Compreender os mecanismos que causam variações espaço-temporais na diversidade biológica é uma das principais atribuições da ecologia. A teoria clássica de nicho prediz que o gradiente ambiental e sua complexidade mediam processos cruciais na estruturação das assembléias locais, permitindo a coexistência das espécies. A associação entre fatores espaciais e ambientais e diversidade inventário e diversidade diferenciação de mamíferos Neotropicais, tem sido usualmente investigada por estudos de resolução grosseira. Assim, o efeito do gradiente ambiental em resolução fina, ainda é praticamente desconhecido. Neste trabalho, eu investiguei os efeitos de processos ambientais, espaciais e ambientais espacialmente estruturados sobre a diversidade α e β de mamíferos, em uma área de aproximadamente de 1.100,42 km2 no norte do Pantanal, a maior área úmida contínua do planeta. Utilizei um método de análise espacial chamado Análise de Coordenadas Principais de Matrizes Vizinhas e modelos lineares para descrever as contribuições desses processos. Os resultados demostram que fatores ambientais e espaciais, em conjunto, são mais importantes do que os efeitos independentes de cada fator, tanto para a diversidade α quanto para a β. O modelo completo explicou 18% da variação na diversidade α e 41% da variação na diversidade β. A diversidade β estimada foi negativamente relacionada com a diversidade α estimada. A diversidade β observada foi positivamente relacionada com a variação da estrutura de habitas entre sítios, embora o modelo tenha explicado uma porcentagem pequena da variação total. Os dados sugerem que embora os grandes mamíferos neotropicais sejam considerados espécies generalistas, eles não ocorrem de forma homogênea ao longo do gradiente, criado pelo mosaico da paisagem pantaneira, e que o papel da variação de nicho espacial é fundamental para manter a riqueza específica em nível regional. / Comprehending the mechanism that causes spatial-temporal variation in biological diversity is at the core of ecological inquiry. Classical niche theory states that environmental gradient and complexity mediate crucial processes that structure local assemblages, allowing species to co-exist. The association between spatial and environmental factors and mammalian inventory or differentiation diversity in the Neotropics, has been usually investigated by coarse grain studies, thus the effect of fine grain effects on mammalian diversity still largely unappreciated. In this paper, I investigated the effects of environmental, spatial, and spatially structured environmental processes on mammalian α- and β-diversity in an area of approximately 1,100.42 km2 in the northern Pantanal, the largest continuous wetland on Earth. I used a spatial analysis method called Principal Coordinates of Neighbor Matrices analysis and linear models to depict the contributions of these processes. The results show that environmental and spatial factors, jointly, are more important than the independent effects of each factor for both, α- and β-diversity. The full model accounted for 18% of the variation in α- diversity and 41% of the variation in β-diversity. Estimated β-diversity decreased with estimated α-diversity. Observed β-diversity increased with site distinctness, although the model had a poor fit and explained a small amount of the total variance. My data suggests that although most large Neotropical mammals are broadly distributed and considered plastic species, they do not occur homogeneously across the landscape, and that the role of spatial niche is critical to maintain species richness at the landscape level.

