The DayOne project: how far can a robot develop in 24 hours?

What could a robot learn in one day? This paper describes the DayOne project, an endeavor to build an epigenetic robot that can bootstrap from a very rudimentary state to relatively sophisticated perception of objects and activities in a matter of hours. The project is inspired by the astonishingly rapidity with which many animals such as foals and lambs adapt to their surroundings on the first day of their life. While such plasticity may not be a sufficient basis for long-term cognitive development, it may be at least necessary, and share underlying infrastructure. This paper suggests that a sufficiently flexible perceptual system begins to look and act like it contains cognitive structures

Feel the beat: using cross-modal rhythm to integrate perception of objects, others, and self

For a robot to be capable of development, it must be able to explore its environment and learn from its experiences. It must find (or create) opportunities to experience the unfamiliar in ways that reveal properties valid beyond the immediate context. In this paper, we develop a novel method for using the rhythm of everyday actions as a basis for identifying the characteristic appearance and sounds associated with objects, people, and the robot itself. Our approach is to identify and segment groups of signals in individual modalities (sight, hearing, and proprioception) based on their rhythmic variation, then to identify and bind causally-related groups of signals across different modalities. By including proprioception as a modality, this cross-modal binding method applies to the robot itself, and we report a series of experiments in which the robot learns about the characteristics of its own body

Better Vision Through Manipulation

For the purposes of manipulation, we would like to know what parts of the environment are physically coherent ensembles - that is, which parts will move together, and which are more or less independent. It takes a great deal of experience before this judgement can be made from purely visual information. This paper develops active strategies for acquiring that experience through experimental manipulation, using tight correlations between arm motion and optic flow to detect both the arm itself and the boundaries of objects with which it comes into contact. We argue that following causal chains of events out from the robot's body into the environment allows for a very natural developmental progression of visual competence, and relate this idea to results in neuroscience

Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation, and School Choice

Based on surveys of two districts, explores the extent to which distance, transportation time, and mode prevent low- and moderate-income families from choosing private, charter, or non-neighborhood schools. Calls for decentralized transportation policies

Correlation of silver halide emulsion bar-coater vacuum chamber pressure fluctuations with flow pattern occurrence

A study was conducted in which the cause of flow pattern, a repetitive mottle-like defect, was investigated. Results obtained indicate that vacuum pressure fluctuations occur at the start of coating by the vacuum flow port that are 367% greater than at the center of coating. These fluctuations decay in time during the period of flow pattern occurrence, and range in frequency from 0 to .10 mm-1. These pressure fluctuations correlate to flow pattern density fluctuation frequencies of the same range. Additionally, it was seen that the decay rate of the ME side of the vacuum chamber was three times the rate of the UME side. No significant pressure fluctuation phenomena was observed by the end seals of the vacuum chamber

The Whole World in Your Hand: Active and Interactive Segmentation

Object segmentation is a fundamental problem in computer vision and a powerful resource for development. This paper presents three embodied approaches to the visual segmentation of objects. Each approach to segmentation is aided by the presence of a hand or arm in the proximity of the object to be segmented. The first approach is suitable for a robotic system, where the robot can use its arm to evoke object motion. The second method operates on a wearable system, viewing the world from a human's perspective, with instrumentation to help detect and segment objects that are held in the wearer's hand. The third method operates when observing a human teacher, locating periodic motion (finger/arm/object waving or tapping) and using it as a seed for segmentation. We show that object segmentation can serve as a key resource for development by demonstrating methods that exploit high-quality object segmentations to develop both low-level vision capabilities (specialized feature detectors) and high-level vision capabilities (object recognition and localization)

An examination of the ideological perspectives on the citizen's income debate

Though it is not at the centre of political attention, Citizen's Income (CI) receives the kind of widespread ideological support which most other proposals in the areas of labour market and social security reform do not. Given the breadth of such support, the objective of this research is to improve our understanding of why various ideologies get involved in the CI debate, and of how their differing contributions to that debate produce ideological variants of CI.Chapter 1 introduces us both to the debate and to this thesis, while chapter 2 outlines the principal ideologies with which the thesis deals. Chapters 3 to 5 then address those subjects - citizenship, work, full employment - which are at the heart of disagreements over benefit reform, since it is here that ideological distinctions relevant to the welfare state begin to be made. This approach allows us to formulate those principles which our varying ideologies would have a CI serve. Chapter 6 then examines Negative Income Tax as that form of CI most likely to be supported by economic liberals. Chapter 7 analyses why social democrats are attracted to the principle of social insurance, and why this might lead them to support a combination of CI and insurance benefits, i.e. a Participation Income. Chapter 8 looks at the importance of a social dividend to any market socialist strategy, and chapters 9 and 10 examine, respectively, ecological and feminist justifications for CI.In the concluding chapter, I argue that the widespread ideological support for CI is largely of a negative kind, i.e. a series of distinct but complementary reactions to the failures of non- integrated tax and benefit systems. Should CI enter the mainstream of policy -making debates then this consensus might well break down, since disagreements over the generosity and the (un)conditionality of any CI would inevitably become more important

An Open-Source Simulator for Cognitive Robotics Research: The Prototype of the iCub Humanoid Robot Simulator

This paper presents the prototype of a new computer simulator for the humanoid robot iCub. The iCub is a new open-source humanoid robot developed as a result of the “RobotCub” project, a collaborative European project aiming at developing a new open-source cognitive robotics platform. The iCub simulator has been developed as part of a joint effort with the European project “ITALK” on the integration and transfer of action and language knowledge in cognitive robots. This is available open-source to all researchers interested in cognitive robotics experiments with the iCub humanoid platform

Community pharmacist perceptions of delivering post-hospital discharge Medicines Use Reviews for elderly patients

Background The UK’s Department of Health has recommended that formal communication channels between hospital and community pharmacy should be established so that post discharge Medicines Use Reviews (dMUR) become an integral part of the medicines pathway. Objective To investigate the perspective of community pharmacists on the usefulness of dMUR referrals from hospital, the suitability of patients referred and overall views on the service. Method Self-completed survey distributed to 21 community pharmacists who had received referrals from the hospital during a 9-month randomized controlled feasibility study. Results Nineteen pharmacists (90.4%) returned the survey. Seven (36.8%) felt that it was hard to engage patients with dMURs. Failure or inability of patients to attend the pharmacy were the most common barriers. Reasons for medication changes (n=5) and indications for new medicines (n=4) were the most common examples of extra information that would be useful on referral. Community pharmacists held positive opinions on the dMUR service and could see the benefit to patients. Pharmacists wanted more referrals but reported performing few dMURs outside this study. Conclusion This study highlights the need to improve communication between hospital and community pharmacies and to overcome barriers to performing dMURs outside the pharmacy premises in this patient group. Impact of Findings on Practice • Referral of elderly patients from hospital to community pharmacy for a Medicines Use Review is well received by community pharmacists and is feasible • Reasons for medication changes and indications for new medicines started in hospital would be welcomed with the referral • Difficulty in patients leaving home to attend the pharmacy was the most common barrier to completion of the reviews • Contractual restrictions placed on UK community pharmacists limit their ability to provide the service to housebound patient