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Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Twelve Stances of Yi-Jin-Jing (The Tendon-Altering Sutra) Part 3

The Twelve Stances of Yi-Jin-Jing (The Tendon-Altering Sutra) Part 2


第五式倒拽九牛尾

接上式,左手由上经左侧至左胯外侧,掌心向上,手指内屈,右手由背后伸至肩高时屈肘,变成虚握拳,上体与左腿成一条斜线,与地面约成45度。 右脚向右跨一步,同时向右转体90度成右弓步势,右膝关节弯曲,膝盖不超过脚尖,外形动作似用力拉车状。 呼吸自然,意念两手心。 然后身体左转,左脚向前上一步,左手伸向前,右手伸向后,动作相同,方向相反(右图)。

5th Stance: Pulling Nine Bulls by Their Tails

Continue from the last stance. Move left hand downward past the left side of your body until it reaches the outside of the left hip. Turn palm facing upward and bent the fingers inward slightly. Raise the right hand up from behind your back until the arm is at shoulder height, then bend the elbow and transform palm into a hallow fist. The upper body and the left leg should now be inclined to form a 45 degree angle with the ground. Move right foot one step to the right and at the same time turn your body right 90 degrees and from a front stance toward the right. Bend the right knee but the knee should not exceed the toes of the right foot. The posture resembles pulling hard on a wagon. Maintain natural breathing and focus your mind on the two palms. Then turn your body left and take a step forward with your left foot. Reach the left hand forward and extend the right hand back. The movements are the same just to the opposite direction (see right figure).
 

第六式出爪亮翅

接上式,右腿用力蹬地,向前上一步,落于左脚内侧,成立正姿势。 两臂均回收于腰间,拳心朝上。 然后两拳变掌,同时向前推掌,掌心向前,指尖与肩斋平。 向前推掌要重如推山。 推掌时意想推窗望月,返回时五指微张,慢慢收向两胁,意想海水返潮。 反覆七次。

6th Stance: White Crane Spreading Wings and Extending Claws

Continue from the last stance. Firmly push the ground with the right leg and then take a step forward so the right foot lands next to the inside of your left foot and you are standing straight (the Attention position in military drills). Retract both arms back next to your waist still holding fists with the palm side facing upward. Then open the fists and shift hands into the palm form. At the same time push your palms forward. The centers of your palms should be facing forward, and the finger tips should be at shoulder height. Push palms forward as though you were pushing a giant mountain. Imagine that you are pushing windows open so you can appreciate the beauty of the moon when pushing palms forward. When retracting the arms, slightly separate the fingers and slowly retract arms back to the sides of your waist. Imagine the tidal waves retracting to the ocean. Repeat seven times.
Now let's see how Mr. Bruce Wen does it and explains it. Remember, it might be slightly different from the version I translated.




The Twelve Stances of Yi-Jin-Jing (The Tendon-Altering Sutra) Part 4


Video of the Day:

I also do this intense abs workout twice a day! It's a good one!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

AI Robot Related Conferences and Journals For My Research (Part 6)

AI Robot Related Conferences and Journals For My Research Part 5 

I have discussed several top conferences related to my research. Now moving on to top symposiums. These symposiums are like workshops where new ideas are presented and discussed to get a reality check from the fellow researchers and also to brainstorm. However, they normally last for several days and give the participants plenty of time to collaborate and discuss things.

Top Symposiums
==================================================================

RO-MAN -- IEEE International Symposium on Robots and Human Interactive Communications

RO-MAN workshop/symposium addresses fundamental issues of co-existence of human and intelligent machines such as robots and recent advancements of technological as well as psychological researches on every aspect of interactive communication and collaboration between robots and humans. Originally founded by several Japaneses researchers in 1992, the symposium has grown to attract much attention from researchers around the world. For example, the last RO-MAN included papers from 17 different countries. Solicited subjects cover a wide range including (but not limited to) ones such as socially interactive robots, entertainment robots, human assisting robots, human training robots, education robots, and robotic arts.

