40 research outputs found
Bounding inconsistency using a novel threshold metric for dead reckoning update packet generation
Human-to-human interaction across distributed applications requires that sufficient consistency be maintained among participants in the face of network characteristics such as latency and limited bandwidth. The level of inconsistency arising from the network is proportional to the network delay, and thus a function of bandwidth consumption. Distributed simulation has often used a bandwidth reduction technique known as dead reckoning that combines approximation and estimation in the communication of entity movement to reduce network traffic, and thus improve consistency. However, unless carefully tuned to application and network characteristics, such an approach can introduce more inconsistency than it avoids. The key tuning metric is the distance threshold. This paper questions the suitability of the standard distance threshold as a metric for use in the dead reckoning scheme. Using a model relating entity path curvature and inconsistency, a major performance related limitation of the distance threshold technique is highlighted. We then propose an alternative time—space threshold criterion. The time—space threshold is demonstrated, through simulation, to perform better for low curvature movement. However, it too has a limitation. Based on this, we further propose a novel hybrid scheme. Through simulation and live trials, this scheme is shown to perform well across a range of curvature values, and places bounds on both the spatial and absolute inconsistency arising from dead reckoning
Exploring the Effect of Curvature on the Consistency of Dead Reckoned Paths for Different Error Threshold Metrics
Dead reckoning is widely employed as an entity update
packet reduction technique in Distributed Interactive
Applications (DIAs). Such techniques reduce network
bandwidth consumption and thus limit the effects of
network latency on the consistency of networked
simulations. A key component of the dead reckoning
method is the underlying error threshold metric, as this
directly determines when an entity update packet is to
be sent between local and remote users. The most
common metric is the spatial threshold, which is simply
based on the distance between a local user’s actual
position and their predicted position. Other, recently
proposed, metrics include the time-space threshold and
the hybrid threshold, both of which are summarised
within. This paper investigates the issue of user
movement in relation to dead reckoning and each of
the threshold metrics. In particular the relationship
between the curvature of movement, the various
threshold metrics and absolute consistency is studied.
Experimental live trials across the Internet allow a
comparative analysis of how users behave when
different threshold metrics are used with varying
degrees of curvature. The presented results provide
justification for the use of a hybrid threshold approach
when dead reckoning is employed in DIAs
Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation
This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion
An Information-Theoretic Framework for Consistency Maintenance in Distributed Interactive Applications
Distributed Interactive Applications (DIAs) enable geographically dispersed users
to interact with each other in a virtual environment. A key factor to the success
of a DIA is the maintenance of a consistent view of the shared virtual world for
all the participants. However, maintaining consistent states in DIAs is difficult
under real networks. State changes communicated by messages over such networks
suffer latency leading to inconsistency across the application. Predictive Contract
Mechanisms (PCMs) combat this problem through reducing the number of messages
transmitted in return for perceptually tolerable inconsistency. This thesis examines
the operation of PCMs using concepts and methods derived from information theory.
This information theory perspective results in a novel information model of PCMs
that quantifies and analyzes the efficiency of such methods in communicating the
reduced state information, and a new adaptive multiple-model-based framework for
improving consistency in DIAs.
The first part of this thesis introduces information measurements of user behavior
in DIAs and formalizes the information model for PCM operation. In presenting the
information model, the statistical dependence in the entity state, which makes using
extrapolation models to predict future user behavior possible, is evaluated. The
efficiency of a PCM to exploit such predictability to reduce the amount of network
resources required to maintain consistency is also investigated. It is demonstrated
that from the information theory perspective, PCMs can be interpreted as a form
of information reduction and compression.
