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Angular momentum in turns and abrupt starts : strategies for bipedal balance controlFarrell, Matthew Todd January 2009 (has links)
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-83). / Transients occur in human walking during a transition to, from, and between steady state walking and act as an impulse destabilizing an otherwise normal gait cycle. Turns and accelerated starts are all common transients encountered and managed intelligently by humans everyday. The population of elderly has increased and understanding balance control in healthy subjects will be more important. In addition, humanoid bipeds are rapidly becoming a more common part of our everyday life. Therefore, they must also be able to navigate our environments adroitly if they are to assist us in our daily living. This thesis takes biomechanical principals of angular momentum and applies them to healthy subjects in an effort to elucidate human balance control strategies. Each transient task is unique, and despite large segmental contributions to whole-body angular momentum during movement, the whole-body angular momentum remains tightly regulated. A analysis of segmental contributions to the principal components explaining more than 90% makes clear the balance control strategy used by healthy humans during these transients. / by Matthew Todd Farrell. / S.M.
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Accelerated and improved motor learning and rehabilitation using kinesthetic feedbackLieberman, Jeff I. (Jeff Ian), 1978- January 2006 (has links)
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-71). / About 21 million people in the United States [roughly 8%] have a basic motor skill inability [13], many stemming not from atrophy, but an improper mapping from the brain to the motor system. Devices exist today to aid people in rebuilding their motor system mappings, but do so in bulky, and inconvenient ways, since many of the users have adequate muscle strength, but the inability to control it properly. Hundreds of millions of people in the world participate in the arts, most of which involve motion of some sort. Typically, to become able to properly perform/paint/dance/etc, training is necessary. We learn from visual and auditory feedback, and sometimes, from the touch of a teacher. This research aims to improve the efficacy of such training with robotic touch, to enable people to become better, faster. This research proposes an augmented sensory feedback system - a lightweight comfortable wearable device that utilizes the communication channel of direct touch on the body, to give real-time feedback to the wearer about their performance in motor skill tasks. Using vibrotactile signals to indicate joint error in a user's motion, we enable a user to wear a full-body suit that provides subtle cues for the brain, as they perform a variety of motor skill tasks. / (cont.) The hope is that utilizing tactile real-time feedback will act as a dance teacher or physical therapist does: by giving muscle aid through informational touch cues, not only through force or torque. This will enable people to undergo constant therapy/training, over all joints of the body simultaneously. with higher accuracy than a therapist/teacher provides. The device will enable more rapid motor rehabilitation and postural retraining to combat repetitive strain injuries (RSIs). It will also allow allow communication between a motion expert and a student in real-time [by comparing the student's performance to an expert's]. to aid in higher level motor learning skills such as sports and dance. It will function as a tool to accelerate and deepen peoples motor learning capabilities. This thesis focuses on actuator selection and feedback mechanisms for such a suit, in a low-joint-number test, comprising elements of the upper arm. Initial tests on a 5 degree-of-freedom suit show a decrease in motion errors of roughly 21% (p = 0.015), with 15% lower steady-state error (p = 0.007) and a 7% accelerated rate of learning (p = 0.007). / by Jeff Lieberman. / S.M.
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The design and evaluation of a mobile handheld intervention for providing context-sensitive medication remindersKaushik, Pallavi January 2005 (has links)
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-124). / This work introduces the design and exploratory evaluation of a home reminder system for medication and healthcare that situates the timing and location of reminders based on contextual information about the user. The system consists of three major components: 1) a handheld computing interface for providing reminders, 2) a sensor subsystem integrated into the home environment, and 3) a central server that manages medical tasks and reasons over sensor data in real time. A volunteer participant adhering to a complex regimen of simulated medical tasks is closely observed in a residential research facility. The participant is presented with both context-sensitive reminders and reminders that are scheduled at fixed times during the day. The degree of adherence to the regimen, and the participant's own assessment of the usefulness of each reminder (while blinded to the reminder strategy being used), are evaluated over the course of a 10-day study. Quantitative and qualitative results are provided, comparing the efficacy of context-sensitive reminders over fixed-time reminders with respect to adherence and perceived value. / by Pallavi Kaushik. / S.M.
