Optimising robot personalities for symbiotic interaction

The Expressive Agents for Symbiotic Education and Learning (EASEL) project will explore human-robot symbiotic interaction (HRSI) with the aim of developing an understanding of symbiosis over long term tutoring interactions. The EASEL system will be built upon an established and neurobiologically grounded architecture - Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC). Here we present the design of an initial experiment in which our facially expressive humanoid robot will interact with children at a public exhibition. We discuss the range of measurements we will employ to explore the effects our robot's expressive ability has on interaction with children during HRSI, with the aim of contributing optimal robot personality parameters to the final EASEL model. © 2014 Springer International Publishing

Field Measurements of Terrestrial and Martian Dust Devils

Surface-based measurements of terrestrial and martian dust devils/convective vortices provided from mobile and stationary platforms are discussed. Imaging of terrestrial dust devils has quantified their rotational and vertical wind speeds, translation speeds, dimensions, dust load, and frequency of occurrence. Imaging of martian dust devils has provided translation speeds and constraints on dimensions, but only limited constraints on vertical motion within a vortex. The longer mission durations on Mars afforded by long operating robotic landers and rovers have provided statistical quantification of vortex occurrence (time-of-sol, and recently seasonal) that has until recently not been a primary outcome of more temporally limited terrestrial dust devil measurement campaigns. Terrestrial measurement campaigns have included a more extensive range of measured vortex parameters (pressure, wind, morphology, etc.) than have martian opportunities, with electric field and direct measure of dust abundance not yet obtained on Mars. No martian robotic mission has yet provided contemporaneous high frequency wind and pressure measurements. Comparison of measured terrestrial and martian dust devil characteristics suggests that martian dust devils are larger and possess faster maximum rotational wind speeds, that the absolute magnitude of the pressure deficit within a terrestrial dust devil is an order of magnitude greater than a martian dust devil, and that the time-of-day variation in vortex frequency is similar. Recent terrestrial investigations have demonstrated the presence of diagnostic dust devil signals within seismic and infrasound measurements; an upcoming Mars robotic mission will obtain similar measurement types

Informality in organization and research : a review and a proposal

The growing interest in informal and emergent features of organizations has accompanied changes both in the dominant forms of organization and prevailing academic views about how best to think about and research them. It is argued here that currently espoused dichotomous characterizations of both organizations and research approaches are over-simplified and misleading. A review of types of organisation research is conducted and it is suggested that the relationship between theory and data collection provides a more detailed and illuminating taxonomy than a distinction between qualitative and quantitative research. Two major distinctions are proposed: [1] between theory driven and phenomenon driven research; [2] between descriptive and prescriptive theory. It is suggested that organization theory is properly prescriptive in nature. The place of informality in organization and management studies is explicated, drawing on insights from Wittgenstein and ethnomethodology (EM). A distinction is drawn between [1] the degree of formality in particular organizational settings and [2] the necessarily informal foundations of formal organizational schemes and methods. Finally, the organization of research itself is addressed. A prescriptive theory (TFV) is suggested as a means of organizing and accounting for the research process. This suggestion serves as both [1] a proposal for research management and [2] an illustration of the relationship between theory and organization

On the Selection of a Transversal to Solve Nonlinear Systems with Interval Arithmetic

International audienceThis paper investigates the impact of the selection of a transversal on the speed of convergence of interval methods based on the nonlinear Gauss-Seidel scheme to solve nonlinear systems of equations. It is shown that, in a marked contrast with the linear case, such a selection does not speed-up the computation in the general case; directions for researches on more flexible methods to select projections are then discussed