135,747 research outputs found
Interacting via the Heap in the Presence of Recursion
Almost all modern imperative programming languages include operations for
dynamically manipulating the heap, for example by allocating and deallocating
objects, and by updating reference fields. In the presence of recursive
procedures and local variables the interactions of a program with the heap can
become rather complex, as an unbounded number of objects can be allocated
either on the call stack using local variables, or, anonymously, on the heap
using reference fields. As such a static analysis is, in general, undecidable.
In this paper we study the verification of recursive programs with unbounded
allocation of objects, in a simple imperative language for heap manipulation.
We present an improved semantics for this language, using an abstraction that
is precise. For any program with a bounded visible heap, meaning that the
number of objects reachable from variables at any point of execution is
bounded, this abstraction is a finitary representation of its behaviour, even
though an unbounded number of objects can appear in the state. As a
consequence, for such programs model checking is decidable.
Finally we introduce a specification language for temporal properties of the
heap, and discuss model checking these properties against heap-manipulating
programs.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2012, arXiv:1212.345
Software systems for modeling articulated figures
Research in computer animation and simulation of human task performance requires sophisticated geometric modeling and user interface tools. The software for a research environment should present the programmer with a powerful but flexible substrate of facilities for displaying and manipulating geometric objects, yet insure that future tools have a consistent and friendly user interface. Jack is a system which provides a flexible and extensible programmer and user interface for displaying and manipulating complex geometric figures, particularly human figures in a 3D working environment. It is a basic software framework for high-performance Silicon Graphics IRIS workstations for modeling and manipulating geometric objects in a general but powerful way. It provides a consistent and user-friendly interface across various applications in computer animation and simulation of human task performance. Currently, Jack provides input and control for applications including lighting specification and image rendering, anthropometric modeling, figure positioning, inverse kinematics, dynamic simulation, and keyframe animation
Jack: A Toolkit for Manipulating Articulated Figures
The problem of positioning and manipulating three dimensional articulated figures is often handled by ad hoc techniques which are cumbersome to use. In this paper, we describe a system which provides a consistent and flexible user interface to a complex representation for articulated figures in a 3D environment. Jack is a toolkit of routines for displaying and manipulating complex geometric figures, and it provides a method of interactively manipulating arbitrary homogeneous transformations with a mouse. These transformations may specify the position and orientation of figures within a scene or the joint transformations within the figures themselves. Jack combines this method of 3D input with a flexible and informative screen management facility to provide a user-friendly interface for manipulating three dimensional objects
Acoustophoresis in Variously Shaped Liquid Droplets
The ability to precisely trap, transport and manipulate micrometer-sized
objects, including biological cells, DNA-coated microspheres and
microorganisms, is very important in life science studies and biomedical
applications. In this study, acoustic radiation force in an ultrasonic standing
wave field is used for micro-objects manipulation, a technique termed as
acoustophoresis. Free surfaces of liquid droplets are used as sound reflectors
to confine sound waves inside the droplets. Two techniques were developed for
precise control of droplet shapes: edge pinning and hydrophilic/hydrophobic
interface pinning. For all tested droplet shapes, including circular, annular
and rectangular, our experiments show that polymer micro particles can be
manipulated by ultrasound and form into a variety of patterns, for example,
concentric rings and radial lines in an annular droplet. The complexity of the
pattern increases with increasing frequency, and the observations are in line
with simulation results. The acoustic manipulation technique developed here has
the potential to be integrated into a more complex on-chip microfluidic
circuit. Especially because our method is well compatible with electrowetting
technology, which is a powerful tool for manipulating droplets with free
surfaces, the combination of the two methods can provide more versatile
manipulation abilities and may bring a wealth of novel applications. In the
end, we demonstrate for the first time that acoustophoresis can be used for
manipulating Caenorhabditis elegans
Robotic manipulation of a rotating chain
This paper considers the problem of manipulating a uniformly rotating chain:
the chain is rotated at a constant angular speed around a fixed axis using a
robotic manipulator. Manipulation is quasi-static in the sense that transitions
are slow enough for the chain to be always in "rotational" equilibrium. The
curve traced by the chain in a rotating plane -- its shape function -- can be
determined by a simple force analysis, yet it possesses complex multi-solutions
behavior typical of non-linear systems. We prove that the configuration space
of the uniformly rotating chain is homeomorphic to a two-dimensional surface
embedded in . Using that representation, we devise a manipulation
strategy for transiting between different rotation modes in a stable and
controlled manner. We demonstrate the strategy on a physical robotic arm
manipulating a rotating chain. Finally, we discuss how the ideas developed here
might find fruitful applications in the study of other flexible objects, such
as elastic rods or concentric tubes.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
An Approach to Distance Estimation with Stereo Vision Using Address-Event-Representation
Image processing in digital computer systems usually considers the
visual information as a sequence of frames. These frames are from cameras that
capture reality for a short period of time. They are renewed and transmitted at a
rate of 25-30 fps (typical real-time scenario). Digital video processing has to
process each frame in order to obtain a result or detect a feature. In stereo
vision, existing algorithms used for distance estimation use frames from two
digital cameras and process them pixel by pixel to obtain similarities and
differences from both frames; after that, depending on the scene and the
features extracted, an estimate of the distance of the different objects of the
scene is calculated. Spike-based processing is a relatively new approach that
implements the processing by manipulating spikes one by one at the time they
are transmitted, like a human brain. The mammal nervous system is able to
solve much more complex problems, such as visual recognition by
manipulating neuron spikes. The spike-based philosophy for visual information
processing based on the neuro-inspired Address-Event-Representation (AER) is
achieving nowadays very high performances. In this work we propose a two-
DVS-retina system, composed of other elements in a chain, which allow us to
obtain a distance estimation of the moving objects in a close environment. We
will analyze each element of this chain and propose a Multi Hold&Fire
algorithm that obtains the differences between both retinas.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-10639-C04-0
Manipulating Highly Deformable Materials Using a Visual Feedback Dictionary
The complex physical properties of highly deformable materials such as
clothes pose significant challenges fanipulation systems. We present a novel
visual feedback dictionary-based method for manipulating defoor autonomous
robotic mrmable objects towards a desired configuration. Our approach is based
on visual servoing and we use an efficient technique to extract key features
from the RGB sensor stream in the form of a histogram of deformable model
features. These histogram features serve as high-level representations of the
state of the deformable material. Next, we collect manipulation data and use a
visual feedback dictionary that maps the velocity in the high-dimensional
feature space to the velocity of the robotic end-effectors for manipulation. We
have evaluated our approach on a set of complex manipulation tasks and
human-robot manipulation tasks on different cloth pieces with varying material
characteristics.Comment: The video is available at goo.gl/mDSC4
Attention deployment during memorizing and executing complex instructions.
We investigated the mental rehearsal of complex action instructions by recording spontaneous eye movements of healthy adults as they looked at objects on a monitor. Participants heard consecutive instructions, each of the form "move [object] to [location]". Instructions were only to be executed after a go signal, by manipulating all objects successively with a mouse. Participants re-inspected previously mentioned objects already while listening to further instructions. This rehearsal behavior broke down after 4 instructions, coincident with participants' instruction span, as determined from subsequent execution accuracy. These results suggest that spontaneous eye movements while listening to instructions predict their successful execution
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