2,560 research outputs found
3D Object Detection For Intelligent Vehicles
No full textThis master thesis presents an experimental study on 3D person localization (i.e., pedestrians, cyclists)in traffic scenes, using monocular vision and Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) data. The performance of two top-ranking methods is analyzed on the 3D object detection KITTI dataset. In this evaluation, the effect of the Intersection over Union (IoU) threshold on the performance in terms of 3D bounding box location, size, and orientation is analysed.Since the KITTI 3D object detection dataset contains relatively few 3D person instances, the analysis will is to the EuroCity Persons 2.5D (ECP2.5D) datasets (both day and night), which is one order of magnitude larger. Using both datasets, additional experiments are performed to evaluate the influence of distance, the number of LiDAR points, occlusion, and intensity on the performance. Domain transfer experiments between the KITTI and ECP2.5D datasets are performed, to examine how these datasets generalize with respect to each other. Furthermore, Part-A2 net is used to evaluate the detection score which is given to the ground truth pedestrians. The relationship between the detection score and the distance, the number of LiDAR points, and occlusion is analyzed. Some objects are not detected although their ground truth detection score is high. This creates the potential to detect these pedestrians. Lastly, this thesis presents a method that uses the detections from the previous frame to increase the performance in the subsequent frame by adding the previous detections to the 3D proposals coming from the Region Proposal Network (RPN).During this master thesis, two articles were written. The first article will be presented at the 2020 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV2020) titled “An Experimental Study on 3D Person Localization in Traffic Scenes” by Joram R. van der Sluis, Ewoud A.I. Pool, and Dariu M. Gavrila. The second article will be submitted to IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles (T-IV) titled “An Experimental Study on 3D Person Localization in Traffic Scenes” by Joram R. van der Sluis, Ewoud A.I. Pool, and Dariu M. Gavrila. This second article is an extension of the first article. Since this article is not submitted yet, it could be that the appended version will contain some differences regarding the final submitted version.Mechanical Engineering | Vehicle Engineerin
The Importation and Generation of the Religious and the Sacred in Political Song
No full textThe relevance of studying the “edges” or “adjacencies” of religion is further demonstrated in Chapter 12 by Joram Tarusarisa, who investigates the impact of religious resonances in “Nora”, a Zimbabwean political song. His analysis demonstrates that what is said to be religious and/or sacred is not cast in stone but is the result of practices, discourses and narratives woven around what gets defined as such. He discusses how the song sets apart the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and its former leader Robert Mugabe and turns them into representations of the religious and/or sacred. Tarusarira’s analysis casts light on how the song’s narratives and discourses created a numinous vision and version of Zimbabwe that was to be delivered by the then President Mugabe, who was said to be “anointed” to guide his followers and deliver them from the land of Egypt (coloniality) to the Promised Land (independence and sovereignty). He demonstrates that the song has an explanatory dimension by which it claims to provide answers to questions of ultimate meaning in times of political instability and conflict that characterized Zimbabwe at the time when the song was composed. In doing so, it provides a theodicy, a narrative that answers ultimate questions concerning life and people’s (Zimbabweans’) place in the universe. Tarusarira’s analysis of the song and its performances is thus a concrete example of how the study of “religion” does not involve the study of a “thing” in itself, but an enquiry into how particular actors and institutions weave particular ideas, discourses and narratives, using a particular language which reflects their subjectivities and interests, to create the religious and/or sacred. The author concludes by stating that the proffered definitions of religion tell us more about those offering them than what they claim to be telling us about religion
The Importation and Generation of the Religious and the Sacred in Political Song
No full textThe relevance of studying the “edges” or “adjacencies” of religion is further demonstrated in Chapter 12 by Joram Tarusarisa, who investigates the impact of religious resonances in “Nora”, a Zimbabwean political song. His analysis demonstrates that what is said to be religious and/or sacred is not cast in stone but is the result of practices, discourses and narratives woven around what gets defined as such. He discusses how the song sets apart the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and its former leader Robert Mugabe and turns them into representations of the religious and/or sacred. Tarusarira’s analysis casts light on how the song’s narratives and discourses created a numinous vision and version of Zimbabwe that was to be delivered by the then President Mugabe, who was said to be “anointed” to guide his followers and deliver them from the land of Egypt (coloniality) to the Promised Land (independence and sovereignty). He demonstrates that the song has an explanatory dimension by which it claims to provide answers to questions of ultimate meaning in times of political instability and conflict that characterized Zimbabwe at the time when the song was composed. In doing so, it provides a theodicy, a narrative that answers ultimate questions concerning life and people’s (Zimbabweans’) place in the universe. Tarusarira’s analysis of the song and its performances is thus a concrete example of how the study of “religion” does not involve the study of a “thing” in itself, but an enquiry into how particular actors and institutions weave particular ideas, discourses and narratives, using a particular language which reflects their subjectivities and interests, to create the religious and/or sacred. The author concludes by stating that the proffered definitions of religion tell us more about those offering them than what they claim to be telling us about religion
The Importation and Generation of the Religious and the Sacred in Political Song
