Download or read book Design Experiments and Implementation of Reinforcement Learning in RSTAR Robot for Search and Rescue Applications written by Liran Yehezkel and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis presents the Rising STAR (RSTAR) a newly developed crawling robot capable of reconfiguring its shape and moving the position of its center of mass. RSTAR belongs to the family of the STAR robots with similar sprawling capabilities allowing it to run in a planar configuration, either upright or inverted and change its mechanics from the lateral to the sagittal planes. The RSTAR is also fitted with four bar extension mechanism (FBEM) allowing it to extend the distance between its body and legs.
Download or read book Design of Experiments for Reinforcement Learning written by Christopher Gatti and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-11-22 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis takes an empirical approach to understanding of the behavior and interactions between the two main components of reinforcement learning: the learning algorithm and the functional representation of learned knowledge. The author approaches these entities using design of experiments not commonly employed to study machine learning methods. The results outlined in this work provide insight as to what enables and what has an effect on successful reinforcement learning implementations so that this learning method can be applied to more challenging problems.
Download or read book Design and Implementation of Artificial Intelligence for Autonomous Search and Rescue Robot written by Yohannes Abreham Mebrahtu and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Inverse Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Applications written by Kenneth Daniel Bogert and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robots deployed into many real-world scenarios are expected to face situations that their designers could not anticipate. Machine learning is an effective tool for extending the capabilities of these robots by allowing them to adapt their behavior to the situation in which they find themselves. Most machine learning techniques are applicable to learning either static elements in an environment or elements with simple dynamics. We wish to address the problem of learning the behavior of other intelligent agents that the robot may encounter. To this end, we extend a well-known Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL) algorithm, Maximum Entropy IRL, to address challenges expected to be encountered by autonomous robots during learning. These include: occlusion of the observed agent's state space due to limits of the learner's sensors or objects in the environment, the presence of multiple agents who interact, and partial knowledge of other agents' dynamics. Our contributions are investigated with experiments using simulated and real world robots. These experiments include learning a fruit sorting task from human demonstrations and autonomously penetrating a perimeter patrol. Our work takes several important steps towards deploying IRL alongside other machine learning methods for use by autonomous robots.
Download or read book Guidance and Search Algorithms for Mobile Robots written by Kevin James Worrall and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban Search and Rescue is a dangerous task for rescue workers and for this reason the use of mobile robots to carry out the search of the environment is becoming common place. These robots are remotely operated and the search is carried out by the robot operator. This work proposes that common search algorithms can be used to guide a single autonomous mobile robot in a search of an environment and locate survivors within the environment. This work then goes on to propose that multiple robots, guided by the same search algorithms, will carry out this task in a quicker time. The work presented is split into three distinct parts. The first is the development of a nonlinear mathematical model for a mobile robot. The model developed is validated against a physical system. A suitable navigation and control system is required to direct the robot to a target point within an environment. This is the second part of this work. The final part of this work presents the search algorithms used. The search algorithms generate the target points which allow the robot to search the environment. These algorithms are based on traditional and modern search algorithms that will enable a single mobile robot to search an area autonomously. The best performing algorithms from the single robot case are then adapted to a multi robot case. The mathematical model presented in the thesis describes the dynamics and kinematics of a four wheeled mobile ground based robot. The model is developed to allow the design and testing of control algorithms offline. With the model and accompanying simulation the search algorithms can be quickly and repeatedly tested without practical installation. The mathematical model is used as the basis of design for the manoeuvring control algorithm and the search algorithms. This design process is based on simulation studies. In the first instance the control methods investigated are Proportional-Integral-Derivative, Pole Placement and Sliding Mode. Each method is compared using the tracking error, the steady state error, the rise time, the charge drawn from the battery and the ability to control the robot through a simple motion. Obstacle avoidance is also covered as part of the manoeuvring control algorithm. The final aspect investigated is the search algorithms. The following search algorithms are investigated, Lawnmower, Random, HillClimbing, Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithms. Variations on these algorithms are also investigated. The variations are based on Tabu Search. Each of the algorithms is investigated in a single robot case with the best performing investigated within a multi robot case. A comparison between the different methods is made based on the percentage of the area covered within the time available, the number of targets located and the time taken to locate targets. It is shown that in the single robot case the best performing algorithms have high random elements and some structure to selecting points. Within the multi robot case it is shown that some algorithms work well and others do not. It is also shown that the useable number of robots is dependent on the size of the environment. This thesis concludes with a discussion on the best control and search algorithms, as indicated by the results, for guiding single and multiple autonomous mobile robots. The advantages of the methods are presented, as are the issues with using the methods stated. Suggestions for further work are also presented.
