Ganezza’s Visual Identity: A Dynamic Branding Journey

Event Begins: Thursday, November 14, 2024 3:00pm
Location: Ford Robotics Building
Organized By: Michigan Robotics

Chair: Prof. Dimitra Panagou

Abstract:
Advances in sensing modalities and computational power have led to the prospect of a widespread deployment of robots in our society. Central to this objective is developing control and navigation stacks that avoid conservatism, presumed to be measured by a performance metric, while being provably and practically safe. A crucial element that must be accounted for is that controllers, which are typically designed for and tuned in laboratory or highly monitored industrial settings for a specific scenario, may experience a drop in performance and lose their safety guarantees when used elsewhere. It is of paramount importance therefore to import robots with the capability to adapt their controllers online to customize responses to a priori untested environments.

In this dissertation, I present (1) tools to adapt any parametric controller using a model-based approach to achieve simultaneous satisfaction of multiple state constraints and enhanced performance; (2) a numerical scheme for predicting future state distributions in systems governed by stochastic dynamics with state-dependent disturbances, which can be utilized in model-predictive approaches; and (3) a method to assist decision-making on dropping (disregarding) constraints when it is not feasible to satisfy all constraints simultaneously.

A significant part of the dissertation also focuses on a specific safety-critical control method - control barrier functions (CBF). The CBF-based controllers have garnered interest in recent years due to their ease of implementation. However, finding a theoretically valid CBF remains a challenge and in practice, they are prone to performance degradation and safety violations, especially when multiple CBFs are imposed together. This dissertation introduces a new notion of CBFs, called Rate-Tunable CBFs, that allows for time-varying parameters in theory and online tuning in practice.

Rice, J M; Ross, M; Paulen, R C; Kelley, S E; Briner, J P. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 2020 p. 1-23, https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.4957
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20190357.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20190357.jpg" title="Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 2020 p. 1-23, https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.4957" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Evans, D J A; Smith, I R; Gosse, J C; Galloway, J M. Quaternary Science Reviews vol. 262, 106958, 2021 p. 1-50, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.106958

Sun, R; Grasby, S E; Shen, J; Xiao, J; Yin, R. Chemical Geology vol. 598, 120830, 2022 p. 1-6, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2022.120830
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20220032.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20220032.jpg" title="Chemical Geology vol. 598, 120830, 2022 p. 1-6, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2022.120830" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Wu, Y; Tian, H; Yin, R; Chen, D; Grasby, S E; Shen, J; Li, T; Ju, S; Peng, P. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 616, 118211, 2023 p. 1-9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2023.118211
<a href="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20230261.jpg"><img src="https://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/images/geoscan/20230261.jpg" title="Earth and Planetary Science Letters 616, 118211, 2023 p. 1-9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2023.118211" height="150" border="1" /></a>

Parent, M. Surficial geology of northern Canada: a summary of Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals program contributions; by McMartin, I (ed.); Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 611, 2023 p. 201-219, https://doi.org/10.4095/331425
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Rice, J M; Paulen, R C; Campbell, H E; Ross, M. Quaternary Science Advances vol. 13, 100123, 2023 p. 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.qsa.2023.100123
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1. 'Wage dynamics not consistent with cutting the cash rate', despite slowdown in pay rises  ABC News
2. Real wages are growing at highest rate since 2020. But it’s unlikely to last  Sydney Morning Herald
3. Jobs market keeps grinding away as data update looms  The Canberra Times

