Review of The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin.

Review of book The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin by Keith E. Stanovich (see record 2004-95228-000). In his interesting scholarly book, The Robot's Rebellion, Stanovich leads us on a journey to find meaning in a world populated by mortal biological vehicles, the robots, put on earth to replicate their masters' selfish genes. If the genes do a satisfactory job programming the robots, then the genes replicate in perpetuity and are, therefore, immortal. Stanovich's basic assumptions are: a) vehicles are designed to replicate genes; b) at least in human animals, the brain houses two minds; c) the first mind, System 1 or The Autonomous Set of Systems, evolved much earlier in evolutionary history than did the second mind, System 2 or the Analytic System; d) System 1 is associative, parallel, fast to respond, and designed to automatically serve its genetic master; e) System 2 is rule-based, serial, slow to respond, not aware of System 1 functioning but sometimes privy to System 1 output, controls executive functioning, and is capable of self-evaluation and leading the rebellion against its genetic master; and, f) memes, culturally generated ideas passed on by nongenetic means, can sometimes be as effective as System 1 at squashing the rebellion. These assumptions are derived from work in cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and provide a solid foundation for the book. Both the metaphor and the basic assumptions are embedded in detailed and informative reviews of decision theory, evolutionary psychology, memetic theory, rational philosophy, and utility theory. The interweaving of metaphor and review provides a framework that allows Stanovich to make inferences to help the general reader understand "the implications of modern science" (p. xi). He also develops criteria to evaluate memes that are needed in his quest to find meaning in human existence. In combination with the basic assumptions, these criteria are used to create an ethical ideology that will be embraced by some readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

双蓄热步进梁式加热炉的技术改造

介绍了福建三钢棒材厂蓄热式加热炉的改造方案及应用情况,采用两座双蓄热步进梁式加热炉解决了加热炉制约轧机能力提升瓶颈及冷热坯混装的问题,改造后取得了很好的经济效益。     

非完整链式系统的时变光滑指数镇定

针对非完整链式系统,导出了一种时变光滑反馈控制律,该控制律可以保证系统状态 全局指数收敛到原点,克服了以往控制律非光滑或虽光滑但却只能渐近镇定系统的缺陷.所得 控制律应用于移动机器人系统的镇定.     

Maximizing Reward in a Non-Stationary Mobile Robot Environment

The ability of a robot to improve its performance on a task can be critical, especially in poorly known and non-stationary environments where the best action or strategy is dependent upon the current state of the environment. In such systems, a good estimate of the current state of the environment is key to establishing high performance, however quantified. In this paper, we present an approach to state estimation in poorly known and non-stationary mobile robot environments, focusing on its application to a mine collection scenario, where performance is quantified using reward maximization. The approach is based on the use of augmented Markov models (AMMs), a sub-class of semi-Markov processes. We have developed an algorithm for incrementally constructing arbitrary-order AMMs on-line. It is used to capture the interaction dynamics between a robot and its environment in terms of behavior sequences executed during the performance of a task. For the purposes of reward maximization in a non-stationary environment, multiple AMMs monitor events at different timescales and provide statistics used to select the AMM likely to have a good estimate of the environmental state. AMMs with redundant or outdated information are discarded, while attempting to maintain sufficient data to reduce conformation to noise. This approach has been successfully implemented on a mobile robot performing a mine collection task. In the context of this task, we first present experimental results validating our reward maximization performance criterion. We then incorporate our algorithm for state estimation using multiple AMMs, allowing the robot to select appropriate actions based on the estimated state of the environment. The approach is tested first with a physical robot, in a non-stationary environment with an abrupt change, then with a simulation, in a gradually shifting environment.     

LOGUE: an architecture for task and behavior object transmission among multiple autonomous robots

This paper proposes a new communication and control architecture which improves the capability and the flexibility of multiple autonomous robot systems in performing a complicated task and coping with unpredictable situations. This system treats robot’s information as a Behavior Element Object (BEO) and a Task Object (TO) in terms of Object Oriented paradigm. Both BEO and TO can be serialized, so they can be communicated among the robots and behavior server system in the network. The action manager module, device module, and some checking mechanisms are also designed for executing new TO or BEO sent from other robots or a server system. A simulation and basic experiments are presented for a situation of robots’ relief for an emergency purpose.     

Learning from designing the RoboFesta—Blue Peter robots

Can children and adults learn anything from building robots? In 2001 we ran a robot design competition with the BBC TelevisionBlue Peter, program. Some 32 000 children, aged between 5 and 16 years, submitted paper designs. We built prototypes of the four winners' robots for a Robot Design MasterClass at the London Science Museum. It is widely believed that across the curriculum, robotics is a powerful force in motivating education. We ask what the children learned from the robot design process. Our answer is that they learned many things, both inside and outside the science and technology curriculum.     

Dynamic Modeling and Analysis of the Human Jumping Process

Humanoid robots have recently been the subject of many new and interesting fields both in robotics research and industry. The wide variety of their applications in civic and hostile environments demand developing approperiate theoretical models for analysis. A dynamical model was developed to study the human jumping process, and the effect of factors like joint speeds and hand motion in jumping. An experiment was designed and setup to compare the theoretical model with experimental observations. Time histories of vertical force, mass center velocity and driving torques were also obtained. Using dynamical equations, the effect of joint speeds on the maximum values of these quantities is discussed. It was shown that reducing the joint speeds of a body could lead to an unsuccessful jump in which the body would not enter the flight phase. An increase in speed reduced the take-off time (the time necessary for the body to leave the ground) and increased the body's linear velocity at take-off, as well as the maximum value of driving torques. Effect of hand motion was also investigated through suppressing motion of the shoulder and elbow. It was observed that hand motion had an improving effect on the body's linear velocity. Although speed of joints did not show to have a great influence on most joint torques, those at the shoulder and elbow were observed to be more sensitive to it.     

Data Communications for Internet Robots

For Internet robots, the most challenging and distinct difficulties are well recognized to be associated with Internet transmission delays, delay jitter and not-guaranteed bandwidth, which might degrade system performance dramatically or even lead to instability. Current approaches to data communication between the remote robot and the human operator employ directly one of the two currently available protocols, i.e. TCP and UPD. In this paper, a teleoperation-oriented data transmission mechanism is implemented. Compared to TCP, the presented scheme provides minimized transmission delays and delay jitter; in the steady state, its transmission rate is much smoother; when available network bandwidth changes, it adapts to the variation quickly without large overshoot. Compared to UDP, it is inter-protocol fairness convergent, intro-protocol convergent, and efficient convergent. The presented mechanism is deployed in a mobile robot teleoperation system developed. In the experiments, users successfully guided a Pioneer-2 mobile robot through a laboratory environment remotely over the Internet via a web browser.     

双机器人协调作业下碰撞算法及仿真研究

本文立足于关节水平，从双机器人碰撞研究入手，提出了机器人协同作业下碰撞检测 、干涉空间的算法，解决了机器人与周边环境任意障碍物碰撞问题．建立了连杆与连杆，连 杆与平面，连杆与任意三维实体避障理论模型，给出了相应的计算方法及计算机仿真结果．     

一种基于概率方法的车型机器人路径规划方法

考虑车体外形和前轮方向角限制,车型移动机器人路径的空间维数明显增加,常规的规划方法难以获得理想的速度。论文报告了概率方法在车型机器人路径规划上的研究结果,共研究了机器人约束、全局、局部概率路径规划和启发式结点生成等问题。模拟表明,该方法可获得足够好的适合车型机器人移动的次优路径。