Workshop on Fuzzy Control Systems and Space Station Applications

The Workshop on Fuzzy Control Systems and Space Station Applications was held on 14-15 Nov. 1990. The workshop was co-sponsored by McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Company and NASA Ames Research Center. Proceedings of the workshop are presented

Non-conventional control of the flexible pole-cart balancing problem

Emerging techniques of intelligent or learning control seem attractive for applications in manufacturing and robotics. It is however important to understand the capabilities of such control systems. In the past the inverted pendulum has been used as a test case. The thesis begins with an examination of whether the inverted pendulum or polecart balancing problem is a representative problem for experimentation for learning controllers for complex nonlinear systems. Results of previous research concerning the inverted pendulum problem are presented to show that this problem is not sufficiently testing. This thesis therefore concentrates on the control of the inverted pendulum with an additional degree of freedom as a testing demonstrator problem for learning control system experimentation. A flexible pole is used in place of a rigid one. The transverse displacement of the flexible pole adds a degree of freedom to the system. The dynamics of this new system are more complex as the system needs additional parameters to be defIned due to the pole's elastic deflection. This problem also has many of the signifIcant features associated with flexible robots with lightweight links as applied in manufacturing. Novel neural network and fuzzy control systems are presented that control such a system both in simulation and real time. A fuzzy-genetic approach is also demonstrated that allows the creation of fuzzy control systems without the use of extensive knowledge

Fourth Annual Workshop on Space Operations Applications and Research (SOAR 90)

The proceedings of the SOAR workshop are presented. The technical areas included are as follows: Automation and Robotics; Environmental Interactions; Human Factors; Intelligent Systems; and Life Sciences. NASA and Air Force programmatic overviews and panel sessions were also held in each technical area

Using genetic algorithms to take into account user wishes in an advanced building control system

From a sustainable development perspective, the newly developed automatic controllers for building services are very promising in that they increase energy efficiency and reduce commissioning and maintenance costs. But a major problem has appeared as the automatic building control systems have been implemented: the user rejection of this kind of system is quite high. This is mainly due to a lack of user considerations in the controllers. An integrated blind, electric lighting and heating control system that adapts to user wishes on a long-term basis has been developed in this work to deal with this issue. The adaptation of the control system to user wishes was achieved by means of Genetic Algorithms. They have been seen to be the most appropriate optimization method for this task. They ensure a 100% convergence whereas standard search methods such as Gauss-Newton and Nelder-Mead converge in less than 25% of the time and Simulated Annealing method converges in about 75% of the time. In addition, simulations with a consistent virtual user have shown that the user adaptive controller is capable of anticipation. Nine months of experimental tests were carried out in 14 office rooms of the LESO building with a total of 23 users concerned. Three controllers were compared: a manual control system, an automatic controller without user adaptation and an automatic controller with user adaptation. Tests were conducted in a similar fashion as clinical randomized trials are carried out: control systems are randomly attributed to rooms and users do not know which system they have (single-blind study). Results show that the automatic control rejection percentage is greatly reduced with the user adaptive system. Indeed, after four weeks with an automatic control, 25% of the users with the non-adaptive system reject the automatic control, whereas only 5% of the users with the user adaptive system reject it. These percentages depend neither on age or gender of the user, nor on the number of occupants in a room. Moreover, the energy savings due to automatic control (26% compared to a manual system) are not reduced by the user adaptation. These large energy savings are mainly due to the predictive feature of the heating controller and to the efficient control of electric lighting. In addition, indoor comfort is slightly improved by the automatic controllers for both thermal and visual aspects. The indoor comfort is even slightly more improved by the user adaptive control compared to the non-adaptive one. The user adaptation has not converged properly in the mechanical workshop, a space used by several persons and also considered in the experiments. It has been concluded that user adaptive systems are probably not appropriate for places with irregular users, such as workshops, libraries, corridors and all public spaces

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

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen

Ein mobiler Serviceroboter zur Automatisierung der Probenahme und des Probenmanagements in einem biotechnologischen Pilotlabor