The sudden appearance of a visual distractor shortly before saccade initiation can capture spatial attention and modulate the saccade trajectory in spite of the ongoing execution of the initial plan to shift gaze straight to the saccade target. To elucidate the neural correlates underlying these curved saccades, we recorded from single neurons in the frontal eye field of two male rhesus monkeys shifting gaze to a target while a distractor with the same eccentricity appeared either left or right of the target at various delays after target presentation. We found that the population level of presaccadic activity of neurons representing the distractor location encoded the direction of the saccade trajectory. Stronger activity occurred when saccades curved toward the distractor, and weaker when saccades curved away. This relationship held whether the distractor was ipsilateral or contralateral to the recorded neurons. Meanwhile, visually responsive neurons showed asymmetrical patterns of excitatory responses that varied with the location of the distractor and the duration of distractor processing relating to attentional capture and distractor inhibition. During earlier distractor processing, neurons encoded curvature toward the distractor. During later distractor processing, neurons encoded curvature away from the distractor. This was observed when saccades curved away from distractors contralateral to the recording site and when saccades curved toward distractors ipsilateral to the recording site. These findings indicate that saccadic motor planning involves dynamic push–pull hemispheric interactions producing attraction or repulsion for potential but unselected saccade targets.

Domestic violence. Behind closed doors, it secretly bruises the lives of millions of spouses, children, relatives, and friends each year. We’ve all seen the statistics: an estimated 10 million people in the United States are battered each year by their partners. If this is happening to you, rest assured that you are not alone and […]

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8 of the best dynamic exercises with multiple variations to choose from to warm up.

(Telecompaper) Canadian vendor Vecima Networks has announced the successful completion of a first-phase linear ad insertion deployment for US fibre and IPTV carrier Hotwire Communications. The first phase introduces linear parity ad insertion, enabling zonal ad placements in IPTV streams. In the next phase,...

Join Michael as he uses science and examples in everyday life to discuss order and disorder, why it is important to understand what they mean spiritually, and how we must be deliberate and committed in our choices to be holy and grow in Christ.

We all have one. But what should it be? Fr. John explores the tapestry of our lives and those intrusions that can interupt the pattern.

Thanks to a superb pair of handlers/chauffeurs, Fr. Joseph goes a house blessin' in Houston.

(no podcast this week - Boo! Check back next week) Chrome for Android Google has just released a beta of Chrome for Android, which is available for those running Android Ice Cream Sandwich (aka "the 1%"). This isn't JavaScript-specific news per se, but it is HUGE news for web devs ...

Interactive video is increasingly becoming a more and more dominant feature of our media platforms. Especially due to the popular YouTube annotations framework, integrating graphical annotations in a video has become very fashionable these days. However, the current options are limited to a few graphical shapes for which the user can define as good as no dynamic behaviour. Despite the enormous demand for easy-creatable, interactive video there are no such advanced tools available.

In this article we describe an innovative approach, to realize dynamics and interactivity of video annotations. First we explain basic concepts of video-markup like the generic element model and visual descriptors. After that we introduce the event-tree model, which can be used to define event-handling in an interactive video formally as well as visually. By combining these basic concepts, we can give an effective tool to the video community for realizing interactive and dynamic video in a simple, intuitive and focused way.

One of the challenges in Dynamic Software Product Line (DSPL) is how to support the coordination of multiple instances of a service feature. In particular, there is a need for a decentralized decision-making capability that will be able to seamlessly integrate new instances of a service feature without an omniscient central controller. Because of the need for decentralization, we are investigating principles from self-organization in biological organisms. As an initial proof of concept, we have applied three bio-inspired techniques to a simple smart home scenario: quorum sensing based service activation, a firefly algorithm for synchronization, and a gossiping (epidemic) protocol for information dissemination. In this paper, we first explain why we selected those techniques using a set of motivating scenarios of a smart home and then describe our experiences in adopting them.

Web Services have become a standard for integration of systems in distributed environments. By using a set of open interoperability standards, they allow computer-computer interaction, regardless the programming languages and operating systems used. The Semantic Web Services, by its turn, make use of ontologies to describe their functionality in a more structural manner, allowing computers to reason about the information required and provided by them. Such a description also allows dynamic composition of several Web Services, when only one is not able to provide the desired functionality. There are scenarios, however, in which only the functional correctness is not enough to fulfill the user requirements, and a minimum level of quality should be guaranteed by their providers. In this context, this work presents an approach for dynamic Web Service composition that takes into account the composition overall quality. The proposed approach relies on a heuristics to efficiently perform the composition. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed approach, a Web Service composition application prototype was developed and experimented with public test sets, along with another approach that does not consider quality in the composition process. The results have shown that the proposed approach in general finds compositions with more quality, within a reasonable processing time.

