1,721,007 research outputs found
Deep Reinforcement Learning for Instruction Following Visual Navigation in 3D Maze-Like Environments
No full textIn this work, we address the problem of visual navigation by following instructions. In this task, the robot must interpret a natural language instruction in order to follow a predefined path in a possibly unknown environment. Despite different approaches have been proposed in the last years, they are all based on the assumption that the environment contains objects or other elements that can be used to formulate instructions, such as houses or offices. On the contrary, we focus on situations where the environment objects cannot be used to specify a navigation path. In particular, we consider 3D maze-like environments as our test bench because they can be very large and offer very intricate structures. We show that without reference points, visual navigation and instruction following can be rather challenging, and that standard approaches can not be applied successfully. For this reason, we propose a new architecture that explicitly learns both visual navigation and instruction understanding. We demonstrate with simulated experiments that our method can effectively follow instructions and navigate in previously unseen mazes of various sizes
E-VAT: An Asymmetric End-to-End Approach to Visual Active Exploration and Tracking
No full textThe development of visual tracking systems is becoming a major goal for the Robotics community. Most of the works dealing with this topic focus exclusively on passive tracking, where the target is confined within the camera's field of view. Only a minority propose active approaches, capable not only of identifying the object to be tracked but also of producing motion control actions to maintain visual contact with it. However, all the methods introduced so far assume that the target is initially in the immediate proximity of the tracker. This represents an undesirable constraint on the applicability of these techniques, and it is to overcome this limitation that we propose a novel End-to-End Deep Reinforcement Learning based system, capable of both exploring the surrounding environment to find the target and then of tracking it. To do this, we develop a network consisting of two sub-components: i) the Target-Detection Network, which detects the target in the camera's field-of-view, and ii) the Exploration and Tracking Network, which employs this information to switch between the exploration policy and the tracking policy with the goal of exploring the environment, finding the target and finally tracking it. Through different experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach and its superior performance with respect to current state-of-the-art (SotA) methods
Review: From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution by Manfred Daubichler; Jane Maienschein
No full textIntroduction: The biological process of development has always served as a focal point for empirical research and conceptual reflection on organisms and life in general. Many have drawn connections between development (ontogeny) and the history of life (phylogeny). The most recent manifestation of this is evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), currently one of the most thriving disciplines within biology. The contributions in From Embryology to Evo-Devo: A History of Developmental Evolution manifest how the topic of development continues giving rise to changing biological views and novel perspectives on the history of biology. The title is not meant to imply that evo-devo has simply grown out of developmental biology; in fact, the essays make clear that evo-devo has many historical roots—e.g. reaching back to 19th century evolutionary morphology—and that evo-devo is more than a synthesis of the two fields of evolutionary and developmental biology. Among other recurring historical themes, the contributions highlight how throughout the 20th century multiple traditions of developmental biology coexisted, how technological innovations played a significant role in the history of developmental biology, and how development provided the foundation for an organismal perspective in biology, particularly with respect to evolutionary issues
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
