Designing Behavior Trees from Goal-Oriented LTLf Formulas

Temporal logic can be used to formally specify autonomous agent goals, but synthesizing planners that guarantee goal satisfaction can be computationally prohibitive. This paper shows how to turn goals specified using a subset of finite trace Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) into a behavior tree (BT) that guarantees that successful traces satisfy the LTL goal. Useful LTL formulas for achievement goals can be derived using achievement-oriented task mission grammars, leading to missions made up of tasks combined using LTL operators. Constructing BTs from LTL formulas leads to a relaxed behavior synthesis problem in which a wide range of planners can implement the action nodes in the BT. Importantly, any successful trace induced by the planners satisfies the corresponding LTL formula. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated in two ways: a) exploring the alignment between two planners and LTL goals, and b) solving a sequential key-door problem for a Fetch robot.Comment: Accepted as "Most Visionary Paper" in Autonomous Robots and Multirobot Systems (ARMS) 2023 workshop affiliated with the 22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2023

Mice Infected with Low-virulence Strains of Toxoplasma gondii Lose their Innate Aversion to Cat Urine, Even after Extensive Parasite Clearance

Toxoplasma gondii chronic infection in rodent secondary hosts has been reported to lead to a loss of innate, hard-wired fear toward cats, its primary host. However the generality of this response across T. gondii strains and the underlying mechanism for this pathogen mediated behavioral change remain unknown. To begin exploring these questions, we evaluated the effects of infection with two previously uninvestigated isolates from the three major North American clonal lineages of T. gondii, Type III and an attenuated strain of Type I. Using an hour-long open field activity assay optimized for this purpose, we measured mouse aversion toward predator and non-predator urines. We show that loss of innate aversion of cat urine is a general trait caused by infection with any of the three major clonal lineages of parasite. Surprisingly, we found that infection with the attenuated Type I parasite results in sustained loss of aversion at times post infection when neither parasite nor ongoing brain inflammation were detectable. This suggests that T. gondii-mediated interruption of mouse innate aversion toward cat urine may occur during early acute infection in a permanent manner, not requiring persistence of parasitecysts or continuing brain inflammation.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Fully Retroactive Approximate Range and Nearest Neighbor Searching

We describe fully retroactive dynamic data structures for approximate range reporting and approximate nearest neighbor reporting. We show how to maintain, for any positive constant $d$, a set of $n$ points in $\R^d$ indexed by time such that we can perform insertions or deletions at any point in the timeline in $O(\log n)$ amortized time. We support, for any small constant $\epsilon>0$, $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate range reporting queries at any point in the timeline in $O(\log n + k)$ time, where $k$ is the output size. We also show how to answer $(1+\epsilon)$-approximate nearest neighbor queries for any point in the past or present in $O(\log n)$ time.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures. To appear at the 22nd International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2011

Constellation-X SXT Assembly Design

Constellation-X is a long term NASA project intended to develop a satellite X-ray telescope to study the structure and evolution of the universe. As of October 2004, the Constellation-X satellites were in the design phase. The goal of this project was to develop alternative methods of reflector installation for the Spectroscopy X-ray Telescope portion of Constellation-X. Our team developed designs for telescope structure and for reflector handling

Tracking Paths in Planar Graphs

We consider the NP-complete problem of tracking paths in a graph, first introduced by Banik et al. [Banik et al., 2017]. Given an undirected graph with a source s and a destination t, find the smallest subset of vertices whose intersection with any s-t path results in a unique sequence. In this paper, we show that this problem remains NP-complete when the graph is planar and we give a 4-approximation algorithm in this setting. We also show, via Courcelle\u27s theorem, that it can be solved in linear time for graphs of bounded-clique width, when its clique decomposition is given in advance

Semi-autonomous human-UAV interfaces for fixed-wing mini-UAVs

Abstract-We present several human-robot interfaces that support real-time control of a small semi-autonomous UAV. These interfaces are designed for searching tasks and other missions that typically do not have a precise predetermined flight plan. We present a detailed analysis of a PDA interface and describe how our other interfaces relate to this analysis. We then offer quantative and qualitative performance comparisons of the interfaces, as well as an analysis of their possible real-world applications

HST Imaging Polarimetry of the Gravitational Lens FSC10214+4724

We present imaging polarimetry of the extremely luminous, redshift 2.3 IRAS source FSC10214+4724. The observations were obtained with HST's Faint Object Camera in the F437M filter, which is free of strong emission lines. The 0.7 arcsec long arc is unresolved to 0.04 arcsec FWHM in the transverse direction, and has an integrated polarization of 28 +/- 3 percent, in good agreement with ground-based observations. The polarization position angle varies along the arc by up to 35 deg. The overall position angle is 62 +/- 3 deg east of north. No counterimage is detected to B = 27.5 mag ($3\sigma$), giving an observed arc to counterimage flux ratio greater than 250, considerably greater than the flux ratio of 100 measured previously in the I-band. This implies that the configuration of the object in the source plane at the B-band is different from that at I-band, and/or that the lensing galaxy is dusty.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomical Journal, February 199