62,721 research outputs found

    A Case Study in Optimization of Resource Distribution to Cope with Unanticipated Changes in Requirements

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    It is a known fact that requirements change continuously, and as a consequence, it may be necessary to reschedule development activities so that the new requirements can be addressed in a costeffective manner. Unfortunately, changes in requirements cannot be specified precisely. Moreover, current software development methods do not provide explicit means to adapt development processes with respect to unanticipated changes in requirements. This article first proposes a method based on Markov Decision Theory, which determines the estimated optimal development schedule with respect to probabilistic product demands and resource constraints. Second, a tool is described that is built to support the method. Finally, some experimental results are presented on the applicability of the proposed method

    Improved decision support for engine-in-the-loop experimental design optimization

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    Experimental optimization with hardware in the loop is a common procedure in engineering and has been the subject of intense development, particularly when it is applied to relatively complex combinatorial systems that are not completely understood, or where accurate modelling is not possible owing to the dimensions of the search space. A common source of difficulty arises because of the level of noise associated with experimental measurements, a combination of limited instrument precision, and extraneous factors. When a series of experiments is conducted to search for a combination of input parameters that results in a minimum or maximum response, under the imposition of noise, the underlying shape of the function being optimized can become very difficult to discern or even lost. A common methodology to support experimental search for optimal or suboptimal values is to use one of the many gradient descent methods. However, even sophisticated and proven methodologies, such as simulated annealing, can be significantly challenged in the presence of noise, since approximating the gradient at any point becomes highly unreliable. Often, experiments are accepted as a result of random noise which should be rejected, and vice versa. This is also true for other sampling techniques, including tabu and evolutionary algorithms. After the general introduction, this paper is divided into two main sections (sections 2 and 3), which are followed by the conclusion. Section 2 introduces a decision support methodology based upon response surfaces, which supplements experimental management based on a variable neighbourhood search and is shown to be highly effective in directing experiments in the presence of a significant signal-to-noise ratio and complex combinatorial functions. The methodology is developed on a three-dimensional surface with multiple local minima, a large basin of attraction, and a high signal-to-noise ratio. In section 2, the methodology is applied to an automotive combinatorial search in the laboratory, on a real-time engine-in-the-loop application. In this application, it is desired to find the maximum power output of an experimental single-cylinder spark ignition engine operating under a quasi-constant-volume operating regime. Under this regime, the piston is slowed at top dead centre to achieve combustion in close to constant volume conditions. As part of the further development of the engine to incorporate a linear generator to investigate free-piston operation, it is necessary to perform a series of experiments with combinatorial parameters. The objective is to identify the maximum power point in the least number of experiments in order to minimize costs. This test programme provides peak power data in order to achieve optimal electrical machine design. The decision support methodology is combined with standard optimization and search methods – namely gradient descent and simulated annealing – in order to study the reductions possible in experimental iterations. It is shown that the decision support methodology significantly reduces the number of experiments necessary to find the maximum power solution and thus offers a potentially significant cost saving to hardware-in-the-loop experi- mentation

    Automatic Differentiation of Rigid Body Dynamics for Optimal Control and Estimation

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    Many algorithms for control, optimization and estimation in robotics depend on derivatives of the underlying system dynamics, e.g. to compute linearizations, sensitivities or gradient directions. However, we show that when dealing with Rigid Body Dynamics, these derivatives are difficult to derive analytically and to implement efficiently. To overcome this issue, we extend the modelling tool `RobCoGen' to be compatible with Automatic Differentiation. Additionally, we propose how to automatically obtain the derivatives and generate highly efficient source code. We highlight the flexibility and performance of the approach in two application examples. First, we show a Trajectory Optimization example for the quadrupedal robot HyQ, which employs auto-differentiation on the dynamics including a contact model. Second, we present a hardware experiment in which a 6 DoF robotic arm avoids a randomly moving obstacle in a go-to task by fast, dynamic replanning

    Unbalanced load flow with hybrid wavelet transform and support vector machine based Error-Correcting Output Codes for power quality disturbances classification including wind energy

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    Purpose. The most common methods to designa multiclass classification consist to determine a set of binary classifiers and to combine them. In this paper support vector machine with Error-Correcting Output Codes (ECOC-SVM) classifier is proposed to classify and characterize the power qualitydisturbances such as harmonic distortion,voltage sag, and voltage swell include wind farms generator in power transmission systems. Firstly three phases unbalanced load flow analysis is executed to calculate difference electric network characteristics, levels of voltage, active and reactive power. After, discrete wavelet transform is combined with the probabilistic ECOC-SVM model to construct the classifier. Finally, the ECOC-SVM classifies and identifies the disturbance type according tothe energy deviation of the discrete wavelet transform. The proposedmethod gives satisfactory accuracy with 99.2% compared with well known methods and shows that each power quality disturbances has specific deviations from the pure sinusoidal waveform,this is good at recognizing and specifies the type of disturbance generated from the wind power generator.Наиболее распространенные методы построения мультиклассовой классификации заключаются в определении набора двоичных классификаторов и их объединении. В данной статье предложена машина опорных векторов с классификатором выходных кодов исправления ошибок(ECOC-SVM) с целью классифицировать и характеризовать такие нарушения качества электроэнергии, как гармонические искажения, падение напряжения и скачок напряжения, включая генератор ветровых электростанций в системах передачи электроэнергии. Сначала выполняется анализ потока несимметричной нагрузки трех фаз для расчета разностных характеристик электрической сети, уровней напряжения, активной и реактивной мощности. После этого дискретное вейвлет-преобразование объединяется с вероятностной моделью ECOC-SVM для построения классификатора. Наконец, ECOC-SVM классифицирует и идентифицирует тип возмущения в соответствии с отклонением энергии дискретного вейвлет-преобразования. Предложенный метод дает удовлетворительную точность 99,2% по сравнению с хорошо известными методами и показывает, что каждое нарушение качества электроэнергии имеет определенные отклонения от чисто синусоидальной формы волны, что способствует распознаванию и определению типа возмущения, генерируемого ветровым генератором
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