Affordance-based robot object retrieval

Autonomous Robots - Natural language object retrieval is a highly useful yet challenging task for robots in human-centric environments. Previous work has primarily focused on commands specifying...     

Flexible amorphous‐silicon non‐volatile memory

Abstract— The development of a flexible, rewritable, non‐volatile memory (NVM) that is implemented on a standard, low‐temperature a‐Si:H process without additional mask steps is reported. This NVM is a part of a flexible‐display system. Each NVM cell is composed of differentially configured thin‐film‐transistors (TFTs). The cell reads out one of two stable states depending on the relative threshold voltages of the differentially configured TFTs. Information is stored in each cell by increasing the threshold voltage of one differential TFT or the other, utilizing the well‐known electrical‐stress degradation intrinsic to a‐Si:H TFTs. The stored information is retained indefinitely with no applied power. A test array of individually addressable NVM cells has been successfully fabricated and tested on flexible stainless‐steel substrates. Read and write operation, as well as preliminary reliability measurements, are described. The design is readily scalable to large memory arrays.     

A blur-robust descriptor with applications to face recognition

Understanding the effect of blur is an important problem in unconstrained visual analysis. We address this problem in the context of image-based recognition by a fusion of image-formation models and differential geometric tools. First, we discuss the space spanned by blurred versions of an image and then, under certain assumptions, provide a differential geometric analysis of that space. More specifically, we create a subspace resulting from convolution of an image with a complete set of orthonormal basis functions of a prespecified maximum size (that can represent an arbitrary blur kernel within that size), and show that the corresponding subspaces created from a clean image and its blurred versions are equal under the ideal case of zero noise and some assumptions on the properties of blur kernels. We then study the practical utility of this subspace representation for the problem of direct recognition of blurred faces by viewing the subspaces as points on the Grassmann manifold and present methods to perform recognition for cases where the blur is both homogenous and spatially varying. We empirically analyze the effect of noise, as well as the presence of other facial variations between the gallery and probe images, and provide comparisons with existing approaches on standard data sets.     

Process diagnostics using trace alignment: Opportunities, issues, and challenges

Business processes leave trails in a variety of data sources (e.g., audit trails, databases, and transaction logs). Hence, every process instance can be described by a trace, i.e., a sequence of events. Process mining techniques are able to extract knowledge from such traces and provide a welcome extension to the repertoire of business process analysis techniques. Recently, process mining techniques have been adopted in various commercial BPM systems (e.g., BPM|one, Futura Reflect, ARIS PPM, Fujitsu Interstage, Businesscape, Iontas PDF, and QPR PA). Unfortunately, traditional process discovery algorithms have problems dealing with less structured processes. The resulting models are difficult to comprehend or even misleading. Therefore, we propose a new approach based on trace alignment. The goal is to align traces in such a way that event logs can be explored easily. Trace alignment can be used to explore the process in the early stages of analysis and to answer specific questions in later stages of analysis. Hence, it complements existing process mining techniques focusing on discovery and conformance checking. The proposed techniques have been implemented as plugins in the ProM framework. We report the results of trace alignment on one synthetic and two real-life event logs, and show that trace alignment has significant promise in process diagnostic efforts.     

Electronic and junction properties of poly(2,5-dimethoxyaniline)-polyethylene oxide blend/metal Schottky diodes

Schottky barrier diode devices were fabricated in a sandwich configuration with a blend film consisting of a conducting polymer, poly(2,5-dimethoxyaniline), PDMA in an insulating matrix, polyethylene oxide (PEO). The influence of two different dopants, sulphate anion (SA) or methane sulfonate anion (MSA), in the electronic properties of the device was followed using the devices: ITO/PDMA (SA)-PEO/Al and ITO/PDMA (MSA)-PEO/Al. Current (I)-Voltage (V) characteristics were recorded for making a comparative evaluation of the electronic and junction properties of the devices. The junction and electronic parameters were analyzed and compared in the light of differences in the electronic state, morphology and transport of carriers. The device turn on voltage was found to be higher for Al/ PEO-PDMA (MSA)/ITO (∼3.0 V) in comparison to Al/ PEO-PDMA (SA)/ITO (∼2.85 V). The electronic states of PDMA doped with SA or MSA dopant were ascertained by optical UV-Visible spectroscopy. AC-impedance measurements were made for the devices and the values of bulk resistance (R_c), depletion resistance (R_d) and depletion layer width (W) were deduced through a proposed equivalent circuit. W for the device with PEO-PDMA (MSA) is more (∼24 nm) than the device with PEO-PDMA (SA) (∼8.5 nm). The observed higher Φ_B for PDMA-PEO (MSA) is consistent with this observation.