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ii Interaction through communication is an important aspect of multi-robot systems. Audio communication, while common among animals and well studied in biology, is not well explored as a multi-robot technology. In this thesis we study the use of audio messages as a means of communication among mobile robots. We examine the properties of audio compared to other communication media, and show how these can be exploited. To guide the design of a multi-robot system, a simple audio propagation model integrated into a robot simulator is developed. This simulator shows how acoustic communication improves the team performance in a prototypical search task. We also introduce a physical network layer that uses audio as the transmission medium and implements a broadcast method related to the CSMA protocol. We then describe a distributed mutual exclusion algorithm suitable for use over audio, and demonstrate it in both simulation and real-world

Audio communication for multi-robot systems

Interaction through communication is an important aspect of multi-robot systems. Audio communication, while common among animals and well studied in biology, is not well explored as a multi-robot technology. In this thesis we study the use of audio messages as a means of communication among mobile robots. We examine the properties of audio compared to other communication media, and show how these can be exploited. To guide the design of a multi-robot system, a simple audio propagation model integrated into a robot simulator is developed. This simulator shows how acoustic communication improves the team performance in a prototypical search task. We also introduce a physical network layer that uses audio as the transmission medium and implements a broadcast method related to the CSMA protocol. We then describe a distributed mutual exclusion algorithm suitable for use over audio, and demonstrate it in both simulation and real-world

Sounds good: Simulation and evaluation of audio communication for multi-robot exploration

Abstract — In order to guide the design of a new multi-robot system, we seek to evaluate two different designs of audio direction sensor. We have implemented a simple but useful audio propagation simulator as an extension to the Stage multi-robot simulator. We use the simulator to evaluate the use of audio signals to improve the performance of a team of robots at a prototypical search task. The results indicate that, for this task, (i) audio can significantly improve team performance, and (ii) binary discrimination of the direction of a sound source (left/right) performs no worse than high-resolution direction information. This result suggests that a simple two-microphone audio system will be useful for our real robots, without advanced signal processing to find sound direction. I

Sharif CESR Small Size Robocup Team

Introduction Robotic soccer is a challenD88 research area, which in volves multi leagen ts that ntp to collaboratein an adversarial en viron8] t to achieve s ecific objectives. Here we describe the Sharif CESR small robot team, which was artici ated in Robocu 2001 small size league in Seattle, USA. This a er ex lain s the overall architecture of our robotic soccer system. Figure 1 shows a icture of our soccer robots. Fig. 1. Two robots of Sharif CESR small size robocu team. 2 Mechanics The Sharif CESR team con sists of four iden tical field layersan d a goalkee er. Each robot uses two DC Faulhaber DC motors with a 3.71:1 reduction gear box an twoinW:L+p tal en' ders with resolution of 512 ulses er revolution of motor axis. The algorithm to estimate the velocity from theen# der out ut is A. Birk, S. Coradeschi, and S. Tadokoro (Eds.): RoboCup 2001, LNAI 2377, pp. 595--598, 2002. c # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002 596 Mohammad Taghi Manzuri et al. implemen ted on the robot

Dual Blockade of PD-1 and LAG3 Immune Checkpoints Increases Dendritic Cell Vaccine Mediated T Cell Responses in Breast Cancer Model

Purpose Increasing the efficiency of unsuccessful immunotherapy methods is one of the most important research fields. Therefore, the use of combination therapy is considered as one of the ways to increase the effectiveness of the dendritic cell (DC) vaccine. In this study, the inhibition of immune checkpoint receptors such as LAG3 and PD-1 on T cells was investigated to increase the efficiency of T cells in response to the DC vaccine. Methods We used trimethyl chitosan-dextran sulfate-lactate (TMC-DS-L) nanoparticles (NPs) loaded with siRNA molecules to quench the PD-1 and LAG3 checkpoints’ expression. Results Appropriate physicochemical characteristics of the generated NPs led to efficient inhibition of LAG3 and PD-1 on T cells, which was associated with increased survival and activity of T cells, ex vivo. Also, treating mice with established breast tumors (4T1) using NPs loaded with siRNA molecules in combination with DC vaccine pulsed with tumor lysate significantly inhibited tumor growth and increased survival in mice. These ameliorative effects were associated with increased anti-tumor T cell responses and downregulation of immunosuppressive cells in the tumor microenvironment and spleen. Conclusion These findings strongly suggest that TMC-DS-L NPs loaded with siRNA could act as a novel tool in inhibiting the expression of immune checkpoints in the tumor microenvironment. Also, combination therapy based on inhibition of PD-1 and LAG3 in combination with DC vaccine is an effective method in treating cancer that needs to be further studied