Many existing datasets for lidar place recognition are solely representative of structured urban environments, and have recently been saturated in performance by deep learning based approaches. Natural and unstructured environments present many additional challenges for the tasks of long-term localisation but these environments are not represented in currently available datasets. To address this we introduce Wild-Places, a challenging large-scale dataset for lidar place recognition in unstructured, natural environments. Wild-Places contains eight lidar sequences collected with a handheld sensor payload over the course of fourteen months, containing a total of 67K undistorted lidar submaps along with accurate 6DoF ground truth. Our dataset contains multiple revisits both within and between sequences, allowing for both intra-sequence (i.e. loop closure detection) and inter-sequence (i.e. re-localisation) place recognition. We also benchmark several state-of-the-art approaches to demonstrate the challenges that this dataset introduces, particularly the case of long-term place recognition due to natural environments changing over time. Our dataset and code will be available at https://csiro-robotics.github.io/Wild-Places.

鸟类等动物通过将腿部和空中迁移率与显性惯性作用相结合，广泛使用多模式运动。这种多模式运动壮举的机器人仿生型可以在协商其任务空间的能力方面产生超虚拟系统。本文的主要目的是讨论实现多模式运动的挑战，并报告我们在开发能够多模式运动（腿部和空中运动）的四足动物机器人方面的进展。我们报告了机器人中使用的机械和电气组件，除了为开发多功能多模式机器人平台实现目标的模拟和实验外。

位置识别是机器人技术的基本组成部分，近年来通过使用深度学习模型看到了巨大的改进。当部署在看不见或高度动态的环境中时，网络可以体验到大幅下降，并且需要对收集的数据进行其他培训。但是，对新训练分布进行天真的微调会导致先前访问的域上的性能严重降解，这一现象被称为灾难性遗忘。在本文中，我们解决了点云识别的增量学习问题，并引入了基于结构感知蒸馏的方法，可保留网络嵌入空间的高阶结构。我们在四个流行和大规模的激光雷达数据集（牛津，木兰，内部和基蒂）上介绍了几个挑战性的新基准测试，在各种网络架构上显示了Point Cloud Plote识别性能的广泛改进。据我们所知，这项工作是第一个有效地将增量学习应用于Point Cloud Place识别的工作。

在本文中，我们介绍了一个大型数据集，其中包含各种移动映射传感器，该传感器使用以典型的步行速度携带的手持设备收集了近2.2公里，该设备通过牛津大学的新学院近2.2公里。该数据集包括来自两个市售设备的数据 - 立体惯性摄像头和一个多光束3D激光雷达，该镜头还提供惯性测量。此外，我们使用了三脚架安装的调查级LIDAR扫描仪来捕获测试位置的详细毫米准确的3D地图（包含$ \ sim $ \ sim $ 2.9亿点）。使用地图，我们推断出每次雷达扫描的设备位置的6度自由度（DOF）地面真理，以更好地评估LIDAR和视觉定位，映射和重建系统。这个基础真理是该数据集的特殊新颖贡献，我们认为它将实现许多类似数据集缺乏的系统评估。数据集结合了建筑环境，开放空间和植被区域，以测试本地化和映射系统，例如基于视觉的导航，视觉和激光雷达大满贯，3D激光雷达重建以及基于外观的位置识别。该数据集可在以下网址获得：ori.ox.ac.uk/datasets/newer-college-dataset

In this paper, we present a novel control architecture for the online adaptation of bipedal locomotion on inclined obstacles. In particular, we introduce a novel, cost-effective, and versatile foot sensor to detect the proximity of the robot's feet to the ground (bump sensor). By employing this sensor, feedback controllers are implemented to reduce the impact forces during the transition of the swing to stance phase or steeping on inclined unseen obstacles. Compared to conventional sensors based on contact reaction force, this sensor detects the distance to the ground or obstacles before the foot touches the obstacle and therefore provides predictive information to anticipate the obstacles. The controller of the proposed bump sensor interacts with another admittance controller to adjust leg length. The walking experiments show successful locomotion on the unseen inclined obstacle without reducing the locomotion speed with a slope angle of 12. Foot position error causes a hard impact with the ground as a consequence of accumulative error caused by links and connections' deflection (which is manufactured by university tools). The proposed framework drastically reduces the feet' impact with the ground.

