Autonomous Flight in Unknown Indoor Environments

http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/80586kml376k2711/This paper presents our solution for enabling a quadrotor helicopter, equipped with a laser rangefinder sensor, to autonomously explore and map unstructured and unknown indoor environments. While these capabilities are already commodities on ground vehicles, air vehicles seeking the same performance face unique challenges. In this paper, we describe the difficulties in achieving fully autonomous helicopter flight, highlighting the differences between ground and helicopter robots that make it difficult to use algorithms that have been developed for ground robots. We then provide an overview of our solution to the key problems, including a multilevel sensing and control hierarchy, a high-speed laser scan-matching algorithm, an EKF for data fusion, a high-level SLAM implementation, and an exploration planner. Finally, we show experimental results demonstrating the helicopter's ability to navigate accurately and autonomously in unknown environments.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF Division of Information and Intelligent Systems under grant # 0546467)United States. Army Research Office (ARO MAST CTA)Singapore. Armed Force

Dry Matter Accumulation and Partitioning between Vegetative and Reproductive Organs in Alfalfa (\u3ci\u3eMedicago sativa\u3c/i\u3e L.)

This work investigated the partitioning of dry matter between vegetative and reproductive plant organs in alfalfa during the reproductive period under field conditions. Two French varieties (Europe and Magali) were studied. Both varieties showed similar growth pattern of the different plant organs in 1998 and 1999. The mean dry matter of vegetative organs (shoots and leaves) over the two years was higher in Europe (567g/m2) than Magali (470g/m2). No vegetative growth was observed during the reproductive period. The root organs (measured to a depth of 0.20 m) and the reproductive organs showed an increase in dry matter accumulation during the first 300 °Cd and 600 °Cd, respectively. It indicated that dry matter was preferentially partitioned to the reproductive organs during the first 600 °Cd. The root organs seem to be a competing sink during the early seed growth (200 °Cd to 300 °Cd). The dry matter partitioning was not affected by the year. Thus, when dry matter accumulation ceased only 30% in Europe and 27% in Magali of the aboveground dry weight was in the reproductive organs. The mean inflorescence weight reached its maximum after 450 °Cd from inflorescence flowering

Rofecoxib and cardiovascular adverse events in adjuvant treatment of colorectal cancer

Background Selective cyclooxygenase inhibitors may retard the progression of cancer, but they have enhanced thrombotic potential. We report on cardiovascular adverse events in patients receiving rofecoxib to reduce rates of recurrence of colorectal cancer. Methods All serious adverse events that were cardiovascular thrombotic events were reviewed in 2434 patients with stage II or III colorectal cancer participating in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of rofecoxib, 25 mg daily, started after potentially curative tumor resection and chemotherapy or radiotherapy as indicated. The trial was terminated prematurely owing to worldwide withdrawal of rofecoxib. To examine possible persistent risks, we examined cardiovascular thrombotic events reported up to 24 months after the trial was closed. Results The median duration of active treatment was 7.4 months. The 1167 patients receiving rofecoxib and the 1160 patients receiving placebo were well matched, with a median follow-up period of 33.0 months (interquartile range, 27.6 to 40.1) and 33.4 months (27.7 to 40.4), respectively. Of the 23 confirmed cardiovascular thrombotic events, 16 occurred in the rofecoxib group during or within 14 days after the treatment period, with an estimated relative risk of 2.66 (from the Cox proportional-hazards model; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.03 to 6.86; P = 0.04). Analysis of the Antiplatelet Trialists’ Collaboration end point (the combined incidence of death from cardiovascular, hemorrhagic, and unknown causes; of nonfatal myocardial infarction; and of nonfatal ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke) gave an unadjusted relative risk of 1.60 (95% CI, 0.57 to 4.51; P = 0.37). Fourteen more cardiovascular thrombotic events, six in the rofecoxib group, were reported within the 2 years after trial closure, with an overall unadjusted relative risk of 1.50 (95% CI, 0.76 to 2.94; P = 0.24). Four patients in the rofecoxib group and two in the placebo group died from thrombotic causes during or within 14 days after the treatment period, and during the follow-up period, one patient in the rofecoxib group and five patients in the placebo group died from cardiovascular causes. Conclusions Rofecoxib therapy was associated with an increased frequency of adverse cardiovascular events among patients with a median study treatment of 7.4 months’ duration. (Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN98278138.

