A vision system planner for increasing the autonomy of the Extravehicular Activity Helper/Retriever

The Extravehicular Activity Retriever (EVAR) is a robotic device currently being developed by the Automation and Robotics Division at the NASA Johnson Space Center to support activities in the neighborhood of the Space Shuttle or Space Station Freedom. As the name implies, the Retriever's primary function will be to provide the capability to retrieve tools and equipment or other objects which have become detached from the spacecraft, but it will also be able to rescue a crew member who may have become inadvertently de-tethered. Later goals will include cooperative operations between a crew member and the Retriever such as fetching a tool that is required for servicing or maintenance operations. This paper documents a preliminary design for a Vision System Planner (VSP) for the EVAR that is capable of achieving visual objectives provided to it by a high level task planner. Typical commands which the task planner might issue to the VSP relate to object recognition, object location determination, and obstacle detection. Upon receiving a command from the task planner, the VSP then plans a sequence of actions to achieve the specified objective using a model-based reasoning approach. This sequence may involve choosing an appropriate sensor, selecting an algorithm to process the data, reorienting the sensor, adjusting the effective resolution of the image using lens zooming capability, and/or requesting the task planner to reposition the EVAR to obtain a different view of the object. An initial version of the Vision System Planner which realizes the above capabilities using simulated images has been implemented and tested. The remaining sections describe the architecture and capabilities of the VSP and its relationship to the high level task planner. In addition, typical plans that are generated to achieve visual goals for various scenarios are discussed. Specific topics to be addressed will include object search strategies, repositioning of the EVAR to improve the quality of information obtained from the sensors, and complementary usage of the sensors and redundant capabilities

Vision technology/algorithms for space robotics applications

The thrust of automation and robotics for space applications has been proposed for increased productivity, improved reliability, increased flexibility, higher safety, and for the performance of automating time-consuming tasks, increasing productivity/performance of crew-accomplished tasks, and performing tasks beyond the capability of the crew. This paper provides a review of efforts currently in progress in the area of robotic vision. Both systems and algorithms are discussed. The evolution of future vision/sensing is projected to include the fusion of multisensors ranging from microwave to optical with multimode capability to include position, attitude, recognition, and motion parameters. The key feature of the overall system design will be small size and weight, fast signal processing, robust algorithms, and accurate parameter determination. These aspects of vision/sensing are also discussed

Developing Interaction 3D Models for E-Learning Applications

Some issues concerning the development of interactive 3D models for e-learning applications are considered. Given that 3D data sets are normally large and interactive display demands high performance computation, a natural solution would be placing the computational burden on the client machine rather than on the server. Mozilla and Google opted for a combination of client-side languages, JavaScript and OpenGL, to handle 3D graphics in a web browser (Mozilla 3D and O3D respectively). Based on the O3D model, core web technologies are considered and an example of the full process involving the generation of a 3D model and their interactive visualization in a web browser is described. The challenging issue of creating realistic 3D models of objects in the real world is discussed and a method based on line projection for fast 3D reconstruction is presented. The generated model is then visualized in a web browser. The experiments demonstrate that visualization of 3D data in a web browser can provide quality user experience. Moreover, the development of web applications are facilitated by O3D JavaScript extension allowing web designers to focus on 3D contents generation

Meyer sets, topological eigenvalues, and Cantor fiber bundles

We introduce two new characterizations of Meyer sets. A repetitive Delone set in $\R^d$ with finite local complexity is topologically conjugate to a Meyer set if and only if it has $d$ linearly independent topological eigenvalues, which is if and only if it is topologically conjugate to a bundle over a $d$-torus with totally disconnected compact fiber and expansive canonical action. "Conjugate to" is a non-trivial condition, as we show that there exist sets that are topologically conjugate to Meyer sets but are not themselves Meyer. We also exhibit a diffractive set that is not Meyer, answering in the negative a question posed by Lagarias, and exhibit a Meyer set for which the measurable and topological eigenvalues are different.Comment: minor errors corrected, references added. To appear in the Journal of the LM

scadnano: A Browser-Based, Scriptable Tool for Designing DNA Nanostructures

We introduce scadnano (short for "scriptable cadnano"), a computational tool for designing synthetic DNA structures. Its design is based heavily on cadnano [Douglas et al., 2009], the most widely-used software for designing DNA origami [Paul W. K. Rothemund, 2006], with three main differences: 1) scadnano runs entirely in the browser, with no software installation required. 2) scadnano designs, while they can be edited manually, can also be created and edited by a well-documented Python scripting library, to help automate tedious tasks. 3) The scadnano file format is easily human-readable. This goal is closely aligned with the scripting library, intended to be helpful when debugging scripts or interfacing with other software. The format is also somewhat more expressive than that of cadnano, able to describe a broader range of DNA structures than just DNA origami

Honeycomb tessellations and canonical bases for permutohedral blades

This paper studies two families of piecewise constant functions which are determined by the $(n-2)$-skeleta of collections of honeycomb tessellations of $\mathbb{R}^{n-1}$ with standard permutohedra. The union of the codimension $1$ cones obtained by extending the facets which are incident to a vertex of such a tessellation is called a blade. We prove ring-theoretically that such a honeycomb, with 1-skeleton built from a cyclic sequence of segments in the root directions $e_i-e_{i+1}$, decomposes locally as a Minkowski sum of isometrically embedded components of hexagonal honeycombs: tripods and one-dimensional subspaces. For each triangulation of a cyclically oriented polygon there exists such a factorization. This consequently gives resolution to an issue proposed and developed by A. Ocneanu, to find a structure theory for an object he discovered during his investigations into higher Lie theories: permutohedral blades. We introduce a certain canonical basis for a vector space spanned by piecewise constant functions of blades which is compatible with various quotient spaces appearing in algebra, topology and scattering amplitudes. Various connections to scattering amplitudes are discussed, giving new geometric interpretations for certain combinatorial identities for one-loop Parke-Taylor factors. We give a closed formula for the graded dimension of the canonical blade basis. We conjecture that the coefficients of the generating function numerators for the diagonals are symmetric and unimodal.Comment: Added references; new section on configuration space