Artificial systems as models in biological cybernetics

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 1071-1072 ◽  
Author(s):  
Titus R. Neumann ◽  
Susanne Huber ◽  
Heinrich H. Bülthoff

From the perspective of biological cybernetics, “real world” robots have no fundamental advantage over computer simulations when used as models for biological behavior. They can even weaken biological relevance. From an engineering point of view, however, robots can benefit from solutions found in biological systems. We emphasize the importance of this distinction and give examples for artificial systems based on insect biology.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Göttlich ◽  
Sven Spieckermann ◽  
Stephan Stauber ◽  
Andrea Storck

AbstractThe visualization of conveyor systems in the sense of a connected graph is a challenging problem. Starting from communication data provided by the IT system, graph drawing techniques are applied to generate an appealing layout of the conveyor system. From a mathematical point of view, the key idea is to use the concept of stress majorization to minimize a stress function over the positions of the nodes in the graph. Different to the already existing literature, we have to take care of special features inspired by the real-world problems.


Author(s):  
Yoel Tenne

Modern engineering often uses computer simulations as a partial substitute to real-world experiments. As such simulations are often computationally intensive, metamodels, which are numerical approximations of the simulation, are often used. Optimization frameworks which use metamodels require an initial sample of points to initiate the main optimization process. Two main approaches for generating the initial sample are the ‘design of experiments' method which is statistically based, and the more recent metaheuristic-based sampling which uses a metaheuristic or a computational intelligence algorithm. Since the initial sample can have a strong impact on the overall optimization search and since the two sampling approaches operate based only widely different mechanisms this study analyzes the impact of these two approaches on the overall search effectiveness in an extensive set of numerical experiments which covers a wide variety of scenarios. A detailed analysis is then presented which highlights which method was the most beneficial to the search depending on the problem settings.


spontaneously invented a name for the creature derived from the most prominent features of its anatomy: kamdopardalis [the normal Greek word for ‘giraffe*]. (10.27.1-4) It is worth spending a little time analysing what is going on in this passage. The first point to note is that an essential piece of information, the creature’s name, is not divulged until the last possible moment, after the description is completed. The information contained in the description itself is not imparted directly by the narrator to the reader. Instead it is chan­ nelled through the perceptions of the onlooking crowd. They have never seen a giraffe before, and the withholding of its name from the reader re-enacts their inability to put a word to what they see. From their point of view the creature is novel and alien: this is conveyed partly by the naive wonderment of the description, and partly by their attempts to control the new phenomenon by fitting it into familiar categories. Hence the comparisons with leopards, camels, lions, swans, ostriches, eyeliner and ships. Eventually they assert conceptual mastery over visual experience by coining a new word to name the animal, derived from the naively observed fea­ tures of its anatomy. However, their neologism is given in Greek (kamdopardalis), although elsewhere Heliodoros is scrupulously naturalistic in observing that Ethiopians speak Ethiopian. The reader is thus made to watch the giraffe from, as it were, inside the skull of a member of the Ethiopian crowd. The narration does not objectively describe what they saw but subjectively re­ enacts their ignorance, their perceptions and processes of thought. This mode of presentation, involving the suppression of an omniscient narrator in direct communication with the reader, has the effect that the reader is made to engage with the material with the same immediacy as the fictional audience within the frame of the story: it becomes, in imagination, as real for him as it is for them. But there is a double game going on, since the reader, as a real person in the real world, differs from the fictional audience inside the novel precisely in that he does know what a giraffe is. This assumption is implicit in the way the description is structured. If Heliodoros* primary aim had been to describe a giraffe for the benefit of an ignorant reader, he would surely have begun with the animal’s name, not withheld it. So for the reader the encounter


Author(s):  
Adnan Darwiche ◽  
Knot Pipatsrisawat

Complete SAT algorithms form an important part of the SAT literature. From a theoretical perspective, complete algorithms can be used as tools for studying the complexities of different proof systems. From a practical point of view, these algorithms form the basis for tackling SAT problems arising from real-world applications. The practicality of modern, complete SAT solvers undoubtedly contributes to the growing interest in the class of complete SAT algorithms. We review these algorithms in this chapter, including Davis-Putnum resolution, Stalmarck’s algorithm, symbolic SAT solving, the DPLL algorithm, and modern clause-learning SAT solvers. We also discuss the issue of certifying the answers of modern complete SAT solvers.


