Belief-Space Planning for Resourceful Manipulation and Mobility

Robots are increasingly expected to work in partially observable and unstructured environments. They need to select actions that exploit perceptual and motor resourcefulness to manage uncertainty based on the demands of the task and environment. The research in this dissertation makes two primary contributions. First, it develops a new concept in resourceful robot platforms called the UMass uBot and introduces the sixth and seventh in the uBot series. uBot-6 introduces multiple postural configurations that enable different modes of mobility and manipulation to meet the needs of a wide variety of tasks and environmental constraints. uBot-7 extends this with the use of series elastic actuators (SEAs) to improve manipulation capabilities and support safer operation around humans. The resourcefulness of these robots is complemented with a belief-space planning framework that enables task-driven action selection in the context of the partially observable environment. The framework uses a compact but expressive state representation based on object models. We extend an existing affordance-based object model, called an aspect transition graph (ATG), with geometric information. This enables object-centric modeling of features and actions, making the model much more expressive without increasing the complexity. A novel task representation enables the belief-space planner to perform general object-centric tasks ranging from recognition to manipulation of objects. The approach supports the efficient handling of multi-object scenes. The combination of the physical platform and the planning framework are evaluated in two novel, challenging, partially observable planning domains. The ARcube domain provides a large population of objects that are highly ambiguous. Objects can only be differentiated using multi-modal sensor information and manual interactions. In the dexterous mobility domain, a robot can employ multiple mobility modes to complete navigation tasks under a variety of possible environment constraints. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using experiments in simulation and on a real robot

En beretning om to saker – Undersøke begrunnelser i like saker med ulike utfall

Why is it that some care order cases result in the child being removed from parental care, while in others she is not, despite the cases being similar? This paper investigates how decision-makers reason and justify different outcomes for similar cases, by an analysis of four pairs of judgments (from Norway, Estonia, and Finland) about care orders, using thematic analysis. The comparison is within the pairs and not across countries. I find that the variance in outcome and reasoning seems to be a result of discretionary evaluations: risk, cooperation of the parents, and the potential of services to alleviate the situation are interpreted differently in the cases and lead to different outcomes. This appears to be a legitimate use of the discretionary space available to the decision-makers. The decisions are justified with ‘good reasons’ mostly related to threshold, the least intrusive intervention principle, and the best interests of the child. Such justifications are suitable to provide accountability and legitimacy, but the reasoning is at times lacking transparency and thoroughness. The reasoning is longer in the non-removal cases, suggesting that more thorough reasoning is required when the decision-makers depart from the most common outcome.Hvorfor er det slik at noen omsorgsovertakelser ender med at barnet blir fjernet fra foreldrenes omsorg, mens i andre blir hun ikke det, til tross for at sakene er like? Denne artikkelen undersøker hvordan beslutningstakere resonnerer og begrunner ulike utfall for like saker, gjennom en analyse av fire par av dommer (fra Norge, Estland, og Finland) i omsorgsovertakelser, gjennom å bruke tematisk analyse. Sammenligningen er innad i parene, og ikke på tvers av land. Jeg finner at variasjonen i utfall og resonnering virker å være et resultat av skjønnsmessige vurderinger: risiko, foreldrenes samarbeid, og hjelpetjenesters potensiale til å forbedre situasjonen blir vurdert ulikt i sakene og leder til forskjellige utfall. Dette virker å være legitim bruk av beslutningstakernes skjønnsrom. Beslutningene er begrunnet med «gode grunner», for det meste relatert til terskel for inngripen, det minste inngreps prinsipp, og barnets beste. Slike begrunnelser er godt egnet til å gi ansvarlighet og legitimitet, men resonneringen mangler tidvis transparens og grundighet. Resonneringen er lengre i saker der barnet ikke blir fjernet, som indikerer at mer grundig resonnering er nødvendig når beslutningstakerne avviker fra det mest vanlige utfallet.publishedVersio

The Norwegian Snow Crab Industry. A case study of opportunities and threats in the Norwegian snow crab industry

