Design requirements and challenges for intelligent power wheelchair use in crowds: learning from expert wheelchair users

An intelligent or smart power wheelchair is normally built on a standard power wheelchair with additional modules for perception, navigation or interaction purposes. It adds autonomy to the wheelchair and provides a technical solution to the safety concerns, thus opening the possibility for people who are considered not suitable to use a standard power wheelchair. Although the research in this field has been going on for decades, most of them focus on dealing with static or simple dynamic environments. In addition, the role of the user is sometimes overlooked during the design and development process. In our project, we aim to design a user-centred intelligent wheelchair and extend its application area to one of the most difficult scenarios faced by wheelchair users­, ­­navigating among crowds. As we start the process of designing a smart wheelchair, we present the results of an initial study with expert wheelchair users' to gain insights into their design requirements and challenges when navigating in crowds

Dark-time decay of the retrieval efficiency of light stored as a Rydberg excitation in a noninteracting ultracold gas

We study the dark-time decay of the retrieval efficiency for light stored in a Rydberg state in an ultracold gas of $^{87}$Rb atoms based on electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Using low atomic density to avoid dephasing caused by atom-atom interactions, we measure a $1/e$ time of 30 $\mu$s for the $80S$ state in free expansion. One of the dominant limitations is the combination of photon recoil and thermal atomic motion at 0.2 $\mu$K. If the 1064-nm dipole trap is left on, then the $1/e$ time is reduced to 13 $\mu$s, in agreement with a model taking differential light shifts and gravitational sag into account. To characterize how coherent the retrieved light is, we overlap it with reference light and measure the visibility $V$ of the resulting interference pattern, obtaining $V> 90\%$ for short dark time. Our experimental work is accompanied by a detailed model for the dark-time decay of the retrieval efficiency of light stored in atomic ensembles. The model is generally applicable for photon storage in Dicke states, such as in EIT with $\Lambda$-type or ladder-type level schemes and in Duan-Lukin-Cirac-Zoller single-photon sources. The model includes a treatment of the dephasing caused by thermal atomic motion combined with net photon recoil, as well as the influence of trapping potentials. It takes into account that the signal light field is typically not a plane wave. The model maps the retrieval efficiency to single-atom properties and shows that the retrieval efficiency is related to the decay of fringe visibility in Ramsey spectroscopy and to the spatial first-order coherence function of the gas.Comment: List of changes: (i) The role of separable and entangled states was clarified. In the process, a new appendix C was added. (ii) More detail was added in the supplemental material in sections II.E and II.F, that discuss the relation to Ramsey spectroscopy and to the spatial coherence function. (iii) A new figure 1 was added. (iv) Various smaller revisions were mad

An ‘Ethical Black Box’, Learning From Disagreement in Shared Control Systems

Shared control, where a human user cooperates with an algorithm to operate a device, has the potential to greatly expand access to powered mobility, but also raises unique ethical challenges. A shared-control wheelchair may perform actions that do not reflect its user’s intent in order to protect their safety, causing frustration or distrust in the process. Unlike physical accidents there is currently no framework for investigating or adjudicating these events, leading to a reduced capability to improve the shared control algorithm’s user experience. In this paper we suggest a system based on the idea of an ‘ethical black box’ that records the sensor context of sub-critical disagreements and collision risks in order to allow human investigators to examine them in retrospect and assess whether the algorithm has taken control from the user without justification

Modeling of hyper-adaptability: from motor coordination to rehabilitation

Hyper-adaptability is an ability of humans and animals to adapt to large-scale changes in the nervous system or the musculoskeletal system, such as strokes and spinal cord injuries. Although this adaptation may involve similar neural processes with normal adaptation to usual environmental and body changes in daily lives, it can be fundamentally different because it requires ‘construction’ of the neural structure itself and ‘reconstitution’ of sensorimotor control rules to compensate for the changes in the nervous system. In this survey paper, we aimed to provide an overview on how the brain structure changes after brain injury and recovers through rehabilitation. Next, we demonstrated the recent approaches used to apply computational and neural network modeling to recapitulate motor control and motor learning processes. Finally, we discussed future directions to bridge the gap between conventional physiological and modeling approaches to understand the neural and computational mechanisms of hyper-adaptability and its applications to clinical rehabilitation

On the direction of transcription of cloned genes in Neurospora crassa.

On the direction of transcription of cloned genes in Neurospora crassa

From HRI to CRI: Crowd Robot Interaction - understanding the effect of robots on crowd motion

How does the presence of a robot affect pedestri- ans and crowd dynamics, and does this influence vary across robot type? In this paper, we took the first step towards an- swering this question by performing a crowd-robot gate- crossing experiment. The study involved 28 participants and two distinct robot representatives: A smart wheelchair and a Pepper humanoid robot. Collected data includes: video recordings; robot and participant trajectories; and partici- pants’ responses to post-interaction questionnaires. Quanti- tative analysis on the trajectories suggests the robot affects crowd dynamics in terms of trajectory regularity and interac- tion complexity. Qualitative results indicate that pedestrians tend to be more conservative and follow “social rules” while passing a wheelchair compared to a humanoid robot. These insights can be used to design a social navigation strategy that allows more natural interaction by considering the robot effect on the crowd dynamics

Retrieval Practice Fails to Insulate Episodic Memories against Interference after Stroke

Recent work in cognitive psychology showed that retrieval practice of previously studied information can insulate this information against retroactive interference from subsequently studied other information in healthy individuals. The present study examined whether this beneficial effect of interference reduction is also present in patients with stroke. Twenty-two patients with stroke, 4.6 months post injury on average, and 22 healthy controls participated in the experiment. In each of two experimental sessions, participants first studied a list of items (list 1) and then underwent a practice phase in which the list 1 items were either restudied or retrieval practiced. Participants then either studied a second list of items (list 2) or fulfilled an unrelated distractor task. Recall of the two lists' items was assessed in a final criterion test. Results showed that, in healthy controls, additional study of list 2 items impaired final recall of list 1 items in the restudy condition but not in the retrieval practice condition. In contrast, in patients with stroke, list 2 learning impaired final list 1 recall in both conditions. The results indicate that retrieval practice insulated the tested information against retroactive interference in healthy controls, but failed to do so in patients with stroke. Possible implications of the findings for the understanding of long-term memory impairment after stroke are discussed

Patterns of Sympathetic Responses Induced by Different Stress Tasks

Stress tasks are used to induce sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal. However, the efficacy and the patterns of SNS activation have not been systematically compared between different tasks