Author(s):  
Wolff-Michael Roth

To learn by means of analogies, students have to see surface and deep structures in both source and target domains. Educators generally assume that students, presented with images, texts, video, or demonstrations, see what the curriculum designer intends them to see, that is, pick out and integrate information into their existing understanding. However, there is evidence that students do not see what they are supposed to see, which precisely inhibits them to learn what they are supposed to learn. In this extended case study, which exemplifies a successful multimedia application, 3 classroom episodes are used (a) to show how students in an advanced physics course do not see relevant information on the computer monitor; (b) to exemplify teaching strategies designed to allow relevant structures to become salient in students’ perception, allowing them to generate analogies and thereby learn; and (c) to exemplify how a teacher might assist students in bridging from the multimedia context to the real world.


1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Laughton ◽  
Roger Ottewill

As part of their attempt to embed their teaching more firmly in the ‘real world’ of business, some university tutors have incorporated ‘commissioned’ or ‘live’ projects into their learning and teaching strategies. These projects enable students to make a direct contribution to their business clients while simultaneously fulfilling key educational objectives. Drawing on their experience of the use of commissioned projects on an MSc in International Business (MSclB) course, the authors analyse in detail both the potential benefits and the problems that arise in implementing such schemes. In this paper, they outline some of the key features of the MSclB course, focusing on the commissioned project component; indicate the reasons for using commissioned projects from the point of view of both tutors and students; describe and evaluate the methodology used to generate data for informing the identification and discussion of issues; and explore a number of key factors for tutors and students in the use of commissioned projects. The paper thus raises awareness of the nature of commissioned projects as a pedagogic tool and of what needs to be done if their contribution to the enhancement of students' understanding of the business world is to be maximized.


Author(s):  
John T. Lehman

In biological systems, optimal strategy is generally defined as optimizing fitness, measured as reproductive value (RV), the expectation of producing surviving offspring from time t onward, given that an organism is in state S(t). Any action can be associated with an expectation of immediate reproductive success. Maximum RV results from the action that maximizes the sum of immediate and future surviving offspring. Adaptive biological behavior is the product of historical experience, heritability, individual variation, and differential fitness among individuals. Foraging tasks are a standard test bed for robot research because of their applicability to many problems. Optimal foraging theory offers explanations and predictions with direct applicability to engineering problems. Much theory development involves optimal solutions based on complete information about the system, but animals do not always conform to predictions of such models. Adaptive approximations to optimality in biological systems offer models for design of engineered systems.


Author(s):  
James G. Clawson ◽  
Gerry Yemen

Suitable for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education programs, this version of the K2 story provides the full version of the story based on sequential dates. Written as a replacement for the much-used Greenland Case (UVA-OB-0581) this undisguised case can be taught in a similar manner. Chris Warner led a team of experienced mountain climbers on an expedition to reach the summit of K2—the second highest in the world. After failing to succeed on their first two attempts, Warner and his team brought together other teams representing eight different countries hoping to work together for success. Their story is an account full of examples where a leadership point of view was taken or not taken. The successes and failures of the expedition's approach is bursting with real world examples and offers an exciting framework to house theoretical concepts about team building and leadership. A video supplement is available to enhance student learning.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 2569 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Luengo ◽  
David Meltzer ◽  
Tom Trigano

The electrocardiogram (ECG) was the first biomedical signal for which digital signal processing techniques were extensively applied. By its own nature, the ECG is typically a sparse signal, composed of regular activations (QRS complexes and other waveforms, such as the P and T waves) and periods of inactivity (corresponding to isoelectric intervals, such as the PQ or ST segments), plus noise and interferences. In this work, we describe an efficient method to construct an overcomplete and multi-scale dictionary for sparse ECG representation using waveforms recorded from real-world patients. Unlike most existing methods (which require multiple alternative iterations of the dictionary learning and sparse representation stages), the proposed approach learns the dictionary first, and then applies a fast sparse inference algorithm to model the signal using the constructed dictionary. As a result, our method is much more efficient from a computational point of view than other existing algorithms, thus becoming amenable to dealing with long recordings from multiple patients. Regarding the dictionary construction, we located first all the QRS complexes in the training database, then we computed a single average waveform per patient, and finally we selected the most representative waveforms (using a correlation-based approach) as the basic atoms that were resampled to construct the multi-scale dictionary. Simulations on real-world records from Physionet’s PTB database show the good performance of the proposed approach.


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