Field and Service Robotics Results of the 5th International Conference

The 5th International Conference on Field and Service Robotics (FSR05) was held in Port Douglas, Australia, on 29th - 31st July 2005, and brought together the worlds' leading experts in field and service automation. The goal of the conference was to report and encourage the latest research and practical results towards the use of field and service robotics in the community with particular focus on proven technology. The conference provided a forum for researchers, professionals and robot manufacturers to exchange up-to-date technical knowledge and experience. Field robots are robots which operate in outdoor, complex, and dynamic environments. Service robots are those that work closely with humans, with particular applications involving indoor and structured environments. There are a wide range of topics presented in this issue on field and service robots including: Agricultural and Forestry Robotics, Mining and Exploration Robots, Robots for Construction, Security & Defence Robots, Cleaning Robots, Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Autonomous Flying Robots. This meeting was the fifth in the series and brings FSR back to Australia where it was first held. FSR has been held every 2 years, starting with Canberra 1997, followed by Pittsburgh 1999, Helsinki 2001 and Lake Yamanaka 2003.

In the Rough : In-Field evaluation of an autonomous vehicle for golf course maintenance

Maintenance is a time consuming and expensive task for any golf course or driving range manager. For a golf course the primary tasks are grass mowing and maintenance (fertilizer and herbicide spreading), while for a driving range mowing, maintenance and ball collection are required. All these tasks require an operator to drive a vehicle along paths which are generally predefined. This paper presents some preliminary in-field tsting results for an automated tractor vehicle performing golf ball collection on an actual driving range, and mowing on difficult unstructured terrain.

A point interpolation method with locally smoothed strain field (PIM-LS2) for mechanics problems using triangular mesh

A point interpolation method with locally smoothed strain field (PIM-LS2) is developed for mechanics problems using a triangular background mesh. In the PIM-LS2, the strain within each sub-cell of a nodal domain is assumed to be the average strain over the adjacent sub-cells of the neighboring element sharing the same field node. We prove theoretically that the energy norm of the smoothed strain field in PIM-LS2 is equivalent to that of the compatible strain field, and then prove that the solution of the PIM- LS2 converges to the exact solution of the original strong form. Furthermore, the softening effects of PIM-LS2 to system and the effects of the number of sub-cells that participated in the smoothing operation on the convergence of PIM-LS2 are investigated. Intensive numerical studies verify the convergence, softening effects and bound properties of the PIM-LS2, and show that the very ������tight������ lower and upper bound solutions can be obtained using PIM-LS2.

Avoiding full extension field arithmetic in pairing computations

The most costly operations encountered in pairing computations are those that take place in the full extension ���eld Fpk . At high levels of security, the complexity of operations in Fpk dominates the complexity of the operations that occur in the lower degree sub���elds. Consequently, full extension ���eld operations have the greatest e���ect on the runtime of Miller���s algorithm. Many recent optimizations in the literature have focussed on improving the overall operation count by presenting new explicit formulas that reduce the number of sub���eld operations encountered throughout an iteration of Miller���s algorithm. Unfortunately, almost all of these improvements tend to su���er for larger embedding degrees where the expensive extension ���eld operations far outweigh the operations in the smaller sub���elds. In this paper, we propose a new way of carrying out Miller���s algorithm that involves new explicit formulas which reduce the number of full extension ���eld operations that occur in an iteration of the Miller loop, resulting in signi���cant speed ups in most practical situations of between 5 and 30 percent.

Delaying mismatched field multiplications in pairing computations

Miller���s algorithm for computing pairings involves perform- ing multiplications between elements that belong to di���erent ���nite ���elds. Namely, elements in the full extension ���eld Fpk are multiplied by elements contained in proper sub���elds F pk/d , and by elements in the base ���eld Fp . We show that signi���cant speedups in pairing computations can be achieved by delaying these ���mismatched��� multiplications for an optimal number of iterations. Importantly, we show that our technique can be easily integrated into traditional pairing algorithms; implementers can exploit the computational savings herein by applying only minor changes to existing pairing code.

Researching crime and violence: Untold stories from the field

Undertaking empirical research on crime and violence can be a tricky enterprise fraught with ethical, methodological, intellectual and legal implications. This chapter takes readers on a reflective journey through the qualitative methodologies I used to research sex work in Kings Cross, miscarriages of justice, female delinquency, sexual violence, and violence in rural and regional settings over a period of nearly 30 years. Reflecting on these experiences, the chapter explores and analyses the reality of doing qualitative field research, the role of the researcher, the politics of subjectivity, the exercise of power, and the ���muddiness��� of the research process, which is often overlooked in sanitised accounts of the research process (Byrne-Armstrong, Higgs and Horsfall, 2001; Davies, 2000).

Seasonal Variation in Measured Solar Ultraviolet Radiation Exposure of Adults in Subtropical Australia

Generating accurate population-specific public health messages regarding sun protection requires knowledge about seasonal variation in sun exposure in different environments. To address this issue for a subtropical area of Australia, we used polysulphone badges to measure UVR for the township of Nambour (26�� latitude) and personal UVR exposure among Nambour residents who were taking part in a skin cancer prevention trial. Badges were worn by participants for two winter and two summer days. The ambient UVR was approximately three times as high in summer as in winter. However, participants received more than twice the proportion of available UVR in winter as in summer (6.5%vs 2.7%, P < 0.05), resulting in an average ratio of summer to winter personal UVR exposure of 1.35. The average absolute difference in daily dose between summer and winter was only one-seventh of a minimal erythemal dose. Extrapolating from our data, we estimate that ca. 42% of the total exposure received in the 6 months of winter (June���August) and summer (December���February) is received during the three winter months. Our data show that in Queensland a substantial proportion of people���s annual UVR dose is obtained in winter, underscoring the need for dissemination of sun protection messages throughout the year in subtropical and tropical climates.