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Matrix multiplication with Asynchronous Logic Automata / Matrix multiplication with ALA / Generating and profiling performance of circuits in Asynchronous Logic AutomataGreenwald, Scott Wilkins January 2010 (has links)
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2010. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-63). / A longstanding trend in supercomputing is that as supercomputers scale, they become more difficult to program in a way that fully utilizes their parallel processing capabilities. At the same time they become more power-hungry - today's largest supercomputers each consume as much power as a town of 5000 inhabitants in the United States. In this thesis I investigate an alternative type of architecture, Asynchronous Logic Automata, which I conclude has the potential to be easy to program in a parametric way and execute very dense, high-throughput computation at a lesser energy cost than that of today's supercomputers. This architecture aligns physics and computation in a way that makes it inherently scalable, unlike existing architectures. An ALA circuit is a network of 1-bit processors that perform operations asynchronously and communicate only with their nearest neighbors over wires that hold one bit at a time. In the embodiment explored here, ALA circuits form a 2D grid of 1-bit processors. ALA is both a model for computation and a hardware architecture. The program is a picture which specifies what operation each cell does, and which neighbors it communicates with. This program-picture is also a hardware design - there is a one-to-one mapping of logical cells to hardware blocks that can be arranged on a grid and execute the computation. On the hardware side, it can be seen as the fine-grained limit of several hardware paradigms which exploit parallelism, data locality and application-specific customization to achieve performance. In this thesis I use matrix multiplication as a case study to investigate how numerical computation can be performed in this substrate, and how the potential benefits play out in terms of hardware performance estimates. First we take a brief tour of supercomputing today, and see how ALA is related to a variety of progenitors. Next ALA computation and circuit metrics are introduced - characterizing runtime and number of operations performed. The specification part of the case study begins with numerical primitives, introduces a language called Snap for design for in ALA, and expresses matrix multiplication using the two together. Hardware performance estimates are given for a known CMOS embodiment by translating circuit metrics from simulation into physical units. The theory section reveals in full detail the algorithms used to compute and optimize circuit characteristics based on directed acyclic graphs (DAG's). Finally it is shown how the Snap procedure of assembling larger modules out of modules employs theory to hierarchically maintain throughput optimality. / by Scott Wilkins Greenwald. / S.M.
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Interactively skimming recorded speechArons, Barry Michael January 1994 (has links)
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-156). / Barry Michael Arons. / Ph.D.
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Grounding language in spatial routinesTellex, Stefanie, 1980- January 2006 (has links)
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-108). / This thesis describes a spatial language understanding system based on a lexicon of words defined in terms of spatial routines. A spatial routine is a script composed from a set of primitive operations on sensor data, analogous to Ullman's visual routines. By finding a set of primitives that underlie natural spatial language, the meaning of spatial terms can be succinctly expressed in a way that can be used to obey natural language commands. This hypothesis is tested by using spatial routines to build a natural language interface to a real time strategy game, in which a player controls an army of units in a battle. The system understands the meaning of context-dependent natural language commands such as "Run back!" and "Move the marines on top above the fiamethrowers on the bottom." In evaluation, the system successfully interpreted a range of spatial commands not seen during implementation, and exceeded the performance of a baseline system. Beyond real-time strategy games, spatial routines may provide the basis for interpreting spatial language in a broad range of physically situated language understanding systems, such as mobile robots or other computer game genres. / by Stefanie Tellex. / S.M.
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SoundStrand : a tangible interface for composing music with limited degrees of freedom / Sound Strand : a tangible interface for composing music with limited degrees of freedom / Tangible interface for composing music with limited degrees of freedomShahar, Eyal January 2012 (has links)
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-88). / This thesis presents SoundStrand, a novel tangible interface for composing music. A new paradigm is also presented - one that allows for music composition with limited degrees of freedom, and therefore is well suited for music creation through the use of tangible interfaces. SoundStrand is comprised of a set of building blocks that represent pre-composed musical segments. By sequentially connecting building blocks to one another, the user arranges these segments into a musical theme; and by individually twisting, stretching and bending the blocks, variations of the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic content are introduced. Software tools are made available to program the musical segments and govern SoundStrand's behavior. Additional work, namely the Coda system, is presented in order to put SoundStrand and the described paradigm in a wider context as tools for music sharing and learning. / by Eyal Shahar. / S.M.
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Scalable optical architectures for electronic holographySt.-Hillaire, Pierre, 1960- January 1994 (has links)
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-110). / by Pierre St.-Hilaire. / Ph.D.
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Toward electric field tomographySmith, Joshua Reynolds January 1995 (has links)
Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-55). / by Joshua Reynolds Smith. / M.S.
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Sculpting behavior : a tangible language for hands-on play and learning / Tangible language for hands-on play and learningRaffle, Hayes Solos, 1974- January 2008 (has links)
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2008. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-192). / For over a century, educators and constructivist theorists have argued that children learn by actively forming and testing -- constructing -- theories about how the world works. Recent efforts in the design of "tangible user interfaces" (TUIs) for learning have sought to bring together interaction models like direct manipulation and pedagogical frameworks like constructivism to make new, often complex, ideas salient for young children. Tangible interfaces attempt to eliminate the distance between the computational and physical world by making behavior directly manipulable with one's hands. In the past, systems for children to model behavior have been either intuitive-but-simple (e.g. curlybot) or complex-but-abstract, (e.g. LEGO Mindstorms). In order to develop a system that supports a user's transition from intuitive-but-simple constructions to constructions that are complex-but-abstract, I draw upon constructivist educational theories, particularly Bruner's theories of how learning progresses through enactive then iconic and then symbolic representations. This thesis present an example system and set of design guidelines to create a class of tools that helps people transition from simple-but-intuitive exploration to abstract-and-flexible exploration. The Topobo system is designed to facilitate mental transitions between different representations of ideas, and between different tools. A modular approach, with an inherent grammar, helps people make such transitions. With Topobo, children use enactive knowledge, e.g. knowing how to walk, as the intellectual basis to understand a scientific domain, e.g. engineering and robot locomotion. Queens, backpacks, Remix and Robo add various abstractions to the system, and extend the tangible interface. Children use Topobo to transition from hands-on knowledge to theories that can be tested and reformulated, employing a combination of enactive, iconic and symbolic representations of ideas. / by Hayes Solos Raffle. / Ph.D.
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