Determining robot actions for tasks requiring sensor interaction

The performance of non-trivial tasks by a mobile robot has been a long term objective of robotic research. One of the major stumbling blocks to this goal is the conversion of the high-level planning goals and commands into the actuator and sensor processing controls. In order for a mobile robot to accomplish a non-trivial task, the task must be described in terms of primitive actions of the robot's actuators. Most non-trivial tasks require the robot to interact with its environment; thus necessitating coordination of sensor processing and actuator control to accomplish the task. The main contention is that the transformation from the high level description of the task to the primitive actions should be performed primarily at execution time, when knowledge about the environment can be obtained through sensors. It is proposed to produce the detailed plan of primitive actions by using a collection of low-level planning components that contain domain specific knowledge and knowledge about the available sensors, actuators, and sensor/actuator processing. This collection will perform signal and control processing as well as serve as a control interface between an actual mobile robot and a high-level planning system. Previous research has shown the usefulness of high-level planning systems to plan the coordination of activities such to achieve a goal, but none have been fully applied to actual mobile robots due to the complexity of interacting with sensors and actuators. This control interface is currently being implemented on a LABMATE mobile robot connected to a SUN workstation and will be developed such to enable the LABMATE to perform non-trivial, sensor-intensive tasks as specified by a planning system

Monitoring robot actions for error detection and recovery

Reliability is a serious problem in computer controlled robot systems. Although robots serve successfully in relatively simple applications such as painting and spot welding, their potential in areas such as automated assembly is hampered by programming problems. A program for assembling parts may be logically correct, execute correctly on a simulator, and even execute correctly on a robot most of the time, yet still fail unexpectedly in the face of real world uncertainties. Recovery from such errors is far more complicated than recovery from simple controller errors, since even expected errors can often manifest themselves in unexpected ways. Here, a novel approach is presented for improving robot reliability. Instead of anticipating errors, researchers use knowledge-based programming techniques so that the robot can autonomously exploit knowledge about its task and environment to detect and recover from failures. They describe preliminary experiment of a system that they designed and constructed

Associations between facial emotion recognition and young adolescents\u2019 behaviors in bullying

This study investigated whether different behaviors young adolescents can act during bullying episodes were associated with their ability to recognize morphed facial expressions of the six basic emotions, expressed at high and low intensity. The sample included 117 middle-school students (45.3% girls; mean age = 12.4 years) who filled in a peer nomination questionnaire and individually performed a computerized emotion recognition task. Bayesian generalized mixed-effects models showed a complex picture, in which type and intensity of emotions, students\u2019 behavior and gender interacted in explaining recognition accuracy. Results were discussed with a particular focus on negative emotions and suggesting a \u201cneutral\u201d nature of emotion recognition ability, which does not necessarily lead to moral behavior but can also be used for pursuing immoral goals

Unique and interactive effects of moral emotions and moral disengagement on bullying and defending among school children

The first aim of the present study was to examine in a single model how moral disengagement and moral emotions were related to bullying and defending behavior among schoolchildren. The second aim was to test whether the two moral dimensions interacted with each other to explain behavior in bullying situations. Data were collected from 561 Swedish students. Moral disengagement was positively associated with bullying and negatively associated with defending, whereas moral emotions score was negatively associated with bullying and positively associated with defending. Moreover, students who scored high in moral emotions did not tend to bully other students, irrespective of their levels of moral disengagement, whereas when the moral emotions score was low bullying behavior increased with increasing levels of moral disengagement. In contrast, moral disengagement was negatively related to defending behavior at low levels of moral emotions, but not when moral emotions were high

Flexible Decision Control in an Autonomous Trading Agent

An autonomous trading agent is a complex piece of software that must operate in a competitive economic environment and support a research agenda. We describe the structure of decision processes in the MinneTAC trading agent, focusing on the use of evaluators – configurable, composable modules for data analysis and prediction that are chained together at runtime to support agent decision-making. Through a set of examples, we show how this structure supports sales and procurement decisions, and how those decision processes can be modified in useful ways by changing evaluator configurations. To put this work in context, we also report on results of an informal survey of agent design approaches among the competitors in the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management (TAC SCM).autonomous trading agent;decision processes