Recent advances in distributed artificial intelligence (AI) have led to tremendous breakthroughs in various communication services, from fault-tolerant factory automation to smart cities. When distributed learning is run over a set of wirelessly connected devices, random channel fluctuations and the incumbent services running on the same network impact the performance of both distributed learning and the coexisting service. In this paper, we investigate a mixed service scenario where distributed AI workflow and ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) services run concurrently over a network. Consequently, we propose a risk sensitivity-based formulation for device selection to minimize the AI training delays during its convergence period while ensuring that the operational requirements of the URLLC service are met. To address this challenging coexistence problem, we transform it into a deep reinforcement learning problem and address it via a framework based on soft actor-critic algorithm. We evaluate our solution with a realistic and 3GPP-compliant simulator for factory automation use cases. Our simulation results confirm that our solution can significantly decrease the training delay of the distributed AI service while keeping the URLLC availability above its required threshold and close to the scenario where URLLC solely consumes all network resources.

The behavior of the network and its stability are governed by both dynamics of individual nodes as well as their topological interconnections. Attention mechanism as an integral part of neural network models was initially designed for natural language processing (NLP), and so far, has shown excellent performance in combining dynamics of individual nodes and the coupling strengths between them within a network. Despite undoubted impact of attention mechanism, it is not yet clear why some nodes of a network get higher attention weights. To come up with more explainable solutions, we tried to look at the problem from stability perspective. Based on stability theory, negative connections in a network can create feedback loops or other complex structures by allowing information to flow in the opposite direction. These structures play a critical role in the dynamics of a complex system and can contribute to abnormal synchronization, amplification, or suppression. We hypothesized that those nodes that are involved in organizing such structures can push the entire network into instability modes and therefore need higher attention during analysis. To test this hypothesis, attention mechanism along with spectral and topological stability analyses was performed on a real-world numerical problem, i.e., a linear Multi Input Multi Output state-space model of a piezoelectric tube actuator. The findings of our study suggest that the attention should be directed toward the collective behaviour of imbalanced structures and polarity-driven structural instabilities within the network. The results demonstrated that the nodes receiving more attention cause more instability in the system. Our study provides a proof of concept to understand why perturbing some nodes of a network may cause dramatic changes in the network dynamics.

We introduce a new probabilistic temporal logic for the verification of Markov Decision Processes (MDP). Our logic is the first to include operators for causal reasoning, allowing us to express interventional and counterfactual queries. Given a path formula $\phi$, an interventional property is concerned with the satisfaction probability of $\phi$ if we apply a particular change $I$ to the MDP (e.g., switching to a different policy); a counterfactual allows us to compute, given an observed MDP path $\tau$, what the outcome of $\phi$ would have been had we applied $I$ in the past. For its ability to reason about different configurations of the MDP, our approach represents a departure from existing probabilistic temporal logics that can only reason about a fixed system configuration. From a syntactic viewpoint, we introduce a generalized counterfactual operator that subsumes both interventional and counterfactual probabilities as well as the traditional probabilistic operator found in e.g., PCTL. From a semantics viewpoint, our logic is interpreted over a structural causal model (SCM) translation of the MDP, which gives us a representation amenable to counterfactual reasoning. We provide a proof-of-concept evaluation of our logic on a reach-avoid task in a grid-world model.

Although deep networks have shown vulnerability to evasion attacks, such attacks have usually unrealistic requirements. Recent literature discussed the possibility to remove or not some of these requirements. This paper contributes to this literature by introducing a carpet-bombing patch attack which has almost no requirement. Targeting the feature representations, this patch attack does not require knowing the network task. This attack decreases accuracy on Imagenet, mAP on Pascal Voc, and IoU on Cityscapes without being aware that the underlying tasks involved classification, detection or semantic segmentation, respectively. Beyond the potential safety issues raised by this attack, the impact of the carpet-bombing attack highlights some interesting property of deep network layer dynamic.

This work presents an actuation framework for a bioinspired flapping drone called Aerobat. This drone, capable of producing dynamically versatile wing conformations, possesses 14 body joints and is tail-less. Therefore, in our robot, unlike mainstream flapping wing designs that are open-loop stable and have no pronounced morphing characteristics, the actuation, and closed-loop feedback design can pose significant challenges. We propose a framework based on integrating mechanical intelligence and control. In this design framework, small adjustments led by several tiny low-power actuators called primers can yield significant flight control roles owing to the robot's computational structures. Since they are incredibly lightweight, the system can host the primers in large numbers. In this work, we aim to show the feasibility of joint's motion regulation in Aerobat's untethered flights.