DeFog is an innovative microservice placement and load balancing approach for distributed multi-cluster cloud-fog-edge architectures to minimise application response times. The architecture is modelled as a three-layered hierarchy. Each layer consists of one or more clusters of machines, with resource constraints increasing towards lower layers. Applications are modelled as service oriented architectures (SOA) comprising multiple interconnected microservices. As many applications can be run simultaneously, and as the resources of the edge and the fog are limited, choosing among services to run on the edge or the fog is the problem this work is dealing with. DeFog focuses on dynamic (i.e., adaptive) decentralised service placement within each cluster with zero downtime, eliminating the need for coordination between clusters. To assess the effectiveness of DeFog, two realistic applications based on microservices are deployed, and several placement policies are tested to select the one that reduces application latency. Least frequently used (LFU) is the reference service placement strategy. The experimental results reveal that a replacement policy that uses individual microservice latency as the crucial factor affecting service placement outperformed LFU by at least 10% in application response time.

The current study has outlined slow fashion (SF) research trends and created a future research agenda for this field. It is a thorough analysis of the literature on slow fashion. Numerous bibliometric features of slow fashion have been discussed in the paper. This study comprises 182 research articles from the Scopus database. The database was utilised for bibliometric analysis. To identify certain trends in the area of slow fashion, a bibliometric study is done. For bibliometric analysis, the study employed R-software (the Biblioshiny package). Here, VOSviewer software is used to determine the co-occurrence of authors, countries, sources, etc. The study has outlined the gap that still exists in the field of slow fashion. Here, the research outcome strengthens the domain of slow fashion for sustainable consumption. The study findings will be useful for policymakers, industry professionals, and researchers.

Numerous Indian economic sectors have been impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic, with many being forced to the verge of extinction. As a result, this essay analyses the importance of supply chains for grapes and the manufactured goods made from them, including beverages and currants, in a specific state that happens to be India's top grape-producing region. In order to identify the sites of rupture brought on by the pandemic and to recommend policy changes to create a resilient system, a value chain analysis is performed. Value chain management has emerged as one of the key strategies businesses use today to boost productivity and costs when they are up against greater rivalry in the marketplace, however, with several new challenges, such as concerns over security, environmental protection, compensation, and business accountability. According to the value chain study, the level of value addition for intermediary agents, such as pre-harvest contractors, has increased after COVID-19 at the expense of farmers. Various policy approaches are explained to enhance the grape value chain using the knowledge gained from Porter's value chain results and supply and demand shocks.

In the competitive landscape of globalised markets, businesses must prioritise cost reduction for sustained competitiveness. This study delves into the dynamic facility layout problem (DFLP) within a cable production company in Kerala, emphasising adaptability to changing production demands. Addressing material handling costs and rearrangement expenses, the research evaluates the efficacy of the current static layout and explores the benefits of transitioning to a dynamic layout. The case study reveals potential cost savings through the strategic restructuring of machine arrangements. The innovative machine learning-based genetic algorithm (ML-GA) integrates machine learning algorithms, genetic algorithms, and a local search method, offering a cutting-edge solution to dynamic facility layout challenges. By considering demand variability and relocation costs, the study provides insights for informed decision-making, emphasising the significance of material flow patterns. This research contributes to enhancing efficiency and profitability, providing practical implications for businesses navigating the complexities of modern manufacturing.

