A Multistate Friction Model for the Compensation of the Asymmetric Hysteresis in the Mechanical Response of Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

These days, biomimetic and compliant actuators have been made available to the main applications of rehabilitation and assistive robotics. In this context, the interaction control of soft robots, mechatronic surgical instruments and robotic prostheses can be improved through the adoption of pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs), a class of compliant actuators that exhibit some similarities with the structure and function of biological muscles. Together with the advantage of implementing adaptive compliance control laws, the nonlinear and hysteretic force/length characteristics of PAMs pose some challenges in the design and implementation of tracking control strategies. This paper presents a parsimonious and accurate model of the asymmetric hysteresis observed in the force response of PAMs. The model has been validated through the experimental identification of the mechanical response of a small-sized PAM where the asymmetric effects of hysteresis are more evident. Both the experimental results and a comparison with other dynamic friction models show that the proposed model could be useful to implement efficient compensation strategies for the tracking control of soft robots

Generalized averaged Gaussian quadrature and applications

A simple numerical method for constructing the optimal generalized averaged Gaussian quadrature formulas will be presented. These formulas exist in many cases in which real positive GaussKronrod formulas do not exist, and can be used as an adequate alternative in order to estimate the error of a Gaussian rule. We also investigate the conditions under which the optimal averaged Gaussian quadrature formulas and their truncated variants are internal

MS FT-2-2 7 Orthogonal polynomials and quadrature: Theory, computation, and applications

Quadrature rules find many applications in science and engineering. Their analysis is a classical area of applied mathematics and continues to attract considerable attention. This seminar brings together speakers with expertise in a large variety of quadrature rules. It is the aim of the seminar to provide an overview of recent developments in the analysis of quadrature rules. The computation of error estimates and novel applications also are described

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp