Unshackling evolution: evolving soft robots with multiple materials and a powerful generative encoding

In 1994 Karl Sims showed that computational evolution can produce interesting morphologies that resemble natural organisms. Despite nearly two decades of work since, evolved morphologies are not obviously more complex or natural, and the field seems to have hit a complexity ceiling. One hypothesis for the lack of increased complexity is that most work, including Sims’, evolves morphologies composed of rigid elements, such as solid cubes and cylinders, limiting the design space. A second hypothesis is that the encodings of previous work have been overly regular, not allowing complex regularities with variation. Here we test both hypotheses by evolving soft robots with multiple materials and a powerful generative encoding called a compositional pattern-producing network (CPPN). Robots are selected for locomotion speed. We find that CPPNs evolve faster robots than a direct encoding and that the CPPN morphologies appear more natural. We also find that locomotion performance increases as more materials are added, that diversity of form and behavior can be increased with di↵erent cost functions without stifling performance, and that organisms can be evolved at di↵erent levels of resolution. These findings suggest the ability of generative soft-voxel systems to scale towards evolving a large diversity of complex, natural, multi-material creatures. Our results suggest that future work that combines the evolution of CPPNencoded soft, multi-material robots with modern diversityencouraging techniques could finally enable the creation of creatures far more complex and interesting than those produced by Sims nearly twenty years ago

1D Printing of Recyclable Robots

Recent advances in 3D printing are revolutionizing manufacturing, enabling the fabrication of structures with unprecedented complexity and functionality. Yet biological systems are able to fabricate systems with far greater complexity using a process that involves assembling and folding a linear string. Here, we demonstrate a 1D printing system that uses an approach inspiredby the ribosome to fabricate a variety of specialized robotic automata from a single string of source material. This proof-ofconcept system involves both a novel manufacturing platform thatconfigures the source material using folding and a computational optimization tool that allows designs to be produced from the specification of high-level goals. We show that our 1D printingsystem is able to produce three distinct robots from the same source material, each of which is capable of accomplishing a specialized locomotion task. Moreover, we demonstrate the abilityof the printer to use recycled material to produce new designs, enabling an autonomous manufacturing ecosystem capable of repurposing previous iterations to accomplish new tasks

A Compact Acoustic Communication Module for Remote Control Underwater

This paper describes an end-to-end compact acoustic communication system designed for easy integration into remotely controlled underwater operations. The system supports up to 2048 commands that are encoded as 16 bit words. We present the design, hardware, and supporting algorithms for this system. A pulse-based FSK modulation scheme is presented, along with a method of demodulation requiring minimal processing power that leverages the Goertzel algorithm and dynamic peak detection. We packaged the system together with an intuitive user interface for remotely controlling an autonomous underwater vehicle. We evaluated this system in the pool and in the open ocean. We present the communication data collected during experiments using the system to control an underwater robot.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF 1117178)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF IIS1226883)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 112237

Compliant Electric Actuators Based on Handed Shearing Auxetics

In this paper, we explore a new class of electric motor-driven compliant actuators based on handed shearing auxetic cylinders. This technique combines the benefits of compliant bodies from soft robotic actuators with the simplicity of direct coupling to electric motors. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique by creating linear actuators, a four degree-of-freedom robotic platform, and a soft robotic gripper. We compare the soft robotic gripper against a state of the art pneumatic soft gripper, finding similar grasping performance in a significantly smaller and more energy-efficient package.Boeing CompanyNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant numbers NSF IIS- 1226883)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant numbers NSF CCF-1138967

Characteristics of superior science students and some factors that were found in their background

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston Universit

Anthropology at the Washington Meeting

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Knot Theory: from Fox 3-colorings of links to Yang-Baxter homology and Khovanov homology

This paper is an extended account of my "Introductory Plenary talk at Knots in Hellas 2016" conference We start from the short introduction to Knot Theory from the historical perspective, starting from Heraclas text (the first century AD), mentioning R.Llull (1232-1315), A.Kircher (1602-1680), Leibniz idea of Geometria Situs (1679), and J.B.Listing (student of Gauss) work of 1847. We spend some space on Ralph H. Fox (1913-1973) elementary introduction to diagram colorings (1956). In the second section we describe how Fox work was generalized to distributive colorings (racks and quandles) and eventually in the work of Jones and Turaev to link invariants via Yang-Baxter operators, here the importance of statistical mechanics to topology will be mentioned. Finally we describe recent developments which started with Mikhail Khovanov work on categorification of the Jones polynomial. By analogy to Khovanov homology we build homology of distributive structures (including homology of Fox colorings) and generalize it to homology of Yang-Baxter operators. We speculate, with supporting evidence, on co-cycle invariants of knots coming from Yang-Baxter homology. Here the work of Fenn-Rourke-Sanderson (geometric realization of pre-cubic sets of link diagrams) and Carter-Kamada-Saito (co-cycle invariants of links) will be discussed and expanded. Dedicated to Lou Kauffman for his 70th birthday.Comment: 35 pages, 31 figures, for Knots in Hellas II Proceedings, Springer, part of the series Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics (PROMS

Cyber security fear appeals:unexpectedly complicated

Cyber security researchers are starting to experiment with fear appeals, with a wide variety of designs and reported efficaciousness. This makes it hard to derive recommendations for designing and deploying these interventions. We thus reviewed the wider fear appeal literature to arrive at a set of guidelines to assist cyber security researchers. Our review revealed a degree of dissent about whether or not fear appeals are indeed helpful and advisable. Our review also revealed a wide range of fear appeal experimental designs, in both cyber and other domains, which confirms the need for some standardized guidelines to inform practice in this respect. We propose a protocol for carrying out fear appeal experiments, and we review a sample of cyber security fear appeal studies, via this lens, to provide a snapshot of the current state of play. We hope the proposed experimental protocol will prove helpful to those who wish to engage in future cyber security fear appeal research

Multifamily Households Across California are Paying a Lot More to Charge Their Electric Vehicle

To better understand inequities in EV charging costs, we compared charging costs at public EV DCFC stations to the cost for single-family housing (SFH) residents charging at home for three California electric utility service areas, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), San Diego Gas and Electric Company (SDG&E) and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), and for three specific urban areas - Sacramento, San Diego, and San Jose. We used a combination of observed pricing data from PlugShare, a crowd-sourced database of public EV charging, and public DCFC pricing data from electric vehicle service provider (EVSP) websites, as well as electric utility tariff information from their respective websites