This article addresses the obstacle avoidance problem for setpoint stabilization tasks in complex dynamic 2-D environments that go beyond conventional scenes with isolated convex obstacles. A combined motion planner and controller is proposed that integrates the favorable convergence characteristics of closed-form motion planning techniques with the intuitive representation of system constraints t

Normalizing flows (NFs) have been shown to be advantageous in modeling complex distributions and improving sampling efficiency for unbiased sampling. In this work, we propose a new class of continuous NFs, ascent continuous normalizing flows (ACNFs), that makes a base distribution converge faster to a target distribution. As solving such a flow is non-trivial and barely possible, we propose a prac

We investigate how the anchoring effect—a well-established cognitive bias—influences the full distribution of subjective beliefs. While prior research extensively examines the impact of anchoring and other biases on point estimates, their effect on higher moments of the distribution remains unexplored. Through a pre-registered online experiment (N=732), we find that anchoring impacts the mean, var

Whether monetary incentives to change behavior work and how they should be structured are fundamental economic questions. We overcome typical data limitations in a large-scale field experiment on vaccination (N = 5,324) with a unique combination of administrative and survey data. We find that guaranteed incentives of $20 increase uptake by 13 percentage points in the short run and 9 in the long ru

Distributed optimal control is known to be challenging and can become intractable even for linear-quadratic regulator problems. In this work, we study a special class of such problems where distributed state feedback controllers can give near-optimal performance. More specifically, we consider networked linear-quadratic controllers with decoupled costs and spatially exponentially decaying dynamics

In this work, we consider the problem of coordinating a collection of nth-order integrator systems. The coordination is achieved through the novel serial consensus design; this control design achieves a stable closed-loop system while adhering to the constraint of only using local and relative measurements. Earlier work has shown that second-order serial consensus can stabilize a collection of dou

This paper presents a novel control design for vehicular formations as an alternative to alignment through conventional consensus protocols for second-order systems. The design is motivated by the closed-loop system, which we construct as first-order systems connected in series, and is therefore called serial consensus. The serial consensus design will guarantee the stability of the closed-loop sy

This study investigates speech production under various room acoustic conditions in virtual environments, by comparing vocal behavior and the subjective experience of speaking in four real rooms and their audio-visual virtual replicas. Sex differences were explored. Males and females (N = 13) adjusted their voice levels similarly to room acoustic changes in the real rooms, but only males did so in

Background: Communication is a key tool in the nursing profession. It is known that listeners are sensitive to the speaker's voice and interpret the speaker's intentions primarily from the non-verbal signal conveyed. Aim: To map and discuss the current state of knowledge and research evidence on professional voice use in health and nursing care. Design and Method: A scoping review adherent to the

Information encountered in different events, such as people and objects, can be interlinked in memory. Such memory integration supports novel inferences about the world. This study investigates the role of episodic context on memory integration in two experiments using an associative inference task. Participants encoded events with overlapping (AB and BC) and non-overlapping associations (XY) pres

Purpose: Children’s results on school-related achievements tests, such as aspects of math, reading and writing, have been shown to decline following a lengthy summer vacation. Few studies have investigated whether this also applies to vocabulary skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate how lexical organization and retrieval, assessed by a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task, develops dur

The prepositional ‘in’ and possessive pronouns, e.g., ‘my’ and ‘mine,’ in the context of attributions of mental states, such as “in my mind” or “in your mind,” threaten to confuse attempts to account for knowledge of other minds. This paper distinguishes proper from improper uses of such expressions. I will argue that proper use of the prepositional ‘in’ and possessive pronouns in the context of m

The growing need for human-machine interfaces (HMIs) underscores the importance of sensory feedback, with electrical stimulation offering efficient interaction in various applications. While its sensory effects are extensively studied, investigations into the reaction time (RT) following transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TES) remain limited. This study aimed to evaluate how stimulation parame

Human-machine interfaces using electromyography (EMG) offer promising applications in control of prosthetic limbs, rehabilitation assessment, and assistive technologies. These applications rely on advanced algorithms that decode the activation patterns of muscles contractions. This paper presents a new approach to assess and decode muscle activity by localizing the origin of individual temporal pe

Assessment of psychological constructs, such as the Big Five personality traits, has predominantly relied on standardized rating scales. While these scales have advantages, we propose that descriptive word-based responses analyzed with natural language processing (NLP) offer a promising alternative for assessing personality traits. We asked participants (N = 663) to describe either their own perso

Advanced sensory feedback from upper limb prostheses would provide multiple benefits to people with upper limb amputations, but achieving functional and natural-feeling sensation is technologically challenging. Advances are being made with invasive and non-invasive stimulation approaches, but considerable challenges need to be addressed with technological innovation.

Background: In recent years, a discourse on how to systematically consider and report threats to validity started to gain momentum within the empirical software engineering community. Aims: With this study, we aim to systematically underpin the current state of threats to validity practices in software engineering research. Method: We conduct a literature review comprising 91 papers awarded with t