The RO-MAN symposium/workshop is a two-track event held annually, therefore, relatively small, holding about 70 to 280 participants. Papers accepted are mostly six pages long. I have never attended the RO-MAN symposium, and I couldn't find any information on the acceptance rate of the workshop. I would guess the acceptance rate is much lower compared to the top conferences I had blogged about before

Since the last RO-MAN symposium just happened last month, the location for the next RO-MAN symposium Ro-Man 2012 (the 21th) is still unknown at this point.
Conference Dates: July 31-August 3, 2012 (roughly)
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2012 (roughly)



AAAI Spring/Fall Symposium Series

The AAAI Spring/Fall Symposia are great places to meet peer researchers in a more intimate setting and a relaxed atmosphere to share ideas and learn from each other's artificial intelligence research. The topics might change each year depending on symposium proposals received. Multiple symposiums of various topics will be held simultaneously and participants are expected to attend a single symposium throughout the symposium series. Besides the selected participants by the program committee (authors of accepted papers), only a limited number of people are allowed to register in each symposium on a first-come, first served basis, due to limited seats (the Symposium series are actually quite popular).

The Fall Symposium series is usually held on the east coast at Arlington, Virginia during late October or early November.

Each symposium will have a distinct research interest. For example, the AAAI 2011 Fall Symposia have the following seven topics:
  •     Advances in Cognitive Systems
  •     Building Representations of Common Ground with Intelligent Agents
  •     Complex Adaptive Systems: Energy, Information and Intelligence
  •     Multiagent Coordination under Uncertainty
  •     Open Government Knowledge: AI Opportunities and Challenges
  •     Question Generation
  •     Robot-Human Teamwork in Dynamic Adverse Environment
The last one about Robot-Human Teamwork would be the one I am interested in. Sometimes you can find the papers accepted at the symposium-specific web sites. But they really want you to buy the technical report at $35.
 
The next AAAI Fall Symposia AAAI 2011 Fall Symposia will be held at Arlington, Virginia, USA.
Symposia Dates: November 4-6, 2011
Submission Deadline: May 20, 2011


The next AAAI Fall Symposia you can submit a paper to is AAAI 2012 Fall Symposia
Symposia Dates: November 4-6, 2012 (Roughly)
Submission Deadline: May 20, 2012 (Roughly)



The Spring Symposium series is typically held during spring break (generally in March) on the west coast at Stanford. This one is actually my preferred one because Stanford University is not that far away from Utah, and I also lived in the neighborhood for three months.

The next AAAI Spring Symposia include the following six topics:
  •     AI, The Fundamental Social Aggregation Challenge, and the Autonomy of Hybrid Agent Groups
  •     Designing Intelligent Robots: Reintegrating AI
  •     Game Theory for Security, Sustainability and Health
  •     Intelligent Web Services Meet Social Computing
  •     Self-Tracking and Collective Intelligence for Personal Wellness
  •     Wisdom of the Crowd
 I have never attended either the Spring or Fall Symposia, but I was the co-author of a paper that got accepted at the AAAI Spring Symposium 2009 under the topic Agents that Learn from Human Teachers. It would be great if I could publish here again in the near future. It's always fun to visit the Silicon Valley!

The next AAAI Spring Symposium AAAI 2012 Spring Symposia will be held at Stanford University, Palo Alto,California, USA.
Symposium Dates: March 26-28, 2012
Submission Deadline: October 7, 2011



A good friend of mine, Janet, passed away this morning because of Acute Leukemia. Wish her peace in heaven! Lessons learned: Complete all those projects you want to do before a doctor tells you that you only have 5 days to live. Let's see, I need to finish my PhD, finish translating SPW, finish building a robot, and make up all the blog posts. Man! I better get working!




Friday, April 17, 2009

Robot of the Day: Panasonic's Hair-Washing Robot

Washing your hair might not be a difficult or tedious task that needs to be automated, unless you are a disabled person, an elderly, or a nurse at a hospital who has to give many patients many hair washes everyday.

