Many biological systems can switch between two distinct states. Once switched, the system remains stable for a period of time and may switch back to its original state. A gene network with bistability is usually required for the switching and stochastic effect in the gene expression may induce such switching. A typical bistable system allows one-directional switching, in which the switch from t...

The global illumination or transport problems can also be considered as a sequence of integrals, while its MonteCarlo solutions as different sampling techniques. Multiple importance sampling takes advantage of different sampling strategies and combines the results obtained with them. In this paper we propose the combination of very different global illumination algorithms in a way that their st...

Dancing is an entertaining form of taskless interaction. When interacting with a dancing Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA), the lack of a clear task presents the challenge of eliciting an interaction between user and ECA in a different way. In this paper we describe our Virtual Dancer, which is an ECA that invites a user to dance. In our system the user is monitored using global movement char...

Due to a rapid decrease in fossil fuel resources and ever-growing carbon emissions, clean energy is urgently needed as vital solution. In the past two decades, harvesting from ambient environment has attracted much attention. Flow induced vibration performance of cylinder with fins attached were investigated. Four configurations studied: plain cylinder, windward fins, leeward four fins. These c...

This paper describes a new algorithm called Bi-Directional Monte Carlo Tree Search. The essential idea of Bi-directional Search is to run an MCTS forwards from the start state, and simultaneously backwards goal stop when two searches meet. tested on 8-Puzzle Pancakes Problem, single-agent search problems, which allow control over optimal solution length d average branching factor b respectively...

Widespread adoption of soft robotic technologies is held back by the limitations existing actuators. One cause limited performance actuators their uni-polar stroke, which means only part work-cycle powered. In this work, we introduce RoboHeart, a bi-directional compliant smart actuator. RoboHeart consists two spring-steel strips covered with PVC insulation, pre-bent into heart shape and driven ...