Compreender os mecanismos que causam variações espaço-temporais na diversidade biológica é uma das principais atribuições da ecologia. A teoria clássica de nicho prediz que o gradiente ambiental e sua complexidade mediam processos cruciais na estruturação das assembléias locais, permitindo a coexistência das espécies. A associação entre fatores espaciais e ambientais e diversidade inventário e diversidade diferenciação de mamíferos Neotropicais, tem sido usualmente investigada por estudos de resolução grosseira. Assim, o efeito do gradiente ambiental em resolução fina, ainda é praticamente desconhecido. Neste trabalho, eu investiguei os efeitos de processos ambientais, espaciais e ambientais espacialmente estruturados sobre a diversidade α e β de mamíferos, em uma área de aproximadamente de 1.100,42 km2 no norte do Pantanal, a maior área úmida contínua do planeta. Utilizei um método de análise espacial chamado Análise de Coordenadas Principais de Matrizes Vizinhas e modelos lineares para descrever as contribuições desses processos. Os resultados demostram que fatores ambientais e espaciais, em conjunto, são mais importantes do que os efeitos independentes de cada fator, tanto para a diversidade α quanto para a β. O modelo completo explicou 18% da variação na diversidade α e 41% da variação na diversidade β. A diversidade β estimada foi negativamente relacionada com a diversidade α estimada. A diversidade β observada foi positivamente relacionada com a variação da estrutura de habitas entre sítios, embora o modelo tenha explicado uma porcentagem pequena da variação total. Os dados sugerem que embora os grandes mamíferos neotropicais sejam considerados espécies generalistas, eles não ocorrem de forma homogênea ao longo do gradiente, criado pelo mosaico da paisagem pantaneira, e que o papel da variação de nicho espacial é fundamental para manter a riqueza específica em nível regional. / Comprehending the mechanism that causes spatial-temporal variation in biological diversity is at the core of ecological inquiry. Classical niche theory states that environmental gradient and complexity mediate crucial processes that structure local assemblages, allowing species to co-exist. The association between spatial and environmental factors and mammalian inventory or differentiation diversity in the Neotropics, has been usually investigated by coarse grain studies, thus the effect of fine grain effects on mammalian diversity still largely unappreciated. In this paper, I investigated the effects of environmental, spatial, and spatially structured environmental processes on mammalian α- and β-diversity in an area of approximately 1,100.42 km2 in the northern Pantanal, the largest continuous wetland on Earth. I used a spatial analysis method called Principal Coordinates of Neighbor Matrices analysis and linear models to depict the contributions of these processes. The results show that environmental and spatial factors, jointly, are more important than the independent effects of each factor for both, α- and β-diversity. The full model accounted for 18% of the variation in α- diversity and 41% of the variation in β-diversity. Estimated β-diversity decreased with estimated α-diversity. Observed β-diversity increased with site distinctness, although the model had a poor fit and explained a small amount of the total variance. My data suggests that although most large Neotropical mammals are broadly distributed and considered plastic species, they do not occur homogeneously across the landscape, and that the role of spatial niche is critical to maintain species richness at the landscape level.

Esta tese apresenta dois métodos diferentes de estimativa de desfocagem usando uma única imagem. Ambos os métodos assumem uma função de espalhamento de ponto (Point Spread Function - PSF) Gaussiana e exploram a razão de magnitudes de gradientes de versões re-borradas da imagem original com escalas diferentes nas bordas da imagem, o que fornece uma expressão matemática fechada para borramento local. A primeira abordagem calcula perfis 1D ao longo de pontos de borda ortogonais ao contorno local, e avalia a localização da borda (máximo da derivada primeira) para selecionar adaptativamente o número de escalas no re-borramento. Considerando o consumo de tempo de explorar perfis de aresta orientados 1D, um segundo método foi proposto com base em gradientes de imagem diretamente no domínio 2D, e os parâmetros de re-borramento locais foram selecionados com base na concordância de um detector de bordas calculado em várias escalas. Dada uma estimativa inicial da escala de desfocagem nas posições de borda proporcionada por qualquer um destes dois métodos, é também proposto um passo de correção que atenua os erros introduzidos pela discretização da formulação contínua. Um novo método de filtragem local que suaviza as estimativas refinadas ao longo dos contornos de imagem também é proposto, e um filtro de domínio conjunto (jointdomain filter) rápido é explorado para propagar informações de desfocagem para toda a imagem, gerando o mapa de desfocagem completo. Os resultados experimentais em imagens sintéticas e reais mostram