A Behavioral Decision-Making Model of Learning and Memory for Mobile Robot Triggered by Curiosity

We present a programming approach to let a multitude of simple mobile computational “particles” (i.e. sorts of tiny mobile robots) to self-organize their respective locations to assume a coherent global formation (i.e. shape). The problem has a variety of applications in mobile robotics, modular robots, sensor networks, and computational self-assembly. Here we show how the TOTA (“Tuples On The Air”) middleware can be effectively exploited to enable self-organization of spatial shapes in mobile particles with minimal capabilities. The key idea in TOTA is to rely on spatially distributed tuples, spread across the network, to drive particles' movements and activities. Several experiments are reported showing the effectiveness of the approach.

A novel method of recording neural activity from the rodent medial prefrontal cortex reveals that the medial prefrontal cortex is composed of functionally distinct subregions that process economic decision information differentially along a dorso-ventral gradient.

Imaging of Eating Disorders: Multiple Techniques to Demonstrate the Dynamic Brain

To compare the glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) activity and amounts of GDHI, GDHII, and GDHIII immunoreactive forms in prefrontal, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex and cerebellar cortex of patients with schizophrenia and control subjects. GDH enzymatic activity was measured and levels of GDH immunoreactive forms were determined in extracts of autopsied samples of prefrontal, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex (areas 10, 24, and 23 by Brodmann), and cerebellar cortex of patients with schizophrenia (n=8) and controls (n=9). GDH enzymatic activity was significantly increased in the prefrontal cortex (area 10) (p<0.004), the posterior cingulate cortex (area 23) (p<0.05) and the cerebellar cortex (p<0.002) and was unchanged in the anterior cingulate cortex (area 24) in patients with schizophrenia compared to controls. The levels of immunoreactive GDH I, GDH II and GDH III were significantly higher in the prefrontal cortex of patients with schizophrenia than in controls (p<0.008, p<0.003, and p<0.0001, respectively). Levels of all three immunoreactive GDH forms were unchanged in the anterior cingulate cortex (area 24), but they were increased in the posterior cingulate cortex (area 23) (p<0.004, p<0.001 and p<0.02, respectively). The levels of immunoreactive GDH II and GDH III, but not GDH I, were significantly increased in the cerebellar cortex of patients with schizophrenia compared with the control group (p<0.02 and p<0.001, respectively). The alteration in the levels of GDH immunoreactive forms in the brain of patients with schizophrenia is one of the causes of impaired brain glutamate metabolism and an important aspect of schizophrenia pathogenesis.

In this chapter, we suggest a new information space concept called “smart floor”. It is the floor storage of specific information designed for route guidance of a mobile robot. A mobile robot can reach its goal position using the information saved in smart floor as well as automatically update the information for a changing environment. We constructed smart floor using RFID tag packaging and fabricated a mobile robot mounted with a passive RFID tag in ultra high frequency (UHF) bandwidth. The passive RFID tag is inexpensive and does not require a power supply. The primary information stored in smart floor is direction-values and Q-values. These values are the resultant Q-learning method that is employed to guide a mobile robot form an arbitrary position to the goal position. This research will contribute to the development of various applications such as mobile robot applications.

Patients with schizophrenia exhibit impairments in working memory that often appear in attenuated form in persons at high risk for the illness. The authors hypothesized that deviations in task-related brain activation and deactivation would occur in persons with an at-risk mental state performing a working memory task that entailed the maintenance and manipulation of letters. Participants at ultra high risk for developing psychosis (N=60), identified using the Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States, and healthy comparison subjects (N=38) 14 to 29 years of age underwent functional MRI while performing a verbal working memory task. Group differences in brain activation were identified using analysis of covariance. The two groups did not show significant differences in speed or accuracy of performance, even after accounting for differences in education. Irrespective of task condition, at-risk participants exhibited significantly less activation than healthy comparison subjects in the left anterior insula. During letter manipulation, at-risk persons exhibited greater task-related deactivation within the default-mode network than comparison subjects. Region-of-interest analysis in the at-risk group revealed significantly greater right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation during manipulation of letters. Despite comparable behavioral performance, at-risk participants performing a verbal working memory task exhibited altered brain activation compared with healthy subjects. These findings demonstrate an altered pattern of brain activation in at-risk persons that contains elements of reduced function as well as compensation.

