Grounding action in visuo-haptic space using experience networks

Traditional approaches to the use of machine learning algorithms do not provide a method to learn multiple tasks in one-shot on an embodied robot. It is proposed that grounding actions within the sensory space leads to the development of action-state relationships which can be re-used despite a change in task. A novel approach called an Experience Network is developed and assessed on a real-world robot required to perform three separate tasks. After grounded representations were developed in the initial task, only minimal further learning was required to perform the second and third task.

Grounding the internet : categorising the geographies of locative media

Taxonometrical uncertainty is prevalent in the field of locative media, which has been variously referred to as “the geomobile web” (Crawford and Goggin, 2009), “the geoweb” (Lake et al., 2004), “Where 2.0” (O’Reilly, 2008:1), and “DigiPlace” (Zook and Graham, 2007). However, it is not only the rapid development of the technology, or the various academic disciplinary approaches to it, that have resulted in this uncertainty but also the deeply ideological debates and concerns about what locative media should and should not be. The intention of this article is to provide an overview of existing literature and research in this field in order to develop a synthetic overview of the various types of locative media, and the geographies arising from them. Not only will such taxonomy clarify communication about locative media, it will identify for developers, users, policy-makers and scholars the specific contours and affordances of the different types of locative media, as well as the issues associated with them.

Communication and essentialism: Grounding the shared reality of a social category

Essentialism is an ontological belief that there exists an underlying essence to a category. This article advances and tests in three studies the hypothesis that communication about a social category, and expected or actual mutual validation, promotes essentialism about a social category. In Study 1, people who wrote communications about a social category to their ingroup audiences essentialized it more strongly than those who simply memorized about it. In Study 2, communicators whose messages about a novel social category were more elaborately discussed with a confederate showed a stronger tendency to essentialize it. In Study 3, communicators who elaborately talked about a social category with a naive conversant also essentialized the social category. A meta-analysis of the results supported the hypothesis that communication promotes essentialism. Although essentialism has been discussed primarily in perceptual and cognitive domains, the role of social processes as its antecedent deserves greater attention.

Evaluation of the Grounding Resistance of Conductors Buried in Steplike Terrain

Availability of land for conventional air-insulated substations is becoming increasingly difficult not only in urban but also in semiurban areas. When the land made available is highly uneven, the associated technoeconomic factors favors the erection of substations on a steplike-formed ground surface and such constructions are in service for more than ten years in some parts of southern India. Noting that the literature on the performance of ground grids in such a construction is rather scarce, the present work was taken up. Evaluation of the performance of earthing elements in steplike ground forms the main goal of the present work. For the numerical evaluation, a suitable boundary-based methodology is employed. This method retains the classical Galerkin approach for the conductors, while the interfaces are replaced by equivalent fictitious surface sources defined over unstructured mesh. Details of the implementation of this numerical method, along with special measures to minimize the computation, are presented. The performance of basic earthing elements, such as the driven rod, counterpoise, and simple grids buried in steplike ground, are analyzed and compared with that for the case with uniform soil surface. It is shown that more than the earthing resistances, the step potentials can get significantly affected.

Pre-construction coral survey of the M/V Wellwood Grounding Site: April 23-24, 2002

This report documents abundance and cover for selected elements of the benthic coral reef assemblage at the site of the 1984 grounding of the M/V Wellwood on Molasses Reef, Florida Keys. The purpose of the effort was to establish a pre-construction baseline before the installation of reef modules at the site. The installation process is intended to stabilize fractured substrates that were recently exposed by storm impacts, and to provide three-dimensional relief in order to enhance reef community recovery. It is hoped that the restoration effort will result in a biological assemblage with the character of the transition community that would exist there had the incident not occurred. To date, the assemblage has developed the character of a comparatively featureless hard ground similar in composition to hard ground areas and transition zones surrounding the grounding site. These data will allow scientists and resource managers to better track the trajectory of recovery following the installation of modules. Direct counts of scleractinian and gorgonian corals, hydrocorals of the genus Millepora, and zoanthids of the genus Palythoa were made in three areas within and around the grounding site. The site is poorly developed with respect to scleractinian colony size and cover compared to surrounding areas. Key scleractinian species necessary for the development of topographic relief in the area denuded by the grounding are not well represented in the current community. Though gorgonian cover and richness is similar in all study areas, gorgonian community recovery in the damaged area is not complete. Unlike surrounding areas, one species, Pseudopterogorgia americana, accounts for over half of all corals at the grounding site, over 80% of all gorgonians, and nearly all the coral cover. Based on these findings and other observations made in the 18 years since the grounding, recommendations are made that should be considered in the course of human intervention targeted at stabilizing and enhancing the site. (PDF contains 24 pages.)