Scherer T. A mobile service robot for automisation of sample taking and sample management in a biotechnological pilot laboratory. Bielefeld (Germany): Bielefeld University; 2004.In biotechnologischen Laboratorien ist die Qualität der typischerweise pharmazeutischen Produkte ein wortwörtlich lebenswichtiges Ziel. Die Qualität der Zellkultivierungen wurde historisch nur durch off-line Messungen von physikalischen Prozessparametern wie pH und pO2 sichergestellt. Biologische Parameter wie die Zelldichte und -viabilität wurden nur off-line gemessen, weil das dazu notwendige Probenmanagement hochkomplizierte Manipulationen und Analysen beinhaltet und deshalb nicht automatisiert werden konnte. Es gibt zwar mehrere automatisierte Geräte, um einem Labortechniker zu assistieren, aber kein System, welches das gesamte Probenmanagement automatisiert. In dieser Arbeit wird ein neuer Typ von Serviceroboter präsentiert, der aus einem auf einer mobilen Plattform montierten Roboterarm besteht und diese Lücke schließt. Dieser Roboter muss eine ganze Reihe von Problemen bewältigen: Er muss seine Position im Labor bestimmen können (Lokalisation), er muss eine kollisionsfreie Bahn zu den beteiligten Geräten finden können (Bahnplanung mit Hindernisvermeidung), er darf bei seinen Bewegungen keine Menschen gefährden oder Laborausrüstung beschädigen (Kollisionsvermeidung), er muss die zu bedienenden Geräte erkennen und ihre Position präzise messen können (Bildverarbeitung), er muss sie bedienen können (Armsteuerung), er muss Objekte greifen können (Greifer und Finger) und er muss sie gefügig handhaben können, um sie nicht zu beschädigen (Kraftregelung). Er muss autonom sein, um nur die allernotwendigste Menge an Benutzereingriffen zu benötigen, und doch durch ein Laborsteuerprogramm kontrollierbar sein, um Eingriffe zu erlauben. Schließlich muss er einfach durch ungeschultes Personal zu warten sein. All diese Aspekte werden von dem in dieser Arbeit präsentierten neuen Robotersystem abgedeckt.In biotechnolgical laboratories, the quality of the typically pharmaceutical product is a literally life-important goal. Historically, the quality of the cell cultivations was ensured by on-line measurements of physical process parameters like pH and pO2 only. Biological parameters like cell density and viability were only measured off-line, because the necessary sample management involves highly complicated manipulations and analyses and could therefore not be automated. Various automated devices to assist a laboratory technician do exist, but so far no system to automate the entire sample management. In this work a novel type of service robot consisting of a robot arm mounted on a mobile platform is presented that closes this gap. This robot has to master a multitude of problems: It must be able to locate its position in the laboratory (localisation), it must be able to find a collision-free path to the involved devices (path planning with obstacle avoidance), it must not endanger humans or damage laboratory equipment while moving (collision avoidance), it must be able to recognize the devices to be manipulated and measure their precise position (computer vision), it must be able to manipulate them (arm control), it must be able to grasp objects (gripper and fingers) and it must be able to handle them with compliance in order to not damage them (force control). It must be autonomous in order to only require the least possible amount of user intervention, and yet controllable by a laboratory control program in order to allow intervention. Finally, it must be easily maintainable by non-expert personell. All these aspects are covered by the novel robot system presented in this thesis

Third International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Automation for Space 1994

The Third International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Automation for Space (i-SAIRAS 94), held October 18-20, 1994, in Pasadena, California, was jointly sponsored by NASA, ESA, and Japan's National Space Development Agency, and was hosted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology. i-SAIRAS 94 featured presentations covering a variety of technical and programmatic topics, ranging from underlying basic technology to specific applications of artificial intelligence and robotics to space missions. i-SAIRAS 94 featured a special workshop on planning and scheduling and provided scientists, engineers, and managers with the opportunity to exchange theoretical ideas, practical results, and program plans in such areas as space mission control, space vehicle processing, data analysis, autonomous spacecraft, space robots and rovers, satellite servicing, and intelligent instruments

Combining SOA and BPM Technologies for Cross-System Process Automation

This paper summarizes the results of an industry case study that introduced a cross-system business process automation solution based on a combination of SOA and BPM standard technologies (i.e., BPMN, BPEL, WSDL). Besides discussing major weaknesses of the existing, custom-built, solution and comparing them against experiences with the developed prototype, the paper presents a course of action for transforming the current solution into the proposed solution. This includes a general approach, consisting of four distinct steps, as well as specific action items that are to be performed for every step. The discussion also covers language and tool support and challenges arising from the transformation