Cellular Automata (CAs) have been investigated extensively as abstract models of the decentralized systems composed of autonomous entities characterized by local interactions. However, it is poorly... Show More

Cellular Automata (CAs) have been investigated extensively as abstract models of the decentralized systems composed of autonomous entities characterized by local interactions. However, it is poorly understood how CAs can interact with their external environment, which would be useful for implementing pervasive systems that consist of billions of components (nodes, sensors, etc.). This paper focuses on the emergent properties of CAs induced by external perturbations toward controlling pervasive systems. The authors assumed a minimum task in which a CA has to change its global state drastically after every occurrence of a perturbation period. By conducting evolutionary searches for rules of CAs, they obtained interesting behaviors of CAs in which their global state cyclically transited among different stable states in either ascending or descending order. They analyze the emergent behavior in detail and also introduce applications of the evolved CA for controlling pervasive robots and an interactive art.

This paper covers the measurement of biopotentials for diagnosis: the electrical voltages that can be measured from electrodes placed on the skin or within the body. Biopotentials include: the... Show More

This paper covers the measurement of biopotentials for diagnosis: the electrical voltages that can be measured from electrodes placed on the skin or within the body. Biopotentials include: the electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocortogram (ECoG), electromyogram (EMG), electroneurogram (ENG), electrogastrogram (EGG), action potential (AP), electroretinogram (ERG), electro-oculogram (EOG). This paper also covers skin conductance, pulse oximeters, urology, wearable systems and important therapeutic devices such as: the artificial cardiac pacemaker, defibrillator, cochlear implant, hemodialysis, lithotripsy, ventilator, anesthesia machine, heart-lung machine, infant incubator, infusion pumps, electrosurgery, tissue ablation, and medical imaging. It concludes by covering electrical safety. It provides future subjects for research such as a blood glucose sensor and a permanently implanted intracranial pressure sensor.

Biological vision components like visual attention (VA) algorithms aim to mimic the mechanism of the human vision system. Often VA algorithms are complex and require high computational and memory... Show More

Biological vision components like visual attention (VA) algorithms aim to mimic the mechanism of the human vision system. Often VA algorithms are complex and require high computational and memory requirements to be realized. In biologically-inspired vision and embedded systems, the computational capacity and memory resources are of a primary concern. This paper presents a discussion for implementing VA algorithms in embedded vision systems in a resource constrained environment. The authors survey various types of VA algorithms and identify potential techniques which can be implemented in embedded vision systems. Then, they propose a low complexity and low memory VA model based on a well-established mainstream VA model. The proposed model addresses critical factors in terms of algorithm complexity, memory requirements, computational speed, and salience prediction performance to ensure the reliability of the VA in a resource constrained environment. Finally a custom softcore microprocessor-based hardware implementation on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is used to verify the implementation feasibility of the presented model.

From insects in your garden to creatures in the sea, inspiration can be drawn from nature to design a whole new class of smart robotic devices. These smart machines may move like living creatures.... Show More

From insects in your garden to creatures in the sea, inspiration can be drawn from nature to design a whole new class of smart robotic devices. These smart machines may move like living creatures. They can be launched toward a specific target for a pre-defined task. Bio-inspiration is developing to meet the needs of many challenges particularly in machine vision. Some species in the animal kingdom like cephalopods, crustaceans and insects are distinguished with their visual capabilities which are strongly improved by means of polarization. This work surveys the most recent research in the area of bio-inspired polarization based robot orientation and navigation. Firstly, the authors will briefly discuss the polarization based orientation and navigation behavior in the animal kingdom. Secondly, a comprehensive cover of its mapping into robotics navigation and orientation estimation will be given. Finally, the future research directions will be discussed.