que os métodos propostos apresentam resultados promissores para a estimativa de borramento por desfoco, com um bom compromisso entre qualidade e tempo de execução quando comparados a técnicas estado-da-arte. Para lidar com sequências de vídeo desfocadas, a consistência temporal também foi incluída no modelo proposto. Mais precisamente, Filtros de Kalman foram aplicados para gerar estimativas temporais suaves para cada pixel quando a aparência local da sequência de vídeo não varia muito, permitindo transições durante mudanças drásticas da aparência local, que podem se relacionar com oclusões/desoclusões. Finalmente, esta tese também mostra aplicações dos métodos propostos para a estimativa de desfocagem de imagem e vídeo. Um novo método de redimensionamento (retargeting) de imagens é proposto para fotos tiradas por câmera com baixa profundidade de campo. O método inclui informação de desfocamento local no contexto do método seam carving, visando preservar objetos em foco com melhor qualidade visual. Assumindo que os pixels em foco estejam relacionados às regiões de interesse de uma imagem com desfocamento, o método de redimensionamento proposto começa com um método de corte (cropping), o qual remove as partes sem importância (borradas) da imagem, e então o método seam carving é aplicado com uma nova função de energia que prioriza as regiões em foco. Os resultados experimentais mostram que o método proposto funciona melhor na preservação de objetos em foco do que outras técnicas de redimensionamento de imagens. A tese também explora o método de estimação de desfocagem proposto no contexto de des-borramento de imagens e sequências de vídeo, e os resultados foram comparados com vários outros métodos de estimação de desfocagem. Os resultados obtidos mostram que as métricas tipicamente usadas para avaliar métodos de estimação de desfocagem (por exemplo, erro absoluto médio) podem não estar correlacionadas com a qualidade das métricas de imagem desfocada, como a Relação Sinal-Ruído de Pico. / This dissertation presents two different defocus blur estimation methods for still images. Both methods assume a Gaussian Point Spread Function (PSF) and explore the ratio of gradient magnitudes of reblurred images computed at edge location with different scales, which provides a closed form mathematical formulation for the local blur assuming continuous-time signals. The first approach computes 1D profiles along edge points orthogonal to the local contour, and evaluate the location of the edge (maximum of the derivative) to adaptively select the number of reblurring scales. Considering the time consumption of exploring 1D oriented edge profiles, a second method was proposed based on 2D multiscale image gradients, and local reblurring parameters were selected based on the agreement of an edge detector computed at several scales. Given an initial estimate of the blur scale at edge locations provided by either of these two methods, a correction step that accounts for the discretization of the continuous formulation is also proposed. A novel local filtering method that smooths the refined estimates along the image contours is also proposed, and a fast joint domain filter is explored to propagate blur information to the whole image to generate the full blur map. Experimental results on synthetic and real images show that the proposed methods have promising results for defocus blur estimation, with a good trade off between running time and accuracy when compared to state-of-the art defocus blur estimation methods. To deal with blurry video sequences, temporal consistency was also included in the proposed model. More precisely, Kalman Filters were applied to generate smooth temporal estimates for each pixel when the local appearance of the video sequence does not vary much, and allowing sharp transitions during drastic local appearance changes, which might relate to occlusions/disocclusions. Finally, this dissertation also shows applications of the proposed methods for image and video blur estimation. A new image retargeting method is proposed for photos taken by a shallow Depth of Field (DoF) camera. The method includes defocus blur information with the seam carving framework aiming to preserve in-focus objects with better visual quality. Assuming the in-focus pixels related to regions of interest of a blurry image, the proposed retargeting method starts with a cropping method, which removes the unimportant parts (blurry) of the image, then the seam carving method is applied with a novel energy function that prioritizes in-focus regions. Experimental results show that the proposed blur aware retargeting method works better at preserving in-focus objects than other well known competitive retargeting methods. The dissertation also explores the proposed blur estimation method in the context of image and video deblurring, and results were compared with several other blur estimation methods. The obtained results show that metrics typically used to evaluate blur estimation methods (e.g. Mean Absolute Error) might not be correlated with the quality of deblurred image metrics, such as Peak Signal to Noise Ratio.