An Evolutionary Framework for Determining Heterogeneous Strategies in Multi-Agent Marketplaces

We propose an evolutionary approach for studying the dynamics of interaction of strategic agents that interact in a marketplace. The goal is to learn which agent strategies are most suited by observing the distribution of the agents that survive in the market over extended periods of time. We present experimental results from a simulated market, where multiple service providers compete for customers using different deployment and pricing schemes. The results show that heterogeneous strategies evolve and co-exist in the same market.marketing;simulation;multi-agent systems;complexity economics;trading agents

On location: The imagined private interior in public life

This paper reveals the interior landscapes of selected contemporary Australian films, such as The Caterpillar Wish and Bad Boy Bubby, to develop a number of thematic influences on the manner in which domestic and private lives are constructed through filmic imagination. The research uncovers the conditions that contribute to particular scenographic representations of the humble interiors that act as both backdrop and performer to subtle and often troubled narratives. Such readings are informed by the theoretical works of writer Gertrude Stein, among others, who explore the relationships between the scenographic third dimension and the fourth dimensional performance in the representation of narrative space. A further theoretical thread lies in Giuliana Bruno’s work on the tension between private and public filmic space, which is explored through the public outing of intensely private spaces generated through narratives framed by the specificities of found interiors. Beyond the interrogation of qualities of imagined filmic space is the condition whereby locations, once transformed by the event of movie making are consequently forever revised. These altered conditions subsequently reinvest the lives of those who return to the location with layered narratives of occupation. Situationally, the now reconverted interior performs as contributor to subsequent private inhabitation, even if only as imagined space. The possibility here is that the qualities of the original may be superimposed and recontextualised to invest post-produced interiors with the qualities of the other space as imagined. This reading of film space explores new theoretical design scenarios for imagined and everyday interior landscapes

Goce precise non-gravitational force modeling for POD applications

GOCE was launched in 2009 at 250 km altitude to recover Earth’s static gravity field. As part of the GOCE-Italy project, we carried out the precise modeling for the radiation pressure and the aerodynamic effects on this satellite. This analysis has been performed to reduce the mismodeling of the non-gravitational forces, in order to be able to estimate the ocean tides parameters from the LEO satellites orbital perturbation. A new software ARPA (Aerodynamics and Radiation Pressure Analysis), which takes advantage of the raytracing technique, has been designed and developed to accurately model the non-gravitational perturbations. ARPA can compute the Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP), Earth Radiation Pressure (ERP), the spacecraft Thermal Re-Radiation (TRR) and the aerodynamic forces and torques acting on any satellite with a high level of accuracy. The adopted methodologies and procedure are presented in this thesis, and the results of the tests on GOCE are illustrated and discussed. The NAPEOS (NAvigation Package for Earth Observation Satellites) software, developed and maintained at ESA/ESOC, was upgraded to make use of the new ARPA inputs and adopted to perform the tests on GOCE. The tests were performed on 30 consecutive daily arcs, starting at the beginning of the GOCE science phase on 1st November 2009. The results for the radiation test cases show a significant reduction of the empirical accelerations, especially in the cross-track direction, of about the 20% for the SRP, 12% for the ERP albedo, 13% for the ERP infrared and 20% for the TRR with respect to the standard NAPEOS force modeling (cannon-ball). For the aerodynamics, an important reduction of the post-fit RMS from 7.6 to 7.3 mm has been observed with the new ARPA model, and the a reduction from 4.6 to 4.2 cm of the distance of the orbits computed with ARPA from the official reduced-dynamics GOCE orbits (Precise Science Orbit) has been computed. The obtained results confirm the goodness of the modeling and techniques of ARPA for all the non-gravitational perturbations computed for GOCE. Even though the results are presented for the GOCE satellite, the new technique and software are adaptable to satellite of any shape, whether in Earth-bound orbit, or orbiting another planet, or cruising in interplanetary space