In this paper, we investigate the phenomenon of speed-up in the context of theories of truth. We focus on axiomatic theories of truth extending Peano arithmetic. We are particularly interested on whether conservative extensions of PA have speed-up and on how this relates to a deflationist account. We show that disquotational theories have no significant speed-up, in contrast to some compositional theories, and we briefly assess the philosophical implications of these results.

We consider a production–inventory control model with two reflecting boundaries, representing the finite storage capacity and the finite maximum backlog. Demands arrive at the inventory according to a Poisson process, their i.i.d. sizes having a common phase-type distribution. The inventory is filled by a production process, which alternates between two prespecified production rates ρ1 and ρ2: as long as the content level is positive, ρ1 is applied while the production follows ρ2 during time intervals of backlog (i.e., negative content). We derive in closed form the various cost functionals of this model for the discounted case as well as under the long-run-average criterion. The analysis is based on a martingale of the Kella–Whitt type and results for fluid flow models due to Ahn and Ramaswami.

In this paper, a new design of neural networks is introduced, which is able to generate oscillatory patterns in its output. The oscillatory neural network is used in a biped robot to enable it to learn to walk. The fundamental building block of the neural network proposed in this paper is O-neurons, which can generate oscillations in its transfer functions. O-neurons are connected and coupled with each other in order to shape a network, and their unknown parameters are found by a particle swarm optimization method. The main contribution of this paper is the learning algorithm that can combine natural policy gradient with particle swarm optimization methods. The oscillatory neural network has six outputs that determine set points for proportional-integral-derivative controllers in 6-DOF humanoid robots. Our experiment on the simulated humanoid robot presents smooth and flexible walking.

Probabilistic logic programs are logic programs in which some of the facts are annotated with probabilities. This paper investigates how classical inference and learning tasks known from the graphical model community can be tackled for probabilistic logic programs. Several such tasks, such as computing the marginals, given evidence and learning from (partial) interpretations, have not really been addressed for probabilistic logic programs before. The first contribution of this paper is a suite of efficient algorithms for various inference tasks. It is based on the conversion of the program and the queries and evidence to a weighted Boolean formula. This allows us to reduce inference tasks to well-studied tasks, such as weighted model counting, which can be solved using state-of-the-art methods known from the graphical model and knowledge compilation literature. The second contribution is an algorithm for parameter estimation in the learning from interpretations setting. The algorithm employs expectation-maximization, and is built on top of the developed inference algorithms. The proposed approach is experimentally evaluated. The results show that the inference algorithms improve upon the state of the art in probabilistic logic programming, and that it is indeed possible to learn the parameters of a probabilistic logic program from interpretations.

This paper investigates worst-case analysis of a moving obstacle avoidance algorithm for unmanned vehicles in a dynamic environment in the presence of uncertainties and variations. Automatic worst-case search algorithms are developed based on optimization techniques, and illustrated by a Pioneer robot with a moving obstacle avoidance algorithm developed using the potential field method. The uncertainties in physical parameters, sensor measurements, and even the model structure of the robot are taken into account in the worst-case analysis. The minimum distance to a moving obstacle is considered as an objective function in automatic search process. It is demonstrated that a local nonlinear optimization method may not be adequate, and global optimization techniques are necessary to provide reliable worst-case analysis. The Monte Carlo simulation is carried out to demonstrate that the proposed automatic search methods provide a significant advantage over random sampling approaches.

The safety analysis of human–robot collisions has recently drawn significant attention, as robots are increasingly used in human environments. In order to understand the potential injury a robot could cause in case of an impact, such incidents should be evaluated before designing a robot arm based on biomechanical safety criteria. In recent literature, such incidents have been investigated mostly by experimental crash-testing. However, experimental methods are expensive, and the design parameters of the robot arm are difficult to change instantly. In order to solve this issue, we propose a novel robot-human collision model consisting of a 6-degree-of-freedom mass-spring-damper system for impact analysis. Since the proposed robot-human consists of a head, neck, chest, and torso, the relative motion among these body parts can be analyzed. In this study, collision analysis of impacts to the head, neck, and chest at various collision speeds are conducted using the proposed collision model. Then, the degree of injury is estimated by using various biomechanical severity indices. The reliability of the proposed collision model is verified by comparing the obtained simulation results with experimental results from literature. Furthermore, the basic requirements for the design of safer robots are determined.