An island subspecies endemic to the remote St Kilda archipelago, Apodemus sylvaticus hirtensis is considered of national importance but has been little studied, despite its inclusion in the criteria for the islands’ designation as a World Heritage Site. This study expands our knowledge of the core ecology of the mice; distribution, morphology, age structure, breeding phenology, population density, range size, survival and fecundity are all described and quantified using data collected from 4462 captures of 787 individuals between 2009-2012 on three sites (Carn Mor, Glen Bay & Village Bay), 1-2km apart on the main island of Hirta. Morphological analysis confirmed the reputed gigantism the mice, with maximum body weights of 60g for males and 50.5g for a non-gravid female both being approximately double that of a mainland specimen (the heaviest gravid female caught weighed 56g). Sexual dimorphism was evident, with males >1 year old being 8.7% heavier than females on average. Significant geographical variation in size was also found; mice on the seabird breeding colony of Carn Mor were heavier, longer and in better condition than mice elsewhere. Mice were observed to have a well-defined breeding season between April and September, shorter than on the mainland, with most individuals not breeding until their second year and very few surviving two winters. No geographical differences were found in the proportion of adult mice more than a year old that were in breeding condition at any given time, although there were significant geographical differences in the proportion of individuals in breeding condition for ‘young adult’ mice entering their first spring and sub adult mice in the autumn of the year in which they were. Spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) methods were used to quantify population densities free from ad hoc methods of trapping area estimation. Temporal variation in population size typical of temperate small mammals was found, with densities as low as 2 mice/ha in spring, increasing through summer and autumn with juvenile recruitment until reaching a peak at the beginning of winter of up to 50 mice/ha. Geographical variation was again observed, with frequent significant differences between trapping sites and an overall trend of highest population densities on the seabird breeding site. Mean individual range sizes varied between 0.3-3.0ha and were largest in Village Bay and in males in breeding condition. Pradel robust design recruitment models were used to quantify monthly survival (0.67-1.00) and fecundity (0.03- 0.41) and overall rate of population change (0.81-1.52) between sessions. Survival varied little between grids outside of the breeding season, but tended to be greater in Carn Mor than Village Bay during the summer. Fecundity rates varied little between years and grids, with one exception where increased summer fecundity followed a severe winter decline on Carn Mor. The possible role of differences in the quality of the food supply (in particular the seabird breeding colony and spatial variation in sheep grazing pressure) on creating geographical variation in body size, condition, breeding phenology, density and population dynamics are discussed in detail, as is the overall pattern of insular traits found in the mice.

This is a study about art exhibitions and the flow of spatial movement within them. The thesis of this work is how to create an active and guiding flow of movement within a smaller exhibition space. Using the methods Timing and Tracking and Spatial Analysis, three different art exhibitions in smaller spaces are studied to see how the flow of spatial movement is created. Former studies about spatial movement and how form and space affect visitors’ behavior by Wineman and Peonies (2010) and Ching and Binggeli (2012) have been taken into account for this study.  The results of studying three exhibitions; Paper Art, Nya Målningar and Kemiska Undersökningar, show that the use of walls and furniture positively affects an active and guiding movement even within the limitations of smaller exhibition spaces.  Three different examples have been created to show how an active and guiding spatial movement within smaller spaces may be achieved. These examples also visuality represent the spatial movement within a smaller exhibition space. The examples are created in the form of floor-plans and coloured sketches to demonstrate how exhibition designers and artists could effectively use smaller spaces for art exhibitions.

