Limited Visibility and Uncertainty Aware Motion Planning for Automated Driving

Adverse weather conditions and occlusions in urban environments result in impaired perception. The uncertainties are handled in different modules of an automated vehicle, ranging from sensor level over situation prediction until motion planning. This paper focuses on motion planning given an uncertain environment model with occlusions. We present a method to remain collision free for the worst-case evolution of the given scene. We define criteria that measure the available margins to a collision while considering visibility and interactions, and consequently integrate conditions that apply these criteria into an optimization-based motion planner. We show the generality of our method by validating it in several distinct urban scenarios

Improving PWR core simulations by Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis and Bayesian inference

A Monte Carlo-based Bayesian inference model is applied to the prediction of reactor operation parameters of a PWR nuclear power plant. In this non-perturbative framework, high-dimensional covariance information describing the uncertainty of microscopic nuclear data is combined with measured reactor operation data in order to provide statistically sound, well founded uncertainty estimates of integral parameters, such as the boron letdown curve and the burnup-dependent reactor power distribution. The performance of this methodology is assessed in a blind test approach, where we use measurements of a given reactor cycle to improve the prediction of the subsequent cycle. As it turns out, the resulting improvement of the prediction quality is impressive. In particular, the prediction uncertainty of the boron letdown curve, which is of utmost importance for the planning of the reactor cycle length, can be reduced by one order of magnitude by including the boron concentration measurement information of the previous cycle in the analysis. Additionally, we present first results of non-perturbative nuclear-data updating and show that predictions obtained with the updated libraries are consistent with those induced by Bayesian inference applied directly to the integral observables.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure

Technology requirements for an orbiting fuel depot: A necessary element of a space infrastructure

Advanced planning within NASA has identified several bold space exploration initiatives. The successful implementation of these missions will require a supporting space infrastructure which would include a fuel depot, an orbiting facility to store, transfer and process large quantities of cryogenic fluids. In order to adequately plan the technology development programs required to enable the construction and operation of a fuel depot, a multidisciplinary workshop was convened to assess critical technologies and their state of maturity. Since technology requirements depend strongly on the depot design assumptions, several depot concepts are presented with their effect on criticality ratings. Over 70 depot-related technology areas are addressed

Federated Robust Embedded Systems: Concepts and Challenges

The development within the area of embedded systems (ESs) is moving rapidly, not least due to falling costs of computation and communication equipment. It is believed that increased communication opportunities will lead to the future ESs no longer being parts of isolated products, but rather parts of larger communities or federations of ESs, within which information is exchanged for the benefit of all participants. This vision is asserted by a number of interrelated research topics, such as the internet of things, cyber-physical systems, systems of systems, and multi-agent systems. In this work, the focus is primarily on ESs, with their specific real-time and safety requirements. While the vision of interconnected ESs is quite promising, it also brings great challenges to the development of future systems in an efficient, safe, and reliable way. In this work, a pre-study has been carried out in order to gain a better understanding about common concepts and challenges that naturally arise in federations of ESs. The work was organized around a series of workshops, with contributions from both academic participants and industrial partners with a strong experience in ES development. During the workshops, a portfolio of possible ES federation scenarios was collected, and a number of application examples were discussed more thoroughly on different abstraction levels, starting from screening the nature of interactions on the federation level and proceeding down to the implementation details within each ES. These discussions led to a better understanding of what can be expected in the future federated ESs. In this report, the discussed applications are summarized, together with their characteristics, challenges, and necessary solution elements, providing a ground for the future research within the area of communicating ESs

Risk Assessment and Management Associated with CCS

AbstractAs things stand, there is currently no available commercial insurance for long-term liability of CCS projects. This makes investors shy away from such initiatives, even if the risk of the venture is assessed to be relatively small. A policy review was carried out to assess the risks involved in the CCS industry which identified uncertainties with regards to the risks associated with CCS that make policy making and insuring CCS projects very difficult. This paper presents a coherent understanding of the chain of events that could lead to major failures in a CCS project. This research project has looked into the potential risks involved in CO2 storage and the ways in which their criticality and importance as well as their probability and likelihood can potentially be calculated using Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods