Global hypoelliptic and symbolic estimates for the linearized Boltzmann operator without angular cutoff

In this article we provide global subelliptic estimates for the linearized inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff, and show that some global gain in the spatial direction is available although the corresponding operator is not elliptic in this direction. The proof is based on a multiplier method and the so-called Wick quantization, together with a careful analysis of the symbolic properties of the Weyl symbol of the Boltzmann collision operator

Automatic Differentiation of Rigid Body Dynamics for Optimal Control and Estimation

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

Bounded decomposition in the Brieskorn lattice and Pfaffian Picard--Fuchs systems for Abelian integrals

We suggest an algorithm for derivation of the Picard--Fuchs system of Pfaffian equations for Abelian integrals corresponding to semiquasihomogeneous Hamiltonians. It is based on an effective decomposition of polynomial forms in the Brieskorn lattice. The construction allows for an explicit upper bound on the norms of the polynomial coefficients, an important ingredient in studying zeros of these integrals.Comment: 17 pages in LaTeX2