Search results for "Robot"
showing 10 items of 1036 documents
The central control of oriented locomotion in insects - towards a neurobiological model
2010
A neurobiological model for the higher control of oriented locomotion in insects is developed here. It is based on studies in a genetic model insect, the fruit fly Drosophila melangaster. Reference is made to other insects, where respective functions are not yet studied in Drosophila. Flies can walk swiftly with up to 16 steps per second, each leg, on almost any substrate and in any orientation to the gravity vector. To bring about this astounding maneuverability and agility the central complex within the insect brain derives directional commands for the leg coordination centers in the thoracic nervous system. Neuroanatomical information is taken into account with regard to the general flow…
Feeding ecology of the loggerhead turtle Caretta caretta in the western Mediterranean
2001
We studied the feeding ecology of juvenile loggerhead turtles Caretta caretta in the western Mediterranean based on the contents of the digestive tract of 54 turtles (range of CCL: 34–69 cm) seized in Barcelona (Spain) in 1991. Turtles had been captured in fishing trawls, but specific information about dates and localities is not available. Despite this limitation, we obtained interesting evidences about the foraging strategies of loggerheads, with potentially important conservation implications. We report 33 new taxa in the diet. Results indicated that western Mediterranean loggerheads feed in an opportunistic way. Numerically, fish made up the most important prey group, followed by pelagi…
Gastrointestinal Helminths of Loggerhead Turtles (Caretta caretta) from the Western Mediterranean: Constraints on Community Structure
1998
Richness and composition of gastrointestinal helminth communities of 54 loggerhead turtles, Caretta caretta, from the western Mediterranean were interpreted from patterns of helminth exchange at 2 host taxonomic scales: exchange between marine turtles and other marine hosts and exchange within turtles. We predicted exchange of the former to be unimportant ecologically and evolutionarily because of the host phylogenetic distance. The absence of records of successful exchange at this host taxonomic scale confirmed that host physiological barriers seem to prevent contemporary parasite transfer between marine turtles and other sympatric hosts. Marine turtles also seem to exhibit an evolutionary…
New distributional data on <em>Haemogregarina stepanowi</em> (Apicomplexa) and <em>Placobdella costata</em> (Hirudinea) paras…
2021
The host-parasite system “Emys trinacris – Placobdella costata – Haemogregarina stepanowi” is known for Sicily, but scarce information is available to date about the distribution of the two parasites on the island. Therefore, an extensive sampling effort through visual census and collection and analysis of blood smears of the endemic Sicilian pond turtle E. trinacris was carried out in 46 water bodies scattered throughout mainland Sicily. Our findings revealed that the distribution of both parasites is limited to the Nebrodi area, where the infection of H. stepanowi has shown a high incidence on the local turtle populations. Our data suggest no correlation between the current distribution o…
The Aquatic Surface Robot (AnSweR), a Lightweight, Low Cost, Multipurpose Unmanned Research Vessel
2021
Even though a few examples of aquatic surface robots exist, they are generally expensive, relatively large and heavy and tailored to custom-made hardware/software components that are not openly available to a broad public. In this work, the Aquatic Surface Robot (AnSweR), a newly-designed, lightweight, low cost, open-source, multipurpose unmanned research vessel is presented. The AnSweR features a lightweight and compact design that makes it fit in a backpack. Low-noise operation (in and above the surface) is achieved with a propulsion system based on two water-jets. Only affordable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components are adopted. The primary goal of the AnSweR is to map underwater l…
Breedbot: An Edutainment Robotics System to Link Digital and Real World
2007
The paper describes Breedbot an edutainment software and hardware system that could be used to evolve autonomous agents in digital (software) world and to transfer the evolved minds in physical agents (robots). The system is based on a wide variety of Artificial Life techniques (Artificial Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms, User Guided Evolutionary Design and Evolutionary Robotics). An user without any computer programming skill can determine the robot behaviour. Breedbot was used as a didactic tool in teaching Evolutionary Biology and as a futuristic toy by several Science Centers. The digital side of Breedbot is downloadable from www.isl.unina.it/breedbot.
A Kinect-Based Gesture Acquisition and Reproduction System for Humanoid Robots
2020
The paper illustrates a system that endows an humanoid robot with the capability to mimic the motion of a human user in real time, serving as a basis for further gesture based human-robot interactions. The described approach uses the Microsoft Kinect as a low cost alternative to expensive motion capture devices.
Camera-LiDAR Data Fusion for Autonomous Mooring Operation
2020
Author's accepted manuscript. © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. The use of camera and LiDAR sensors to sense the environment has gained increasing popularity in robotics. Individual sensors, such as cameras and LiDARs, fail to meet the growing challenges in complex autonomous systems. One such scenario is autonomous mooring, where the ship has to …
2D-3D Camera Fusion for Visual Odometry in Outdoor Environments
2014
International audience; Accurate estimation of camera motion is very important for many robotics applications involving SfM and visual SLAM. Such accuracy is attempted by refining the estimated motion through nonlinear optimization. As many modern robots are equipped with both 2D and 3D cameras, it is both highly desirable and challenging to exploit data acquired from both modalities to achieve a better localization. Existing refinement methods, such as Bundle adjustment and loop closing, may be employed only when precise 2D-to-3D correspondences across frames are available. In this paper, we propose a framework for robot localization that benefits from both 2D and 3D information without re…
Ontology-based state representation for intention recognition in cooperative human-robot environments
2012
In this paper, we describe a novel approach for representing state information for the purpose of intention recognition in cooperative human-robot environments. States are represented by a combination of spatial relationships in a Cartesian frame along with cardinal direction information. This approach is applied to a manufacturing kitting operation, where humans and robots are working together to develop kits. Based upon a set of predefined high-level states relationships that must be true for future actions to occur, a robot can use the detailed state information presented in this paper to infer the probability of subsequent actions occurring. This would enable the robot to better help th…