184,533 research outputs found
Goal accomplishment tracking for automatic supervision of plan execution
It is common practice to break down plans into a series of goals or sub-goals in order to facilitate plan execution, thereby only burdening the individual agents responsible for their execution with small, easily achievable objectives at any one time, or providing a simple way of sharing these objectives amongst a group of these agents. Ensuring that plans are executed correctly is an essential part of any team management. To allow proper tracking of an agent's progress through a pre-planned set of goals, it is imperative to keep track of which of these goals have already been accomplished. This centralised approach is essential when the agent is part of a team of humans and/or robots, and goal accomplishment is not always being tracked at a low level. This paper presents a framework for an automated supervision system to keep track of changes in world states so as to chart progress through a pre-planned set of goals. An implementation of this framework on a mobile service robot is presented, and applied in an experiment which demonstrates its feasibility
Adaptive planning for distributed systems using goal accomplishment tracking
Goal accomplishment tracking is the process of monitoring the progress of a task or series of tasks towards completing a goal. Goal accomplishment tracking is used to monitor goal progress in a variety of domains, including workflow processing, teleoperation and industrial manufacturing. Practically, it involves the constant monitoring of task execution, analysis of this data to determine the task progress and notification of interested parties. This information is usually used in a passive way to observe goal progress. However, responding to this information may prevent goal failures. In addition, responding proactively in an opportunistic way can also lead to goals being completed faster. This paper proposes an architecture to support the adaptive planning of tasks for fault tolerance or opportunistic task execution based on goal accomplishment tracking. It argues that dramatically increased performance can be gained by monitoring task execution and altering plans dynamically
Corrections to the energy levels of a spin-zero particle bound in a strong field
Formulas for the corrections to the energy levels and wave functions of a
spin-zero particle bound in a strong field are derived. General case of the sum
of a Lorentz-scalar potential and zero component of a Lorentz-vector potential
is considered. The forms of the corrections differ essentially from those for
spin-1/2 particles. As an example of application of our results, we evaluated
the electric polarizability of a ground state of a spin-zero particle bound in
a strong Coulomb field.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
New insights into the supression of plant pathogenic fungus (Phytophthora cinnamomi) by compost leachates
Use of compost as a soil conditioner and low-grade fertiliser is gaining popularity worldwide (Epstein, 1997). Compost not only adds plant nutrients to the soil, but also improves physical properties of soil such as buffering capacity, cation exchange capacity and water holding capacity. In addition to these benefits, compost can also suppress plant diseases caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi (Hoitink et al., 1977), Pythium aphanidermatum (Mandelbaum and Hadar, 1990), Rhizoctonia solani and Sclerotium rolfoii (Gorodecki and Hadar, 1990).
Irwin et al., (1995) reported that the diseases caused by P. cinnamomi are directly responsible for considerable economic losses in many horticultural, ornamental and forestry industries throughout Australia. Phytophthora spp. continue to be the focus of attention of many researchers due to the diversity of P. cinnamomi-host interactions and their potential economic impact on a wide range of industries.
The practise of using methyl bromide and other chemicals for disinfection of soil is widespread (Trill as et al., 2002). However, the use of methyl bromide and other chemicals is phased out in the USA and Europe. The suppression of soil-borne plant fungus by composts produced from tree barks (Spencer et al., 1982) and municipal solid wastes is well documented (Trill as et al., 2002).
Composts that suppress plant disease have been extensively described and are used in greenhouse production systems (Lazarovitis et aI, 2001). However, most studies have focused on compo sting different types of materials and their effect on fungal pathogens inhibition rather than compo sting conditions that may produce suppressive composts. An objective of this study was to investigate the role of moisture, aeration and compost maturity in enhancing the inhibition effect of compost on the plant pathogen P. cinnamomi. A further objective was to generate an increased understanding of the mechanism of growth inhibition
Standardized field testing of assistant robots in a Mars-like environment
Controlled testing on standard tasks and within standard environments can provide meaningful performance comparisons between robots of heterogeneous design. But because they must perform practical tasks in unstructured, and therefore non-standard, environments, the benefits of this approach have barely begun to accrue for field robots. This work describes a desert trial of six student prototypes of astronaut-support robots using a set of standardized engineering tests developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), along with three operational tests in natural Mars-like terrain. The results suggest that standards developed for emergency response robots are also applicable to the astronaut support domain, yielding useful insights into the differences in capabilities between robots and real design improvements. The exercise shows the value of combining repeatable engineering tests with task-specific application-testing in the field
LHC Benchmarks from Flavored Gauge Mediation
We present benchmark points for LHC searches from flavored gauge mediation
models, in which messenger-matter couplings give flavor-dependent squark
masses. Our examples include spectra in which a single squark - stop, scharm,
or sup - is much lighter than all other colored superpartners, motivating
improved quark flavor tagging at the LHC. Many examples feature flavor mixing;
in particular, large stop-scharm mixing is possible. The correct Higgs mass is
obtained in some examples by virtue of the large stop A-term. We also revisit
the general flavor and CP structure of the models. Even though the A-terms can
be substantial, their contributions to EDM's are very suppressed, because of
the particular dependence of the A-terms on the messenger coupling. This holds
regardless of the messenger-coupling texture. More generally, the special
structure of the soft terms often leads to stronger suppression of flavor- and
CP-violating processes, compared to naive estimates.Comment: 32 pages, 11 figures. Updated to published versio
Non-topological solitons in brane world models
We examine some general properties of a certain class of scalar filed theory
models containing non-topological soliton solutions in the context of brane
world models with compact large extra dimensions. If a scalar field is allowed
to propagate in extra space, then, beside standard Kaluza-Klein type
excitations, a whole new class of very massive soliton-type states can exist.
Depending on their abundance, they can be important dark matter candidates or
give significant contribution to entropy and energy density in our universe. .Comment: version accepted for publication in Physical Review
Charge asymmetry in high-energy photoproduction in the electric field of a heavy atom
The charge asymmetry in the differential cross section of high-energy
photoproduction in the electric field of a heavy atom is obtained.
This asymmetry arises due to the Coulomb corrections to the amplitude of the
process (next-to-leading term with respect to the atomic field). The deviation
of the nuclear electric field from the Coulomb field at small distances is
crucially important for the charge asymmetry. Though the Coulomb corrections to
the total cross section are negligibly small, the charge asymmetry is
measurable for selected final states of and . We further discuss
the feasibility for experimental observation of this effect.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
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