Exploring haptic interfacing with a mobile robot without visual feedback

Search and rescue scenarios are often complicated by low or no visibility conditions. The lack of visual feedback hampers orientation and causes significant stress for human rescue workers. The Guardians project [1] pioneered a group of autonomous mobile robots assisting a human rescue worker operating within close range. Trials were held with fire fighters of South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue. It became clear that the subjects by no means were prepared to give up their procedural routine and the feel of security they provide: they simply ignored instructions that contradicted their routines

Global convergence of quorum-sensing networks

In many natural synchronization phenomena, communication between individual elements occurs not directly, but rather through the environment. One of these instances is bacterial quorum sensing, where bacteria release signaling molecules in the environment which in turn are sensed and used for population coordination. Extending this motivation to a general non- linear dynamical system context, this paper analyzes synchronization phenomena in networks where communication and coupling between nodes are mediated by shared dynamical quan- tities, typically provided by the nodes' environment. Our model includes the case when the dynamics of the shared variables themselves cannot be neglected or indeed play a central part. Applications to examples from systems biology illustrate the approach.Comment: Version 2: minor editions, added section on noise. Number of pages: 36