Keyboard before Head Tracking Depresses User Success in Remote Camera Control

In remote mining, operators of complex machinery have more tasks or devices to control than they have hands. For example, operating a rock breaker requires two handed joystick control to position and fire the jackhammer, leaving the camera control to either automatic control or require the operator to switch between controls. We modelled such a teleoperated setting by performing experiments using a simple physical game analogue, being a half size table soccer game with two handles. The complex camera angles of the mining application were modelled by obscuring the direct view of the play area and the use of a Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera. The camera control was via either a keyboard or via head tracking using two different sets of head gestures called "head motion" and "head flicking" for turning camera motion on/off. Our results show that the head motion control was able to provide a comparable performance to using a keyboard, while head flicking was significantly worse. In addition, the sequence of use of the three control methods is highly significant. It appears that use of the keyboard first depresses successful use of the head tracking methods, with significantly better results when one of the head tracking methods was used first. Analysis of the qualitative survey data collected supports that the worst (by performance) method was disliked by participants. Surprisingly, use of that worst method as the first control method significantly enhanced performance using the other two control methods

Effects of tea oil camellia (Camellia oleifera Abel.) shell-based organic fertilizers on the physicochemical property and microbial community structure of the rhizosphere soil

Soil microorganisms play important roles in promoting soil ecosystem restoration, but much of the current research has been limited to changes in microbial community structure in general, and little is known regarding the soil physicochemical property and microbial community structure. In this study, four organic fertilizers were first prepared based on tea oil camellia shell (TOCS). Our findings indicate that the application of BOFvo increased both total pore volume and BET surface area of the rhizosphere soils, as well there was a remarkable enhancement in total organic matter (TOM), total nitrogen (TN), available nitrogen (AN), total phosphorus (TP), total potassium (TK), and available potassium (AK) contents of the rhizosphere soils. Meanwhile, in comparison to the CK and CF groups, the utilization of BOFvo led to a substantial increase in both average yield and fruiting rate per plant at maturity, as well resulted in a significant increase in TN and TP contents of tea oil camellia leaves. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the application of TOCS-based organic fertilizers significantly enhances the microbial diversity in the rhizosphere soils with Proteobacteria and Ascomycota being the dominant bacterial and fungal phyla, respectively, and Rhodanobacter and Fusarium being the dominant bacterial and fungal genus, respectively. Redundancy analysis (RDA) indicates that the physicochemical characteristics of TOCS-based organic fertilizers had a significant impact on the composition and distribution of microbial communities in the rhizosphere soils. This study will facilitate the promotion and application of TOCS-based organic fertilizers, thereby establishing a foundation for the reuse of tea oil camellia waste resources

A Novel N-Arylpyridone Compound Alleviates the Inflammatory and Fibrotic Reaction of Silicosis by Inhibiting the ASK1-p38 Pathway and Regulating Macrophage Polarization

Silicosis is one of the potentially fatal occupational diseases characterized by respiratory dysfunction, chronic interstitial inflammation, and fibrosis, for which treatment options are limited. Previous studies showed that a novel N-arylpyridone compound named AKEX0011 exhibited anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic effects in bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis; however, it is unknown whether it could also be effective against silicosis. Therefore, we sought to investigate the preventive and therapeutic roles of AKEX0011 in a silicosis rodent model and in a silica-stimulated macrophage cell line. In vivo, our results showed that AKEX0011 ameliorated silica-induced imaging lung damages, respiratory dysfunction, reduced the secretion of inflammatory and fibrotic factors (TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, TGF-β, IL-4, and IL-10), and the deposition of fibrosis-related proteins (collagen I, fibronectin, and α-SMA), regardless of early or advanced therapy. Specifically, we found that AKEX0011 attenuated silicosis by inhibiting apoptosis, blocking the ASK1-p38 MAPK signaling pathway, and regulating polarization of macrophages. In vitro, AKEX0011 inhibited macrophages from secreting inflammatory cytokines and inhibited apoptosis of macrophages in pre-treated and post-treated models, concurrent with blocking the ASK1-p38 pathway and inhibiting M1 polarization. Collectively, AKEX0011, as a novel N-arylpyridone compound, exerted protective effects for silica-induced pulmonary inflammation and fibrosis both in vivo and in vitro, and hence, it could be a strong drug candidate for the treatment of silicosis