This paper presents a new biped mechanism with low-cost easy-operation features. The mechanism is designed with functions for straight walking, changing direction, overcoming obstacle, and climbing stairs with only 7 DOFs (degrees of freedom). Dynamics of the biped mechanism are analyzed by means of simulations in the MSC.ADAMS environment. Simulation results in terms of motion torque, joint force, contact force, parts displacement, velocity, and acceleration are reported and analyzed to show the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed solution. In addition, with the simulation results, dynamical motion of the biped mechanism is investigated and its operation performances are characterized as well.

We propose a distributed algorithm for estimating the 3D pose (position and orientation) of multiple robots with respect to a common frame of reference when Global Positioning System is not available. This algorithm does not rely on the use of any maps, or the ability to recognize landmarks in the environment. Instead, we assume that noisy relative measurements between pairs of robots are intermittently available, which can be any one, or combination, of the following: relative pose, relative orientation, relative position, relative bearing, and relative distance. The additional information about each robot's pose provided by these measurements are used to improve over self-localization estimates. The proposed method is similar to a pose-graph optimization algorithm in spirit: pose estimates are obtained by solving an optimization problem in the underlying Riemannian manifold $(SO(3)\times{\mathcal R}^3)^{n(k)}$ . The proposed algorithm is directly applicable to 3D pose estimation, can fuse heterogeneous measurement types, and can handle arbitrary time variation in the neighbor relationships among robots. Simulations show that the errors in the pose estimates obtained using this algorithm are significantly lower than what is achieved when robots estimate their pose without cooperation. Results from experiments with a pair of ground robots with vision-based sensors reinforce these findings. Further, simulations comparing the proposed algorithm with two state-of-the-art existing collaborative localization algorithms identify under what circumstances the proposed algorithm performs better than the existing methods. In addition, the question of trade-offs between cost (of obtaining a certain type of relative measurement) and benefit (improvement in localization accuracy) for various types of relative measurements is considered.

The spreading of transmissible infectious diseases is inevitably entangled with the dynamics of human population. Humans are the carrier of the pathogen, and the large-scale travel and commuting patterns that govern the mobility of modern societies are defining how epidemics and pandemics travel across the world. For a long time, the development of quantitative spatially explicit models able to shed light on the global dynamics of pandemic has been limited by the lack of detailed data on human mobility. In the last 10 years, however, these limits have been lifted by the increasing availability of data generated by new information technologies, thus triggering the development of computational (microsimulation) models working at a level of single individuals in spatially extended regions of the world. Microsimulations can provide information at very detailed spatial resolutions and down to the level of single individuals. In addition, computational implementations explicitly account for stochasticity, allowing the study of multiple realizations of epidemics with the same parameters' distribution. While on the one hand these capabilities represent the richness of microsimulation methods, on the other hand they face us with a huge amount of information that requires the use of specific data reduction methods and visual analytics.

The paper discusses the shape control problem related to a class of hyper-redundant robot arms with continuum elements, i.e. tentacle arms. A spatial weighted technique for sensor measurements is used in order to facilitate the parameter estimation. The paper focuses on the shape control by using the curvature gradient a constant parameter along the segment arm. The conditions that ensure a constant curvature gradient for a class of tentacle arms characterized by elastic backbone are determined. A sensor network distributed along the robot arm is used for the shape control. The main parameters of the arm shape, curvature and curvature gradient or “shape” Jacobian for the control problem are estimated. Two measuring systems are used: a) a distributed angle sensor network and b) a curvature sensor placed at the end of the arm segment. The stability analysis and the resulting controllers are obtained using the concept of boundary geometric control and the weighted state control methods. The shape control algorithms for dynamic models with uncertain components are proposed. Numerical simulations and experimental results illustrate the effectiveness of the above mentioned algorithms.

A crucial part of probabilistic roadmap planners is the nearest neighbor search, which is typically done by exact methods. Unfortunately, searching the neighbors can become a major bottleneck for the performance. This can occur when the roadmap size grows especially in high-dimensional spaces. In this paper, we investigate how well the approximate nearest neighbor searching works with probabilistic roadmap planners. We propose a method that is based on the locality-sensitive hashing and show that it can speed up the construction of the roadmap considerably without reducing the quality of the produced roadmap.

We propose an appearance-based approach for topological visual mapping and localization using local invariant features. To optimize running times, matchings between the current image and previously visited places are determined using an index based on a set of randomized kd-trees. We use a discrete Bayes filter for predicting loop candidates, whose observation model is a novel approach based on an efficient matching scheme between features. In order to avoid redundant information in the resulting maps, we also present a map refinement framework, which takes into account the visual information stored in the map for refining the final topology of the environment. These refined maps save storage space and improve the execution times of localizations tasks. The approach is validated using image sequences from several environments and compared with the state-of-the-art FAB-MAP 2.0 algorithm.