The second part of this thesis proposes an Information-Based Dynamic Extrapolation
Model for dynamically selecting between extrapolation algorithms based on
information evaluation and inferred network conditions. This model adapts PCM
configurations to both user behavior and network conditions, and makes the most
information-efficient use of the available network resources. In doing so, it improves
PCM performance and consistency in DIAs
A Stochastic Model of Plausibility in Live-Virtual-Constructive Environments
Distributed live-virtual-constructive simulation promises a number of benefits for the test and evaluation community, including reduced costs, access to simulations of limited availability assets, the ability to conduct large-scale multi-service test events, and recapitalization of existing simulation investments. However, geographically distributed systems are subject to fundamental state consistency limitations that make assessing the data quality of live-virtual-constructive experiments difficult. This research presents a data quality model based on the notion of plausible interaction outcomes. This model explicitly accounts for the lack of absolute state consistency in distributed real-time systems and offers system designers a means of estimating data quality and fitness for purpose. Experiments with World of Warcraft player trace data validate the plausibility model and exceedance probability estimates. Additional experiments with synthetic data illustrate the model\u27s use in ensuring fitness for purpose of live-virtual-constructive simulations and estimating the quality of data obtained from live-virtual-constructive experiments
Cooperative Navigation for Low-bandwidth Mobile Acoustic Networks.
This thesis reports on the design and validation of estimation and planning algorithms for underwater vehicle cooperative localization. While attitude and depth are easily instrumented with bounded-error, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have no internal sensor that directly observes XY position. The global positioning system (GPS) and other radio-based navigation techniques are not available because of the strong attenuation of electromagnetic signals in seawater. The navigation algorithms presented herein fuse local body-frame rate and attitude measurements with range observations between vehicles within a decentralized architecture.
The acoustic communication channel is both unreliable and low bandwidth, precluding many state-of-the-art terrestrial cooperative navigation algorithms. We exploit the underlying structure of a post-process centralized estimator in order to derive two real-time decentralized estimation frameworks. First, the origin state method enables a client vehicle to exactly reproduce the corresponding centralized estimate within a server-to-client vehicle network. Second, a graph-based navigation framework produces an approximate reconstruction of the centralized estimate onboard each vehicle. Finally, we present a method to plan a locally optimal server path to localize a client vehicle along a desired nominal trajectory. The planning algorithm introduces a probabilistic channel model into prior Gaussian belief space planning frameworks.
In summary, cooperative localization reduces XY position error growth within underwater vehicle networks. Moreover, these methods remove the reliance on static beacon networks, which do not scale to large vehicle networks and limit the range of operations. Each proposed localization algorithm was validated in full-scale AUV field trials. The planning framework was evaluated through numerical simulation.PhDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113428/1/jmwalls_1.pd
Theory, Design, and Implementation of Landmark Promotion Cooperative Simultaneous Localization and Mapping
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is a challenging problem in practice, the use of multiple robots and inexpensive sensors poses even more demands on the designer. Cooperative SLAM poses specific challenges in the areas of computational efficiency, software/network performance, and robustness to errors. New methods in image processing, recursive filtering, and SLAM have been developed to implement practical algorithms for cooperative SLAM on a set of inexpensive robots.
The Consolidated Unscented Mixed Recursive Filter (CUMRF) is designed to handle non-linear systems with non-Gaussian noise. This is accomplished using the Unscented Transform combined with Gaussian Mixture Models. The Robust Kalman Filter is an extension of the Kalman Filter algorithm that improves the ability to remove erroneous observations using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the X84 outlier rejection rule. Forgetful SLAM is a local SLAM technique that runs in nearly constant time relative to the number of visible landmarks and improves poor performing sensors through sensor fusion and outlier rejection. Forgetful SLAM correlates all measured observations, but stops the state from growing over time. Hierarchical Active Ripple SLAM (HAR-SLAM) is a new SLAM architecture that breaks the traditional state space of SLAM into a chain of smaller state spaces, allowing multiple robots, multiple sensors, and multiple updates to occur in linear time with linear storage with respect to the number of robots, landmarks, and robots poses. This dissertation presents explicit methods for closing-the-loop, joining multiple robots, and active updates. Landmark Promotion SLAM is a hierarchy of new SLAM methods, using the Robust Kalman Filter, Forgetful SLAM, and HAR-SLAM.
