Neural bases for individual differences in the subjective experience of short durations (less than 2 seconds)

The current research was designed to establish whether individual differences in timing performance predict neural activation in the areas that subserve the perception of short durations ranging between 400 and 1600 milliseconds. Seventeen participants completed both a temporal bisection task and a control task, in a mixed fMRI design. In keeping with previous research, there was increased activation in a network of regions typically active during time perception including the right supplementary motor area (SMA) and right pre-SMA and basal ganglia (including the putamen and right pallidum). Furthermore, correlations between neural activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus and SMA and timing performance corroborate the results of a recent meta-analysis and are further evidence that the SMA forms part of a neural clock that is responsible for the accumulation of temporal information. Specifically, subjective lengthening of the perceived duration were associated with increased activation in both the right SMA (and right pre-SMA) and right inferior frontal gyrus.

Towards coordinated multirobot missions for lunar sample collection in an unknown environment

In this paper, the recent results of the space project IMPERA are presented. The goal of IMPERA is the development of a multirobot planning and plan execution architecture with a focus on a lunar sample collection scenario in an unknown environment. We describe the implementation and verification of different modules that are integrated into a distributed system architecture. The modules include a mission planning approach for a multirobot system and modules for task and skill execution within a lunar use-case scenario. The skills needed for the test scenario include cooperative exploration and mapping strategies for an unknown environment, the localization and classification of sample containers using a novel approach of semantic perception, and the skill of transporting sample containers to a collection point using a mobile manipulation robot. Additionally, we present our approach of a reliable communication framework that can deal with communication loss during the mission. Several modules are tested within several experiments in the domain of planning and plan execution, communication, coordinated exploration, perception, and object transportation. An overall system integration is tested on a mission scenario experiment using three robots.

LunaRoo: A Proposal for the Google Lunar XPrize Payload Opportunity with the Part Time Scientists team

This proposal describes the innovative and competitive lunar payload solution developed at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT)–the LunaRoo: a hopping robot designed to exploit the Moon's lower gravity to leap up to 20m above the surface. It is compact enough to fit within a 10cm cube, whilst providing unique observation and mission capabilities by creating imagery during the hop. This first section is deliberately kept short and concise for web submission; additional information can be found in the second chapter.