scholarly journals Personal Guides: Heterogeneous Robots Sharing Personal Tours in Multi-Floor Environments

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 2480
Author(s):  
Igor Rodriguez ◽  
Unai Zabala ◽  
Pedro Marín-Reyes ◽  
Ekaitz Jauregi ◽  
Javier Lorenzo-Navarro ◽  
...  

GidaBot is an application designed to setup and run a heterogeneous team of robots to act as tour guides in multi-floor buildings. Although the tours can go through several floors, the robots can only service a single floor, and thus, a guiding task may require collaboration among several robots. The designed system makes use of a robust inter-robot communication strategy to share goals and paths during the guiding tasks. Such tours work as personal services carried out by one or more robots. In this paper, a face re-identification/verification module based on state-of-the-art techniques is developed, evaluated offline, and integrated into GidaBot’s real daily activities, to avoid new visitors interfering with those attended. It is a complex problem because, as users are casual visitors, no long-term information is stored, and consequently, faces are unknown in the training step. Initially, re-identification and verification are evaluated offline considering different face detectors and computing distances in a face embedding representation. To fulfil the goal online, several face detectors are fused in parallel to avoid face alignment bias produced by face detectors under certain circumstances, and the decision is made based on a minimum distance criterion. This fused approach outperforms any individual method and highly improves the real system’s reliability, as the tests carried out using real robots at the Faculty of Informatics in San Sebastian show.

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 1915-1960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Brázdil ◽  
Andrea Kiss ◽  
Jürg Luterbacher ◽  
David J. Nash ◽  
Ladislava Řezníčková

Abstract. The use of documentary evidence to investigate past climatic trends and events has become a recognised approach in recent decades. This contribution presents the state of the art in its application to droughts. The range of documentary evidence is very wide, including general annals, chronicles, memoirs and diaries kept by missionaries, travellers and those specifically interested in the weather; records kept by administrators tasked with keeping accounts and other financial and economic records; legal-administrative evidence; religious sources; letters; songs; newspapers and journals; pictographic evidence; chronograms; epigraphic evidence; early instrumental observations; society commentaries; and compilations and books. These are available from many parts of the world. This variety of documentary information is evaluated with respect to the reconstruction of hydroclimatic conditions (precipitation, drought frequency and drought indices). Documentary-based drought reconstructions are then addressed in terms of long-term spatio-temporal fluctuations, major drought events, relationships with external forcing and large-scale climate drivers, socio-economic impacts and human responses. Documentary-based drought series are also considered from the viewpoint of spatio-temporal variability for certain continents, and their employment together with hydroclimate reconstructions from other proxies (in particular tree rings) is discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn, and challenges for the future use of documentary evidence in the study of droughts are presented.


Biomedicines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 844
Author(s):  
Armando Tripodi

Lupus anticoagulant (LA) is one of the three laboratory parameters (the others being antibodies to either cardiolipin or β2-glycoprotein I) which defines the rare but potentially devastating condition known as antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). Testing for LA is a challenging task for the clinical laboratory because specific tests for its detection are not available. However, proper LA detection is paramount for patients’ management, as its persistent positivity in the presence of (previous or current) thrombotic events, candidate for long term anticoagulation. Guidelines for LA detection have been established and updated over the last two decades. Implementation of these guidelines across laboratories and participation to external quality assessment schemes are required to help standardize the diagnostic procedures and help clinicians for appropriate management of APS. This article aims to review the current state of the art and the challenges that clinical laboratories incur in the detection of LA.


Genetics ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 158 (2) ◽  
pp. 681-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Chavarrías ◽  
Carlos López-Fanjul ◽  
Aurora García-Dorado

Abstract The effect of 250 generations of mutation accumulation (MA) on the second chromosome competitive viability of Drosophila melanogaster was analyzed both in homozygous and heterozygous conditions. We used full-sib MA lines, where selection hampers the accumulation of severely deleterious mutations but is ineffective against mildly deleterious ones. A large control population was simultaneously evaluated. Competitive viability scores, unaffected by the expression of mutations in heterozygosis, were obtained relative to a Cy/L2 genotype. The rate of decline in mean ΔM ≈ 0.1% was small. However, that of increase in variance ΔV ≈ 0.08 × 10-3 was similar to the values obtained in previous experiments when severely deleterious mutations were excluded. The corresponding estimates of the mutation rate λ ≥ 0.01 and the average effect of mutations E(s) ≤ 0.08 are in good agreement with Bateman-Mukai and minimum distance estimates for noncompetitive viability obtained from the same MA lines after 105 generations. Thus, competitive and noncompetitive viability show similar mutational properties. The regression estimate of the degree of dominance for mild-to-moderate deleterious mutations was ∼0.3, suggesting that the pertinent value for new unselected mutations should be somewhat smaller.