No full textThe relevance of studying the “edges” or “adjacencies” of religion is further demonstrated in Chapter 12 by Joram Tarusarisa, who investigates the impact of religious resonances in “Nora”, a Zimbabwean political song. His analysis demonstrates that what is said to be religious and/or sacred is not cast in stone but is the result of practices, discourses and narratives woven around what gets defined as such. He discusses how the song sets apart the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and its former leader Robert Mugabe and turns them into representations of the religious and/or sacred. Tarusarira’s analysis casts light on how the song’s narratives and discourses created a numinous vision and version of Zimbabwe that was to be delivered by the then President Mugabe, who was said to be “anointed” to guide his followers and deliver them from the land of Egypt (coloniality) to the Promised Land (independence and sovereignty). He demonstrates that the song has an explanatory dimension by which it claims to provide answers to questions of ultimate meaning in times of political instability and conflict that characterized Zimbabwe at the time when the song was composed. In doing so, it provides a theodicy, a narrative that answers ultimate questions concerning life and people’s (Zimbabweans’) place in the universe. Tarusarira’s analysis of the song and its performances is thus a concrete example of how the study of “religion” does not involve the study of a “thing” in itself, but an enquiry into how particular actors and institutions weave particular ideas, discourses and narratives, using a particular language which reflects their subjectivities and interests, to create the religious and/or sacred. The author concludes by stating that the proffered definitions of religion tell us more about those offering them than what they claim to be telling us about religion
Private and Social Incentives for Fertility: Israeli Puzzles
No full textWhereas most of the world has experienced decreasing fertility during the past half century, Israel has experienced a puzzling mix of trends. Completed fertility has decreased sharply in some ethnic-religious groups (Mizrahi Jews and non-Bedouin Arabs) and increased moderately in other groups (non-ultra-orthodox Ashkenazi and Israeli-born Jews). In a phenomenon that can only be described as a reverse fertility transition, fertility has increased substantially (from about 3 to 6 children per women) among ultra-orthodox Ashkenazi and Israeli-born Jews. This paper explores how private and social incentives for fertility may have combined to produce the complex pattern of fertility in Israel. Theoretical analysis of the social dynamics of fertility shows that this pattern could have been generated by the joint effects of (a) private preferences for childbearing, (b) preferences for conformity to group fertility norms, and (c) the major child-allowance program introduced by the Israeli government in the 1970s. Econometric analysis of fertility decisions shows that fundamental identification problems make it difficult to infer the actual Israeli fertility process from data on completed fertility. Hence we are able to conjecture meaningfully on what may have happened, but we cannot definitively resolve the Israeli fertility puzzles.
Design, fabrication and performance of the 10-in TOM HPD
No full textThe first sealed TOM Hybrid Photon Detector (HPD) with 10-in. diameter has been fabricated and successfully tested at CERN. This HPD has a spherical entrance window and a bialkali photocathode. The fountain focusing optics produces a demagnified image (D = 4) on the round segmented silicon sensor. The signals of the 2048 cells are read out through analog front-end electronics encapsulated in the vacuum envelope. We report on the design, fabrication technique and the experimental results obtained with laboratory test benches. The large TOM HPD is a prototype tube developed for the CLUE cosmic ray experiment. The final tubes, now under development, will be equipped with a solar-blind Rb//2Te photocathode and self triggering front-end electronics
Heterogeneity and option pricing
No full textAn economy with agents having constant yet heterogeneous degrees of relative risk aversion prices assets as though there were a single decreasing relative risk aversion pricing representative agent. The pricing kernel has fat tails and option prices do not conform to the Black-Scholes formula. Implied volatility exhibits a smile. Heterogeneous beliefs about distribution parameters also implies non-lognormal pricing kernels with fatter tails and over-pricing of out-of-the-money options. Heterogeneity as the source of non-stationary pricing fits Rubinstein’s (1994) interpretation of the over-pricing as an indication of crash-o-phobia. Rubinstein’s term suggests that those who hold out-of-the-money put options have relatively high risk aversion or relatively high subjective probability assessments of low market outcomes. The essence of this explanation is heterogeneity in investor attitudes towards risks and probability beliefs.
Stabilization of Visually Guided Robotic Lampreys
No full textThis thesis contains two contributions to the stabilization of visually guided robotic lampreys: the head stabilization method and the head-led target tracking design. Both approach the problem that camera inputs, attached to the head segment, are disturbed due to the participation of the head in the locomotion gait of the robot. Head stabilization is designed to stabilize the head segment itself, and head-led target tracking is designed to stabilize the target in the field of view of the cameras. The head stabilization and head-led target tracking designs are build upon the Ijspeert model. The Ijspeert model is an biologically inspired oscillator-based central pattern generator, capable of producing locomotion signals to achieve a lateral undulation gait. Analysis of this Ijspeert model is done by rewriting the model as a network of Kuramoto oscillators. This analysis concludes with a proof for the convergence of the phase differences of the Ijspeert oscillators. Although methods that mitigate the head stabilization problem for robotic lampreys have been designed before, the head stabilization method in this thesis approaches the head stabilization problem as a control problem for the fist time, to the best of our knowledge. The head stabilization method is designed to align the head segment with the average body direction, by providing head stabilizing parameters to the Ijspeert model. Perfect head stabilization is achieved, under the assumption that the motor dynamics are instant. Even though head stabilization is not perfectly achieved in reality with non-instant motor dynamics, we have verified that the head stabilized Ijspeert model is an improvement in terms of head stability, compared to the Ijspeert model without head stabilization. The designed head stabilization method is applied to a novel head-led target tracking design. This method combines a forward locomotion gait with a turning controller to perform target tracking, and is designed to increase the accuracy of visual information by directing the head segment towards the target. The head-led target tracking design is verified by placing the robotic lamprey in a virtual fluid environment with a target, which showed that the target is reached by the robot. Furthermore, the head-led target tracking design is compared to a design from the literature that does not direct the head segment towards the target. The head-led target tracking design shows improvements to the design from the literature in terms of the used performance measures.Mechanical Engineering | Systems and Contro
PESI - a taxonomic backbone for Europe
No full textThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor
- …
