scholarly journals A Multicriteria Motion Planning Approach for Combining Smoothness and Speed in Collaborative Assembly Systems

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (15) ◽  
pp. 5086
Author(s):  
Rafael A. Rojas ◽  
Erich Wehrle ◽  
Renato Vidoni
Keyword(s):  
Production Efficiency ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Cognitive Stress ◽  
Safety Requirements ◽  
Cognitive Ergonomics ◽  
Planning Approach ◽  
Variational Formalism ◽  
The Given

Human–robot interaction is an important aspect of Industry 4.0, and the extended use of robotics in industrial environments will not be possible without enabling them to safely interact with humans. This imposes relevant constraints in the qualitative characterization of the motions of robots when sharing their workspace with humans. In this paper, we address the trade-off between two such constraints, namely the smoothness, which is related to the cognitive stress that a person undergoes when interacting with a robot, and the speed, which is related to normative safety requirements. Given an execution time, such an approach will allow us to plan safe trajectories without neglecting cognitive ergonomics and production efficiency aspects. We first present the methodology able to express the balance between these qualities in the form of a composite objective function. Thanks to the variational formalism, we identify the related set of optimal trajectories with respect to the given criterion and give a suitable parametrization to them. Then, we are able to formulate the safety requirements in terms of a reparametrization of the motion. Finally, numerical and experimental results are provided. This allows the identification of the preferable sets of the possible motions that satisfy the operator’s psychological well-being and the assembly process performance by complying with the safety requirements in terms of mechanical risk prevention.

scholarly journals Mental Health, Greenness, and Nature Related Behaviors in the Adult Population of Stockholm County during COVID-19-Related Restrictions

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 3303
Author(s):  
Mare Lõhmus ◽  
Cecilia U. D. Stenfors ◽  
Tomas Lind ◽  
André Lauber ◽  
Antonios Georgelis
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Stockholm County ◽  
Cognitive Stress ◽  
Symptoms Of Depression ◽  
International Data

International data suggest that exposure to nature is beneficial for mental health and well-being. The restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have created a setting that allows us to investigate the importance of greenness exposure on mental health during a period of increased isolation and worry. Based on 2060 responses from an online survey in Stockholm County, Sweden, we investigated: (1) whether the COVID-19 pandemic changed peoples’ lifestyle and nature-related habits, and (2) if peoples’ mental health differed depending on their exposure to greenness. Neighborhood greenness levels were quantified by using the average normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) within 50 m, 100 m, 300 m, and 500 m buffers surrounding the participant’s place of residence. We found that the number of individuals that reported that they visited natural areas “often” was significantly higher during the pandemic than before the pandemic. Higher levels of greenness surrounding one’s location of residence were in general associated with higher mental health/well-being and vitality scores, and less symptoms of depression, anxiety, and perceived and cognitive stress, after adjustments for demographic variables and walkability. In conclusion, the results from the present study provided support to the suggestion that contact with nature may be important for mental health in extreme circumstances.

scholarly journals CD25890, a conserved protein that modulates sporulation initiation in Clostridioides difficile

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Diogo Martins ◽  
Michael A. DiCandia ◽  
Aristides L. Mendes ◽  
Daniela Wetzel ◽  
Shonna M. McBride ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Biofilm Formation ◽  
Regulatory Protein ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Intestine ◽  
Healthy Humans ◽  
Clostridioides Difficile ◽  
Nutritional Conditions ◽  
Sporulation Initiation

AbstractBacteria that reside in the gastrointestinal tract of healthy humans are essential for our health, sustenance and well-being. About 50–60% of those bacteria have the ability to produce resilient spores that are important for the life cycle in the gut and for host-to-host transmission. A genomic signature for sporulation in the human intestine was recently described, which spans both commensals and pathogens such as Clostridioides difficile and contains several genes of unknown function. We report on the characterization of a signature gene, CD25890, which, as we show is involved in the control of sporulation initiation in C. difficile under certain nutritional conditions. Spo0A is the main regulatory protein controlling entry into sporulation and we show that an in-frame deletion of CD25890 results in increased expression of spo0A per cell and increased sporulation. The effect of CD25890 on spo0A is likely indirect and mediated through repression of the sinRR´ operon. Deletion of the CD25890 gene, however, does not alter the expression of the genes coding for the cytotoxins or the genes involved in biofilm formation. Our results suggest that CD25890 acts to modulate sporulation in response to the nutrients present in the environment.

scholarly journals Question-aware memory network for multi-hop question answering in human–robot interaction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinmeng Li ◽  
Mamoun Alazab ◽  
Qian Li ◽  
Keping Yu ◽  
Quanjun Yin
Keyword(s):  
Question Answering ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Knowledge Graph ◽  
Robot Interaction ◽  
Natural Language Question ◽  
Memory Network ◽  
The Given ◽  
Fine Tune ◽  
Language Question

