Recovering from External Disturbances in Online Manipulation through State-Dependent Revertive Recovery Policies

Robots are increasingly entering uncertain and unstructured environments. Within these, robots are bound to face unexpected external disturbances like accidental human or tool collisions. Robots must develop the capacity to respond to unexpected events. That is not only identifying the sudden anomaly, but also deciding how to handle it. In this work, we contribute a recovery policy that allows a robot to recovery from various anomalous scenarios across different tasks and conditions in a consistent and robust fashion. The system organizes tasks as a sequence of nodes composed of internal modules such as motion generation and introspection. When an introspection module flags an anomaly, the recovery strategy is triggered and reverts the task execution by selecting a target node as a function of a state dependency chart. The new skill allows the robot to overcome the effects of the external disturbance and conclude the task. Our system recovers from accidental human and tool collisions in a number of tasks. Of particular importance is the fact that we test the robustness of the recovery system by triggering anomalies at each node in the task graph showing robust recovery everywhere in the task. We also trigger multiple and repeated anomalies at each of the nodes of the task showing that the recovery system can consistently recover anywhere in the presence of strong and pervasive anomalous conditions. Robust recovery systems will be key enablers for long-term autonomy in robot systems. Supplemental info including code, data, graphs, and result analysis can be found at [1].Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Data Anomaly Detection, Classification, Localization, and Mitigation: A Review, Challenges, and Path Forward

Advancements in digital automation for smart grids have led to the installation of measurement devices like phasor measurement units (PMUs), micro-PMUs ($\mu$-PMUs), and smart meters. However, a large amount of data collected by these devices brings several challenges as control room operators need to use this data with models to make confident decisions for reliable and resilient operation of the cyber-power systems. Machine-learning (ML) based tools can provide a reliable interpretation of the deluge of data obtained from the field. For the decision-makers to ensure reliable network operation under all operating conditions, these tools need to identify solutions that are feasible and satisfy the system constraints, while being efficient, trustworthy, and interpretable. This resulted in the increasing popularity of physics-informed machine learning (PIML) approaches, as these methods overcome challenges that model-based or data-driven ML methods face in silos. This work aims at the following: a) review existing strategies and techniques for incorporating underlying physical principles of the power grid into different types of ML approaches (supervised/semi-supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning (RL)); b) explore the existing works on PIML methods for anomaly detection, classification, localization, and mitigation in power transmission and distribution systems, c) discuss improvements in existing methods through consideration of potential challenges while also addressing the limitations to make them suitable for real-world applications

2D approach for modelling self-potential anomalies. Application to synthetic and real data

The aim of this work is to present a 2-D Matlab code based on the finite element method for providing numerical modelling of both groundwater flow and self-potential signals. The distribution of the self-potential is obtained by starting with the solution of the groundwater flow, then computing the source current density, and finally calculating the electrical potential. The reliability of the algorithm is tested with synthetic case studies in order to simulate both the electric field resulting from the existence of a leak in the dam and SP signals associated with a pumping test in an unconfined aquifer. In addition, the algorithm was applied to field data for the localization of piping sinkholes. The results show that the outputs of the algorithm yielded satisfactory solutions, which are in good agreement with those of previous studies and field investigations. In details, the synthetic data and SP anomalies calculated by using the code are very close in terms of sign and magnitude, while real data tests clearly indicated that the computed SP signals were found to be consistent with the measured values

Real-time spatio-temporal coherence estimation for autonomous mode identification and invariance tracking

A general method of anomaly detection from time-correlated sensor data is disclosed. Multiple time-correlated signals are received. Their cross-signal behavior is compared against a fixed library of invariants. The library is constructed during a training process, which is itself data-driven using the same time-correlated signals. The method is applicable to a broad class of problems and is designed to respond to any departure from normal operation, including faults or events that lie outside the training envelope