Esta tese apresenta dois métodos diferentes de estimativa de desfocagem usando uma única imagem. Ambos os métodos assumem uma função de espalhamento de ponto (Point Spread Function - PSF) Gaussiana e exploram a razão de magnitudes de gradientes de versões re-borradas da imagem original com escalas diferentes nas bordas da imagem, o que fornece uma expressão matemática fechada para borramento local. A primeira abordagem calcula perfis 1D ao longo de pontos de borda ortogonais ao contorno local, e avalia a localização da borda (máximo da derivada primeira) para selecionar adaptativamente o número de escalas no re-borramento. Considerando o consumo de tempo de explorar perfis de aresta orientados 1D, um segundo método foi proposto com base em gradientes de imagem diretamente no domínio 2D, e os parâmetros de re-borramento locais foram selecionados com base na concordância de um detector de bordas calculado em várias escalas. Dada uma estimativa inicial da escala de desfocagem nas posições de borda proporcionada por qualquer um destes dois métodos, é também proposto um passo de correção que atenua os erros introduzidos pela discretização da formulação contínua. Um novo método de filtragem local que suaviza as estimativas refinadas ao longo dos contornos de imagem também é proposto, e um filtro de domínio conjunto (jointdomain filter) rápido é explorado para propagar informações de desfocagem para toda a imagem, gerando o mapa de desfocagem completo. Os resultados experimentais em imagens sintéticas e reais mostram que os métodos propostos apresentam resultados promissores para a estimativa de borramento por desfoco, com um bom compromisso entre qualidade e tempo de execução quando comparados a técnicas estado-da-arte. Para lidar com sequências de vídeo desfocadas, a consistência temporal também foi incluída no modelo proposto. Mais precisamente, Filtros de Kalman foram aplicados para gerar estimativas temporais suaves para cada pixel quando a aparência local da sequência de vídeo não varia muito, permitindo transições durante mudanças drásticas da aparência local, que podem se relacionar com oclusões/desoclusões. Finalmente, esta tese também mostra aplicações dos métodos propostos para a estimativa de desfocagem de imagem e vídeo. Um novo método de redimensionamento (retargeting) de imagens é proposto para fotos tiradas por câmera com baixa profundidade de campo. O método inclui informação de desfocamento local no contexto do método seam carving, visando preservar objetos em foco com melhor qualidade visual. Assumindo que os pixels em foco estejam relacionados às regiões de interesse de uma imagem com desfocamento, o método de redimensionamento proposto começa com um método de corte (cropping), o qual remove as partes sem importância (borradas) da imagem, e então o método seam carving é aplicado com uma nova função de energia que prioriza as regiões em foco. Os resultados experimentais mostram que o método proposto funciona melhor na preservação de objetos em foco do que outras técnicas de redimensionamento de imagens. A tese também explora o método de estimação de desfocagem proposto no contexto de des-borramento de imagens e sequências de vídeo, e os resultados foram comparados com vários outros métodos de estimação de desfocagem. Os resultados obtidos mostram que as métricas tipicamente usadas para avaliar métodos de estimação de desfocagem (por exemplo, erro absoluto médio) podem não estar correlacionadas com a qualidade das métricas de imagem desfocada, como a Relação Sinal-Ruído de Pico. / This dissertation presents two different defocus blur estimation methods for still images. Both methods assume a Gaussian Point Spread Function (PSF) and explore the ratio of gradient magnitudes of reblurred images computed at edge location with different scales, which provides a closed form mathematical formulation for the local blur assuming continuous-time signals. The first approach computes 1D profiles along edge points orthogonal to the local contour, and evaluate the location of the edge (maximum of the derivative) to adaptively select the number of reblurring scales. Considering the time consumption of exploring 1D oriented edge profiles, a second method was proposed based on 2D multiscale image gradients, and local reblurring parameters were selected based on the agreement of an edge detector computed at several scales. Given an initial estimate of the blur scale at edge locations provided by either of these two methods, a correction step that accounts for the discretization of the continuous formulation is also proposed. A novel local filtering method that smooths the refined estimates along the image contours is also proposed, and a fast joint domain filter is explored to propagate blur information to the whole image to generate the full blur map. Experimental results on synthetic and real images show that the proposed methods have promising results for defocus blur estimation, with a good trade off between running time and accuracy when compared to state-of-the art defocus blur estimation methods. To deal with blurry video sequences, temporal consistency was also included in the proposed model. More precisely, Kalman Filters were applied to generate smooth temporal estimates for each pixel when the local appearance of the video sequence does not vary much, and allowing sharp transitions during drastic local appearance changes, which might relate to occlusions/disocclusions. Finally, this dissertation also shows applications of the proposed methods for image and video blur estimation. A new image retargeting method is proposed for photos taken by a shallow Depth of Field (DoF) camera. The method includes defocus blur information with the seam carving framework aiming to preserve in-focus objects with better visual quality. Assuming the in-focus pixels related to regions of interest of a blurry image, the proposed retargeting method starts with a cropping method, which removes the unimportant parts (blurry) of the image, then the seam carving method is applied with a novel energy function that prioritizes in-focus regions. Experimental results show that the proposed blur aware retargeting method works better at preserving in-focus objects than other well known competitive retargeting methods. The dissertation also explores the proposed blur estimation method in the context of image and video deblurring, and results were compared with several other blur estimation methods. The obtained results show that metrics typically used to evaluate blur estimation methods (e.g. Mean Absolute Error) might not be correlated with the quality of deblurred image metrics, such as Peak Signal to Noise Ratio.