At the International H.C.R. Exhibition (International Home Care & Rehabilitation Exhibition) 2010 held at Tokyo last year, Panasonic demoed a prototype robot that's capable of washing a person's hair autonomously. That robot had 16 fingers. In the upcoming H.C.R. 2011. Exhibition that will be held next week at Tokyo, Japan, Panasonic will demon a newer version of the hair-washing robot, one with 24 fingers and supposedly capable of delivering a more comfortable wash.

The hair-washing robot, with the size of a washing machine, is fully automous and can perform all the tasks of your regular hairdresser from wetting to shampooing, rinsing, conditioning and drying. It can even give you a head message at the end of hair wash like how most hairdressers do it in China. The robot first scans the shape of the person's head and then uses two robotic arms to guide the 16 fingers to work on your head. Sensors built into these fingers also make sure they apply the right amount of pressure to your head so your head does not explode. The video below shows you how the robot works.


In the video the robot only worked on a dummy. I would have liked to see a real human getting served by the robot. I don't know if real human have been used to test the robot, but I am pretty sure this kind of experiments would never get approved by the IRB at the universities here in the US. (On a side note, all those military robots never seem to run into this IRB problem, somehow.)

It would be really fun to open a shop equipped with these robots. For now people would just walk in to get a hair wash and massage. In the future, customers might also get a haircut in these unmanned barber shops. That would my idea type of robots -- robots that work and make money for me, so I don't have to. LOL! Of course one challenge is to help people overcome their fear of the robot malfunctioning. In fact, the lack of regulations and rules regarding the liabilities and safety of such kind of robots (robots with close human-robot interactions) is the precise reason why Panasonic has not commercialized the robot. Rumor has it that the situation will change dramatically during the year of 2012.

To be honest, I don't mind having one of these at my house if I don't have to pay for it. I'll even wash my hair once a day! But what I really need is a robot that can wash my kids autonomously several times everyday. Somehow they are always dirty!





Now I know why some people don't hate mowing the lawn, because they either have a robot lawn mower or they have a self-propelled lawn mower (which counts as a half-robot). I got one of those self-propelled lawn mowers, and man, what a difference! Now mowing the lawn feels like walking the dog.







Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Twelve Stances of Yi-Jin-Jing (The Tendon-Altering Sutra) Part 2

The Twelve Stances of Yi-Jin-Jing (The Tendon-Altering Sutra) Part 1


第三式掌托天门

接上式,身体不动,两臂由两侧同时缓缓上举,举至正上方时与肩同宽,此时屈肘翻掌,手心向上,掌指相对,双臂成U字形状,并尽力上托,同时尽力提踵,并咬牙叩齿,舌抵上颚,咽津液下送丹田。 接看两脚跟外开,两臂缓缓下落至侧平举。 下落时由小指到拇指依次弯曲握拳,两脚跟随之下落,手足还原。 两臂由平举向上举时吸气,至托掌时略闭气或自然呼吸。 定式后约静停半分钟。

3rd Stance: Palm Lifting the Heavenly Gate

Continue from the last stance.  While keeping the body static, slowly raise arms from the side until they are at shoulder width. Now bend the elbows and turn your palms so your palms are facing upward and the tips of your hands are pointing at each other. The two arms should be in a U-shape. Push hands upward with strength and at the same time raise your heels off the ground. Grit your teeth and push the palate with your tongue. Swallow saliva down to the Dan-Tian (lower abdomen) region. Then turn your heels outward and slowly lower your arms to the side until they form a straight line with your shoulders. While lowering the arms, bend your fingers inward in order, pinky first and thumb last, and lower your heels back to the ground. Inhale while changing your arm position from flat on your sides to a lifting position. Once reaching the lifting position hold your breath shortly or breathe naturally. After the stance is completed, hold the position for half a minute.

