Air vehicle simulator: an application for a cable array robot

The development of autonomous air vehicles can be an expensive research pursuit. To alleviate some of the financial burden of this process, we have constructed a system consisting of four winches each attached to a central pod (the simulated air vehicle) via cables - a cable-array robot. The system is capable of precisely controlling the three dimensional position of the pod allowing effective testing of sensing and control strategies before experimentation on a free-flying vehicle. In this paper, we present a brief overview of the system and provide a practical control strategy for such a system. ©2005 IEEE

Competing in the RoboCup Rescue Robot League

RoboCup Rescue is an international competition in which robots compete to find disaster victims in a simulated earthquake environment. It features both a Rescue Simulation League (RSL) which is entirely computer simulated, and a Rescue Robot League (RRL) with real robots and a test arena. This paper will describe the experience gained sending an undergraduate team to compete in the Rescue Robot League at the RoboCup German Open in 2008 and 2009. The design of the test arena and the rules of the competition will be outlined; as will the approaches taken by different teams; and the competition results

South Pole Telescope Software Systems: Control, Monitoring, and Data Acquisition

We present the software system used to control and operate the South Pole Telescope. The South Pole Telescope is a 10-meter millimeter-wavelength telescope designed to measure anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at arcminute angular resolution. In the austral summer of 2011/12, the SPT was equipped with a new polarization-sensitive camera, which consists of 1536 transition-edge sensor bolometers. The bolometers are read out using 36 independent digital frequency multiplexing (\dfmux) readout boards, each with its own embedded processors. These autonomous boards control and read out data from the focal plane with on-board software and firmware. An overall control software system running on a separate control computer controls the \dfmux boards, the cryostat and all other aspects of telescope operation. This control software collects and monitors data in real-time, and stores the data to disk for transfer to the United States for analysis

Securing The Root: A Proposal For Distributing Signing Authority

Management of the Domain Name System (DNS) root zone file is a uniquely global policy problem. For the Internet to connect everyone, the root must be coordinated and compatible. While authority over the legacy root zone file has been contentious and divisive at times, everyone agrees that the Internet should be made more secure. A newly standardized protocol, DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), would make the Internet's infrastructure more secure. In order to fully implement DNSSEC, the procedures for managing the DNS root must be revised. Therein lies an opportunity. In revising the root zone management procedures, we can develop a new solution that diminishes the impact of the legacy monopoly held by the U.S. government and avoids another contentious debate over unilateral U.S. control. In this paper we describe the outlines of a new system for the management of a DNSSEC-enabled root. Our proposal distributes authority over securing the root, unlike another recently suggested method, while avoiding the risks and pitfalls of an intergovernmental power sharing scheme

The flight telerobotic servicer: From functional architecture to computer architecture

After a brief tutorial on the NASA/National Bureau of Standards Standard Reference Model for Telerobot Control System Architecture (NASREM) functional architecture, the approach to its implementation is shown. First, interfaces must be defined which are capable of supporting the known algorithms. This is illustrated by considering the interfaces required for the SERVO level of the NASREM functional architecture. After interface definition, the specific computer architecture for the implementation must be determined. This choice is obviously technology dependent. An example illustrating one possible mapping of the NASREM functional architecture to a particular set of computers which implements it is shown. The result of choosing the NASREM functional architecture is that it provides a technology independent paradigm which can be mapped into a technology dependent implementation capable of evolving with technology in the laboratory and in space