Longitudinal data are common in biological research. However, real data sets vary considerably in terms of their structure and complexity and present many challenges for statistical modelling. This thesis proposes a series of methods using random coefficients for modelling two broad types of longitudinal response: normally distributed measurements and binary recapture data. Biased inference can occur in linear mixed-effects modelling if subjects are drawn from a number of unknown sub-populations, or if the residual covariance is poorly specified. To address some of the shortcomings of previous approaches in terms of model selection and flexibility, this thesis presents methods for: (i) determining the presence of latent grouping structures using a two-step approach, involving regression splines for modelling functional random effects and mixture modelling of the fitted random effects; and (ii) flexible of modelling of the residual covariance matrix using regression splines to specify smooth and potentially non-monotonic variance and correlation functions. Spatially explicit capture-recapture methods for estimating the density of animal populations have shown a rapid increase in popularity over recent years. However, further refinements to existing theory and fitting software are required to apply these methods in many situations. This thesis presents: (i) an analysis of recapture data from an acoustic survey of gibbons using supplementary data in the form of estimated angles to detections, (ii) the development of a multi-occasion likelihood including a model for stochastic availability using a partially observed random effect (interpreted in terms of calling behaviour in the case of gibbons), and (iii) an analysis of recapture data from a population of radio-tagged skates using a conditional likelihood that allows the density of animal activity centres to be modelled as functions of time, space and animal-level covariates.

Compreender os mecanismos que causam variações espaço-temporais na diversidade biológica é uma das principais atribuições da ecologia. A teoria clássica de nicho prediz que o gradiente ambiental e sua complexidade mediam processos cruciais na estruturação das assembléias locais, permitindo a coexistência das espécies. A associação entre fatores espaciais e ambientais e diversidade inventário e diversidade diferenciação de mamíferos Neotropicais, tem sido usualmente investigada por estudos de resolução grosseira. Assim, o efeito do gradiente ambiental em resolução fina, ainda é praticamente desconhecido. Neste trabalho, eu investiguei os efeitos de processos ambientais, espaciais e ambientais espacialmente estruturados sobre a diversidade α e β de mamíferos, em uma área de aproximadamente de 1.100,42 km2 no norte do Pantanal, a maior área úmida contínua do planeta. Utilizei um método de análise espacial chamado Análise de Coordenadas Principais de Matrizes Vizinhas e modelos lineares para descrever as contribuições desses processos. Os resultados demostram que fatores ambientais e espaciais, em conjunto, são mais importantes do que os efeitos independentes de cada fator, tanto para a diversidade α quanto para a β. O modelo completo explicou 18% da variação na diversidade α e 41% da variação na diversidade β. A diversidade β estimada foi negativamente relacionada com a diversidade α estimada. A diversidade β observada foi positivamente relacionada com a variação da estrutura de habitas entre sítios, embora o modelo tenha explicado uma porcentagem pequena da variação total. Os dados sugerem que embora os grandes mamíferos neotropicais sejam considerados espécies generalistas, eles não ocorrem de forma homogênea ao longo do gradiente, criado pelo mosaico da paisagem pantaneira, e que o papel da variação de nicho espacial é fundamental para manter a riqueza específica em nível regional. / Comprehending the mechanism that causes spatial-temporal variation in biological diversity is at the core of ecological inquiry. Classical niche theory states that environmental gradient and complexity mediate crucial processes that structure local assemblages, allowing species to co-exist. The association between spatial and environmental factors and mammalian inventory or differentiation diversity in the Neotropics, has been usually investigated by coarse grain studies, thus the effect of fine grain effects on mammalian diversity still largely unappreciated. In this paper, I investigated the effects of environmental, spatial, and spatially structured environmental processes on mammalian α- and β-diversity in an area of approximately 1,100.42 km2 in the northern Pantanal, the largest continuous wetland on Earth. I used a spatial analysis method called Principal Coordinates of Neighbor Matrices analysis and linear models to depict the contributions of these processes. The results show that environmental and spatial factors, jointly, are more important than the independent effects of each factor for both, α- and β-diversity. The full model accounted for 18% of the variation in α- diversity and 41% of the variation in β-diversity. Estimated β-diversity decreased with estimated α-diversity. Observed β-diversity increased with site distinctness, although the model had a poor fit and explained a small amount of the total variance. My data suggests that although most large Neotropical mammals are broadly distributed and considered plastic species, they do not occur homogeneously across the landscape, and that the role of spatial niche is critical to maintain species richness at the landscape level.

