DOCSLIB.ORG

Functional Autonomy Techniques for Manipulation in Uncertain Environments

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Functional Autonomy Techniques for Manipulation in Uncertain Environments Functional Autonomy Techniques for Manipulation in Uncertain Environments Thesis by Joseph Bowkett In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California 2020 Defended March 13, 2020 ii © 2020 Joseph Bowkett ORCID: 0000-0002-3101-489X All rights reserved except where otherwise noted iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, my thanks go to Joel, who numbers among the most conscientious and affable humans I have met on this planet. His patience and good-natured guidance made the graduate school experience infinitely more tolerable than it would otherwise have been. I am eternally indebted to many of the fine folk at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who saw fit to offer me work, technical instruction, and social diversion. In particular, the denizens of the 198-B7 lab, both past and present, taught me more about robotics than I believe I could have learnt in any other forum. With any luck I’ll be able to repay that debt in-kind after starting there as an employee. Much of my work undertaken through JPL revolved around the Robotics Collabo- rative Technology Alliance, and across 7 integration meetings in a range of cities I was incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work alongside many superb engineers, roboticists, and researchers from General Dynamics, the Army Research Laboratory, the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University, the Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, and many others. Despite occasionally trying circumstances, they always managed to maintain a cheery outlook, and somehow made the drudge of implementing a million software fixes across more than a million lines of code an enjoyable experience. Of course, I never would have made it to Caltech in the first place were it not for the unwavering support of my family and friends in New Zealand. In particular, this thesis is dedicated to my parents, for their dedication to ensuring I had all the educational resources and anything else I could want for to pursue a fulfilling career and life, even if it meant flying halfway around the world to see me. The first year of classes at Caltech was easily the most challenging of my life, but the comradery and collaboration of my 2014 intake classmates of the MCE and GALCIT departments made it survivable, nigh on enjoyable. The many late nights spent in various libraries or the Keith-Spalding building finishing problem sets while eating 3am orders of thai food will be one of my most enduring memories of Caltech. Orientation week of that first year, around a poker table and otherwise, is also when I met many of the sterling individuals with whom I spent my time outside of studies. Among them, my thanks go to the Fighting Pinecones, skiing, and squash buddies, for managing to get me up and out of the lab every once in a while. The most special iv of mentions must go to the Fremont lads whom, with the ever available supply of star tangled banglers, witty banter, and debate on any topic under the Sun (or beyond it), proved the perfect cocktail for keeping this stressed grad student sane. Thanks also to the MCE & JPL administrative staff, whose guidance and patience dealing with my frequent work trips for integration meetings and conferences cer- tainly saved the logistical day numerous times, and allowed the grad school process to pass as smoothly as it could have. Last but not least, the PhD experience would not be complete without the amazing lab mates I had the pleasure of working with, from both the Burdick and Ames groups. The many diversions discussing geopolitical affairs, the minutia of programming languages, and the merits of different text editors or desk heights, served as welcome stimulation when work, at times, proved monotonous or stressful. Funding Sources Research relating to Chapter 3 of this thesis was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D004). Work on Chapters 4 and 5 was sponsored by the Army Research Laboratory and was accomplished under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-10-2-0016. Government sponsorship acknowledged. v ABSTRACT As robotic platforms are put to work in an ever more diverse array of environments, their ability to deploy visuomotor capabilities without supervision is complicated by the potential for unforeseen operating conditions. This is a particular challenge within the domain of manipulation, where significant geometric, semantic, and kinetic understanding across the space of possible manipulands is necessary to allow effective interaction. To facilitate adoption of robotic platforms in such environments, this work investigates the application of functional, or behavior level, autonomy to the