Author(s):  
Marcos Sanchez Sanchez ◽  
John Iliff

<p>This paper describes the key elements from early planning to completion of a new bridge over the River Barrow which is part of the New Ross bypass in the south of Ireland. The structure has a total length of 887m, with a span arrangement of 36-45-95-230-230-95-70-50-36m. The two central twin spans are the longest of its kind in the world (extrados with a full concrete deck). The bridge carries a dual carriageway with a cable arrangement consisting of a single plane of cables located in the central axis of the deck. The design and construction focused in providing a structure with long term durability, resilience, and a robust approach to design scenarios using the Eurocodes and state of the art analysis techniques, including extreme events such as fire and ship impact<i>.</i></p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1821) ◽  
pp. 20190765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Pezzulo ◽  
Joshua LaPalme ◽  
Fallon Durant ◽  
Michael Levin

Nervous systems’ computational abilities are an evolutionary innovation, specializing and speed-optimizing ancient biophysical dynamics. Bioelectric signalling originated in cells' communication with the outside world and with each other, enabling cooperation towards adaptive construction and repair of multicellular bodies. Here, we review the emerging field of developmental bioelectricity, which links the field of basal cognition to state-of-the-art questions in regenerative medicine, synthetic bioengineering and even artificial intelligence. One of the predictions of this view is that regeneration and regulative development can restore correct large-scale anatomies from diverse starting states because, like the brain, they exploit bioelectric encoding of distributed goal states—in this case, pattern memories. We propose a new interpretation of recent stochastic regenerative phenotypes in planaria, by appealing to computational models of memory representation and processing in the brain. Moreover, we discuss novel findings showing that bioelectric changes induced in planaria can be stored in tissue for over a week, thus revealing that somatic bioelectric circuits in vivo can implement a long-term, re-writable memory medium. A consideration of the mechanisms, evolution and functionality of basal cognition makes novel predictions and provides an integrative perspective on the evolution, physiology and biomedicine of information processing in vivo . This article is part of the theme issue ‘Basal cognition: multicellularity, neurons and the cognitive lens’.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Helpris Estaswara ◽  
Diana Anggraeni

Managing stakeholders in the era of digital society become more complicated and the corporate crisis is highly potential to come forward. Consequently, to develop a long-term profitable relationship with the stakeholders requires dialogue based method. However, many corporate implement stakeholder relationship model remain derived from the understanding that corporate is the centre of all stakeholders, or corporate-centric model. A new model of system-centric than proposed in order to deal with the stakeholders in the era of digital society. The model implies that the corporate will be no longer being a central of stakeholders. It means the position of the corporate being a part of the system and involve symmetrical two-way communication strategy. This paper aimed at, firstly to elaborate a social network that would be potential to create the crisis if the corporate is not implementing the system-centric model that requires the development of multi-stakeholders learning dialogues. Secondly, it also analyzed the steps should be taken into account in order to transform traditional model toward symmetrical communication model of stakeholder relationship. Furthermore, method of literature review was applied as a basis of theoretical construction on stakeholder relationship model that should be engaged in avoiding of the crisis.


2020 ◽  
pp. 279-285
Author(s):  
M. Tretti Clementoni ◽  
E. Azzopardi

AbstractThis chapter presents a state-of-the-art insight into the use of fractional laser for the management of this complex problem. In particular, we focus on the management of complex scars such as those occurring post-burn injury and split-thickness skin grafting.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Gesoon j.k Al-Abass ◽  
Huda R. ALkifaey

"Internet of things (IoT) domain targets human with smart resolutions through the connection of “M2M” in all over the world, effectively. It was difficult to ignore domain importance field of IoT with the new deployment of applications such as smartphone in recent days. The most important layer in architecture of IoT is network layer, because of various systems (perform of cloud computing, switching, hub, gateway, so on), different technologies of connection (Long-Term Evolution (LTE), WIFI, Bluetooth, etc.) gathered in layer. Network layers should transfer the information from or to various applications/objects, via gateways/interfaces between networks that are heterogeneous, therefore utilizing different connection technologies, protocols. Recent work highlighted IoT technologies state-of-the-art utilized in architectures of IoT, some variations among them in addition to the applications of them in life."


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cedric Twardzik ◽  
Mathilde Vergnolle ◽  
Anthony Sladen ◽  
Louisa L. H. Tsang

Abstract. It is well-established that the post-seismic slip results from the combined contribution of seismic slip and aseismic slip. However, the partitioning between these two modes of slip remains unclear due to the difficulty to infer detailed and robust descriptions of how both evolve in space and time. This is particularly true just after a mainshock when both processes are expected to be the strongest. Using state-of-the-art sub-daily processing of GNSS data, along with dense catalogs of aftershocks obtained from template-matching techniques, we unravel the spatiotemporal evolution of post-seismic slip and aftershocks over the first 12 hours following the 2015 Mw8.3 Illapel, Chile, earthquake. We show that the very early post-seismic activity occurs over two regions with distinct behaviors. To the north, post-seismic slip appears to be purely aseismic and precedes the occurrence of late aftershocks. To the south, aftershocks are the primary cause of the post-seismic slip. We suggest that this difference in behavior could be inferred only few hours after the mainshock, and thus could contribute to a more data-driven forecasts of long-term aftershocks.


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