Designing natural interaction for camera viewpoint control in teleoperation

Teleoperation can be used to remove human beings or provide replaceable surrogates in hazardous or difficult working environments. Multi-tasking situations are common in teleoperation. For many teleoperation activities, operators usually have multiple devices or equipment to control via conventional hand operated interfaces, such as joysticks, switches, wheels, mice and keyboards. A typical example of such a situation is controlling a robot for either navigation or manipulation as the primary task and controlling a remote camera as the major visual feedback to obtain situational awareness from the remote environment, all by manual interfaces. Apart from switching hands frequently between different control interfaces, the working attention of the operator will also be distracted from the primary task under such circumstances, which results in increased workload and reducing performance. This thesis is motivated by a real-world industrial setting in mining teleoperation: Remote rock breaking, in which operators have to face such a multi-tasking situation. Instead of using conventional control interfaces, we explore several possible solutions by integrating natural human interactive information to design and develop new remote camera viewpoint control models. Natural interaction based interfaces allow people to interact with technologies, applications and systems as they are used to when they interact with other people in everyday life through movements, gestures, expressions, discovering the world by looking around and manipulating physical objects. In this research, we particularly investigate the use of natural head movements, eye gaze, weight-based body gestures and foot movements with prototype systems as alternative inputs for the camera viewpoint control in teleoperation. We present a number of user studies which compare these camera viewpoint control models with conventional control interfaces. Several novel lab-based experimental models have been designed using the concept of a Functional Physical Model, which is used to simulate the real-world multi-tasking setting to deal with the difficulty of direct access to real industry settings. Both objective and subjective measures were used in all user studies conducted. From the results, we demonstrate the remote viewpoint control models we developed are either comparable to or an improvement over conventional control interfaces used in the experiments. Particularly for the empirical user study comparing our Natural Interaction Model (combining eye gaze and head motion) with optimised manual control and autonomous tracking models, the results indicate the advantages of using our natural interaction model, while the manual control model performed the worst. Existing issues, discovered problems and challenges of using natural interaction for remote camera viewpoint control are also discussed. Finally, suggestions are made for further research in the area of importing more natural interaction based interfaces for teleoperation

Tablet interaction techniques for viewport navigation on large displays

While a subset view on tablet devices allows users to observe in detail an area of the large display from a distance, interaction techniques are required to support viewport navigation around the display efficiently. We propose two dual-touch techniques (DualTaP and DirectTaP) for defining both the size and position of the viewport simultaneously. We also explore two orientation-based techniques (TabTilt and TabPoint) to further explore the design space. In our user study, we found that the DualTaP technique out performs the rest due to its speed and overall preference. We discuss our initial findings and suggests potential applications for using these techniques on large displays

Layered-CasPer: Layered Cascade Artificial Neural Networks

Previous research has demonstrated that constructive algorithms are powerful methods for training feedforward neural networks. The CasPer algorithm is a constructive neural network algorithm that generates networks from a simple architecture and then expands it. The A-CasPer algorithm is a modified version of the CasPer algorithm which uses a candidate pool instead of a single neuron being trained. This research adds an extension to the A-CasPer algorithm in terms of the network architecture - the Layered-CasPer algorithm. The hidden neurons form as layers in the new version of the network structure which results in less computational cost being required. Beyond the network structure, other aspects of Layered-CasPer are the same as A-CasPer. The Layered-CasPer algorithm extension is benchmarked on a number of classification problems and compared to other constructive algorithms, which are CasCor, CasPer, A-CasPer, and AT-CasPer. It is shown that Layered-CasPer has a better performance on the datasets which have a large number of inputs for classification tasks. The Layered-CasPer algorithm has an advantage over other cascade style constructive algorithms in being more similar in topology to the familiar layered structure of traditional feedforward neural networks

Fuzzy Logic for Cooperative Robot Communication

This paper proposes a new approach which applies a recently developed fuzzy technique: Fuzzy Signature to model the communication between cooperative intelligent robots. Fuzzy signature is not only regarded as one of the key solutions to solve the rule explosion in traditional fuzzy inference systems, but also an effective approach for modeling complex problems or systems with a hierarchical structure. Apart from the application of fuzzy signatures, another modeling structure of pattern-matching with possibility calculation is designed for the further intentional inference of cooperative robot communication. By the combination of these two theoretical issues, a codebook for intelligent robot decision making has been developed, as well as its implementation - a Cooperative Robot Communication Simulator