22,075 research outputs found
I Am The Passenger: How Visual Motion Cues Can Influence Sickness For In-Car VR
This paper explores the use of VR Head Mounted Displays
(HMDs) in-car and in-motion for the first time. Immersive
HMDs are becoming everyday consumer items and, as they
offer new possibilities for entertainment and productivity, people
will want to use them during travel in, for example, autonomous
cars. However, their use is confounded by motion
sickness caused in-part by the restricted visual perception
of motion conflicting with physically perceived vehicle motion
(accelerations/rotations detected by the vestibular system).
Whilst VR HMDs restrict visual perception of motion, they
could also render it virtually, potentially alleviating sensory
conflict. To study this problem, we conducted the first on-road
and in motion study to systematically investigate the effects
of various visual presentations of the real-world motion of
a car on the sickness and immersion of VR HMD wearing
passengers. We established new baselines for VR in-car motion
sickness, and found that there is no one best presentation
with respect to balancing sickness and immersion. Instead,
user preferences suggest different solutions are required for
differently susceptible users to provide usable VR in-car. This
work provides formative insights for VR designers and an entry
point for further research into enabling use of VR HMDs,
and the rich experiences they offer, when travelling
On the interaction between Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand systems and the power network: models and coordination algorithms
We study the interaction between a fleet of electric, self-driving vehicles
servicing on-demand transportation requests (referred to as Autonomous
Mobility-on-Demand, or AMoD, system) and the electric power network. We propose
a model that captures the coupling between the two systems stemming from the
vehicles' charging requirements and captures time-varying customer demand and
power generation costs, road congestion, battery depreciation, and power
transmission and distribution constraints. We then leverage the model to
jointly optimize the operation of both systems. We devise an algorithmic
procedure to losslessly reduce the problem size by bundling customer requests,
allowing it to be efficiently solved by off-the-shelf linear programming
solvers. Next, we show that the socially optimal solution to the joint problem
can be enforced as a general equilibrium, and we provide a dual decomposition
algorithm that allows self-interested agents to compute the market clearing
prices without sharing private information. We assess the performance of the
mode by studying a hypothetical AMoD system in Dallas-Fort Worth and its impact
on the Texas power network. Lack of coordination between the AMoD system and
the power network can cause a 4.4% increase in the price of electricity in
Dallas-Fort Worth; conversely, coordination between the AMoD system and the
power network could reduce electricity expenditure compared to the case where
no cars are present (despite the increased demand for electricity) and yield
savings of up $147M/year. Finally, we provide a receding-horizon implementation
and assess its performance with agent-based simulations. Collectively, the
results of this paper provide a first-of-a-kind characterization of the
interaction between electric-powered AMoD systems and the power network, and
shed additional light on the economic and societal value of AMoD.Comment: Extended version of the paper presented at Robotics: Science and
Systems XIV, in prep. for journal submission. In V3, we add a proof that the
socially-optimal solution can be enforced as a general equilibrium, a
privacy-preserving distributed optimization algorithm, a description of the
receding-horizon implementation and additional numerical results, and proofs
of all theorem
On the interaction between Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand systems and the power network: models and coordination algorithms
We study the interaction between a fleet of electric, self-driving vehicles
servicing on-demand transportation requests (referred to as Autonomous
Mobility-on-Demand, or AMoD, system) and the electric power network. We propose
a model that captures the coupling between the two systems stemming from the
vehicles' charging requirements and captures time-varying customer demand and
power generation costs, road congestion, battery depreciation, and power
transmission and distribution constraints. We then leverage the model to
jointly optimize the operation of both systems. We devise an algorithmic
procedure to losslessly reduce the problem size by bundling customer requests,
allowing it to be efficiently solved by off-the-shelf linear programming
solvers. Next, we show that the socially optimal solution to the joint problem
can be enforced as a general equilibrium, and we provide a dual decomposition
algorithm that allows self-interested agents to compute the market clearing
prices without sharing private information. We assess the performance of the
mode by studying a hypothetical AMoD system in Dallas-Fort Worth and its impact
on the Texas power network. Lack of coordination between the AMoD system and
the power network can cause a 4.4% increase in the price of electricity in
Dallas-Fort Worth; conversely, coordination between the AMoD system and the
power network could reduce electricity expenditure compared to the case where
no cars are present (despite the increased demand for electricity) and yield
savings of up $147M/year. Finally, we provide a receding-horizon implementation
and assess its performance with agent-based simulations. Collectively, the
results of this paper provide a first-of-a-kind characterization of the
interaction between electric-powered AMoD systems and the power network, and
shed additional light on the economic and societal value of AMoD.Comment: Extended version of the paper presented at Robotics: Science and
Systems XIV and accepted by TCNS. In Version 4, the body of the paper is
largely rewritten for clarity and consistency, and new numerical simulations
are presented. All source code is available (MIT) at
https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.324165
A path planning and path-following control framework for a general 2-trailer with a car-like tractor
Maneuvering a general 2-trailer with a car-like tractor in backward motion is
a task that requires significant skill to master and is unarguably one of the
most complicated tasks a truck driver has to perform. This paper presents a
path planning and path-following control solution that can be used to
automatically plan and execute difficult parking and obstacle avoidance
maneuvers by combining backward and forward motion. A lattice-based path
planning framework is developed in order to generate kinematically feasible and
collision-free paths and a path-following controller is designed to stabilize
the lateral and angular path-following error states during path execution. To
estimate the vehicle state needed for control, a nonlinear observer is
developed which only utilizes information from sensors that are mounted on the
car-like tractor, making the system independent of additional trailer sensors.
The proposed path planning and path-following control framework is implemented
on a full-scale test vehicle and results from simulations and real-world
experiments are presented.Comment: Preprin
A survey on fractional order control techniques for unmanned aerial and ground vehicles
In recent years, numerous applications of science and engineering for modeling and control of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) systems based on fractional calculus have been realized. The extra fractional order derivative terms allow to optimizing the performance of the systems. The review presented in this paper focuses on the control problems of the UAVs and UGVs that have been addressed by the fractional order techniques over the last decade
A Robust Model Predictive Control Approach for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles Operating in a Constrained workspace
This paper presents a novel Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) scheme
for underwater robotic vehicles operating in a constrained workspace including
static obstacles. The purpose of the controller is to guide the vehicle towards
specific way points. Various limitations such as: obstacles, workspace
boundary, thruster saturation and predefined desired upper bound of the vehicle
velocity are captured as state and input constraints and are guaranteed during
the control design. The proposed scheme incorporates the full dynamics of the
vehicle in which the ocean currents are also involved. Hence, the control
inputs calculated by the proposed scheme are formulated in a way that the
vehicle will exploit the ocean currents, when these are in favor of the
way-point tracking mission which results in reduced energy consumption by the
thrusters. The performance of the proposed control strategy is experimentally
verified using a Degrees of Freedom (DoF) underwater robotic vehicle inside
a constrained test tank with obstacles.Comment: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA-2018),
Accepte
The teaching of aerospace vehicle design at Cranfield University with particular reference to the group design project
Over the years, the aircraft design course at Cranfield has evolved into the
postgraduatemaster's programme in aerospace vehicle design that we have today.
One of the unique featuresof the course is the extensive group design project,
which has played a fundamental part inaircraft design education right from 1948
up to the current day. The success of the course, andthe student experience,
depends on the success of the group design project. The philosophy ofthe role of
the group design project in the teaching of aircraft design is discussed in
detail in thispaper. Examples are presented of recent subject aircraft along
with some novel features ofthese designs
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