Download or read book A Method for Anomaly Detection in Robotics Using ROS written by Matan Sar-Israel and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The goal of building robots that posses a large degree of autonomy and are able to act in a dynamic environment while interacting with humans drives much of the modern research in the area of robotics in general, and service robots in particular. Given the diverse settings such robots are expected to operate in,their designers are unlikely to foresee all situations they could face. In addition, they may suffer from unknown software bugs, from mechanical faults, or might be infected by malicious software. All these issues could lead to unexpected, and potentially harmful behavior that could cause considerable damage to the robot and its environment. This calls for software that can alert the user or operator of anomalous situations that require its intervention. Like similar work in cyber-security, work on anomaly detection in robotics uses machine learning techniques to learn classifiers that can detect bad behaviors from data obtained from the robot at run-time. Often, the type of learning used is 1-class learning, where only positive examples are supplied. This type of learning is motivated by the fact that we assume that the robot designer has addressed all known issues prior to deployment, hence she can train the robot with positive examplesonly. This thesis continues this line of work and describes a new method that uses positive instances only and has two main properties: it is effective, and it is generic and requires little domain and robotics expertise. During training, messages exchanged between different software components are recorded. From these messages, a set of vectors is generated. Each vector summarizes information collected during a particular time window. Each feature of this vector computes some statistical property of messages sent during this time window, such as the number of messages of a particular type, their timing, their size, etc., as well as information on resource use (e.g., CPU, memory, threads) during this time window. There is no attempt to understand the meaning of the messages or no deep analysis of their content. From this set of vectors, we learn a set of rules. The rules generated a reimperfect-they sometimes classify vectors generated during normal runs as negative. Our next step is to characterize the frequency of such negative values in normal runs. Here we compute the largest sequence k of consecutive vectors classified negatively. Now, during run-time, we alert the user when a sequence of length greater than k is observed. In our experiments so far, this leads to perfect behavior. Our system is implemented on top of ROS - the Robot Operating System, recording messages sent to different topics. We provide a configurable tool for generating multiple training instances and transforming them to sets of feature vectors that can be used as input to our (as well as other) learning algorithm. We evaluate our method in simulation on a navigation task using different office like environments and an environment based on the IAEA Challenge, and on a pick-and-place task on a physical robot, demonstrating good performance. In these experiments, our method was able to perfectly classify runs as normal or anomalous." -- abstract.
Download or read book Semi autonomous Control of Multi robot Teams in Urban Search and Rescue Applications written by Yugang Liu and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban search and rescue (USAR) has been a significant application in robotics because the deployment of rescue robots in these life-risking tasks can help reduce the personal risks of human rescue workers and increase the speed of emergency response. Furthermore, the incorporation of multi-robot rescue teams consisting of a group of heterogeneous rescue robots is advantageous since it allows shorter robot deployment times, provides situational awareness from multiple locations, and introduces redundancy and fault-tolerance to this time-critical mission. While promising, the control of multi-robot rescue teams is a challenging task. In particular, decisions need to be made regarding which rescue tasks should be executed and by which robot in a specific scenario. This thesis focuses on the development of semi-autonomous control architectures for multi-robot USAR teams in order to address the challenges in human-robot coordination and multi-robot cooperation in USAR applications. A learning-based semi-autonomous control architecture is developed for multi-robot teams in USAR environments, allowing a team of rescue robots to learn and make decisions regarding which rescue tasks need to be carried out at a given time. The task sharing between rescue robots and human operators can reduce the stress and mental workload of the operators, while allowing rescue robots to benefit from a human operator's experience and knowledge. Furthermore, the cooperation between different rescue robots enables fast exploration of cluttered USAR scenes by minimizing overlap or repeated revisits of an explored area, as well as improve the reliability of the overall search and rescue mission. This thesis further addresses the high-level task allocation challenge for a large heterogeneous multi-robot team. A hierarchical supervisory control architecture is proposed allowing effective task sharing amongst the multi-robot team based on the dimension, mobility and sensing capabilities of individual robots. The developed approach can also handle the changes to team size due to robot failures and the need for robot repair during a USAR mission. The developed multi-robot task allocation approach allows a single operator to control a large team of heterogeneous rescue robots in USAR applications. Simulations and experiments in simulated USAR environments verified the performance of the proposed supervisory controller.
