AirSim: High-Fidelity Visual and Physical Simulation for Autonomous Vehicles

Developing and testing algorithms for autonomous vehicles in real world is an expensive and time consuming process. Also, in order to utilize recent advances in machine intelligence and deep learning we need to collect a large amount of annotated training data in a variety of conditions and environments. We present a new simulator built on Unreal Engine that offers physically and visually realistic simulations for both of these goals. Our simulator includes a physics engine that can operate at a high frequency for real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) simulations with support for popular protocols (e.g. MavLink). The simulator is designed from the ground up to be extensible to accommodate new types of vehicles, hardware platforms and software protocols. In addition, the modular design enables various components to be easily usable independently in other projects. We demonstrate the simulator by first implementing a quadrotor as an autonomous vehicle and then experimentally comparing the software components with real-world flights.Comment: Accepted for Field and Service Robotics conference 2017 (FSR 2017

DEVELOPMENT OFRIZATRIPTAN BENZOATE MICROSPHERES FOR NOSE TO BRAIN TARGETING

Objective: Oral administration of rizatriptan benzoate shows poor bioavailability due to first pass metabolism, which can be avoided by nasal administration of drugs. Additionally, the nasal administration provides faster onset of action, which is desired to get relief from the intense pain of a migraine. The present research work was emphasised on design, development and evaluation of mucoadhesive microspheres for nasal delivery of rizatriptan benzoate through a systematic approach. Methods: The microspheres of rizatriptan benzoate were prepared by the w/o/w double emulsion solvent diffusion method using the non-aqueous medium. Critical formulation and process parameters were identified through preliminary trial batches and 2[4-1] fractional factorial design was employed using polymer concentration (X1:2-5%), drug to polymer ratio (X2:1:2-1:6), amount of liquid paraffin (X3:100-200 ml) and the amount of magnesium stearate (X4:100-150 mg) as independent variables. Results: Design batches were evaluated for percent yield (50-78%), percent entrapment efficiency (62-85%), drug loading (7.5-30%), % mucoadhesion (47-75%) and drug release at 6 h (44-78%). Scanning electron microscopic (SEM) study showed that microspheres were of 50 µm in size and spherical in shape with a smooth surface. The optimised batch (D10) showed 85% entrapment efficiency and 66.6% drug release within 6 h. The developed microspheres could be used to deliver rizatriptan benzoate through nasal administration for treatment of a migraine. Conclusion: The developed microspheres can be considered as a promising system for nasal delivery system of rizatriptan benzoat

Safe Reinforcement Learning via Curriculum Induction

In safety-critical applications, autonomous agents may need to learn in an environment where mistakes can be very costly. In such settings, the agent needs to behave safely not only after but also while learning. To achieve this, existing safe reinforcement learning methods make an agent rely on priors that let it avoid dangerous situations during exploration with high probability, but both the probabilistic guarantees and the smoothness assumptions inherent in the priors are not viable in many scenarios of interest such as autonomous driving. This paper presents an alternative approach inspired by human teaching, where an agent learns under the supervision of an automatic instructor that saves the agent from violating constraints during learning. In this model, we introduce the monitor that neither needs to know how to do well at the task the agent is learning nor needs to know how the environment works. Instead, it has a library of reset controllers that it activates when the agent starts behaving dangerously, preventing it from doing damage. Crucially, the choices of which reset controller to apply in which situation affect the speed of agent learning. Based on observing agents' progress, the teacher itself learns a policy for choosing the reset controllers, a curriculum, to optimize the agent's final policy reward. Our experiments use this framework in two environments to induce curricula for safe and efficient learning

Seasonal changes in microbial community structure and nutrients content in rhizospheric soil of Aegle marmelos tree

