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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Evaluating The Potential Of Drone Swarms In Nonverbal Hri Communication, Kasper Grispino, Damian Lyons, Truong-Huy Nguyen
Evaluating The Potential Of Drone Swarms In Nonverbal Hri Communication, Kasper Grispino, Damian Lyons, Truong-Huy Nguyen
Faculty Publications
Human-to-human communications are enriched with affects and emotions, conveyed, and perceived through both verbal and nonverbal communication. It is our thesis that drone swarms can be used to communicate information enriched with effects via nonverbal channels: guiding, generally interacting with, or warning a human audience via their pattern of motions or behavior. And furthermore that this approach has unique advantages such as flexibility and mobility over other forms of user interface. In this paper, we present a user study to understand how human participants perceived and interpreted swarm behaviors of micro-drone Crazyflie quadcopters flying three different flight formations to bridge …
Using Taint Analysis And Reinforcement Learning (Tarl) To Repair Autonomous Robot Software, Damian Lyons, Saba Zahra
Using Taint Analysis And Reinforcement Learning (Tarl) To Repair Autonomous Robot Software, Damian Lyons, Saba Zahra
Faculty Publications
It is important to be able to establish formal performance bounds for autonomous systems. However, formal verification techniques require a model of the environment in which the system operates; a challenge for autonomous systems, especially those expected to operate over longer timescales. This paper describes work in progress to automate the monitor and repair of ROS-based autonomous robot software written for an a-priori partially known and possibly incorrect environment model. A taint analysis method is used to automatically extract the data-flow sequence from input topic to publish topic, and instrument that code. A unique reinforcement learning approximation of MDP utility …
Drone Proximity Detection Via Air Disturbance Analysis, Qian Zhao, Jason Hughes
Drone Proximity Detection Via Air Disturbance Analysis, Qian Zhao, Jason Hughes
Faculty Publications
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) is expanding to commercial, scientific, and agriculture applications, including surveillance, product deliveries and aerial photography. One challenge for applications of drones is detecting obstacles and avoiding collisions. A typical solution to this issue is the use of camera sensors or ultrasonic sensors for obstacle detection or sometimes just manual control (teleoperation). However, these solutions have costs in battery lifetime, payload, operator skill. We note that there will be an air disturbance in the vicinity of the drone when it’s moving close to obstacles or other drones. Our objective is to detect obstacles from …
A New Ectotherm 3d Tracking And Behavior Analytics System Using A Depth-Based Approach With Color Validation, With Preliminary Data On Kihansi Spray Toad (Nectophrynoides Asperginis) Activity, Philip Bal, Damian Lyons, Avishai Shuter
A New Ectotherm 3d Tracking And Behavior Analytics System Using A Depth-Based Approach With Color Validation, With Preliminary Data On Kihansi Spray Toad (Nectophrynoides Asperginis) Activity, Philip Bal, Damian Lyons, Avishai Shuter
Faculty Publications
The Kihansi spray toad (Nectophrynoides asperginis), classified as Extinct in the Wild by the IUCN, is being bred at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Bronx Zoo as part of an effort to successfully reintroduce the species into the wild. Thousands of toads live at the Bronx Zoo presenting an opportunity to learn more about their behaviors for the first time, at scale. It is impractical to perform manual observations for long periods of time. This paper reports on the development of a RGB-D tracking and analytics approach that allows researchers to accurately and efficiently gather information about the toads’ behavior. …
A Monte Carlo Approach To Closing The Reality Gap, Damian Lyons, James Finocchiaro, Michael Novitzky, Christopher Korpela
A Monte Carlo Approach To Closing The Reality Gap, Damian Lyons, James Finocchiaro, Michael Novitzky, Christopher Korpela
Faculty Publications
We propose a novel approach to the ’reality gap’ problem, i.e., modifying a robot simulation so that its performance becomes more similar to observed real world phenomena. This problem arises whether the simulation is being used by human designers or in an automated policy development mechanism. We expect that the program/policy is developed using simulation, and subsequently deployed on a real system. We further assume that the program includes a monitor procedure with scalar output to determine when it is achieving its performance objectives. The proposed approach collects simulation and real world observations and builds conditional probability functions. These are …