task of manipulation in uncertain environments. Three functional autonomy techniques are presented to address subproblems within the domain. The task of reactive selection between a set of actions that incur a probabilistic cost to advance the same goal metric in the presence of an operator action preference is formulated as the Obedient Multi-Armed Bandit (OMAB) problem, under the purview of Reinforcement Learning. A policy for the problem is presented and evaluated against a novel performance metric, disappointment (analogous to pro- totypical MAB’s regret), in comparison to adaptations of existing MAB policies. This is posed for both stationary and non-stationary cost distributions, within the context of two example planetary exploration applications of multi-modal mobility, and surface excavation. Second, a computational model that derives semantic meaning from the outcome of manipulation tasks is developed, which leverages physics simulation and clustering to learn symbolic failure modes. A deep network extracts visual signatures for each mode that may then guide failure recovery. The model is demonstrated through application to the archetypal manipulation task of placing objects into a container, as well as stacking of cuboids, and evaluated against both synthetic verification sets and real depth images. Third, an approach is presented for visual estimation of the minimum magnitude grasping wrench necessary to extract massive objects from an unstructured pile, subject to a given end effector’s grasping limits, that is formulated for each object as a “wrench space stiction manifold”. Properties are estimated from segmented RGBD point clouds, and a geometric adjacency graph used to infer incident wrenches upon each object, allowing candidate extraction object/force-vector pairs to be selected from the pile that are likely to be within the system’s capability. vi PUBLISHED CONTENT AND CONTRIBUTIONS Joseph Bowkett, Matt Burkhardt, and Joel W. Burdick (2016). “Combined Energy Harvesting and Control of Moball: A Barycentric Spherical Robot”. 2016 In- ternational Symposium on Experimental Robotics. In: Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 1. pp. 71–83. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-50115-4_7. J.B. built the test apparatus, undertook harvesting experiments to validate prior simulations. Also designed, simulated, and experimentally tested strategies for magnet control. Not included in thesis as is outside the functional autonomy narrative. Joseph Bowkett and Rudranarayan Mukherjee (2017). “Comparison of control methods for two-link planar flexible manipulator”. 2017 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference In: 13th International Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics, and Control doi: 10.1115/DETC2017-67937. J.B. formulated reduced dynamics for the problem, designed and implemented the two control schemes, tested them in simulation, then demonstrated their use on a purpose built experimental platform. Not included in thesis as is outside the functional autonomy narrative. Joseph Bowkett, Renaud Detry, and Larry H. Matthies (2018). “Semantic Under- standing of Task Outcomes: Visually Identifying Failure Modes Autonomously Discovered in Simulation”. 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Workshop: Multimodal Robot Perception: Representing a Complex World url: https://natanaso.github.io/rcw-icra18/. J.B. developed the task space formulation, designed and scripted task simulations with depth map generation and processing, then constructed, trained and eval- uated the visual classification model. Constitutes the early portions of Chapter 4. Luca Massari, Calogero M. Oddo, Edoardo Sinibaldi, Renaud Detry, Joseph Bowkett, and Kalind C. Carpenter (2019). “Tactile sensing and control of robotic manipu- lator integrating fiber bragg grating strain-sensor”. In: Frontiers in Neurorobotics vol 13. doi: 10.3389/fnbot.2019.00008. J.B. aided in the analysis of test data as it pertained to grasping. Paper provides a motivating argument for the inclusion of proprioceptive inference in manipuland comprehension, referenced in Chapter 5. William Reid, Gareth Meirion-Griffith, Sisir Karumanchi, Blair Emanuel, Brendan Chamberlain-Simon, Joseph Bowkett, and Michael Garrett (2019). “Actively Articulated Wheel-on-Limb Mobility for Traversing Europa Analogue Terrain”. In: 12th Conference on Field and Service Robotics vol 6. vii J.B. aided in maintenance and upgrade of experimental platform, as well as some lab experiments. Multiple mobility mode demonstrated in paper are a motivating example for algorithm described in Chapter 3. Joseph Bowkett, Joel W. Burdick, and Renaud Detry (2019). “Visual Extraction Ef- fort Estimation
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Charles Darwin: a Companion
