Resilience Autonomy Research Articles

Team CERBERUS Wins the DARPA Subterranean Challenge: Technical Overview and Lessons Learned

This article presents the CERBERUS robotic system-of-systems, which won the DARPA Subterranean Challenge Final Event in 2021. The Subterranean Challenge was organized by DARPA with the vision to facilitate the novel technologies necessary to reliably explore diverse underground environments despite the grueling challenges they present for robotic autonomy. Due to their geometric complexity, degraded perceptual conditions combined with lack of GNSS support, austere navigation conditions, and denied communications, subterranean settings render autonomous operations particularly demanding. In response to this challenge, we developed the CERBERUS system which exploits the synergy of legged and flying robots, coupled with robust control especially for overcoming perilous terrain, multi-modal and multi-robot perception for localization and mapping in conditions of sensor degradation, and resilient autonomy through unified exploration path planning and local motion planning that reflects robot-specific limitations. Based on its ability to explore diverse underground environments and its high-level command and control by a single human supervisor, CERBERUS demonstrated efficient exploration, reliable detection of objects of interest, and accurate mapping. In this article, we report results from both the preliminary runs and the final Prize Round of the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, and discuss highlights and challenges faced, alongside lessons learned for the benefit of the community.

Towards Safe and Resilient Autonomy in Multi-Robot Systems

In the near future, autonomous systems such as multi-robot systems are envisioned to increasingly co-exist with hu- mans in our daily lives, from household service to large- scale warehouse logistics, agriculture environment sampling, and smart city. In these applications, robots and humans as networked heterogeneous components will frequently inter- act with each other in a variety of scenarios under uncer- tain, rapidly-changing, and possibly hostile environment. On one hand, harmonious interactions among robots, as well as between robots and humans, would require safe integration (e.g. collision-free close-proximity interactions) of heteroge- neous robots, human, and human-robot autonomy. On the other hand, reliable interactions among autonomous multi- robot systems often call for resilient system integrity (e.g. communication capability with potential robot failures) to re- tain its capability of accomplishing complex tasks through coordinated behaviors. In the proposed talk, I will discuss our recent works towards safe autonomy and resilient autonomy that aim to facilitate correct-by-design robotic behaviors in a variety of applications.

CERBERUS in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge.

This article presents the core technologies and deployment strategies of Team CERBERUS that enabled our winning run in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge finals. CERBERUS is a robotic system-of-systems involving walking and flying robots presenting resilient autonomy, as well as mapping and navigation capabilities to explore complex underground environments.

Post-fordist death: A comparative ethnographic analysis of milling and mining in Northern England

ABSTRACTBuilding on work on post-Fordist affect, we argue that the group-based and person-centered forms of production in mining and milling, respectively, produce contingent conceptualizations of culture, identity, and personhood and, in turn, of dying and death. The “communal solidarism” characteristic of post-mining milieu engenders senses of dying and death entailing a communal merging of erstwhile individual selfhoods. In post-milling milieu dying and death are conceptualized as individuated, but subject to social evaluation. The evaluative criterion in this regard is ability to “perform” dying and death in ways that reflect the valorized essence of local culture, identity, and personhood, “resilient autonomy.”

Resiliencia y rendimiento académico en estudiantes del 5to y 6to grado de primaria

El objetivo del estudio fue determinar la relación entre los factores personales de resiliencia y el rendimiento académico. La muestra estuvo conformada por 202 estudiantes de 5.to y 6.to grado de educación primaria de la Ciudad Satélite del Callao, de ambos sexos, cuyas edades fluctúan entre los 9 y 14 años; a quienes se aplicó el Inventario de Factores Personales de Resiliencia propuesto por Salgado (2005) y se evaluó el rendimiento académico a través de las calificaciones en las asignaturas más significativas y las notas promedio del semestre. Los resultados mostraron que existe relación significativa entre los factores personales de resiliencia y el rendimiento académico. Se encuentra que los factores personales Autoestima y Empatía presentan correlación significativa con todas las áreas de rendimiento académico. Autonomía con Comunicación, Lógico Matemático y Personal Social. Humor con Comunicación, Ciencia-Ambiente y Personal Social y Creatividad con Personal Social. Resiliencia presenta correlación significativa con todas las áreas de rendimiento académico. En Empatía, Creatividad y Resiliencia se encontraron diferencias significativas a favor de las mujeres. En Autoestima, Autonomía Creatividad y Resiliencia se encontraron diferencias significativas a favor de los alumnos de 5.to Grado. Las mujeres tienen un rendimiento académico significativamente más alto que los varones en Comunicación, Ciencia y Ambiente y Personal Social.

Towards a Theory of Oppression

Despite the concern with oppressive systems and practices there have been few attempts to analyse the general concept of oppression. Recently, Iris Marion Young has argued that it is not possible to analyse oppression as a unitary moral category. Rather, the term ‘oppression’ refers to several distinct structures, namely, exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. This paper rejects Young's claim and advances a general theory of oppression. Drawing insight from American chattel slavery and the situation of the German Jews during the 1930's, I argue that to be oppressed is to be unjustly denied the opportunity for what I call ‘resilient autonomy’. I argue that all instances of oppression can usefully be analysed in these terms. I test my analysis against each of Young's five structures of oppression, concluding that in each case they are captured by my analysis.