On the Integration of Adaptive and Interactive Robotic Smart Spaces

© 2015 Mauro Dragone et al.. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)Enabling robots to seamlessly operate as part of smart spaces is an important and extended challenge for robotics R&D and a key enabler for a range of advanced robotic applications, such as AmbientAssisted Living (AAL) and home automation. The integration of these technologies is currently being pursued from two largely distinct view-points: On the one hand, people-centred initiatives focus on improving the user’s acceptance by tackling human-robot interaction (HRI) issues, often adopting a social robotic approach, and by giving to the designer and - in a limited degree – to the final user(s), control on personalization and product customisation features. On the other hand, technologically-driven initiatives are building impersonal but intelligent systems that are able to pro-actively and autonomously adapt their operations to fit changing requirements and evolving users’ needs,but which largely ignore and do not leverage human-robot interaction and may thus lead to poor user experience and user acceptance. In order to inform the development of a new generation of smart robotic spaces, this paper analyses and compares different research strands with a view to proposing possible integrated solutions with both advanced HRI and online adaptation capabilities.Peer reviewe

A template based user-teaching system for an Assistive Robot

Demographics issues, characterised by an increasing elderly population, are expected to be a major concern both in Europe and other countries around the world. A proposed cost and care solution to these issues has been suggested that uses assistive robots in 'smarthome' environments. The deployment of such integrated facilities presents many challenges, one of which concerns the customisation of such systems to meet the needs of the elderly person themselves. One approach is to allow the elderly person to actually teach the robot sufficient behaviours that meet their care requirements. The teaching could equally well be carried out by the elderly person's relatives or carers. The overriding premise being that teaching is both intuitive and 'non-technical'. As part of a European project investigating these issues we have deployed a commercially available robot in a fully sensorised but otherwise ordinary suburban house, and designed a non-technical teaching system, based on behavioural templates, to achieve this goal. We have evaluated this integrated system within the house with 20 participants in a Human-Robot interaction experiment. Results indicate that participants overall found the interface easy to use, and felt that they would be capable of using it in a real-life situation. There were also some salient individual differences within the sample

Removal of Trace Metal Contaminants from Potable Water by Electrocoagulation

This study investigated the effects of four operational and environmental variables on the removal of trace metal contaminants from drinking water by electrocoagulation (EC). Removal efficiencies for five metals (arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and nickel) were compared under varying combinations of electrode material, post-treatment, water composition and pH. Iron electrodes out-performed aluminum electrodes in removing chromium and arsenic. At pH 6.5, aluminum electrodes were slightly more effective at removing nickel and cadmium, while at pH 8.5, iron electrodes were more effective for these metals. Regardless of electrode, cadmium and nickel removal efficiencies were higher at pH 8.5 than at pH 6.5. Post-EC treatment using membrane filtration (0.45 μm) enhanced contaminant removal for all metals but nickel. With the exception of lead, all metals exhibited poorer removal efficiencies as the ionic strength of the background electrolyte increased, particularly in the very high-solids synthetic groundwaters. Residual aluminum concentrations were lowest at pH 6.5, while iron residuals were lowest in low ionic strength waters. Both aluminum and iron residuals required post-treatment filtration to meet drinking water standards. EC with post-treatment filtration appears to effectively remove trace metal contaminants to potable water standards, but both reactor and source water parameters critically impact removal efficiency

AN ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PURCHASE OF BEEF AND PORK VARIETY MEATS

This analysis uses a dichotomous qualitative response model to assess the influences of several economic and demographic characteristics of consumers on the purchase decision for variety (edible organ and offal) meats. Specific factors considered include education, age, income, household size, and ethnic heritage. Data collected from a survey of 3,340 consumers are utilized. Results confirm strong income, age, household size, and ethic effects on the purchase of variety meats.Consumer/Household Economics,

Observations on North Dakota Sponges (Haplosclerina: Spongillidae) and Sisyrids (Neuroptera: Sisyridae)

Factors influencing occurrence, distribution, and ecology of sponges and sisyrids are discussed, with emphasis on northeastern North Dakota. New state records for North Dakota sponges, Eunapius Jraguis Leidy and Ephydatia fluviatilis L. and the sisyrids, Sisyra vicaria (Hagen) and Climacia areolaris (Hagen), and new county records for C. areolaris in northwestern Minnesota and Eunapius fragilis in northeastern North Dakota are reported. A rare association of the parasite, S. vicaria with the host, Ephydatia fluviatilis is also reported. Some physicochcmical relations of Eunapius fragilis found in the Forest River, North Dakota, are discussed

केंद्रीय समुद्री मात्स्यिकी अनुसंधान संस्थान का वेरावल अनुसंधान केंद्र

केंद्रीय समुद्री मात्स्यिकी अनुसंधान संस्थान का वेरावल अनुसंधान केंद्

"The fridge door is open" : temporal verification of a robotic assistant's behaviours

Robotic assistants are being designed to help, or work with, humans in a variety of situations from assistance within domestic situations, through medical care, to industrial settings. Whilst robots have been used in industry for some time they are often limited in terms of their range of movement or range of tasks. A new generation of robotic assistants have more freedom to move, and are able to autonomously make decisions and decide between alternatives. For people to adopt such robots they will have to be shown to be both safe and trustworthy. In this paper we focus on formal verification of a set of rules that have been developed to control the Care-O-bot, a robotic assistant located in a typical domestic environment. In particular, we apply model-checking, an automated and exhaustive algorithmic technique, to check whether formal temporal properties are satisfied on all the possible behaviours of the system. We prove a number of properties relating to robot behaviours, their priority and interruptibility, helping to support both safety and trustworthiness of robot behaviours

Locally optimal unstructured finite element meshes in 3 dimensions

This paper investigates the adaptive finite element solution of a general class of variational problems in three dimensions using a combination of node movement, edge swapping, face swapping and node insertion. The adaptive strategy proposed is a generalization of previous work in two dimensions and is based upon the construction of a hierarchy of locally optimal meshes. Results presented, both for a single equation and a system of coupled equations, suggest that this approach is able to produce better meshes of tetrahedra than those obtained by more conventional adaptive strategies and in a relatively efficient manner

School reform, school size, and student achievement

An estimation of the effect of school size on student achievement, with the results suggesting that market-based school reform could enhance student performance if the reform reduced school size.Education

Inspections To Avert Terrorism: Robustness Under Severe Uncertainty

Protecting against terrorist attacks requires making decisions in a world in which attack probabilities are largely unknown. The potential for very large losses encourages a conservative perspective, in particular toward decisions that are robust. But robustness, in the sense of assurance against extreme outcomes, ordinarily is not the only desideratum in uncertain environments. We adopt Yakov Ben-Haim’s (2001b) model of information gap decision making to investigate the problem of inspecting a number of similar targets when one of the targets may be attacked, but with unknown probability. We apply this to a problem of inspecting a sample of incoming shipping containers for a terrorist weapon. While it is always possible to lower the risk of a successful attack by inspecting more vessels, we show that robustness against the failure to guarantee a minimum level of expected utility might not be monotonic. Robustness modeling based on expected utility and incorporating inspection costs yields decision protocols that are a useful alternative to traditional risk analysis.Terrorism, Robustness, Severe Uncertainty, Port Security