11,335 research outputs found
Search for gravitational waves associated with the InterPlanetary Network short gamma ray bursts
We outline the scientific motivation behind a search for gravitational waves
associated with short gamma ray bursts detected by the InterPlanetary Network
(IPN) during LIGO's fifth science run and Virgo's first science run. The IPN
localisation of short gamma ray bursts is limited to extended error boxes of
different shapes and sizes and a search on these error boxes poses a series of
challenges for data analysis. We will discuss these challenges and outline the
methods to optimise the search over these error boxes.Comment: Methods paper; Proceedings for Eduardo Amaldi 9 Conference on
Gravitational Waves, July 2011, Cardiff, U
Global Trajectory Optimisation : Can We Prune the Solution Space When Considering Deep Space Manoeuvres? [Final Report]
This document contains a report on the work done under the ESA/Ariadna study 06/4101 on the global optimization of space trajectories with multiple gravity assist (GA) and deep space manoeuvres (DSM). The study was performed by a joint team of scientists from the University of Reading and the University of Glasgow
Scenic: A Language for Scenario Specification and Scene Generation
We propose a new probabilistic programming language for the design and
analysis of perception systems, especially those based on machine learning.
Specifically, we consider the problems of training a perception system to
handle rare events, testing its performance under different conditions, and
debugging failures. We show how a probabilistic programming language can help
address these problems by specifying distributions encoding interesting types
of inputs and sampling these to generate specialized training and test sets.
More generally, such languages can be used for cyber-physical systems and
robotics to write environment models, an essential prerequisite to any formal
analysis. In this paper, we focus on systems like autonomous cars and robots,
whose environment is a "scene", a configuration of physical objects and agents.
We design a domain-specific language, Scenic, for describing "scenarios" that
are distributions over scenes. As a probabilistic programming language, Scenic
allows assigning distributions to features of the scene, as well as
declaratively imposing hard and soft constraints over the scene. We develop
specialized techniques for sampling from the resulting distribution, taking
advantage of the structure provided by Scenic's domain-specific syntax.
Finally, we apply Scenic in a case study on a convolutional neural network
designed to detect cars in road images, improving its performance beyond that
achieved by state-of-the-art synthetic data generation methods.Comment: 41 pages, 36 figures. Full version of a PLDI 2019 paper (extending UC
Berkeley EECS Department Tech Report No. UCB/EECS-2018-8
Signatures of the Martian rotation parameters in the Doppler and range observables
The position of a Martian lander is affected by different aspects of Mars'
rotational motions: the nutations, the precession, the length-of-day variations
and the polar motion. These various motions have a different signature in a
Doppler observable between the Earth and a lander on Mars' surface. Knowing the
correlations between these signatures and the moments when these signatures are
not null during one day or on a longer timescale is important to identify
strategies that maximize the geophysical return of observations with a geodesy
experiment, in particular for the ones on-board the future NASA InSight or
ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars2020 missions.
We provide first-order formulations of the signature of the rotation
parameters in the Doppler and range observables. These expressions are
functions of the diurnal rotation of Mars, the lander position, the planet
radius and the rotation parameter. Additionally, the nutation signature in the
Doppler observable is proportional to the Earth declination with respect to
Mars.
For a lander on Mars close to the equator, the motions with the largest
signature in the Doppler observable are due to the length-of-day variations,
the precession rate and the rigid nutations. The polar motion and the liquid
core signatures have a much smaller amplitude. For a lander closer to the pole,
the polar motion signature is enhanced while the other signatures decrease.
We also numerically evaluate the amplitudes of the rotation parameters
signature in the Doppler observable for landers on other planets or moons.Comment: 30 pages 7 figures, In press PS
Towards Autonomous Aviation Operations: What Can We Learn from Other Areas of Automation?
Rapid advances in automation has disrupted and transformed several industries in the past 25 years. Automation has evolved from regulation and control of simple systems like controlling the temperature in a room to the autonomous control of complex systems involving network of systems. The reason for automation varies from industry to industry depending on the complexity and benefits resulting from increased levels of automation. Automation may be needed to either reduce costs or deal with hazardous environment or make real-time decisions without the availability of humans. Space autonomy, Internet, robotic vehicles, intelligent systems, wireless networks and power systems provide successful examples of various levels of automation. NASA is conducting research in autonomy and developing plans to increase the levels of automation in aviation operations. This paper provides a brief review of levels of automation, previous efforts to increase levels of automation in aviation operations and current level of automation in the various tasks involved in aviation operations. It develops a methodology to assess the research and development in modeling, sensing and actuation needed to advance the level of automation and the benefits associated with higher levels of automation. Section II describes provides an overview of automation and previous attempts at automation in aviation. Section III provides the role of automation and lessons learned in Space Autonomy. Section IV describes the success of automation in Intelligent Transportation Systems. Section V provides a comparison between the development of automation in other areas and the needs of aviation. Section VI provides an approach to achieve increased automation in aviation operations based on the progress in other areas. The final paper will provide a detailed analysis of the benefits of increased automation for the Traffic Flow Management (TFM) function in aviation operations
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