    CHARLES DARWIN: A COMPANION Charles Darwin aged 59. Reproduction of a photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, original 13 x 10 inches, taken at Dumbola Lodge, Freshwater, Isle of Wight in July 1869. The original print is signed and authenticated by Mrs Cameron and also signed by Darwin. It bears Colnaghi's blind embossed registration. [page 3] CHARLES DARWIN A Companion by R. B. FREEMAN Department of Zoology University College London DAWSON [page 4] First published in 1978 © R. B. Freeman 1978 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the publisher: Wm Dawson & Sons Ltd, Cannon House Folkestone, Kent, England Archon Books, The Shoe String Press, Inc 995 Sherman Avenue, Hamden, Connecticut 06514 USA British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Freeman, Richard Broke. Charles Darwin. 1. Darwin, Charles – Dictionaries, indexes, etc. 575′. 0092′4 QH31. D2 ISBN 0–7129–0901–X Archon ISBN 0–208–01739–9 LC 78–40928 Filmset in 11/12 pt Bembo Printed and bound in Great Britain by W & J Mackay Limited, Chatham [page 5] CONTENTS List of Illustrations 6 Introduction 7 Acknowledgements 10 Abbreviations 11 Text 17–309 [page 6] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Charles Darwin aged 59 Frontispiece From a photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron Skeleton Pedigree of Charles Robert Darwin 66 Pedigree to show Charles Robert Darwin's Relationship to his Wife Emma 67 Wedgwood Pedigree of Robert Darwin's Children and Grandchildren 68 Arms and Crest of Robert Waring Darwin 69 Research Notes on Insectivorous Plants 1860 90 Charles Darwin's Full Signature 91 [page 7] INTRODUCTION THIS Companion is about Charles Darwin the man: it is not about evolution by natural selection, nor is it about any other of his theoretical or experimental work.
    [Show full text]
  • Meat: a Novel
    University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Faculty Publications 2019 Meat: A Novel Sergey Belyaev Boris Pilnyak Ronald D. LeBlanc University of New Hampshire, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/faculty_pubs Recommended Citation Belyaev, Sergey; Pilnyak, Boris; and LeBlanc, Ronald D., "Meat: A Novel" (2019). Faculty Publications. 650. https://scholars.unh.edu/faculty_pubs/650 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sergey Belyaev and Boris Pilnyak Meat: A Novel Translated by Ronald D. LeBlanc Table of Contents Acknowledgments . III Note on Translation & Transliteration . IV Meat: A Novel: Text and Context . V Meat: A Novel: Part I . 1 Meat: A Novel: Part II . 56 Meat: A Novel: Part III . 98 Memorandum from the Authors . 157 II Acknowledgments I wish to thank the several friends and colleagues who provided me with assistance, advice, and support during the course of my work on this translation project, especially those who helped me to identify some of the exotic culinary items that are mentioned in the opening section of Part I. They include Lynn Visson, Darra Goldstein, Joyce Toomre, and Viktor Konstantinovich Lanchikov. Valuable translation help with tricky grammatical constructions and idiomatic expressions was provided by Dwight and Liya Roesch, both while they were in Moscow serving as interpreters for the State Department and since their return stateside.
    [Show full text]
  • Martian Crater Morphology
    ANALYSIS OF THE DEPTH-DIAMETER RELATIONSHIP OF MARTIAN CRATERS A Capstone Experience Thesis Presented by Jared Howenstine Completion Date: May 2006 Approved By: Professor M. Darby Dyar, Astronomy Professor Christopher Condit, Geology Professor Judith Young, Astronomy Abstract Title: Analysis of the Depth-Diameter Relationship of Martian Craters Author: Jared Howenstine, Astronomy Approved By: Judith Young, Astronomy Approved By: M. Darby Dyar, Astronomy Approved By: Christopher Condit, Geology CE Type: Departmental Honors Project Using a gridded version of maritan topography with the computer program Gridview, this project studied the depth-diameter relationship of martian impact craters. The work encompasses 361 profiles of impacts with diameters larger than 15 kilometers and is a continuation of work that was started at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas under the guidance of Dr. Walter S. Keifer. Using the most ‘pristine,’ or deepest craters in the data a depth-diameter relationship was determined: d = 0.610D 0.327 , where d is the depth of the crater and D is the diameter of the crater, both in kilometers. This relationship can then be used to estimate the theoretical depth of any impact radius, and therefore can be used to estimate the pristine shape of the crater. With a depth-diameter ratio for a particular crater, the measured depth can then be compared to this theoretical value and an estimate of the amount of material within the crater, or fill, can then be calculated. The data includes 140 named impact craters, 3 basins, and 218 other impacts. The named data encompasses all named impact structures of greater than 100 kilometers in diameter.