Aim/Purpose: The understanding of disease spread dynamics in the context of air travel is crucial for effective disease detection and epidemic intelligence. The Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered-Hospitalized-Critical-Deaths (SEIR-HCD) model proposed in this research work is identified as a valuable tool for capturing the complex dynamics of disease transmission, healthcare demands, and mortality rates during epidemics. Background: The spread of viral diseases is a major problem for public health services all over the world. Understanding how diseases spread is important in order to take the right steps to stop them. In epidemiology, the SIS, SIR, and SEIR models have been used to mimic and study how diseases spread in groups of people. Methodology: This research focuses on the integration of air traffic network data into the SEIR-HCD model to enhance the understanding of disease spread in air travel settings. By incorporating air traffic data, the model considers the role of travel patterns and connectivity in disease dissemination, enabling the identification of high-risk routes, airports, and regions. Contribution: This research contributes to the field of epidemiology by enhancing our understanding of disease spread dynamics through the application of the SIS, SIR, and SEIR-HCD models. The findings provide insights into the factors influencing disease transmission, allowing for the development of effective strategies for disease control and prevention. Findings: The interplay between local outbreaks and global disease dissemination through air travel is empirically explored. The model can be further used for the evaluation of the effectiveness of surveillance and early detection measures at airports and transportation hubs. The proposed research contributes to proactive and evidence-based strategies for disease prevention and control, offering insights into the impact of air travel on disease transmission and supporting public health interventions in air traffic networks. Recommendations for Practitioners: Government intervention can be studied during difficult times which plays as a moderating variable that can enhance or hinder the efficacy of epidemic intelligence efforts within air traffic networks. Expert collaboration from various fields, including epidemiology, aviation, data science, and public health with an interdisciplinary approach can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the disease spread dynamics in air traffic networks. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers can collaborate with international health organizations and authorities to share their research findings and contribute to a global understanding of disease spread in air traffic networks. Impact on Society: This research has significant implications for society. By providing a deeper understanding of disease spread dynamics, it enables policymakers, public health officials, and practitioners to make informed decisions to mitigate disease outbreaks. The recommendations derived from this research can aid in the development of effective strategies to control and prevent the spread of infectious diseases, ultimately leading to improved public health outcomes and reduced societal disruptions. Future Research: Practitioners of the research can contribute more effectively to disease outbreaks within the context of air traffic networks, ultimately helping to protect public health and global travel. By considering air traffic patterns, the SEIR-HCD model contributes to more accurate modeling and prediction of disease outbreaks, aiding in the development of proactive and evidence-based strategies to manage and mitigate the impact of infectious diseases in the context of air travel.

Recently, interest in the correlation between 'contract' in transaction governance and 'trust' in relational governance mechanisms has been growing. This study focuses on issues related to the evolution of contract and inter-organisational trust dynamics in transaction governance and uses mixed research method to investigate sectors related to transaction governance in Taiwan's electronics industry. The study finds higher flexibility in contract implementation to be a promoter of trust between two parties in a relationship, thereby promoting project execution efficiency in the case of Taiwanese firms. Organisational management differs between the East and West; therefore, Western firms should understand how various contractual provisions can be used to accommodate different transactions when cooperating with Taiwanese electronics companies.

The purpose of this investigation is to define the architecture of computer informing systems. The methodology is based on an interdisciplinary, big-picture view of the cognition units which provide the foundation for informing systems. Among the findings are the following: informing systems should be designed for rigor and relevance with respect to the cognitive units (information), integrating its purpose and goal to achieve its expected utility; informing systems should also be designed for reasoning richness, informing modes, informing quality, and predicting informing biases and filters. Practical implications: A well-designed informing system should provide as an output a message and resonant change by reflecting information that triggers the client’s behavior. Social implication: The quest for the development of informing systems is not supported by Academia in practice; it is only supported by a close circle of early leaders of such systemic applications who sought to enhance the existing information systems which very often process data but do not inform as they should. Originality: This investigation, by providing an interdisciplinary and graphic modeling of informing channels and systems, indicates the vitality of these systems and their potential to create better decision-making in order to solve problems and sustain organizations and civilization.