 
第四式摘星换斗

接上式,左臂由上经左下侧划弧,落于背后,手心向下,并尽力下按。 右掌心翻向内下,臂上举,掌心向下﹔同时脖子向右扭转90度,头上仰,目视右掌。 转颈时右脚跟提起内转与左脚成丁字步。 身体重心在左脚(左图)。 定式后静停约半分钟,仿三五次深呼吸。 然后右手下落,左手上举,向左做摘星换斗(右图)。

4th Stance: Picking Off Stars and Change the Big Dipper

Continue from the last stance. Move left arm downward in a circular motion until it is behind your back with palm facing down and push palm down with strength. Turn the right palm downward and raises the right arm with palm facing down; at the same time turn your head 90 degrees to the right. Lift your head slightly to stare at your right palm. While turning your head, lift the right heel and rotate it so it makes up a T-step with your left foot. Keep your body weight on the left foot (see left figure). Hold the position for about half a minute and take 3-5 deep breaths. Then lower your right hand and raise your left hand to perform the stance on the other side (see right figure).

Again, here's a video of Mr. Bruce Wen demonstrating the two above-translated moves with English explanations. Note it is slightly different. I'll show a few other videos that match the translation better at the end of the series, but those videos won't have English dubbing or subtitles.


Watch out for the remaining stances translated in my future blog posts.



The Twelve Stances of Yi-Jin-Jing (The Tendon-Altering Sutra) Part 3

 

Video of the Day:

No, I don't do Tendon-Altering Sutra, although I am thinking about doing it. I do this intense chest workout twice a day instead.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

AI Robot Related Conferences and Journals For My Research (Part 5)

AI Robot Related Conferences and Journals For My Research Part 4

Top Conferences
==================================================================

BRiMS -- Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation

BRIMS is a conference for modeling and simulation research scientists, engineers, and technical communities across disciplines to meet, share ideas, identify capability gaps, discuss cutting-edge research directions, highlight promising technologies, and showcase the state-of-the-art in applications. It focuses on Human Behavior Representation (HBR)-based technologies and practices and bridge the gap across the disciplines of cognitive and computational modeling, sociocultural modeling, graphical and statistical modeling, network science, computer science, artificial intelligence, and engineering.

BRiMS is mainly funded by military research agencies such as Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and Office of Naval Research (ONR). Every year, there's always a heavy presence of researchers from these military research labs. Therefore, if you plan to work for a military research lab, this is a great venue to network and meet potential employers.

BRiMS is a single-track conference, hence, a relatively small conference. It does have workshops and tutorials the day before the conference. Interestingly, every other year, the conference is always held at Sundance, Utah, which is only 20 minutes from where I live (which saves my advisor a bunch of money such as the airfare and hotel). Then the other year a location in eastern US will be selected as the conference hosting venue. I have been fortunate to publish at this conference in the past.

The next BRiMS conference BRiMS 2012 (the 21th) will be held at Amelia Island Plantation, Amelia Island, Florida, USA.
Conference Dates: March 12-15, 2012
Submission Deadline: December 10, 2011 (roughly)



DIS -- The ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems

DIS is a multi-track conference held biennially. It is the premier, international arena where designers, artists, psychologists, user experience researchers, systems engineers and many more come together to debate and shape the future of interactive systems design and practice. Particularly, it addresses design as an integrated activity spanning technical, social, cognitive, organisational, and cultural factors. As described by the Interaction-Design.org, "DIS conferences are usually attended by people like; user experience designers seeking to go beyond usability; interaction designers developing interactive objects and installations; usability people who want to improve experience for ‘users’; web designers who want to create better Web sites; information architects; user interface designers working across the board, including desktop systems, mobile devices, and interactive products; cognitive and social scientists; human factors folks; games designers involved with characters, narrative and game play; visual designers concerned with information design and the aesthetics of their systems; ethnographers and customer service and many more."

DIS is a prestigious conference which makes competition between submissions high. For example, the acceptance rate for DIS 2008 was 34%. Because interactive design can be used in many aspects, DIS is naturally an interdisciplinary conference, encompassing all issues related to the design and deployment of interactive systems.

The theme of the upcoming DIS 2012 focuses on what happens when interactive systems are used "in the wild". This seems to be a perfect fit for research topics such as using a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) in wilderness search and rescue.

The next DIS conference DIS 2012 will be held at Newcastle, UK.
Conference Dates: June 11-15, 2012
Submission Deadline: January 20, 2012


AI Robot Related Conferences and Journals For My Research Part 6





Why do I always forget to eat lunch? This is not the right way to lose weight!