Dog-Robot Interactions

I recently came upon an interesting article talking about experiments on the behavior of dogs in encounters with robots.

Quoting from the article' s abstract:

"...Dogs spent more time staying near the robot experimenter as compared to the human experimenter, with this difference being even more pronounced when the robot behaved socially. Similarly, dogs spent more time gazing at the head of the robot experimenter when the situation was social..."

Full article can be found here:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10071-013-0670-7

and THEN... i remembered when i witnessed for the first time an (accidental) encounter between a robot and dog, sometime around 2011-2012. Below you can watch the corresponding video :)

Using tongue piercing for controlling robotic wheelchair

Researchers from U.S. Universities and in collaboration with medical institutes have recently designed and tested a somewhat "unconventional" (and maybe revolutionary) human-computer interface using the tongue.

In detail, their aim is to allow people with mobility disabilities to control their wheelchair by using a tongue implants (piercing). The developed system is called TDS, standing for, Tongue Driving System.

See the following video:

The full research article can be found here:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.3006296

TED Talk by Rodney Brooks: Why we will rely on robots

This is recent talk given by prof. Rodney Brooks on why robots seem to become part of our present and future, from industry to our everyday life.

inFORM display by MIT

inFORM is a Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table's surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance. inFORM is a step toward our vision of Radical Atoms

Simulating LIDAR sensors

Prologue

Simulation of LIDAR sensors concerns the process of simulating the sensing acquisition process of laser-range-lidar sensors by a computer program.

The way in which these sensors operate is by "active" perception, in other words, by touching the surface at which they are directed. Touching is implicitly performed by casting rays of photos (or rays of sound) and detecting the collisions that occur along their direction.

Active sensors are used extensively in robotics as they can provide measurements that are invariant to lighting conditions as well as denser depth acquisitions compared to passive (camera) sensors.

Available resources

Generally, in order to simulate the behavior of an active sensor through software, the proper way to do it is by employing "ray tracing", as is very well known in Computer Graphics in order to realistically render 3D scenes.

In this post, i would like to share some resources that i found in the internet which provide this functionality as well as some relative papers that employ simulation of active sensing. I hope it would be constructive and useful for all those out there that wish to play with these concepts ;).

Software

• http://www.blensor.org/: Blender Sensor Simulation basically provides a blender add-on that can simulate various standard laser sensors and control various parameters. In my opinion, just superb!

• http://www.kitware.com/media/html/ASyntheticLIDARScannerForVTK.html: the author provides a well-explained description of the provided c++ classes that can be used in VTK.

Papers

• http://www.roboticsproceedings.org/rss05/p22.pdf: K. Lai, D. Fox, 3D Laser Scan Classification using Web Data and Domain Adaptation, Robotics: Science and Systems, 2009.

• http://gfx.cs.princeton.edu/pubs/Podolak_2006_APS/symmpaper.pdf: Podulak et al., A Planar Relfective Symmetry Transform for 3D Shapes, SIGGRAPH, 2006.

• https://diglib.eg.org/EG/DL/WS/3DOR/3DOR13/PDF/081-088.pdf: Sipiran et al., Large Scale Shape Retrieval using Simulated Range Images, Eurographics Workshop on 3D Object Retrieval: SHREC Contest, 2013.

Tutorials

• http://kos.informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de/icar2013/: Large Scale 3D Point Cloud Processing Tutorial, 2013. Organized by Andreas Nuchter and Thomas Wiemann.

I will try to keep this list updated as i come upon relevant material-resources. Any such proposal will be greatly appreciated :).

i-Diots

IDIOTS from BLR_VFX on Vimeo.

Article submission to EES (Elsevier Editorial System)

Having submitted articles to several different journals of elsevier through the EES site, it seems that submitting a latex-based manuscript can be quite burdensome.

In detail, i always had problems in compiling and building the entire manuscript including figures and bibliography. Finally, i arrived to successfully compile and build a prospective article hence i would like to share the recipe of success :). In detail:

* Make sure that you are compiling and building your manuscript locally in your computer without errors. Although you may be able to produce a readable pdf on your computer, EES will not produce a pdf unless there are no errors in the compilation phase.

* Following the previous rule, at least in my case, implied that i had to use .EPS figures.

* Uploading a separate bibliography file (.bib) is not sufficient for EES. You have to additionally upload the corresponding .bbl file that should be produced if you can build your article locally. Eventually, both the .bib file and .bbl file should be designated as "Manuscript" files when uploading.

* If you are only using the style files that come along with the elsarticle package, avoid uploading them again in your submission.

That should be all :).

Good luck.