Males and females are known to differ in a whole suite of characteristics, such as morphology, physiology, ecology, and behavior. Intersexual differences are generally believed to arise because of differences in selective pressures on either sex. In this study, we investigated whether intersexual differences in escape behavior exist in lizards of the genus Anolis, and whether these could be exp...

In this paper we present a novel design for a dual tracked mobile robot. The robot is designed for safe, stable and reliable motion in challenging terrains, tunnels and confined spaces. It consists of two tracked platforms connected with a semi-passive mechanism. Sensors attached to the connecting mechanism provide redundant localization data that improves the vehicle's autonomous dead reckonin...

An important problem in geometric computing is defining and computing similarity between two geometric shapes, e.g. point sets, curves and surfaces, etc. Important geometric and topological information of many shapes can be captured by defining a tree structure on them (e.g. medial axis and contour trees). Hence, it is natural to study the problem of comparing similarity between trees. We study...

In the north Atlantic, Meganyctiphanes norvegica feeds predominantly on copepods, including Calanus spp. To quantify its perceptual field for prey, and the sensory systems underlying prey detection, the responses of tethered krill to free-swimming Calanus spp. were observed in 3D using silhouette video imaging. An attack-which occurred despite the krill's being tethered-was characterized by a p...

This study presents a theoretical method for planning and controlling agile bipedal locomotion based on robustly tracking a set of non-periodic keyframe states. Based on centroidal momentum dynamics, we formulate a hybrid phase-space planning and control method which includes the following key components: (i) a step transition solver that enables dynamically tracking non-periodic keyframe state...

Little is known about the characteristics of meals that serve as motivating operations (MOs) for escape behavior. In the current investigation, we showed that the distance at which a therapist held a spoon from a child's lips served as an MO for escape behavior. Based on these results, we implemented spoon distance fading, compared fading with and without escape extinction (EE), and compared fa...

The relationship between preflight risk assessment by prey and the escape behaviors they perform while fleeing from predators is relatively unexplored. To examine this relationship, a human observer approached groups of Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus), varying his behavior to simulate more or less threatening behavior. We measured the focal deer’s angle of escape, ...