Effects of force-torque and tactile haptic modalities on classifying the success of robot manipulation tasks

We investigate which haptic sensing modalities, or combination of haptic sensing modalities, best enable a robot to determine whether it successfully completed a manipulation task. In this paper, we consider haptic sensing modalities obtained from a wrist-mounted force-torque sensor and three types of fingertip sensors: a pair of FlexiForce force-sensing resistors, a pair of NumaTac sensors, and a pair of BioTac sensors. For each type of fingertip sensor, we simultaneously record force-torque and fingertip tactile data as the robot attempted to complete two manipulation tasks-a picking task and a scooping task-two-hundred times each. We leverage the resulting dataset to train and test a classification method using forty-one different haptic feature combinations, obtained from exhaustive combinations of individual modalities of the force-torque sensor and fingertip sensors. Our results show that the classification method's ability to distinguish between successful and unsuccessful task attempts depends on both the type of manipulation task and the subset of haptic modalities used to train and test the classification method.Accepted manuscrip

Old Buildings, New Ideas: Historic Preservation and Creative Industry Development as Complementary Urban Revitalization Strategies

The cultivation of the creative sector through the implementation of arts districts has been employed as an urban revitalization tool with increasing frequency in recent years, often occurring within historic building stock. In a departure from previous models of economic development in which workers are drawn to an area by jobs, footloose and often self-employed creative industry workers are more likely to locate based on quality of life and an area\u27s so-called livability factors present in historic areas throughout the U.S. Creative sector research and policy making stress the importance of character-rich places and the co-location of spaces for production and consumption of creative goods as a components in developing a region\u27s creative industry. Yet the existing literature does not specifically seek out or incorporate historic preservation as a mechanism in creative district planning strategies. This thesis explores the critical role historic preservation can play in the development of the creative industries, thus ensuring preservation is considered a component in future policy initiatives. It addresses the relationship between historic preservation and arts districts (one aspect of creative industry cultivation), seeking to identify strategies that build effectively on historic preservation policy and arts districts as complementary components of community economic development strategy. It identifies policy tools that advance both historic preservation and the development of the creative industry and describes instances in which these tools have been successfully applied in concert

Rebecca Pek Ga Chan

The Culminating Experience Project is three out of the five movements. Apart from playing music with body movement, it is also a hybrid of everything I have learned in the Music Technology Innovation Program, including Composition, Programming, Sound Design, Controller building, Live Performance, Real time Arts and Logo Design. I use Max/ MSP/ Jitter to generate real time visuals and control information from motion sensor and send information to Ableton and Arduino. Ableton Live is mainly used to build back up tracks, triggering clips, loops and sound samples, manipulate sound in real time and send transport information to Max using Rewire mode. I also designed sound using Massive, Z3ta+2 and Stutter Edit, built LED Table by Arduino, and used Leap Motion, Hot hand and Orbit as performance tools.https://remix.berklee.edu/graduate-studies-production-technology/1027/thumbnail.jp

“This Isn’t Justice”: Abused Women Navigate Family Law in Greater Vancouver

With the implementation of the Family Law Act in 2013, the family legal system in British Columbia saw a series of progressive reforms. These include the recognition of emotional, psychological, and financial control as family violence, a new protection order process to replace the limited restraining orders formerly available to abuse victims, a mandate that courts consider how exposure to family violence impacts children, and minimum mandatory training standards for family dispute resolution professionals. While there has been a great deal of legal commentary on these new provisions, there is a paucity of scholarly research documenting the experiences of frontline workers who support abused women. We address this lacuna, drawing on in-depth interviews with family lawyers and frontline advocates who assist women exiting violent relationships in greater Vancouver. Our findings highlight the many challenges facing women in the family law system and suggest that the perceived unfairness many women experience is neither accidental nor uncommon. Rather, structural barriers to getting into the courtroom, in addition to widespread judicial ignorance about family law and family violence disadvantage women seeking just separations from abusive partners. To better meet the needs of abused women in greater Vancouver, increased funding for legal aid and support services, mandatory family violence training for judges making decisions on family files, and the transformation of victim-blaming attitudes within and beyond the courtroom are needed

Can Information in Children’s Drawings Inform Teachers’ Practices? A Study of Singaporean Pre-school Teachers’ “Reading” of 5-6 year olds’ Drawings.

Children’s drawings are graphic visual records of learning experiences (e.g. a zoo outing) often displayed on the walls of Singapore preschools to celebrate children’s learning and teachers’ teaching. At best, drawings are pictures to report to parents (e.g. child’s colouring skills or impressions of learning). Drawings are under utilized as representations of learning and thinking to inform teachers’ practices in lesson planning. First of all, a questionnaire survey with 325 teachers was collated to understand factors that influence teaching decisions. While face-to-face interviews with 61 children (5 - 6 years) had provided factors that influence their learning from children’s perspectives. The study aimed to explore with the goal of developing a strategy to teach teachers to read children’s drawings for information to support learning. As a result, the Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (TEO): cognitive processes (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) with a focus on learning and cognition was the framework for the “children’s drawing evaluation checklist” designed to deduce information of content-knowledge and cognitive processes. About 140 teacher-respondents evaluated 50 pre-and post-lesson drawings on wild animals and the water cycle by 25 children (5 – 6 years old) from two preschools. The findings showed children’s cognitive processes were directed at Bloom’s “Remember,” “Understand,” “Apply,” and “Analyze,” capturing alongside rich information of children’s spontaneous knowledge. The checklist was later revised and integrated with Biggs and Collis (1982) the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy to reflect the amount of information represented. The revised checklist was tested with 18 mainstream teachers to evaluate wild animals and the water cycle drawings. To test for generalizability, the checklist was tested with 22 special needs teachers to evaluate 17 high functioning special needs children’s (5- 6 years old) drawings. Consequently, implications of the use of information in children’s drawings in this study are discussed

Harnessing Change to Create Sustainable Growth; The Visitacion/ Guadalupe Valley

A Regional Perspective is a report authored by Visitacion Valley Community Development Corporation and Asian Neighborhood Design as the first steps in efforts to create a regional planning perspective, collecting and analyzing data to assist in planning efforts towards sustainable growth, building relationships between regional stakeholders and decision-makers, and providing community outreach to inform and encourage community participation