39044537
Second-Order Conditioning in Mobile Robots
We have proposed a neural network that learns to control avoidance behaviors of a physical mobile robot through classical conditioning and operant conditioning. In this article we test whether our network can acquire second-order conditioning. During training we first associate the activation of the robot's infrared sensors with collisions. Then, the activation of a visual sensor is repeatedly paired with the activation of the infrared sensors. Results show that the robot learns to elicit avoidance responses whenever the visual sensor becomes active.
18983514
Sequence Learning in Mobile Robots Using Avalanche Neural Networks
This paper describes the implementation of a neural network for sequence learning that is based on a neurocomputational theory of learning. The network is implemented on a physical mobile robot in order to learn to reproduce sequences of motor actions. At the onset of a conditioned stimulus the robot is presented with a sequence of visual stimuli that produce reactive motor actions of different duration. Initial results show that after learning the robot can approximate the motor sequence with no visual stimulation.
14595145
An Approach to Vision-Based Person Detection in Robotic Applications
We present an approach to vision-based person detection in robotic applications that integrates top down template matching with bottom up classifiers. We detect components of the human silhouette, such as torso and legs; this approach provides greater invariance than monolithic methods to the wide variety of poses a person can be in. We detect borders on each image, then apply a distance transform, and then match templates at different scales. This matching process generates a focus of attention (candidate people) that are later confirmed using a trained Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. Our results show that this method is both fast and precise and directly applicable in robotic architectures.
33610290
Biomimetic Robotics
11608556
MORF: A Distributed Multimodal Information Filtering System
The proliferation of objectionable information on the Internet has reached a level of serious concern. To empower end-users with the choice of blocking undesirable and offensive Web-sites, we propose a multimodal personalized information filter, named MORF. The design of MORF aims to meet three major performance goals: efficiency, accuracy, and personalization. To achieve these design goals, we have devised a multimodality classification algorithm and a personalization algorithm. Empirical study and initial statistics collected from the MORF filters deployed at sites in the U.S. and Asia show that MORF is both efficient and effective, compared to the traditional URL- and text-based filtering approaches.
36323277
Event-Based Traceability for Managing Evolutionary Change
Although the benefits of requirements traceability are widely recognized, the actual practice of maintaining a traceability scheme is not always entirely successful. The traceability infrastructure underlying a software system tends to erode over its lifetime, as time-pressured practitioners fail to consistently maintain links and update impacted artifacts each time a change occurs, even with the support of automated systems. This paper proposes a new method of traceability based upon event-notification and is applicable even in a heterogeneous and globally distributed development environment. Traceable artifacts are no longer tightly coupled but are linked through an event service, which creates an environment in which change is handled more efficiently, and artifacts and their related links are maintained in a restorable state. The method also supports enhanced project management for the process of updating and maintaining the system artifacts.
11546106
Physical hierarchy generation with routing congestion control
In this paper, we develop a multi-level physical hierarchy generation (mPG) algorithm integrated with fast incremental global routing for directly updating and optimizing congestion cost during placement. The fast global routing is achieved by using a fast two-bend routing and incremental A-tree algorithm. The routing congestion is modeled by the wire usage estimated by the fast global router. A hierarchical area density control is also developed for placing objects with significant size variations. Experimental results show that, compared to Gordian-L, the wire length driven mPG is 3-6.5 times faster and generates slightly better wire length for test circuits larger than 100K cells. Moreover, the congestion driven mPG improves 50% wiring overflow with 5% larger bounding box wire length but 3-6% shorter routing wire length measured by graph based A-tree.
14075719
Receiver-based rate-distortion optimized interactive streaming for scalable bitstreams of light fields
The paper proposes a receiver-based rate-distortion optimized framework to stream interactively scalable bitstreams of light fields. Based on the desired viewpoints, the predicted future buffer state, the network characteristics, and the target transmission rate, the receiver customizes the data request in order to minimize the distortion in the frames to be rendered. Experimental results show that the proposed framework improves the rendering quality by 1.0-2.8 dB over a heuristic scheme at the same rate. Correspondingly, to achieve the same rendering quality the proposed framework reduces 25-35% of the rate over the heuristic scheme.
10801320
Rule-mitigated collaboration technology
The design of an appropriate paradigm for collaboration ultimately stands or falls on the question of whether human users are able to cooperate effectively with it. In this work, we begin with a paradigm of interaction in which human collaborators have shown themselves facile. This paradigm is based on the formal meeting protocol commonly known as parliamentary procedure or Robert's Rules of Order (RRO). These rules are at the same time descriptive and prescriptive of effective meeting behavior. Electronic meeting systems, likewise, have to manage time and communicative resources, maintain logs, and produce artifacts that constitute the fruit of the collaboration. The technology disclosed here facilitates the generation of coauthored artifacts (documents, designs, project plans, etc.) as the direct outcome of the collaborative process. The efficacy of rule-mitigated collaboration technology is based on four major components: an extended parliamentary procedure rule set, a scoping policy and set of application programming interfaces, an object-based client-server architecture, and an M-Net synchronous meeting environment.