    [Show full text]
  • Russian Museums Visit More Than 80 Million Visitors, 1/3 of Who Are Visitors Under 18
    Moscow 4 There are more than 3000 museums (and about 72 000 museum workers) in Russian Moscow region 92 Federation, not including school and company museums. Every year Russian museums visit more than 80 million visitors, 1/3 of who are visitors under 18 There are about 650 individual and institutional members in ICOM Russia. During two last St. Petersburg 117 years ICOM Russia membership was rapidly increasing more than 20% (or about 100 new members) a year Northwestern region 160 You will find the information aboutICOM Russia members in this book. All members (individual and institutional) are divided in two big groups – Museums which are institutional members of ICOM or are represented by individual members and Organizations. All the museums in this book are distributed by regional principle. Organizations are structured in profile groups Central region 192 Volga river region 224 Many thanks to all the museums who offered their help and assistance in the making of this collection South of Russia 258 Special thanks to Urals 270 Museum creation and consulting Culture heritage security in Russia with 3M(tm)Novec(tm)1230 Siberia and Far East 284 © ICOM Russia, 2012 Organizations 322 © K. Novokhatko, A. Gnedovsky, N. Kazantseva, O. Guzewska – compiling, translation, editing, 2012 [email protected] www.icom.org.ru © Leo Tolstoy museum-estate “Yasnaya Polyana”, design, 2012 Moscow MOSCOW A. N. SCRiAbiN MEMORiAl Capital of Russia. Major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation center of Russia and the continent MUSEUM Highlights: First reference to Moscow dates from 1147 when Moscow was already a pretty big town.
    [Show full text]
  • A New Model of the Crustal Magnetic Field of Mars Using MGS and MAVEN
    RESEARCH ARTICLE A New Model of the Crustal Magnetic Field of Mars Using 10.1029/2018JE005854 MGS and MAVEN Key Points: 1 1 2 3 • MGS and MAVEN magnetic field Benoit Langlais , Erwan Thébault , Aymeric Houliez , Michael E. Purucker , 4 measurements are combined into a and Robert J. Lillis high-resolution magnetic field model • The new model extends up to SH 1Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique, Université de Nantes, Université d'Angers, CNRS, UMR 6112, Nantes, degree 134, corresponding to 160-km France, 2Observatoire Royal de Belgique, Uccle, Belgium, 3Planetary Magnetospheres Laboratory, NASA Goddard horizontal resolution at the Martian Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA, 4Space Science Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA surface • It enables local studies, where geologic and magnetic features can be compared Abstract While devoid of an active magnetic dynamo field today, Mars possesses a remanent magnetic field that may reach several thousand nanoteslas locally. The exact origin and the events that have shaped the crustal magnetization remain largely enigmatic. Three magnetic field data sets from two spacecraft Supporting Information: • Supporting Information S1 collected over 13 cumulative years have sampled the Martian magnetic field over a range of altitudes •TableS1 from 90 up to 6,000 km: (a) Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) magnetometer (1997–2006), (b) MGS Electron Reflectometer (1999–2006), and (c) Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) magnetometer Correspondence to: (2014 to today). In this paper we combine these complementary data sets for the first time to build a new B. Langlais, model of the Martian internal magnetic field. This new model improves upon previous ones in several [email protected] aspects: comprehensive data coverage, refined data selection scheme, modified modeling scheme, discrete-to-continuous transformation of the model, and increased model resolution.