Preconditioning with sevoflurane decreases PECAM-1 expression and improves one-year cardiovascular outcome in coronary artery bypass graft surgery

Background. Cardiac preconditioning is thought to be involved in the observed decreased coronary artery reocclusion rate in patients with angina preceding myocardial infarction. We prospectively examined whether preconditioning by sevoflurane would decrease late cardiac events in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. Methods. Seventy-two patients scheduled for elective CABG surgery were randomized to preconditioning by sevoflurane (10 min at 4 vol%) or placebo. For all patients, follow-up of adverse cardiac events was obtained 6 and 12 months after surgery. Transcript levels for platelet-endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1 (PECAM-1/CD31), catalase and heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) were determined in atrial biopsies after sevoflurane preconditioning. Results. Pharmacological preconditioning by sevoflurane reduced the incidence of late cardiac events during the first year after CABG surgery (sevoflurane 3% vs 17% in the placebo group, log-rank test, P=0.038). One patient in the sevoflurane group and three patients in the placebo group experienced new episodes of congestive heart failure and three additional patients had coronary artery reocclusion. Perioperative peak concentrations for myocardial injury markers were higher in patients with subsequent late cardiac events [NTproBNP, 9031 (4125) vs 3049 (1906) ng litre−1, P<0.001; cTnT, 1.31 (0.88) vs 0.46 (0.29) µg litre−1, P<0.001]. Transcript levels were reduced for PECAM-1 and increased for catalase but unchanged for Hsp70 in atrial biopsies after sevoflurane preconditioning. Conclusions. This prospective randomized clinical study provides evidence of a protective role for pharmacological preconditioning by sevoflurane in late cardiac events in CABG patients, which may be related to favourable transcriptional changes in pro- and antiprotective protein

Computationally efficient solutions for tracking people with a mobile robot: an experimental evaluation of Bayesian filters

Modern service robots will soon become an essential part of modern society. As they have to move and act in human environments, it is essential for them to be provided with a fast and reliable tracking system that localizes people in the neighbourhood. It is therefore important to select the most appropriate filter to estimate the position of these persons. This paper presents three efficient implementations of multisensor-human tracking based on different Bayesian estimators: Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) and Sampling Importance Resampling (SIR) particle filter. The system implemented on a mobile robot is explained, introducing the methods used to detect and estimate the position of multiple people. Then, the solutions based on the three filters are discussed in detail. Several real experiments are conducted to evaluate their performance, which is compared in terms of accuracy, robustness and execution time of the estimation. The results show that a solution based on the UKF can perform as good as particle filters and can be often a better choice when computational efficiency is a key issue

Failure is Not an Option: Policy Learning for Adaptive Recovery in Space Operations

This letter considers the problem of how robots in long-term space operations can learn to choose appropriate sources of assistance to recover from failures. Current assistant selection methods for failure handling are based on manually specified static lookup tables or policies, which are not responsive to dynamic environments or uncertainty in human performance. We describe a novel and highly flexible learning-based assistant selection framework that uses contextual multiarm bandit algorithms. The contextual bandits exploit information from observed environment and assistant performance variables to efficiently learn selection policies under a wide set of uncertain operating conditions and unknown/dynamically constrained assistant capabilities. Proof of concept simulations of long-term human-robot interactions for space exploration are used to compare the performance of the contextual bandit against other state-of-the-art assistant selection approaches. The contextual bandit outperforms conventional static policies and noncontextual learning approaches, and also demonstrates favorable robustness and scaling properties

A bank of unscented Kalman filters for multimodal human perception with mobile service robots

A new generation of mobile service robots could be ready soon to operate in human environments if they can robustly estimate position and identity of surrounding people. Researchers in this field face a number of challenging problems, among which sensor uncertainties and real-time constraints. In this paper, we propose a novel and efficient solution for simultaneous tracking and recognition of people within the observation range of a mobile robot. Multisensor techniques for legs and face detection are fused in a robust probabilistic framework to height, clothes and face recognition algorithms. The system is based on an efficient bank of Unscented Kalman Filters that keeps a multi-hypothesis estimate of the person being tracked, including the case where the latter is unknown to the robot. Several experiments with real mobile robots are presented to validate the proposed approach. They show that our solutions can improve the robot's perception and recognition of humans, providing a useful contribution for the future application of service robotics