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Evidence to date suggests there may be a link between interpersonal synchronization and sense of connectedness to others in both music and non-music tasks. However, earlier studies have used a fixed tempo, thereby ruling out the study of spontaneous synchronization that might emerge from a group of agents. This design is essential to test theories that implicate intrinsic systems governing rhythm within individuals as the source of interpersonal synchronization, coordination, and shared positive affect. The current study used an impromptu music-making task to study the relationship between spontaneous synchronization and sense of connectedness. A total of 49 participants were recruited in dyads or triads and were asked to play percussion sounds on MIDI keyboards for a period of 10 min. Every minute they gave a rating of how connected they felt with the other group members. Participants who showed longer periods of spontaneous synchronization during the joint music-making task reported greater average connectedness with the group members during the task, and a greater increase in connectedness over the duration of the task. Within-individual correlations between synchronization and connectedness revealed a tight coupling in around a third of the participants. We discuss the theoretical implication that the collective control of perceptual variables—such as tempo—may achieve and maintain a sense of connectedness to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel real-time obstacle avoidance and navigation technique called as "Free-configuration Eigenspace" (FCE). The FCE enables an autonomous robot to detect unknown obstacles and avoid collisions while simultaneously steering the robot towards the target. The methodology utilizes a two-dimensional (2D) Cartesian Eigenspace as a world model. 2D way points (in world model) are extracted by computing (through FCE model) stacked Eigenvectors of laser data at discrete time scans which manifest desired robotic trajectory. The world model is updated continuously upon obtaining discrete time laser scans sampled by on-board Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors. The FCE technique has been implemented on Robotic Operating System and real-time robotics simulator Gazebo ® . Encouraging results are obtained and shown in this paper. The FCE has also been tested in real-time with laser scans obtained from VL6180X LiDAR sensor mounted on a custom autonomous robot. The results obtained are further compared with the state-of-the-art obstacle avoidance and path planning method called as vector field histogram (VFH). The FCE results (shown in the paper) are comparable, encouraging, and outperform VFH in path length and safe distance maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]