The Norwegian seafood industry is constantly growing and expanding. The snow crab entering the Barents Sea was an opportunity to create a new, profitable industry with a product well established on the world market. Norwegian vessels entered the loophole and were joined by foreign vessels to catch snow crab. January 2017, Russia claimed sovereignty over the area and closed it for all foreign vessels, including the Norwegian ones. The goal of this study was to determine which challenges and opportunities the entrepreneurs have met since entering the industry. The thesis is built on relevant theory and 7 interviews with key informants in the Norwegian-, and Alaskan snow crab industry. The results of this thesis show that the Norwegian snow crab industry is in the early stages of the industry life cycle. The industry’s profitability was challenged after the loophole was closed. The future of the industry is uncertain due to lack of governmental regulations. The Alaskan snow crab industry has met similar challenges through their life cycle and the industry was successfully regulated to ensure profitability to its active vessels and fishermen

Sportsphysician practiceadvice of judoka based on laboratory- and fieldanalysis

In dieser Arbeit wurden Daten der deutschen Judonationalmannschaft der Frauen erhoben. Es wurden mehrere Labortests und ein Feldtest durchgeführt. Der Feldtest wurde auf der Grundlage von eigenen Wettkampfbeobachtungen und Vorversuchen entwickelt. Die Belastung der Probantinnen durch die Tests wurde mittels beschreibender statistischer Parameter beurteilt. Die Untersuchung auf ihre sportartspezifische Aussagefähigkeit geschah durch Korrelation mit der Kaderzugehörigkeit und dem Wettkampferfolg.In this work have been analysed the data from the german women national team. Several laboratory tests and an fieldanalyses was used. The fieldanalyses was developed after competitionstudies. The strain of the testpersons was statistically observed. The results have been correlated with the success in the competitionarea

Services and support for mothers and newborn babies in vulnerable situations: A study of eight European jurisdictions

European countries have a legal obligation to provide services to vulnerable families, and children must not be removed from their parents’ care unless no other viable measures are available. This paper examines whether and how eight jurisdictions provide necessary support and services to families with newborn babies who are considered to be at risk in the child protection system. The data consist of all judgments (n = 216) concerning care orders for 220 newborns for periods ranging from one to several years. The analysis shows that services are provided in an overall majority of the cases but with distinct differences between jurisdictions. These differences are not due to the type of child protection system. Furthermore, we cannot ascertain whether service provision follows parental problems, or identify similarities due to the special case of newborns. We conclude that there are huge knowledge gaps regarding both service provision and the effects of services.publishedVersio

True triaxial testing of geogrid for high speed railways

This work describes a series of novel experimental tests to determine the potential of geogrids to confine granular layers within ballasted railway lines operating at speeds close to critical velocity. This is important because at low train speeds, vertical stresses are dominant, but when approaching critical velocity conditions, dynamic horizontal stress levels are magnified. Therefore the majority of previous geogrid investigations have been performed assuming constant horizontal stress levels, thus making them more relevant for lower speed lines. To investigate settlement under high relative train speeds, ballasted railway track samples were subject to combined vertical-horizontal cyclic loading. Three areas were explored: (1) the performance benefit from placing geogrid at the ballast-subballast interface, (2) the performance benefit from placing geogrid at the subballast-subgrade interface, (3) the effect of subgrade stiffness on geogrid performance at the subballast-subgrade interface. Testing was performed using a unique large-scale true triaxial apparatus which had the ability to vary stress levels in three Cartesian directions. Compared to the control conditions, the geogrid offered a settlement improvement of approximately 35% when placed at the ballast-subballast interface, and 10–15% when placed at the subballast-subgrade interface. Regarding subgrade CBR, it was found that the geogrid offered the greatest performance benefits when the subgrade was soft. Therefore it was concluded that for the ballasted rail structures under test, when subject to elevated levels of horizontal stress, geogrids reduced settlements compared to non-geogrid solutions

Analysis and modelling of predation on biofilm activated sludge process: Influence on microbial distribution, sludge production and nutrient dosage

The influence of predation on the biofilm activated sludge (BAS) process is studied using a unified model that incorporates hydrolysis and predation phenomena into the two stages of the BAS system: moving bed biofilm reactor pre-treatment (bacterial-predator stage) and activated sludge (predator stage). The unified model adequately describes the experimental results obtained in a cellulose and viscose full-scale wastewater plant and has been used to evaluate the role and contribution of predator microorganisms towards removal of COD, nutrient requirements, sludge production and microbial distribution. The results indicate that predation is the main factor responsible for the reduction of both nutrient requirements and sludge production. Furthermore, increasing the sludge retention time (SRT) does not influence the total biomass content in the AS reactor of a BAS process in two different industrial wastewater treatments