    [Show full text]
  • An Insight Into the Fluvial and Subglacial Origin of Valley Networks in the Argyre Basin Region
    EGU21-1742 https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1742 EGU General Assembly 2021 © Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Discordance Mapping of Argyre Basin: An Insight into the Fluvial and Subglacial Origin of Valley Networks in the Argyre Basin Region Rickbir Bahia1, Anna Galofre2, Stephen Covey-Crump3, Merren Jones3, and Neil Mitchell3 1European Space Agency, European Space Research and Technology Centre, Noordwijk, Netherlands ([email protected]) 2Arizona State University, United States 3The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom of Great Britain – England, Scotland, Wales Introduction: Martian valley networks are evidence for surface run-off and past water cycles on ancient Mars. Many of the networks resemble terrestrial precipitation-fed systems; however, recent analysis has found that the geometries and morphological characteristics of some valley networks are more comparable to subglacial valley formation. Subglacial valleys have morphological characteristics that make them distinct from fluvial valley systems (i.e., those formed via precipitation or sapping erosion). Unlike fluvial valley networks, which follow the surface slope of the underlying topography, sub-glacial networks are orientated in the direction of the surface slope of the overlying ice-sheet. Therefore, subglacial valleys may have orientations that are discordant with the underlying topography. Discordance analysis, a technique that compares the valley paleoslope direction and topographic slope direction, has been applied to Mars to determine areas that have undergone topographic modification since valley formation. This technique could also be a tool for identify valleys with potential sub-glacial origins. In this study, we mapped and applied discordance analysis to valley networks in and around Argyre basin.
    [Show full text]
  • Discovery of Volcanic Activity on Io a Historical Review
    Discovery of Volcanic Activity on Io A Historical Review Linda A. Morabito1 1Department of Astronomy, Victor Valley College, Victorville, CA 92395 [email protected] Borrowing from the words of William Herschel about his discovery of Uranus: ‘It has generally been supposed it was a lucky accident that brought the volcanic plume to my view. This is an evident mistake. In the regular manner I examined every Voyager 1 optical navigation frame. It was that day the volcanic plume’s turn to be discovered.” – Linda Morabito Abstract In the 2 March 1979 issue of Science 203 S. J. Peale, P. Cassen and R. T. Reynolds published their paper “Melting of Io by tidal dissipation” indicating “the dissipation of tidal energy in Jupiter’s moon Io is likely to have melted a major fraction of the mass.” The conclusion of their paper was that “consequences of a largely molten interior may be evident in pictures of Io’s surface returned by Voyager 1.” Just three days after that, the Voyager 1 spacecraft would pass within 0.3 Jupiter radii of Io. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory navigation team’s orbit estimation program as well as the team members themselves performed flawlessly. In regards to the optical navigation component image extraction of satellite centers in Voyager pictures taken for optical navigation at Jupiter rms post fit residuals were less than 0.25 pixels. The cognizant engineer of the Optical Navigation Image Processing system was astronomer Linda Morabito. Four days after the Voyager 1 encounter with Jupiter, after performing image processing on a picture of Io taken by the spacecraft the day before, something anomalous emerged off the limb of Io.
