Studying Abductive Reasoning by Playing Mastermind [1]

17. February 2021

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Mastermind is a simple, but very clever code-breaking board game from the 70s. It is a perfect example of abductive reasoning, also called inference to the best explanation. Abduction is a method of (scientific) reasoning in which one chooses the hypothesis that best explains the available evidence. Abduction is the third type of logic inference, in addition to deductive and inductive reasoning. For example, medical doctors perform abduction when diagnosing a disease (hypothesis) given the observable symptoms (evidence). Abductive reasoning can produce false hypotheses, for example, because there might be several diseases producing similar symptoms. Doctors then go through progressively complex tests, successively decreasing the set of possible diseases matching the evidence – in principle very similar to playing Mastermind. more to: Studying Abductive Reasoning by Playing Mastermind [2]

When Robots Know What to Reach for - Contact-Based Motion Planning [3]

28. May 2020

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We all tried to navigate in a dark room in the middle of the night. Even when we know the room, it is challenging because our visual perception is high uncertainty. Uncertain perception and motion make motion planning an even harder problem. But reaching out to the wall to guide our hand is a simple and robust way because contact not just reduces uncertainty in our location. more to: When Robots Know What to Reach for - Contact-Based Motion Planning [4]

Proportional Valves for Precise Air-Mass/Air-Flow Control of Soft Pneumatic Actuators [5]

27. May 2020

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The soft robotic hands developed in our lab are pneumatically actuated. That means, by opening inflation and deflation valves in a controlled manner, we can control the enclosed air in a particular air-chamber. The valves used are so called “binary valves”, referring to the characteristic that they only can take on two different states – open/closed. This comes with a drawback. If we want to close the fingers of the hand slowly, lets say to grasp an object, we need to open-close-open-close the valves in a bang-bang controlled manner that results in jittery movements of the finger. To enable smooth and slow movements, we would need a way to regulate the air-flow that is introduced when we open the valves. Proportional valves are a way to tackle this problem. Unlike binary control valves which produce full flow when energized, proportional control valves produce pressure or flow proportional to an electrical signal. In recent years valves of this kind that satisfy our pressure-range requirements have become commercially available. more to: Proportional Valves for Precise Air-Mass/Air-Flow Control of Soft Pneumatic Actuators [6]

Human-like grasping with robot-like reactiveness [7]

28. May 2020

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If we want robots to help with daily chores, first they need to interact with their environment physically, and second, these machines need to accept their imperfection both in their motion and perception. This is a difficult problem because modeling the environment and dynamic interactions are either a weak approximation or too complex to plan robustly or efficiently. more to: Human-like grasping with robot-like reactiveness [8]

Leveraging Data from Mass Spectrometry to Improve Cross-Links [9]

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Cross-Links are experimentally derived distance constraints that can be used to guide protein structure prediction. The current cross-linking data is obtained from multiple mass spectrometer runs and pre-filtered. In the pre-fltering step we lose a lot of information. For instance, there is ambiguity in the data that is currently handled in a greedy fashion. The idea of this project is to go one step back and look at the "raw" data from the mass spectrometry experiments. The hope is by including external information and dealing directly with the ambiguity in the data we can improve the number of cross-links and/or need fewer experiments for a similar yield. more to: Leveraging Data from Mass Spectrometry to Improve Cross-Links [10]

Leveraging Crosslinks for Template Retrieval [11]

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Cross-Link Mass Spectometry is an experimental technique that provides residue distance constraints on the native structure. The method has been previously used to guide ab initio protein structure prediction. You will develop in this thesis a method that leverages cross-links to find homologous structures to the target in the PDB. For that, you will compare the distance constraints provided by cross-links with simulated cross-links for the templates from the PDB. more to: Leveraging Crosslinks for Template Retrieval [12]