AbstractKnowledge graph question answering is an important technology in intelligent human–robot interaction, which aims at automatically giving answer to human natural language question with the given knowledge graph. For the multi-relation question with higher variety and complexity, the tokens of the question have different priority for the triples selection in the reasoning steps. Most existing models take the question as a whole and ignore the priority information in it. To solve this problem, we propose question-aware memory network for multi-hop question answering, named QA2MN, to update the attention on question timely in the reasoning process. In addition, we incorporate graph context information into knowledge graph embedding model to increase the ability to represent entities and relations. We use it to initialize the QA2MN model and fine-tune it in the training process. We evaluate QA2MN on PathQuestion and WorldCup2014, two representative datasets for complex multi-hop question answering. The result demonstrates that QA2MN achieves state-of-the-art Hits@1 accuracy on the two datasets, which validates the effectiveness of our model.

scholarly journals WEYL GEOMETRY AS CHARACTERIZATION OF SPACE-TIME

2011 ◽  
Vol 03 ◽  
pp. 87-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. P. POULIS ◽  
J. M. SALIM
Keyword(s):  
General Relativity ◽  
Scalar Field ◽  
Riemannian Geometry ◽  
Axiomatic Approach ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Weyl Geometry ◽  
Test Particles ◽  
Variational Formalism ◽  
Physical Fields

Motivated by an axiomatic approach to characterize space-time it is investigated a reformulation of Einstein's gravity where the pseudo-riemannian geometry is substituted by a Weyl one. It is presented the main properties of the Weyl geometry and it is shown that it gives extra contributions to the trajectories of test particles, serving as one more motivation to study general relativity in Weyl geometry. It is introduced its variational formalism and it is established the coupling with other physical fields in such a way that the theory acquires a gauge symmetry for the geometrical fields. It is shown that this symmetry is still present for the red-shift and it is concluded that for cosmological models it opens the possibility that observations can be fully described by the new geometrical scalar field. It is concluded then that this reformulation, although representing a theoretical advance, still needs a complete description of their objects.

scholarly journals Should my robot know what's best for me? Human–robot interaction between user experience and ethical design

AI & Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Fronemann ◽  
Kathrin Pollmann ◽  
Wulf Loh
Keyword(s):  
User Experience ◽  
Interaction Design ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Design Principles ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Original Design ◽  
Robot Interaction ◽  
Ethical Design

AbstractTo integrate social robots in real-life contexts, it is crucial that they are accepted by the users. Acceptance is not only related to the functionality of the robot but also strongly depends on how the user experiences the interaction. Established design principles from usability and user experience research can be applied to the realm of human–robot interaction, to design robot behavior for the comfort and well-being of the user. Focusing the design on these aspects alone, however, comes with certain ethical challenges, especially regarding the user’s privacy and autonomy. Based on an example scenario of human–robot interaction in elder care, this paper discusses how established design principles can be used in social robotic design. It then juxtaposes these with ethical considerations such as privacy and user autonomy. Combining user experience and ethical perspectives, we propose adjustments to the original design principles and canvass our own design recommendations for a positive and ethically acceptable social human–robot interaction design. In doing so, we show that positive user experience and ethical design may be sometimes at odds, but can be reconciled in many cases, if designers are willing to adjust and amend time-tested design principles.

Kleinian characterization of asymptotic symmetries of real general relativity

1993 ◽  
Vol 441 (1913) ◽  
pp. 465-471 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
General Relativity ◽  
Automorphism Group ◽  
Group Action ◽  
Radon Transform ◽  
Symmetry Groups ◽  
Asymptotic Symmetry ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Given ◽  
Asymptotic Symmetries

According to Klein’s Erlanger programme, one may (indirectly) specify a geometry by giving a group action. Conversely, given a group action, one may ask for the corresponding geometry. Recently, I showed that the real asymptotic symmetry groups of general relativity (in any signature) have natural ‘projective’ classical actions on suitable ‘Radon transform’ spaces of affine 3-planes in flat 4-space. In this paper, I give concrete models for these groups and actions. Also, for the ‘atomic’ cases, I give geometric structures for the spaces of affine 3-planes for which the given actions are the automorphism group.

