Continuous Viewpoint Planning in Conjunction with Dynamic Exploration for Active Object Recognition

Active object recognition (AOR) aims at collecting additional information to improve recognition performance by purposefully adjusting the viewpoint of an agent. How to determine the next best viewpoint of the agent, i.e., viewpoint planning (VP), is a research focus. Most existing VP methods perform viewpoint exploration in the discrete viewpoint space, which have to sample viewpoint space and may bring in significant quantization error. To address this challenge, a continuous VP approach for AOR based on reinforcement learning is proposed. Specifically, we use two separate neural networks to model the VP policy as a parameterized Gaussian distribution and resort the proximal policy optimization framework to learn the policy. Furthermore, an adaptive entropy regularization based dynamic exploration scheme is presented to automatically adjust the viewpoint exploration ability in the learning process. To the end, experimental results on the public dataset GERMS well demonstrate the superiority of our proposed VP method.

METHODOLOGICAL GOING IS NEAR MANAGEMENT COMPETITIVE EDGES ON BASIS OF BALANCED OF MONEY STREAMS

Taking into account global development trends, integration and globalization processes, encourage the search for and further development of new products, services and management mechanisms. The economic-mathematical model of optimization of parameters of type NBIC-direction of competitive advantages is developed. The model is formed by the criterion of maximizing the net discounted cashflow. Based on the developed scientific and methodological approach, 4 types of NBIC-direction of competitive advantages of telecommunication enterprises are proposed, which are based on a combination of levels of innovative activity of the enterprise (from low to high) and complementarity of cashflow management (from low to high). As a result, the types of NBIC-direction of competitive advantages of the enterprise are proposed: adaptive-passive, adaptive-active, object-oriented; foresight-progressive. Complementary cashflow management involves a balanced distribution of cashflows by certain NBIC-components, namely: Nano-components (application of Nano-development stop rovide high-speed telecommunications), Bio-components (introduction of artificial intelligence in organizational culture, implementation of self-organization in the enterprise), Info-components (introduction of innovative standards of telecommunication activity, information software in business process management), Cogno-components (cognitive flexibility of top and middle managers, ability of personnel to complementarity, development of knowledge management system at enterprise, introduction of system of continuous training of all employees links). Thus, the combined use of these components provides an increase in cashflows and forms a modern platform for breakthrough competitive development of enterprises. Keywords: management, competitive advantage, cashflow, innovation, complementarity. JEL Classification B26, D61 Formulas: 14; fig.: 3; tabl.: 2; bibl.: 15.

Measuring fingerpad deformation during active object manipulation

During active object manipulation, the finger-object interactions give rise to complex fingertip skin deformations. These deformations are in turn encoded by the local tactile afferents and provide rich and behaviorally relevant information to the central nervous system. Most of the work studying the mechanical response of the finger to dynamic loading has been performed under a passive setup, thereby precisely controlling the kinematics or the dynamics of the loading. However, to identify aspects of the deformations that are relevant to online control during object manipulation, it is desirable to measure the skin response in an active setup. To that end, we developed a device that allows us to monitor finger forces, skin deformations, and kinematics during fine manipulation. We describe the device in detail and test it to precisely describe how the fingertip skin in contact with the object deforms during a simple vertical oscillation task. We show that the level of grip force directly influences the fingerpad skin strains and that the strain rates are substantial during active manipulation (norm up to 100%/s). The developed setup will enable us to causally relate sensory information, i.e. skin deformation, to online control, i.e. grip force adjustment, in future studies.

60 Years of Databases

The article provides an overview of research and development of databases since their appearance in the 60s of the last century to the present time. The following stages are distinguished: the emergence formation and rapid development, the era of relational databases, extended relational databases, post-relational databases and big data. At the stage of formation, the systems IDS, IMS, Total and Adabas are described. At the stage of rapid development, issues of ANSI/X3/SPARC database architecture, CODASYL proposals, concepts and languages of conceptual modeling are highlighted. At the stage of the era of relational databases, the results of E. Codd's scientific activities, the theory of dependencies and normal forms, query languages, experimental research and development, optimization and standardization, and transaction management are revealed. The extended relational databases phase is devoted to describing temporal, spatial, deductive, active, object, distributed and statistical databases, array databases, and database machines and data warehouses. At the next stage, the problems of post-relational databases are disclosed, namely, NOSQL-, NewSQL- and ontological databases. The sixth stage is devoted to the disclosure of the causes of occurrence, characteristic properties, classification, principles of work, methods and technologies of big data. Finally, the last section provides a brief overview of database research and development in the Soviet Union.