This paper describes an extension of previous work on an eye gaze/ head tracking control of a four wheel drive, rough terrain wheelchair (for the ‘adventurous’ disabled), provided with three levels of control which permit a safe teleautonomous style navigation. Here a remote tele-autonomous mode is tested with an eye gaze/ head track system and experimental results reported. In essence, the fou...

I am baking a cake and have run out of sugar, but I can go to my neighbor next door to get some. It was worth being nice to that neighbor even though I did not particularly fancy her. Do I have to return the sugar? Maybe she can borrow my lawn mower the next time she needs to mow her lawn and that will count as a return of the favor. Maybe the value of the sugar is trivial enough not to require...

BACKGROUND In the summer of 2000, an outbreak of primary pneumonic tularemia occurred on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. The only previously reported outbreak of pneumonic tularemia in the United States also occurred on the island in 1978. METHODS We conducted a case-control study of adults with pneumonic tularemia and investigated the environment to identify risk factors for primary pneumo...

Embedded Cartesian Genetic Programming (ECGP) is an extension of the directed graph based Cartesian Genetic Programming (CGP), which is capable of automatically acquiring, evolving and re-using partial solutions in the form of modules. In this paper, we apply for the first time, CGP and ECGP to the well known Lawnmower problem and to the Hierarchical-if-and-Only-if problem. The latter is normal...

Truly autonomous systems require the ability to monitor and adapt their internal body scheme throughout their entire lifetime. In this paper, we present an approach allowing a robot to learn from scratch and maintain a generative model of its own physical body through self-observation with a single monocular camera. We represent the robot’s internal model as a compact Bayesian network, consisti...

Autonomous robotic navigation is a field of computer science with great potential for practical real-life applications. Urban search and rescue work presents complex and demanding environments. In such situations, robots can prove to be invaluable and adaptable resources. Autonomous robots can also be of great value in everyday life, as intelligent aids for elderly or physically disabled person...

This dissertation primarily focuses on robotic self-replication including a theoretical framework and quantitative measures that can be applied to self-replicating systems. A new descriptive model for physical replicating systems is introduced based on three sets of components: an initial functional system, a set of resources, and a set of external elements. Robotic self-replication is viewed a...

1 Description of the Model We consider an autonomous lawnmower that uses a probability bias to avoid patterns on lawns. This mower is started on a rectangular grassed area. When it reaches the border of the area, it changes its direction. To prevent the mower from following a simple cycle pattern, this direction is randomly biased, such as to ensure that finally the entire area has been cut. A ...

The lack of consumer acceptance for remanufactured products is preventing the transition towards sustainable consumption. When knowledge about remanufacturing among consumers limited, more insight required into consumer’s expectations. purpose this paper to examine expectations and willingness engage in purchasing behaviour when considering buying robotic lawn mowers. theory planned variables f...