The use of coreference resolution for understanding manipulation commands for the PR2 Robot

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-84).Natural language interaction can enable us to interface with robots such as the Personal Robot 2 (PR2), without the need for a special training or equipment. Programming such a robot to follow commands is challenging because natural language has a complex structure and semantics, a model for which needs to be based on linguistic knowledge or learned from examples. In this thesis we first enable the PR2 robot to follow manipulation commands expressed in natural language by applying the Generalized Grounding Graph (G3 ). We model the PR2's actions and their trajectories in the physical environment, define the state-action space and learn a grounding model from an annotated corpus of robot actions aligned with commands. We achieved lower overall performance than previous implementations of G3 had reported. After that, we present an approach for using the linguistic technique of coreference resolution to improve the robot's ability to understand commands consisting of multiple clauses. We constrain the groundings for coreferent phrases to be identical by merging their nodes in the grounding graph. We show that using coreference information increases the robot ability to infer the right action sequence. This brings the robotic capabilities of modeling and understanding natural language closer to our theoretical understanding of discourse.by Dimitar N. Simeonov.M.Eng

Pseudorapidity densities of charged particles with transverse momentum thresholds in pp collisions at √ s = 5.02 and 13 TeV

The pseudorapidity density of charged particles with minimum transverse momentum (pT) thresholds of 0.15, 0.5, 1, and 2 GeV/c is measured in pp collisions at the center of mass energies of √s=5.02 and 13 TeV with the ALICE detector. The study is carried out for inelastic collisions with at least one primary charged particle having a pseudorapidity (η) within 0.8pT larger than the corresponding threshold. In addition, measurements without pT-thresholds are performed for inelastic and nonsingle-diffractive events as well as for inelastic events with at least one charged particle having |η|2GeV/c), highlighting the importance of such measurements for tuning event generators. The new measurements agree within uncertainties with results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments obtained at √s=13TeV.

Enhanced deuteron coalescence probability in jets

The transverse-momentum (pT) spectra and coalescence parameters B2 of (anti)deuterons are measured in pp collisions at s√=13 TeV for the first time in and out of jets. In this measurement, the direction of the leading particle with the highest pT in the event (pleadT>5 GeV/c) is used as an approximation for the jet axis. The event is consequently divided into three azimuthal regions and the jet signal is obtained as the difference between the Toward region, that contains jet fragmentation products in addition to the underlying event (UE), and the Transverse region, which is dominated by the UE. The coalescence parameter in the jet is found to be approximately a factor of 10 larger than that in the underlying event. This experimental observation is consistent with the coalescence picture and can be attributed to the smaller average phase-space distance between nucleons inside the jet cone as compared to the underlying event. The results presented in this Letter are compared to predictions from a simple nucleon coalescence model, where the phase space distributions of nucleons are generated using PYTHIA 8 with the Monash 2013 tuning, and to predictions from a deuteron production model based on ordinary nuclear reactions with parametrized energy-dependent cross sections tuned on data. The latter model is implemented in PYTHIA 8.3. Both models reproduce the observed large difference between in-jet and out-of-jet coalescence parameters, although the almost flat trend of the BJet2 is not reproduced by the models, which instead give a decreasing trend

Measurements of azimuthal anisotropies at forward and backward rapidity with muons in high-multiplicity p–Pb collisions at √sNN = 8.16 TeV

The study of the azimuthal anisotropy of inclusive muons produced in p-Pb collisions at sNN−−−√=8.16 TeV, using the ALICE detector at the LHC is reported. The measurement of the second-order Fourier coefficient of the particle azimuthal distribution, v2, is performed as a function of transverse momentum pT in the 0-20% high-multiplicity interval at both forward (2.032 GeV/c. The v2 coefficient of inclusive muons is extracted using two different techniques, namely two-particle cumulants, used for the first time for heavy-flavour measurements, and forward-central two-particle correlations. Both techniques give compatible results. A positive v2 is measured at both forward and backward rapidities with a significance larger than 4.7σ and 7.6σ, respectively, in the interval 2<pT<6 GeV/c. Comparisons with previous measurements in p-Pb collisions at sNN−−−√=5.02 TeV, and with AMPT and CGC-based theoretical calculations are discussed. The findings impose new constraints on the theoretical interpretations of the origin of the collective behaviour in small collision systems