Effects of the Cooling Rate on the Acoustic Properties of Pb-10Sn Solder

2012 ◽  
Vol 729 ◽  
pp. 356-360
Author(s):  
Endre Harkai ◽  
Tamás Hurtony ◽  
Péter Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Sound Velocity ◽  
Cooling Rate ◽  
Acoustic Microscopy ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Scanning Acoustic Microscopy ◽  
Cooling Rates ◽  
Reliability Parameters ◽  
Microscopy Characterization ◽  
The Given

Microhardness and sound velocity were measured in case of differently prepared solder samples. The used Pb-10Sn solder samples were melted then cooled down applying different cooling rates. These procedures caused variant microstructure thus different microhardness and sound velocity values. The sound velocity was measured by means of scanning acoustic microscopy. Characterization of solder materials by acoustic microscopy gives the possibility to non-destructively estimate mechanical and reliability parameters of the given material.

scholarly journals Reports of the AAAI 2016 Spring Symposium Series

AI Magazine ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 83-88
Author(s):  
Christopher Amato ◽  
Ofra Amir ◽  
Joanna Bryson ◽  
Barbara Grosz ◽  
Bipin Indurkhya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Intelligent Systems ◽  
Observational Studies ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Robot Interaction ◽  
Symposium Series ◽  
Research Platform ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, in cooperation with Stanford University's Department of Computer Science, presented the 2016 Spring Symposium Series on Monday through Wednesday, March 21-23, 2016 at Stanford University. The titles of the seven symposia were (1) AI and the Mitigation of Human Error: Anomalies, Team Metrics and Thermodynamics; (2) Challenges and Opportunities in Multiagent Learning for the Real World (3) Enabling Computing Research in Socially Intelligent Human-Robot Interaction: A Community-Driven Modular Research Platform; (4) Ethical and Moral Considerations in Non-Human Agents; (5) Intelligent Systems for Supporting Distributed Human Teamwork; (6) Observational Studies through Social Media and Other Human-Generated Content, and (7) Well-Being Computing: AI Meets Health and Happiness Science.

scholarly journals Controllable Fabrication and Characterization of Gold Nanoparticles: Enhanced Therapeutic Approaches in Cancer

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-28
Author(s):  
Aqsa Ikram ◽  
Yasir Jamil ◽  
Tahira Ahmad ◽  
Hira Ikram ◽  
Amna Ameen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Nano Particles ◽  
Cell Labeling ◽  
Therapeutic Approaches ◽  
Laser Hyperthermia ◽  
Seed Growth ◽  
Gold Nano Particles ◽  
Controllable Fabrication ◽  
Cancerous Cells

Energy trans-ducting gold nano-particles, with well-being physical, chemical and optical properties for utilization in different types of cancer therapy can be prepared through chemical seed growth reduction method. Gold nano particle is a umbrella term have a variety of size and shape. More regular gold nano-particles can be obtained by reduction of HAuCl4, selection of chemicals and parameters of growth medium are set in accordance with the required category of nano-particles. Nano-particles have longest dimension of 100 nm. Therapeutic treatments like photo-imaging, gene delivery, drug delivery, cell labeling and photo thermal therapy   can be done by gold nano particles.  They reduce the side effects of conventional therapy due to high target specificity and absorb and scatter specific wavelength of laser. Hyperthermia in cancerous cells is generated without damaging surrounding healthy tissues, cause the cell death by necrosis and apoptosis. The overall morphology of gold nano particles can be characterized by SEM and TEM.

scholarly journals Ergonomic risk assessment in medical-dental clinics

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (Supplement_2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Ferreira ◽  
Ana Lança ◽  
João Paulo Figueiredo ◽  
Silvia Seco ◽  
António Loureiro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Muscle Tension ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Physical Work ◽  
Cognitive Stress ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Dental Clinics ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Level 3 ◽  
Improve Health

Abstract Background The ergonomic applied to Dental Medicine aims to develop an ergonomically planned environment, with equipment rationally distributed, to reduce physical and cognitive stress, prevent diseases related to professional exercise, increasing productivity, improving the quality of service provided and reducing fatigue in the working team. However, physical work usually imposes muscle tension on the musculoskeletal system that can culminate in work-related trauma, commonly called Musculoskeletal Disorder. Methods We proposed as an objective, to evaluate how the ergonomic risks in Medical-Dental Clinics, which can cause work-related Musculoskeletal Injuries, influence the quality of life and health of the workers. The checklist was applied based on the legislation in force and, at the same time, a questionnaire was applied for consultation with the workers; identification of the tasks of all workers and their associated risks has been carried out; ergonomic studies of the workstations concerned have been carried out and, in the light of the results obtained, preventive measures have been indicated to address the problems. Results Through the Rula Method, we evaluated the level of performance in relation to the tasks performed and found that most of these corresponded to level 3, which corresponded to values between 5 and 6 and indicated that changes should occur briefly. Conclusion It was concluded that the most outstanding area in need of rapid changes was the surgical area, since it requires more effort on the part of these professionals. It is therefore proposed to implement new measures to improve health and well-being and avoid ergonomically incorrect postures.

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