy showing
competitive results with respect to four different baselines and not requiring
any access to additional supervised signals, previously encountered
environmental conditions or observations.Comment: Accepted in the CLVision Workshop at CVPR2020: 13 pages, 4 figures, 5
table
Teaching new media composition studies in a lifelong learning context
Governmental proposals for lifelong learning, and the role of Information and Learning Technologies/Information Communication Technologies (ILT/ICT) in this, idealistically proclaim that ILT/ICT empowers learners. A number of important governmental funding initiatives have recently been extended to the development of ILT in further education, which provides a particularly appropriate environment for lifelong learning. Yet little emphasis is given to more problematic research findings that students may be âdisarmedâ in the process of learning to use technology. In the current global shift towards new forms of multimedia literacy, it is important to recognize human diversity by carrying out research focusing on the actual problems students face in adapting to Webâbased technology as a new authoring medium. A case study into multimedia creative composition carried out with FE students in 1996â9 found that students tend to experience a problematic but potentially useful period of âcreative messâ when authoring in multimedia, and that âscaffoldingâ strategies can be useful in overcoming this. Such strategies can empower students to derive benefits from multimedia composition if close attention is given to the setting up of the learning environment: a teachersâ model for supporting novice hypermedia authors in further education is proposed, to assist teachers to understand and support the learning processes students may undergo in dynamic composition using new media technology
A postgraduate design learning experience: understanding the effects of community, cultural and contextual environment
This paper describes on going research that investigates how learning (students and tutors) takes place in a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural postgraduate design programme in the UK. The research maps and makes explicit the effects of community, cultural and contextual environment on learning. Initial findings have identified that learning is taking place within communities of practice and further research is used to explore reasons for its emergence. The authors evaluate and discuss the effects of learning in a post disciplinary and multi-cultural environment, and its value to current design postgraduate pedagogy. A social model of learning and communities of practice is evident in the design programme studied and preliminary findings indicates that this model is particularly relevant model to adopt in the current post-disciplinary era
Reading Matters in the Academic Library: Taking the Lead from Public Librarians
With the increasing virtualization of resources, reference service, and instruction, college students have fewer reasons to visit the academic library, a place they believe lacks relevance in their lives. This article explores the idea of revitalizing academic libraries by reconsidering the place of pleasure reading in them. Considerable research has been conducted on reading in the last quarter century. Reading serves a host of essential functions, far more than we have ever guessed. The first part of this paper looks at the social, psychological, moral, emotional, and cognitive role it plays in our lives. The second half examines readersâ advisory services that we can borrow or adapt from public libraries, services that can attract new users, promote lifelong reading, and transform academic libraries to be more community, user, and reader focused
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Sharing practice, problems and solutions for institutional change
This chapter critiques the roles of different forms of representation of practice as part of an institutional change process. It discusses how these representations can be used both to design and to share learning activities at the various levels of decision-making in a university. We illustrate our arguments with empirical data gathered on change processes associated with an institution-wide change programme: the introduction of a new virtual learning environment (VLE). In particular, we describe a case study of the introduction of the VLE tools in a business course. We focus on two particular forms of representations to describe the essence of the innovation: a pedagogical pattern and a visual learning design. We argue that pedagogical patterns and learning design have emerged as parallel approaches to describing practice in recent years. Despite their very different origins, both provide complementary representations, which emphasize different aspects of the practice being described. We are attempting to combine these approaches. We briefly outline the Open University Learning Design initiative, of which this work is part, and describe its key underpinning philosophies. We believe our approach provides a vehicle for enabling a better articulation of design principles and the discussion of issues concerning the re-use of educational resources and activities
Reviews
500 Computing Tips for Teachers and Lecturers by Phil Race and Steve McDowell, London: Kogan Page, 1996. ISBN: 0â7494â1931â8. 135 pages, paperback. ÂŁ15.99
Learning Deep Visual Object Models From Noisy Web Data: How to Make it Work
Deep networks thrive when trained on large scale data collections. This has
given ImageNet a central role in the development of deep architectures for
visual object classification. However, ImageNet was created during a specific
period in time, and as such it is prone to aging, as well as dataset bias
issues. Moving beyond fixed training datasets will lead to more robust visual
systems, especially when deployed on robots in new environments which must
train on the objects they encounter there. To make this possible, it is
important to break free from the need for manual annotators. Recent work has
begun to investigate how to use the massive amount of images available on the
Web in place of manual image annotations. We contribute to this research thread
with two findings: (1) a study correlating a given level of noisily labels to
the expected drop in accuracy, for two deep architectures, on two different
types of noise, that clearly identifies GoogLeNet as a suitable architecture
for learning from Web data; (2) a recipe for the creation of Web datasets with
minimal noise and maximum visual variability, based on a visual and natural
language processing concept expansion strategy. By combining these two results,
we obtain a method for learning powerful deep object models automatically from
the Web. We confirm the effectiveness of our approach through object
categorization experiments using our Web-derived version of ImageNet on a
popular robot vision benchmark database, and on a lifelong object discovery
task on a mobile robot.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 3 table
Why Your Academic Library Needs a Popular Reading Collection Now More Than Ever
Do popular reading materials belong in college and university libraries? Although some librarians think not, others believe there are compelling reasons for including them. The trend towards user-focused libraries, the importance of attracting patrons to libraries in the age of the Internet, and, most importantly, the need to promote literacy at a time when it has reached its lowest levels are all reasons why academic librarians are reconsidering their ideas about popular reading materials. Librarians who decide to implement a leisure reading collection should consider a number of key issues
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