Aim/Purpose: As traditional Knowledge Management (KM) struggles to support the personal needs of knowledge workers in a new era of accelerating information abundance, we examine the shortcomings and put forward alternative scenarios and architectures for developing a novel Personal KM System (PKMS). Background: While prior publications focused on the complementing features compared to conventional dynamic KM models, our emphasis shifts to instantiating a flourishing PKMS community supported by a Digital Platform Ecosystem. Methodology: Design science research focusing on conceptual analysis and prototyping. Contribution: The PKMS concept advances the understanding of how digital platform communities may serve members with highly diverse skills and ambitions better to gainfully utilize the platform’s resources and generative potential in their personal and local settings. Findings: We demonstrate how the needs to tackle attention-consuming rising entropy and to benefit from generative innovation potentials can be addressed. Future Research: As this article has iteratively co-evolved with the preparing of a PKMS implementation, business, and roll-out plan, the prototype’s testing, completion, and subsequent migration to a viable system is of primary concern.

Takahito YOSHIDA,Takaharu YAGUCHI,Takashi MATSUBARA, Vol.E107-D, No.11, pp.1458-1462
Accurately simulating physical systems is essential in various fields. In recent years, deep learning has been used to automatically build models of such systems by learning from data. One such method is the neural ordinary differential equation (neural ODE), which treats the output of a neural network as the time derivative of the system states. However, while this and related methods have shown promise, their training strategies still require further development. Inspired by error analysis techniques in numerical analysis while replacing numerical errors with modeling errors, we propose the error-analytic strategy to address this issue. Therefore, our strategy can capture long-term errors and thus improve the accuracy of long-term predictions.
Publication Date: 2024/11/01

Despite recognizing the importance of personal identification in organizations, the literature has rarely explored its dynamics. We define personal identification as perceived oneness with another individual, where one defines oneself in terms of the other. While many scholars have found that personal identification is associated with helpful effects, others have found it harmful. To resolve this contradiction, we distinguish between three paths to personal identification -threat-focused, opportunity-focused, and closeness-focused - and articulate a model that includes each. We examine the contextual features, how individuals' identities are constructed, and the likely outcomes that follow in the three paths. We conclude with a discussion of how the threat-, opportunity-, and closeness-focused personal identification processes potentially blend, as well as implications for future research and practice.

These dynamics manifest in various ways, influencing interactions, decision-making and overall outcomes.

The Mediterranean Institute for Biodiversity and Ecology (IMBE, Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France), in its research group "Macroecology and Biogeography of Global Change (MacroBio)" has a PostDoc position open for applications. The post has a duration of 36 months, the initial contract is made for 18 months, being extended based on an assessment of performance. The position is funded by the European Commission through the FP7 Research Project LUC4C and affiliated to the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS).

The main topic is to improve the way LULCC processes are represented in the DGVM LPJmL through enhanced soil and vegetation process representation. Work should improve the model's capacity to project climate-LULCC interactions for the computation of net climate effects, and ecosystem services. One focus is on the representation of diverse agricultural management systems, cropland abandonment/afforestation and forest management, in order to develop ways to account for their effects on biochemical cycles and biophysics.

Top central station executives illuminate the art of recruiting, onboarding and retaining exceptional talent. Plus, they share their views on remote work policies.

Boston Dynamics’ Spot robots perform autonomous patrols of property perimeters such as fence lines, exterior doors, and other critical assets located outside buildings.

Prepared Foods explores the growing and dynamic topic of regenerative agriculture in a discussion with Ryan Slabaugh, founder of Think Regeneration.

The ingredient was developed using a patented fermentation process on grape derivatives and allows food manufacturers to reduce sugar and sodium while enhancing flavor and increasing shelf-life across many different food and beverage applications.

The lessons learned from the principles and subsystems in play can and should be applied broadly to your own industrial vacuum system, whether freeze-drying is your game or not.

The dynamic walkway concept, birthed by integration partner Arrow Conveyor Equipment, is specifically designed to allow uninterrupted conveyance for operator traffic below.

Boston Dynamics presented the new robot. The company refused from the old hydraulic platform to introduce the new electric one under the same name, Atlas. The new robot is completely electronic, there are no hydraulic systems involved. The new robot will be stronger and more maneuverable as all developments of the previous generation of the robot will be improved. The company is ambitious to introduce humanoid robots and create infrastructure for them, including software.