    [Show full text]
  • Voyage to Jupiter. INSTITUTION National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 312 131 SE 050 900 AUTHOR Morrison, David; Samz, Jane TITLE Voyage to Jupiter. INSTITUTION National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC. Scientific and Technical Information Branch. REPORT NO NASA-SP-439 PUB DATE 80 NOTE 208p.; Colored photographs and drawings may not reproduce well. AVAILABLE FROMSuperintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402 ($9.00). PUB TYPE Reports - Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC09 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Aerospace Technology; *Astronomy; Satellites (Aerospace); Science Materials; *Science Programs; *Scientific Research; Scientists; *Space Exploration; *Space Sciences IDENTIFIERS *Jupiter; National Aeronautics and Space Administration; *Voyager Mission ABSTRACT This publication illustrates the features of Jupiter and its family of satellites pictured by the Pioneer and the Voyager missions. Chapters included are:(1) "The Jovian System" (describing the history of astronomy);(2) "Pioneers to Jupiter" (outlining the Pioneer Mission); (3) "The Voyager Mission"; (4) "Science and Scientsts" (listing 11 science investigations and the scientists in the Voyager Mission);.(5) "The Voyage to Jupiter--Cetting There" (describing the launch and encounter phase);(6) 'The First Encounter" (showing pictures of Io and Callisto); (7) "The Second Encounter: More Surprises from the 'Land' of the Giant" (including pictures of Ganymede and Europa); (8) "Jupiter--King of the Planets" (describing the weather, magnetosphere, and rings of Jupiter); (9) "Four New Worlds" (discussing the nature of the four satellites); and (10) "Return to Jupiter" (providing future plans for Jupiter exploration). Pictorial maps of the Galilean satellites, a list of Voyager science teams, and a list of the Voyager management team are appended. Eight technical and 12 non-technical references are provided as additional readings.
    [Show full text]
  • Mars Express
    sp1240cover 7/7/04 4:17 PM Page 1 SP-1240 SP-1240 M ARS E XPRESS The Scientific Payload MARS EXPRESS The Scientific Payload Contact: ESA Publications Division c/o ESTEC, PO Box 299, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands Tel. (31) 71 565 3400 - Fax (31) 71 565 5433 AAsec1.qxd 7/8/04 3:52 PM Page 1 SP-1240 August 2004 MARS EXPRESS The Scientific Payload AAsec1.qxd 7/8/04 3:52 PM Page ii SP-1240 ‘Mars Express: A European Mission to the Red Planet’ ISBN 92-9092-556-6 ISSN 0379-6566 Edited by Andrew Wilson ESA Publications Division Scientific Agustin Chicarro Coordination ESA Research and Scientific Support Department, ESTEC Published by ESA Publications Division ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Price €50 Copyright © 2004 European Space Agency ii AAsec1.qxd 7/8/04 3:52 PM Page iii Contents Foreword v Overview The Mars Express Mission: An Overview 3 A. Chicarro, P. Martin & R. Trautner Scientific Instruments HRSC: the High Resolution Stereo Camera of Mars Express 17 G. Neukum, R. Jaumann and the HRSC Co-Investigator and Experiment Team OMEGA: Observatoire pour la Minéralogie, l’Eau, 37 les Glaces et l’Activité J-P. Bibring, A. Soufflot, M. Berthé et al. MARSIS: Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface 51 and Ionosphere Sounding G. Picardi, D. Biccari, R. Seu et al. PFS: the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer for Mars Express 71 V. Formisano, D. Grassi, R. Orfei et al. SPICAM: Studying the Global Structure and 95 Composition of the Martian Atmosphere J.-L. Bertaux, D. Fonteyn, O. Korablev et al.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origins of Non-Violence
    The Origins of Non-violence Tolstoy and Gandhi in Their Historical Settings Martin Green The Origins of Non-violence This book describes the world-historical forces, acting on the periphery of the modern world—in Russia in the nineteenth century—which developed the idea of nonviolence in Tolstoy and then in Gandhi. It was from Tolstoy that Gandhi first learned of this idea, but those world-historical forces acted upon and through both men. The shape of the book is a convergence, the coming together of two widely separate lives, under the stress of history. The lives of Tolstoy and Gandhi begin at widely separate points— of time, of place, of social origin, of talent and of conviction; in the course of their lives, they become, respectively, military officer and novelist, and lawyer and political organizer. They win fame in those roles; but in the last two decades of their lives, they occupy the same special space—ascetic/saint/prophet. Tolstoy and Gandhi were at first agents of modern reform, in Russia and India. But then they became rebels against it and led a profound resistance—a resistance spiritually rooted in the traditionalism of myriad peasant villages. The book’s scope and sweep are enormous. Green has made history into an absorbing myth—a compelling and moving story of importance to all scholars and readers concerned with the history of ideas. www.mkgandhi.org Page 1 The Origins of Non-violence Preface This book tells how the modern version of nonviolence—and Satyagraha, and war-resistance, and one kind of anti-imperialism, even— were in effect invented by Tolstoy and Gandhi.