Download or read book The Whirlwind War written by Frank N. Schubert and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1995 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CMH Publication 70-30. Edited by Frank N. Schubert and TheresaL. Kraus. Discusses the United States Army's role in the Persian Gulf War from August 1990 to February 1991. Shows the various strands that came together to produce the army of the 1990s and how that army in turn performed under fire and in the glare of world attention. Retains a sense of immediacy in its approach. Contains maps which were carefully researched and compiled as original documents in their own right. Includes an index.
Download or read book Yearbook on Space Policy 2007 2008 written by Kai-Uwe Schrogl and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-07-19 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the time of ?nalising this second volume of the ?Yearbook on Space Policy? which covers the period mid-2007 to mid-2008, Europe is as visible and strong in the area of space activities as never before. Its space probes are present on the Moon, around Mars, and on Saturn?s Moon Titan, and are chasing asteroids and comets; Ariane V is the most successful commercial launch vehicle; and more and more European space applications satellites are in operation. Finally, with the successful launch of the Columbus Orbital Facility (COF) – the most prominent highlight of this period which is also depicted on the cover of this Yearbook – and the ?rst Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), Europe has become a decisive player in human space?ight. This is accompanied by new policy initiatives on the ministerial level which have been bringing the European Space Agency and the European Union steadily closer. Europe?s outstanding development and positioning in the space ?eld is based not only on Europe?s successful engineering and scienti?c capabilities and capacities, but also on the forceful political determination of all European actors to maintain and even further their engagement in the use of outer space. And it is this political determination which provides the focus for this ?Yearbook on Space Policy?. The Yearbook describes and analyses the contexts and contents of space policy. Its primary ?eld of investigation is Europe, but it also covers the whole range of global space activities and their in?uence on European endeavours.
Download or read book The Memory Keeper s Daughter written by Kim Edwards and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-05-30 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A #1 New York Times bestseller by Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a brilliantly crafted novel of parallel lives, familial secrets, and the redemptive power of love Kim Edwards’s stunning novel begins on a winter night in 1964 in Lexington, Kentucky, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy, but the doctor immediately recognizes that his daughter has Down syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse, Caroline, to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century—in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that winter night long ago. A family drama, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter explores every mother's silent fear: What would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? It is also an astonishing tale of love and how the mysterious ties that hold a family together help us survive the heartache that occurs when long-buried secrets are finally uncovered.
Download or read book Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability written by Marion Hersh and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ensuring that their work has a positive influence on society is a responsibility and a privilege for engineers, but also a considerable challenge. This book addresses the ways in which engineers meet this challenge, working from the assumption that for a project to be truly ethical both the undertaking itself and its implementation must be ethically sound. The contributors discuss varied topics from an international and interdisciplinary perspective, including l robot ethics; l outer space; l international development; l internet privacy and security; l green branding; l arms conversion; l green employment; and l deliberate misinformation about climate change Important questions are answered, such as l what is meant by engineering ethics and its practical implications; l how decisions made by engineers in their working lives make an impact at the global as well as the local level; and l what ethics-related questions should be asked before making such decisions. Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability will be a valuable resource for practising and student engineers as well as all who are interested in professional ethics, especially as it relates to engineering. Researchers and policy makers concerned with the effects of engineering decisions on environmental sustainability and international stability will find this book to be of special interest.