Practical aspects of SLAM are a focus of this dissertation. LK-SURF is a new image processing technique that combines Lucas-Kanade feature tracking with Speeded-Up Robust Features to perform spatial and temporal tracking. Typical stereo correspondence techniques fail at providing descriptors for features, or fail at temporal tracking. Several calibration and modeling techniques are also covered, including calibrating stereo cameras, aligning stereo cameras to an inertial system, and making neural net system models. These methods are important to improve the quality of the data and images acquired for the SLAM process
Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments
The field of shared virtual environments, which also
encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a
system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model
Sobre a aplicação de técnicas de controlo em redes industriais com falhas
Doutoramento em Engenharia EletrotécnicaThe performance of real-time networks is under continuous improvement as
a result of several trends in the digital world. However, these tendencies not
only cause improvements, but also exacerbates a series of unideal aspects
of real-time networks such as communication latency, jitter of the latency
and packet drop rate.
This Thesis focuses on the communication errors that appear on such realtime
networks, from the point-of-view of automatic control. Specifically, it
investigates the effects of packet drops in automatic control over fieldbuses,
as well as the architectures and optimal techniques for their compensation.
Firstly, a new approach to address the problems that rise in virtue of such
packet drops, is proposed. This novel approach is based on the simultaneous
transmission of several values in a single message. Such messages can
be from sensor to controller, in which case they are comprised of several
past sensor readings, or from controller to actuator in which case they are
comprised of estimates of several future control values. A series of tests
reveal the advantages of this approach.
The above-explained approach is then expanded as to accommodate the
techniques of contemporary optimal control. However, unlike the aforementioned
approach, that deliberately does not send certain messages in
order to make a more efficient use of network resources; in the second case,
the techniques are used to reduce the effects of packet losses.
After these two approaches that are based on data aggregation, it is also
studied the optimal control in packet dropping fieldbuses, using generalized
actuator output functions. This study ends with the development of a new
optimal controller, as well as the function, among the generalized functions
that dictate the actuator’s behaviour in the absence of a new control
message, that leads to the optimal performance.
The Thesis also presents a different line of research, related with the output
oscillations that take place as a consequence of the use of classic co-design
techniques of networked control. The proposed algorithm has the goal of
allowing the execution of such classical co-design algorithms without causing
an output oscillation that increases the value of the cost function. Such
increases may, under certain circumstances, negate the advantages of the
application of the classical co-design techniques. A yet another line of research, investigated algorithms, more efficient than
contemporary ones, to generate task execution sequences that guarantee
that at least a given number of activated jobs will be executed out of
every set composed by a predetermined number of contiguous activations.
This algorithm may, in the future, be applied to the generation of message
transmission patterns in the above-mentioned techniques for the efficient
use of network resources. The proposed task generation algorithm is better
than its predecessors in the sense that it is capable of scheduling systems
that cannot be scheduled by its predecessor algorithms.
The Thesis also presents a mechanism that allows to perform multi-path
routing in wireless sensor networks, while ensuring that no value will be
counted in duplicate. Thereby, this technique improves the performance of
wireless sensor networks, rendering them more suitable for control applications.
As mentioned before, this Thesis is centered around techniques for the
improvement of performance of distributed control systems in which several
elements are connected through a fieldbus that may be subject to packet
drops. The first three approaches are directly related to this topic, with the
first two approaching the problem from an architectural standpoint, whereas
the third one does so from more theoretical grounds. The fourth approach
ensures that the approaches to this and similar problems that can be found
in the literature that try to achieve goals similar to objectives of this Thesis,
can do so without causing other problems that may invalidate the solutions
in question. Then, the thesis presents an approach to the problem dealt
with in it, which is centered in the efficient generation of the transmission
patterns that are used in the aforementioned approaches.Em resultado de várias tendências que têm afetado o mundo digital, o desempenho
das redes de comunicação em tempo-real está continuamente a
ser melhorado. No entanto, tais tendĂŞncias nĂŁo sĂł introduzem melhorias,
como também introduzem uma série de não idealidades, tais como a
latência, o jitter da latência de comunicação e uma maior probabilidade de
perda de pacotes.