    [Show full text]
  • Meteorite Impacts, Earth, and the Solar System
    Traces of Catastrophe A Handbook of Shock-Metamorphic Effects in Terrestrial Meteorite Impact Structures Bevan M. French Research Collaborator Department of Mineral Sciences, MRC-119 Smithsonian Institution Washington DC 20560 LPI Contribution No. 954 i Copyright © 1998 by LUNAR AND PLANETARY INSTITUTE The Institute is operated by the Universities Space Research Association under Contract No. NASW-4574 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Material in this volume may be copied without restraint for library, abstract service, education, or personal research purposes; however, republication of any portion thereof requires the written permission of the Insti- tute as well as the appropriate acknowledgment of this publication. Figures 3.1, 3.2, and 3.5 used by permission of the publisher, Oxford University Press, Inc. Figures 3.13, 4.16, 4.28, 4.32, and 4.33 used by permission of the publisher, Springer-Verlag. Figure 4.25 used by permission of the publisher, Yale University. Figure 5.1 used by permission of the publisher, Geological Society of America. See individual captions for reference citations. This volume may be cited as French B. M. (1998) Traces of Catastrophe:A Handbook of Shock-Metamorphic Effects in Terrestrial Meteorite Impact Structures. LPI Contribution No. 954, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston. 120 pp. This volume is distributed by ORDER DEPARTMENT Lunar and Planetary Institute 3600 Bay Area Boulevard Houston TX 77058-1113, USA Phone:281-486-2172 Fax:281-486-2186 E-mail:[email protected] Mail order requestors will be invoiced for the cost of shipping and handling. Cover Art.“One Minute After the End of the Cretaceous.” This artist’s view shows the ancestral Gulf of Mexico near the present Yucatán peninsula as it was 65 m.y.
    [Show full text]
  • Mosasaurs from Germany – a Brief History of the First 100 Years of Research
    Netherlands Journal of Geosciences —– Geologie en Mijnbouw | 94 – 1 | 5-18 | 2015 doi: 10.1017/njg.2014.16 Mosasaurs from Germany – a brief history of the first 100 years of research Sven Sachs1,*,JahnJ.Hornung2 &MikeReich2,3 1 Im Hof 9, 51766 Engelskirchen, Germany 2 Georg-August University Gottingen,¨ Geoscience Centre, Department of Geobiology, Gottingen,¨ Germany 3 Georg-August University Gottingen,¨ Geoscience Museum, Gottingen,¨ Germany * Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] Manuscript received: 30 December 2013, accepted: 26 May 2014 Abstract In Germany, mosasaur remains are very rare and only incompletely known. However, the earliest records date back to the 1830s, when tooth crowns werefoundinthechalkoftheIsleofRugen.¨ A number of prominent figures in German palaeontology and geosciences of the 19th and 20th centuries focused on these remains, including, among others, Friedrich von Hagenow, Hermann von Meyer, Andreas Wagner, Hanns Bruno Geinitz and Josef Pompeckj. Most of these works were only short notes, given the scant material. However, the discovery of fragmentary cranial remains in Westphalia in 1908 led to a more comprehensive discussion, which is also of historical importance, as it illustrates the discussions on the highly controversial and radical universal phylogenetic theory proposed by Gustav Steinmann in 1908. This theory saw the existence of continuous lines of descent, evolving in parallel, and did not regard higher taxonomic units as monophyletic groups but as intermediate paraphyletic stages of evolution. In this idea, nearly all fossil taxa form part of these lineages, which extend into the present time, and natural extinction occurs very rarely, if ever. In Steinmann’s concept, mosasaurs were not closely related to squamates but formed an intermediate member in a anagenetic chain from Triassic thalattosaurs to extant baleen whales.
    [Show full text]