Impact of non-optimal grounding of the CC2420 RFIC on a 802.15.4 Tyndall sensor wireless mote

The performance of an RF output matching network is dependent on integrity of the ground connection. If this connection is compromised in anyway, additional parasitic elements may occur that can degrade performance and yield unreliable results. Traditionally, designers measure Constant Wave (CW) power to determine that the RF chain is performing optimally, the device is properly matched and by implication grounded. It is shown that there are situations where modulation quality can be compromised due to poor grounding that is not apparent using CW power measurements alone. The consequence of this is reduced throughput, range and reliability. Measurements are presented on a Tyndall Mote using a CC2420 RFIC todemonstrate how poor solder contact between the ground contacts and the ground layer of the PCB can lead tothe degradation of modulated performance. Detailed evaluation that required the development of a new measurement definition for 802.15.4 and analysis is presented to show how waveform quality is affected while the modulated output power remains within acceptable limits.

Grounding human vocabulary in robot perception through interaction

This thesis addresses the problem of word learning in computational agents. The motivation behind this work lies in the need to support language-based communication between service robots and their human users, as well as grounded reasoning using symbols relevant for the assigned tasks. The research focuses on the problem of grounding human vocabulary in robotic agent’s sensori-motor perception. Words have to be grounded in bodily experiences, which emphasizes the role of appropriate embodiments. On the other hand, language is a cultural product created and acquired through social interactions. This emphasizes the role of society as a source of linguistic input. Taking these aspects into account, an experimental scenario is set up where a human instructor teaches a robotic agent the names of the objects present in a visually shared environment. The agent grounds the names of these objects in visual perception. Word learning is an open-ended problem. Therefore, the learning architecture of the agent will have to be able to acquire words and categories in an openended manner. In this work, four learning architectures were designed that can be used by robotic agents for long-term and open-ended word and category acquisition. The learning methods used in these architectures are designed for incrementally scaling-up to larger sets of words and categories. A novel experimental evaluation methodology, that takes into account the openended nature of word learning, is proposed and applied. This methodology is based on the realization that a robot’s vocabulary will be limited by its discriminatory capacity which, in turn, depends on its sensors and perceptual capabilities. An extensive set of systematic experiments, in multiple experimental settings, was carried out to thoroughly evaluate the described learning approaches. The results indicate that all approaches were able to incrementally acquire new words and categories. Although some of the approaches could not scale-up to larger vocabularies, one approach was shown to learn up to 293 categories, with potential for learning many more.

Micromorphology of Last Glacial Maximum Grounding line sediments around the Antarctic Peninsula

Sediments recovered from seven Last Glacial Maximum grounding lines sites, around the Antarctic Peninsula, were analyzed using micromorphology. This is the first evidence that grounding line sediments from around the Antarctic Peninsula have complex deformational histories and subglacial origins. It was determined that grounding zone wedge contain multiple units, or diamicton layers, with homogenized boundaries. The multiple diamicton units / layers are due to the accretionary formation of a grounding line wedge. All the sediments were deposited via deformation, and continual reincorporation, homogenization of lower diamicton layers by upper diamicton layers produced what macroscopically appeared to be a single massive diamicton unit. The morainal ridge that was sampled, alternatively, is composed of a single unit, or diamicton layer, that was subglacial in origin and believed to have been pushed out to form a ridge that was subsequently deformed via glacial push.

Logical and epistemic foundationalism about grounding: the triviality of facts and principles

In this paper, I seek to undermine G.A. Cohen’s polemical use of a metaethical claim he makes in his article, ‘Facts and Principles’, by arguing that that use requires an unsustainable equivocation between epistemic and logical grounding. I begin by distinguishing three theses that Cohen has offered during the course of his critique of Rawls and contractualism more generally, the foundationalism about grounding thesis, the justice as non-regulative thesis, and the justice as all-encompassing thesis, and briefly argue that they are analytically independent of each other. I then offer an outline of the foundationalism about grounding thesis, characterising it, as Cohen does, as a demand of logic. That thesis claims that whenever a normative principle is dependent on a fact, it is so dependent in virtue of some other principle. I then argue that although this is true as a matter of logic, it, as Cohen admits, cannot be true of actual justifications, since logic cannot tell us anything about the truth as opposed to the validity of arguments. Facts about a justification cannot then be decisive for whether or not a given argument violates the foundationalism about grounding thesis. As long as, independently of actual justifications, theorists can point to plausible logically grounding principles, as I argue contractualists can, Cohen’s thesis lacks critical bite.