Esta tese tem o seu cerne em falhas de comunicação que surgem em tais
redes, sob o ponto de vista do controlo automático. Concretamente, são
estudados os efeitos das perdas de pacotes em redes de controlo, bem como
arquitecturas e técnicas óptimas de compensação das mesmas.
Primeiramente, ´e proposta uma nova abordagem para colmatar os problemas
que surgem em virtude de tais perdas. Essa nova abordagem ´e baseada
no envio simultâneo de vários valores numa única mensagem. Tais mensagens
podem ser de sensor para controlador, caso em que as mesmas sĂŁo
constituĂdas por um conjunto de valores passados, ou de controlador para
actuador, caso em que tais mensagens contˆem estimativas de futuros valores
de controlo. Uma série de testes revela as vantagens de tal abordagem.
A abordagem acima explanada ´e seguidamente expandida de modo a acomodar
o controlo óptimo. Contudo, ao contrário da abordagem acima
apresentada, que passa pelo nĂŁo envio deliberado de certas mensagens com
vista a alcançar um uso mais eficiente dos recursos de rede; no presente
caso, as técnicas são usadas para reduzir os efeitos da perda de pacotes.
Em seguida são estudadas abordagens de controlo óptimo que em situações
de perda de pacotes empregam formas generalizadas da aplicação de valores
de saĂda. Este estudo culmina com o desenvolvimento de um novo
controlador óptimo, bem como a função, entre as funções generalizadas
do funcionamento do actuador, que conduz o sistema a um desempenho óptimo. É
tambĂ©m apresentada uma linha de investigação diferente, relacionada com a oscilação da saĂda que ocorre em consequĂŞncia da utilização de tĂ©cnicas e algoritmos clássicos de co-desenho de controlo e redes industriais. O algoritmo
proposto tem como finalidade permitir que tais algoritmos clássicos
possam ser executados sem causar oscilações de saĂda, oscilações que por
sua vez aumentam o valor da função de custo. Tais aumentos da função
do custo, podem, em certas circunstâncias, por em causa os benefĂcios da
aplicação das técnicas de co-desenho clássico. Numa outra linha de investigação, foram estudadas formas, mais eficientes
que as contemporâneas, de geração de sequências de execuções de tarefas
que garantam que pelo menos um dado nĂşmero de tarefas activadas
serĂŁo executadas por cada conjunto contĂguo composto por um nĂşmero
predefinido de activações. Esta técnica poderá, no futuro, ser aplicada na
geração dos padrões de envio de mensagens que ´e empregue na abordagem
de utilização eficiente dos recursos de rede acima referida. A técnica proposta
de geração de tarefas é melhor que as anteriores no sentido em que
a mesma é capaz de escalonar sistemas que não são escalonáveis pelas
técnicas clássicas.
A tese também apresenta um mecanismo que permite fazer o encaminhamento
multi-caminho em redes de sensores sem fios com falhas sem
causar a contagem em duplicado. Assim sendo a mesma técnica melhora
o desempenho das redes de sensores sem fios, tornando as mesmas mais
maleável as necessidades do controlo aum´atico em redes sem fios.
Como foi referido acima, a tese foca-se em t´ecnicas de melhoria de desempenho
de sistemas de controlo distribu´ıdo em que os v´arios elementos
de controlo encontram-se interligados por meio de uma rede industrial que
pode estar sujeita a perda de pacotes. As primeiras trĂŞs abordagens cingemse
a este tema, sendo que primeiras duas olham para o problema sob um
ponto de vista arquitetural, enquanto que a terceira olha sob um ponto de
vista mais teĂłrico. A quarta abordagem garante que outras propostas que
podem ser encontradas na literatura e que visam atingir resultados semelhantes
aos que se pretendem atingir nesta tese, possam fazˆe-lo sem causar
outros problemas que invalidem as soluções em questão. Seguidamente, é
apresenta-se uma abordagem ao problema proposto nesta tese que foca-se
na geração eficiente de padrões para subsequente utilização nas abordagens
acima referidas. E por fim, apresentar-se-a uma técnica de optimização do
funcionamento de redes sem fios que promete melhorar o controlo em tais
redes