The study of self-assembling robots represents a promising strand within the emerging field of modular robots research. Self-assembling robots have the potential to autonomously adapt their bodies to new tasks and changing environments long after their initial deployment by forming new or reorganizing existing physical connections to peer robots. In previous research, many approaches have been presented to enable self-assembling robots to form composite morphologies. Recent technological advances have also increased the number of robots able to form such morphologies by at least two orders of magnitude. However, to date, composite robot morphologies have not been able to solve real-world tasks nor have they been able to adapt to changing conditions entirely without human assistance or prior knowledge.In this thesis, we identify three reasons why self-assembling robots may not have been able to fully unleash their potential and propose appropriate solutions. First, composite morphologies are not able to show sensorimotor coordination similar to those seen in their monolithic counterparts. We propose "mergeable nervous systems" -- a novel methodology that unifies independent robotic units into a single holistic entity at the control level. Our experiments show that mergeable nervous systems can enable self-assembling robots to demonstrate feats that go beyond those seen in any engineered or biological system. Second, no proposal has been tabled to enable a robot in a decentralized multirobot system select its communication partners based on their location. We propose a new form of highly scalable mechanism to enable "spatially targeted communication" in such systems. Third, the question of when and how to trigger a self-assembly process has been ignored by researchers to a large extent. We propose "supervised morphogenesis" -- a control methodology that is based on spatially targeted communication and enables cooperation between aerial and ground-based self-assembling robots. We show that allocating self-assembly related decision-making to a robot with an aerial perspective of the environment can allow robots on the ground to operate in entirely unknown environments and to solve tasks that arise during mission time. For each of the three propositions put forward in this thesis, we present results of extensive experiments carried out on real robotic hardware. Our results confirm that we were able to substantially advance the state of the art in self-assembling robots by unleashing their potential for morphological adaptation through enhanced sensorimotor coordination and by improving their overall autonomy through cooperation with aerial robots. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Abstract Light scattering diagnostics of turbid media containing both structural and dynamic inhomogeneities is currently of significant importance. One of the important directions in modern light scattering diagnostics is the development of methods for probing biological media with visible- and near-infrared radiation allowing for visualization of the biotissue structure. Optical methods for studying the biotissue structure and characterization of its optical properties are very promising and have been rapidly developing during the past decade. The present work is aimed at improving and discovering new potentials of currently existing methods of laser diagnostics of biological tissues containing both structural and dynamic inhomogeneities. In particular, the feasibilities of spatially resolved reflectometry and time-of-flight techniques for the problem of noninvasive determination of glucose level in human blood and tissues were examined both numerically and experimentally. The relative sensitivities of these methods to changes in glucose level were estimated. Time-of-flight technique was found to be more sensitive. The possibilities of Doppler optical coherence tomography for imaging of dynamic inhomogeneities with high resolution were considered. This technique was applied for the first time for the imaging of complex autowave cellular motility and cytoplasm shuttle flow in the slime mold Physarum polycephalum. The effect of multiple scattering on the accuracy of the measured flow velocity profiles for the case of single flow and for the case of the flow embedded into the static medium with strong scattering was studied. It was shown that this effect causes significant distortion to the measured flow velocity profiles and it is necessary to take this into account while making quantitative measurements of flow velocities.