Download or read book Expert Clouds and Applications written by I. Jeena Jacob and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book features original papers from International Conference on Expert Clouds and Applications (ICOECA 2021), organized by GITAM School of Technology, Bangalore, India during February 18–19, 2021. It covers new research insights on artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, sustainability, and knowledge-based expert systems. The book discusses innovative research from all aspects including theoretical, practical, and experimental domains that pertain to the expert systems, sustainable clouds, and artificial intelligence technologies.
Download or read book Virtual Augmented and Mixed Reality written by Jessie Y. C. Chen and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-03 with total page 715 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, VAMR 2021, held virtually as part of the 23rd HCI International Conference, HCII 2021, in July 2021. The total of 1276 papers and 241 posters included in the 39 HCII 2021 proceedings volumes was carefully reviewed and selected from 5222 submissions. The 47 papers included in this volume were organized in topical sections as follows: designing and evaluating VAMR environments; multimodal and natural interaction in VAMR; head-mounted displays and VR glasses; VAMR applications in design, the industry and the military; and VAMR in learning and culture.
Download or read book Robot Learning written by J. H. Connell and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Building a robot that learns to perform a task has been acknowledged as one of the major challenges facing artificial intelligence. Self-improving robots would relieve humans from much of the drudgery of programming and would potentially allow operation in environments that were changeable or only partially known. Progress towards this goal would also make fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence by furthering our understanding of how to successfully integrate disparate abilities such as perception, planning, learning and action. Although its roots can be traced back to the late fifties, the area of robot learning has lately seen a resurgence of interest. The flurry of interest in robot learning has partly been fueled by exciting new work in the areas of reinforcement earning, behavior-based architectures, genetic algorithms, neural networks and the study of artificial life. Robot Learning gives an overview of some of the current research projects in robot learning being carried out at leading universities and research laboratories in the United States. The main research directions in robot learning covered in this book include: reinforcement learning, behavior-based architectures, neural networks, map learning, action models, navigation and guided exploration.
Download or read book Computer Related Risks written by Peter G. Neumann and published by Addison-Wesley Professional. This book was released on 1994-10-18 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This sobering description of many computer-related failures throughout our world deflates the hype and hubris of the industry. Peter Neumann analyzes the failure modes, recommends sequences for prevention and ends his unique book with some broadening reflections on the future." —Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate This book is much more than a collection of computer mishaps; it is a serious, technically oriented book written by one of the world's leading experts on computer risks. The book summarizes many real events involving computer technologies and the people who depend on those technologies, with widely ranging causes and effects. It considers problems attributable to hardware, software, people, and natural causes. Examples include disasters (such as the Black Hawk helicopter and Iranian Airbus shootdowns, the Exxon Valdez, and various transportation accidents); malicious hacker attacks; outages of telephone systems and computer networks; financial losses; and many other strange happenstances (squirrels downing power grids, and April Fool's Day pranks). Computer-Related Risks addresses problems involving reliability, safety, security, privacy, and human well-being. It includes analyses of why these cases happened and discussions of what might be done to avoid recurrences of similar events. It is readable by technologists as well as by people merely interested in the uses and limits of technology. It is must reading for anyone with even a remote involvement with computers and communications—which today means almost everyone. Computer-Related Risks: Presents comprehensive coverage of many different types of risks Provides an essential system-oriented perspective Shows how technology can affect your life—whether you like it or not!
Download or read book Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers written by Mr.Olivier J. Blanchard and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper investigates the relation between growth forecast errors and planned fiscal consolidation during the crisis. We find that, in advanced economies, stronger planned fiscal consolidation has been associated with lower growth than expected, with the relation being particularly strong, both statistically and economically, early in the crisis. A natural interpretation is that fiscal multipliers were substantially higher than implicitly assumed by forecasters. The weaker relation in more recent years may reflect in part learning by forecasters and in part smaller multipliers than in the early years of the crisis.
Download or read book The Sky is Gray written by Ernest J. Gaines and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poor African American boy and his mother experience both discrimination and kindness during a trip to town to see the dentist.
