204,480 research outputs found
Formal Analysis and Redesign of a Neural Network-Based Aircraft Taxiing System with VerifAI
We demonstrate a unified approach to rigorous design of safety-critical
autonomous systems using the VerifAI toolkit for formal analysis of AI-based
systems. VerifAI provides an integrated toolchain for tasks spanning the design
process, including modeling, falsification, debugging, and ML component
retraining. We evaluate all of these applications in an industrial case study
on an experimental autonomous aircraft taxiing system developed by Boeing,
which uses a neural network to track the centerline of a runway. We define
runway scenarios using the Scenic probabilistic programming language, and use
them to drive tests in the X-Plane flight simulator. We first perform
falsification, automatically finding environment conditions causing the system
to violate its specification by deviating significantly from the centerline (or
even leaving the runway entirely). Next, we use counterexample analysis to
identify distinct failure cases, and confirm their root causes with specialized
testing. Finally, we use the results of falsification and debugging to retrain
the network, eliminating several failure cases and improving the overall
performance of the closed-loop system.Comment: Full version of a CAV 2020 pape
SRAT-Distribution Voltage Sags and Reliability Assessment Tool
Interruptions to supply and sags of distribution system voltage are the main aspects causing customer complaints. There is a need for analysis of supply reliability and voltage sag to relate system performance with network structure and equipment design parameters. This analysis can also give prediction of voltage dips, as well as relating traditional reliability and momentary outage measures to the properties of protection systems and to network impedances. Existing reliability analysis software often requires substantial training, lacks automated facilities, and suffers from data availability. Thus it requires time-consuming manual intervention for the study of large networks. A user-friendly sag and reliability assessment tool (SRAT) has been developed based on existing impedance data, protection characteristics, and a model of failure probability. The new features included in SRAT are a) efficient reliability and sag assessments for a radial network with limited loops, b) reliability evaluation associated with realistic protection and restoration schemes, c) inclusion of momentary outages in the same model as permanent outage evaluation, d) evaluation of the sag transfer through meshed subtransmission network, and e) simplified probability distribution model determined from available faults records. Examples of the application of the tools to an Australian distribution network are used to illustrate the application of this model
Failure Localization in Power Systems via Tree Partitions
Cascading failures in power systems propagate non-locally, making the control
and mitigation of outages extremely hard. In this work, we use the emerging
concept of the tree partition of transmission networks to provide an analytical
characterization of line failure localizability in transmission systems. Our
results rigorously establish the well perceived intuition in power community
that failures cannot cross bridges, and reveal a finer-grained concept that
encodes more precise information on failure propagations within tree-partition
regions. Specifically, when a non-bridge line is tripped, the impact of this
failure only propagates within well-defined components, which we refer to as
cells, of the tree partition defined by the bridges. In contrast, when a bridge
line is tripped, the impact of this failure propagates globally across the
network, affecting the power flow on all remaining transmission lines. This
characterization suggests that it is possible to improve the system robustness
by temporarily switching off certain transmission lines, so as to create more,
smaller components in the tree partition; thus spatially localizing line
failures and making the grid less vulnerable to large-scale outages. We
illustrate this approach using the IEEE 118-bus test system and demonstrate
that switching off a negligible portion of transmission lines allows the impact
of line failures to be significantly more localized without substantial changes
in line congestion
Multihop Routing in Ad Hoc Networks
This paper presents a dual method of closed-form analysis and lightweight
simulation that enables an evaluation of the performance of mobile ad hoc
networks that is more realistic, efficient, and accurate than those found in
existing publications. Some features accommodated by the new analysis are
shadowing, exclusion and guard zones, and distance-dependent fading. Three
routing protocols are examined: least-delay, nearest-neighbor, and
maximum-progress routing. The tradeoffs among the path reliabilities, average
conditional delays, average conditional number of hops, and area spectral
efficiencies are examined.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, to appear in IEEE Military Commun. Conf.
(MILCOM), 201
Cost and losses associated with offshore wind farm collection networks which centralise the turbine power electronic converters
Costs and losses have been calculated for several different network topologies, which centralise the turbine power electronic converters, in order to improve access for maintenance. These are divided into star topologies, where each turbine is connected individually to its own converter on a platform housing many converters, and cluster topologies, where multiple turbines are connected through a single large converter. Both AC and DC topologies were considered, along with standard string topologies for comparison. Star and cluster topologies were both found to have higher costs and losses than the string topology. In the case of the star topology, this is due to the longer cable length and higher component count. In the case of the cluster topology, this is due to the reduced energy capture from controlling turbine speeds in clusters rather than individually. DC topologies were generally found to have a lower cost and loss than AC, but the fact that the converters are not commercially available makes this advantage less certain
- âŠ