Treatment of Psychiatric Symptoms Associated With a Frontal Lobe Tumor Through Surgical Resection

Currently, the application of mobile ground robots spans a range of fields from surveillance, search and rescue, exploration, agriculture, military among others. In unstructured and dangerous environments such as disaster scene, military fields or chemical spray in agricultural farms, the experience and intelligence of the operator are necessary for making complex decisions beyond the autonomy of the robot. In such cases, teleoperation allow the operator to guide the robot in achieving complex task from a safe location. The effectiveness with which the operator controls the robot depends on, among others, operator’s awareness of the robot’s environment, the quality of communication link, the robustness of robot’s control system and experience of the human operator. Ground mobile robots form the basis of this work since they are applicable in many fields and mostly operate in dynamic environments that require additional guidance from a human operator. This study reviews research work on mobile robot teleoperation systems, and puts more emphasis on the architecture, communication link and situation awareness creation. Moreover, future trend in mobile robot teleoperation is also put forward in this review to give ground for new research work in this field. Based on the sited literature, it is noted that making the operator feel present in the robot’s environment through sufficient visual and force feedback as well as use of good quality network, significantly improve the navigation efficiency and task achievement of mobile ground robots.

SUMMARYExact knowledge of the position and proper calibration of robots that move by wheels form an important foundation in mobile robot applications. In this context, a variety of sensory systems and techniques have been developed for accurate positioning of differential drive mobile robots. This paper, first, provides a brief overview of mobile robots positioning techniques and then, presents a new benchmark method capable of calibrating mobile robots with differential drive mechanisms to correct systematic errors. The proposed method is compared with the commonly used University of Michigan Benchmark (UMBmark) odometry method. Two sets of comparisons are conducted on six prototyped robots with differential drives. The first set of tests establishes the workability and accuracy that can be achieved with the new method and compares them with the ones obtained from the UMBmark technique. The second experiment compares the performance of a mobile robot, calibrated with either the UMBmark or the new method, for an unseen path. It is demonstrated that the proposed method of calibration is simple to implement, and leads to accuracy comparable to the UMBmark method. Specifically, while the error corrections in both methods are within ±5% of each other, the proposed method requires single straight line motion for calibration, which is believed to be simpler and less timely to implement than the square path motion required by the UMBmark technique. The method should therefore be considered seriously as a new tool when calibrating differential drive mobile robots.

The research of mobile robot has always been the focus of academia. In the specific academic content, robot path planning and general positioning technology are two of the more important academic research in mobile robot technology. Mobile planning technology is divided into global path planning and local environment path planning. This paper describes the current situation and development of the robot path planning. In addition, this paper also describes the research progress of mobile robot positioning technology based on map. Through the research of the above two technologies of mobile robot, we can get the corresponding conclusions.

Highly significant elevations in regional brain monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) binding were recently reported during major depressive episodes (MDEs) of major depressive disorder (MDD). The relationship between MAO-A levels and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) treatment, recovery, and recurrence in MDD is unknown. To determine whether brain MAO-A binding changes after SSRI treatment, whether brain MAO-A binding normalizes in subjects with MDD in recovery, and whether there is a relationship between prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex MAO-A binding in recovery and subsequent recurrence of MDE. Case-control study. Tertiary care psychiatric hospital. Twenty-eight healthy subjects, 16 subjects with an MDE secondary to MDD, and 18 subjects with MDD in recovery underwent carbon 11-labeled harmine positron emission tomography scans. Subjects with MDE were scanned before and after 6 weeks of SSRI treatment. All were otherwise healthy, nonsmoking, and medication free. Subjects with MDD in recovery were followed up for 6 months after MAO-A binding measurement. Monoamine oxidase A V(T), an index of MAO-A density, was measured in the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, dorsal putamen, ventral striatum, thalamus, anterior temporal cortex, midbrain, and hippocampus. Monoamine oxidase A V(T) was significantly elevated in each brain region both during MDE and after SSRI treatment as compared with healthy controls. During recovery, MAO-A V(T) was significantly elevated in each brain region; however, those who went on to recurrence had significantly higher MAO-A V(T) in the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex than those who did not. Elevated MAO-A binding after SSRI treatment indicates persistence of a monoamine-lowering process not present in health. This provides a strong conceptual rationale for continuing SSRI treatment during early remission. Greater MAO-A binding in the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex in subjects with MDD in recovery and its association with subsequent recurrence argue that deficient monoamine neuromodulation may persist into recovery and contribute to recurrence.

This paper introduces error eliminating rapid ultrasonic firing (EERUF), a new method for firing multiple ultrasonic sensors in mobile robot applications. EERUF allows ultrasonic sensors to fire at rates that are five to ten times faster than those customary in conventional applications. This is possible because EERUF reduces the number of erroneous readings due to ultrasonic noise by one to two orders of magnitude. While faster firing rates improve the reliability and robustness of mobile robot obstacle avoidance and are necessary for safe travel at higher speed (e.g., V>0.3 m/sec), they introduce more ultrasonic noise and increase the occurrence rate of crosstalk. However, EERUF almost eliminates crosstalk, making fast firing feasible. Furthermore, ERRUF's unique noise rejection capability allows multiple mobile robots to collaborate in the same environment, even if their ultrasonic sensors operate at the same frequencies. The authors have implemented and tested the EERUF method on a mobile robot and they present experimental results. With EERUF, a mobile robot was able to traverse an obstacle course of densely spaced, pencil-thin (8 mm-diameter) poles at up to 1 m/sec. >