A preliminary investigation was carried out on dominance of different types of microbial communities at different monsoon seasons in rhizospheric soils of Aegle marmelos tree. Nutrients content of soil were also determined simultaneously to correlate with the microbial population. Results show that the rhizosphere of Aegle marmelos contains gram-negative bacteria, Rhizobium, Azotobacter,Actinomycetes and Yeast and major plant nutrients and their count as well as dominance changes with moisture content in rhizosphere.Except actinomycetes all the microorganisms were found highest duringmonsoon season whereas in post-monsoon season Actinomycetes were dominant. Amount of water in rhizosphere soil also affects soil chemical properties. Soil pH, organic carbon, C:N ratio, available nitrogen and available phosphorus were recorded maximum in monsoon, whereas electrical conductivity and total nitrogen content were found maximum in post-monsoon

A High-Fidelity Open Embodied Avatar with Lip Syncing and Expression Capabilities

Embodied avatars as virtual agents have many applications and provide benefits over disembodied agents, allowing non-verbal social and interactional cues to be leveraged, in a similar manner to how humans interact with each other. We present an open embodied avatar built upon the Unreal Engine that can be controlled via a simple python programming interface. The avatar has lip syncing (phoneme control), head gesture and facial expression (using either facial action units or cardinal emotion categories) capabilities. We release code and models to illustrate how the avatar can be controlled like a puppet or used to create a simple conversational agent using public application programming interfaces (APIs). GITHUB link: https://github.com/danmcduff/AvatarSimComment: International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2019

Managing patient expectations at emergency department triage

Emergency departments (ED) overcrowding, long wait, and uncomfortable waiting room conditions may lower perceived quality of the patient experience and satisfaction. This study investigates the relationship between patient satisfaction and communication of expected wait times, at the point of triage. A pre-post (11/4/ 2008 – 2/5/2009) group design with convenience sample (n=1,209) of all discharge adult ED patients was utilized for this study. A static expected wait time model (i.e., average wait time + one standard deviation) based on time of the day, day of the week and triage levels was employed to communicating expected wait time at triage while an in-house survey with five-point Likert-scale patient satisfaction questions (satisfied with wait time in triage, informed about delays, and overall rating of ED visit) was administrated at the discharge desk. The communication of delays intervention was significant for only overall rating of ED, while binary communication status was significantly associated with all three patient satisfaction questions. The patients who didn’t receive any communication about delays, were between 1.42 to 5.48 times more likely to rate the three satisfaction questions lower than very good. With communication about delays, the percentage of patients responding very good and very poor/poor were 14.6% higher and 5.9% lower, respectively, for the satisfied with wait time in triage question. Although communication of delays intervention was not significant, the patients who received wait times information were significantly more satisfied. This indicates that patients are more likely to accept longer wait times provided their expectations are managed via communication. Future studies should explore technological solutions for communication of delays and operational improvement initiatives along with alignment of incentives for ED staff to further improve the patient experience. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Culture & Leadership lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework. (http://bit.ly/ExperienceFramework) Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this len

The impact of the resident duty hour regulations on surgical patients’ perceptions of care

Implementation of the 2003 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) resident duty-hour regulations and access to publicly reported patient satisfaction measures have challenged administrators and clinicians to balance resident’s educational experience, patient care quality, and patients’ satisfaction and perceptions. A pre-post retrospective study design investigated association between implementation of ACGME regulations and patient satisfaction/perceptions using multinomial logistic regressions. The sample consisted of all surgical inpatients (July 2001 – June 2005), who responded to surveys at an academic medical center. Patients gave lower ratings for physician interactions (patient-physician interaction time, clinical updates, and courtesy) following the implementation of post-duty hour regulations. While the odds of patients rating “below good” post-implementation for physician survey questions (i.e., related to time spent, kept informed, and friendliness/ courtesy) were higher (i.e., 1.25 to 1.3) as compared to odds of rating “very good”, the overall rating of quality care improved post-implementation. This difference could be due to increased interaction of patients with other hospital personnel. To improve patient satisfactions and in turn their perceptions, initiatives such as workload balancing, hand-off protocols, patient communication, and interactive training for care providers are recommended. Finally, residency programs and institutions need to develop strategies for implementation of current and future ACGME duty hour regulations so as to balance patient safety, patient perceptions, and resident well-being