Objective To study the resting-state functional connectivity(FC) changes of anterior cingulate cortex(ACC) and amygdala in adolescent patients with medication-naive first-episode major depressive disorder(MDD). Methods Medication-naive first-episode MDD adolescents(n=30) and pair-wise matched healthy controls(HCs, n=29) underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance images(fMRI). To study whether there were different in FC changes between amygdala and ACC and whole brain regions, and whether abnormal FC was related to clinical characteristics. Results Compared with HCs, the adolescent MDD patients showed decreased FC between the left amygdala and right thalamus(MNI x, y, z: 15, -21, 18)(t=-2.85)and increased FC between the left amygdala and the bilateral temporal middle gyrus, left occipital gyrus, right medial prefrontal cortex(MPFC)(MNI x, y, z: 9, 66, 15)(t=2.80). The right amygdale showed decreased FC with bilateral middle frontal gyrus, left caudate(MNI x, y, z: -15, -9, 21)(t=-2.53), right thalamus(MNI x, y, z: 12, -36, 12)(t=-3.01), right cerebellum(MNI x, y, z: 3, -84, -33)(t=-2.45) and increased FC with right temporal middle gyrus, right MPFC(MNI x, y, z: 6, 69, 12)(t=2.41). The left ACC showed decreased FC with left cerebellum(MNI x, y, z: 12, -87, -24)(t=-2.36), left frontal inferior triangle gyrus, right frontal inferior orbital gyrus and increased FC with right frontal middle orbital gyrus.The right ACC showed decreased FC with left caudate(MNI x, y, z: -15, 21, 6)(t=-2.29), right temporal middle gyrus, right MPFC(MNI x, y, z: 9, 54, 36)(t=-2.29), right frontal inferior orbital gyrus, right angular(MNI x, y, z: 45, -51, 21)(t=-3.01), left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex(MNI x, y, z: -21, 33, 36)(t=-2.61). The increased FC between the left amygdale and bilateral temporal middle gyrus showed positive correlation with the score of HAMD(r=0.50, P<0.05; r=0.45, P<0.05). And the FC between the right amygdale and right middle frontal gyrus was positive correlation with duration of disease(r=0.63, P<0.05). Conclusion There is widespread FC disorder in amygdala and ACC in adolescents patients with first-episode depression.Abnormal FC changes may be the neuropathological mechanism of depression. Key words: Adolescent major depressive disorder; Resting-state fMRI; Functional connectivity; Amygdala; Anterior cingulated cortex

Active imaging techniques have been, and will remain relevant as an integral part of the sensor network needed in mobile robotics navigation, most commonly with the use of LiDARs. For close range applications, time-of-flight (TOF) cameras are an alternative to more expensive LiDARs. The Kinect v2 (Kinect for XboxOne) has been used frequently as a range imaging camera in machine vision research because of its low cost and good performance. For mobile robotics applications moving at low speed, a larger field of view than the original (70° X 60°) would be desirable to increase awareness of the surroundings, and also detect other moving objects in the trajectory. Our main goal is therefore to increase the Kinect v2 field of view while keeping its main feature of depth measurements. A simple but effective solution consists in using a conversion lens to increase the ray collection angle before the rays enter the IR camera. Depth measurements remain possible from each pixel using TOF with the Kinect v2 modulated signal, provided the field of illumination matches the field of view. A trade-off has to be made between accuracy of depth measurement, optical performance and field of view/illumination enhancement. Therefore, we modified a Kinect v2 to characterize its optical performances and evaluate its relevancy for applications requiring accurate knowledge of the 3D surroundings. A field of view improvement of the Kinect v2 and other similar TOF cameras could offer an alternative at minimal cost for depth measurements in machine vision, specifically in mobile robotics research where object detection and mapping tasks are frequently carried out.

The field of mobile robot tracking is active and vibrant, with more great systems and ideas being developed continuously. Exact knowledge of the position of a vehicle is a fundamental problem in mobile robot applications. In search for a solution, researchers and engineers have developed a variety of systems, sensors, and techniques for mobile robot positioning. This paper provides an implementation of tracking a hand-on robotic platform from another autonomous robot almost at the same size, which will be referred as the `chase-hunter' application. The proposed alignment control algorithm has the advantage that can be implemented on very simple robots that lack complex sensing capabilities to detect random obstacles and the orientation of their pair robot. Low cost, though modern and up to date technology was used and all gear data will be explained in details as well as the performing scenario.