28,122 research outputs found

    Towards Autonomous Selective Harvesting: A Review of Robot Perception, Robot Design, Motion Planning and Control

    Full text link
    This paper provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in selective harvesting robots (SHRs) and their potential for addressing the challenges of global food production. SHRs have the potential to increase productivity, reduce labour costs, and minimise food waste by selectively harvesting only ripe fruits and vegetables. The paper discusses the main components of SHRs, including perception, grasping, cutting, motion planning, and control. It also highlights the challenges in developing SHR technologies, particularly in the areas of robot design, motion planning and control. The paper also discusses the potential benefits of integrating AI and soft robots and data-driven methods to enhance the performance and robustness of SHR systems. Finally, the paper identifies several open research questions in the field and highlights the need for further research and development efforts to advance SHR technologies to meet the challenges of global food production. Overall, this paper provides a starting point for researchers and practitioners interested in developing SHRs and highlights the need for more research in this field.Comment: Preprint: to be appeared in Journal of Field Robotic

    Geometric Properties of the 2-D Peskin Problem

    Full text link
    The 2-D Peskin problem describes a 1-D closed elastic string immersed and moving in a 2-D Stokes flow that is induced by its own elastic force. The geometric shape of the string and its internal stretching configuration evolve in a coupled way, and they combined govern the dynamics of the system. In this paper, we show that certain geometric quantities of the moving string satisfy extremum principles and decay estimates. As a result, we can prove that the 2-D Peskin problem admits a unique global solution when the initial data satisfies a medium-size geometric condition on the string shape, while no assumption on the size of stretching is needed

    An exploration of the language within Ofsted reports and their influence on primary school performance in mathematics: a mixed methods critical discourse analysis

    Get PDF
    This thesis contributes to the understanding of the language of Ofsted reports, their similarity to one another and associations between different terms used within ‘areas for improvement’ sections and subsequent outcomes for pupils. The research responds to concerns from serving headteachers that Ofsted reports are overly similar, do not capture the unique story of their school, and are unhelpful for improvement. In seeking to answer ‘how similar are Ofsted reports’ the study uses two tools, a plagiarism detection software (Turnitin) and a discourse analysis tool (NVivo) to identify trends within and across a large corpus of reports. The approach is based on critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 2009; Fairclough, 1989) but shaped in the form of practitioner enquiry seeking power in the form of impact on pupils and practitioners, rather than a more traditional, sociological application of the method. The research found that in 2017, primary school section 5 Ofsted reports had more than half of their content exactly duplicated within other primary school inspection reports published that same year. Discourse analysis showed the quality assurance process overrode variables such as inspector designation, gender, or team size, leading to three distinct patterns of duplication: block duplication, self-referencing, and template writing. The most unique part of a report was found to be the ‘area for improvement’ section, which was tracked to externally verified outcomes for pupils using terms linked to ‘mathematics’. Those required to improve mathematics in their areas for improvement improved progress and attainment in mathematics significantly more than national rates. These findings indicate that there was a positive correlation between the inspection reporting process and a beneficial impact on pupil outcomes in mathematics, and that the significant similarity of one report to another had no bearing on the usefulness of the report for school improvement purposes within this corpus

    On Hilb/Sym correspondence for K3 surfaces

    Full text link
    We derive a crepant resolution correspondence for some genus zero reduced Gromov-Witten invariants of Hilbert schemes of points on a K3 surface.Comment: 9 page

    Optimal Control of the Landau-de Gennes Model of Nematic Liquid Crystals

    Full text link
    We present an analysis and numerical study of an optimal control problem for the Landau-de Gennes (LdG) model of nematic liquid crystals (LCs), which is a crucial component in modern technology. They exhibit long range orientational order in their nematic phase, which is represented by a tensor-valued (spatial) order parameter Q=Q(x)Q = Q(x). Equilibrium LC states correspond to QQ functions that (locally) minimize an LdG energy functional. Thus, we consider an L2L^2-gradient flow of the LdG energy that allows for finding local minimizers and leads to a semi-linear parabolic PDE, for which we develop an optimal control framework. We then derive several a priori estimates for the forward problem, including continuity in space-time, that allow us to prove existence of optimal boundary and external ``force'' controls and to derive optimality conditions through the use of an adjoint equation. Next, we present a simple finite element scheme for the LdG model and a straightforward optimization algorithm. We illustrate optimization of LC states through numerical experiments in two and three dimensions that seek to place LC defects (where Q(x)=0Q(x) = 0) in desired locations, which is desirable in applications.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure

    Technical Dimensions of Programming Systems

    Get PDF
    Programming requires much more than just writing code in a programming language. It is usually done in the context of a stateful environment, by interacting with a system through a graphical user interface. Yet, this wide space of possibilities lacks a common structure for navigation. Work on programming systems fails to form a coherent body of research, making it hard to improve on past work and advance the state of the art. In computer science, much has been said and done to allow comparison of programming languages, yet no similar theory exists for programming systems; we believe that programming systems deserve a theory too. We present a framework of technical dimensions which capture the underlying characteristics of programming systems and provide a means for conceptualizing and comparing them. We identify technical dimensions by examining past influential programming systems and reviewing their design principles, technical capabilities, and styles of user interaction. Technical dimensions capture characteristics that may be studied, compared and advanced independently. This makes it possible to talk about programming systems in a way that can be shared and constructively debated rather than relying solely on personal impressions. Our framework is derived using a qualitative analysis of past programming systems. We outline two concrete ways of using our framework. First, we show how it can analyze a recently developed novel programming system. Then, we use it to identify an interesting unexplored point in the design space of programming systems. Much research effort focuses on building programming systems that are easier to use, accessible to non-experts, moldable and/or powerful, but such efforts are disconnected. They are informal, guided by the personal vision of their authors and thus are only evaluable and comparable on the basis of individual experience using them. By providing foundations for more systematic research, we can help programming systems researchers to stand, at last, on the shoulders of giants

    Hybrid time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau simulations of block copolymer nanocomposites: nanoparticle anisotropy

    Full text link
    Block copolymer melts are perfect candidates to template the position of colloidal nanoparticles in the nanoscale, on top of their well-known suitability for lithography applications. This is due to their ability to self-assemble into periodic ordered structures, in which nanoparticles can segregate depending on the polymer-particle interactions, size and shape. The resulting coassembled structure can be highly ordered as a combination of both the polymeric and colloidal properties. The time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau model for the block copolymer was combined with Brownian dynamics for nanoparticles, resulting in an efficient mesoscopic model to study the complex behaviour of block copolymer nanocomposites. This review covers recent developments of the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau/Brownian dynamics scheme. This includes efforts to parallelise the numerical scheme and applications of the model. The validity of the model is studied by comparing simulation and experimental results for isotropic nanoparticles. Extensions to simulate nonspherical and inhomogeneous nanoparticles are discussed and simulation results are discussed. The time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau/Brownian dynamics scheme is shown to be a flexible method which can account for the relatively large system sizes required to study block copolymer nanocomposite systems, while being easily extensible to simulate nonspherical nanoparticles

    Low-cost fabrication of printed electronics devices through continuous wave laser-induced forward transfer

    Full text link
    Laser induced forward transfer (LIFT) is a direct-writing technique that allows printing inks from a liquid film in a similar way to inkjet printing but with fewer limitations concerning ink viscosity and loading particle size. In this work we prove that liquid inks can be printed through LIFT by using continuous wave (CW) instead of pulsed lasers, which allows a substantial reduction in the cost of the printing system. Through the fabrication of a functional circuit on both rigid and flexible substrates (plastic and paper) we provide a proof-of-concept that demonstrates the versatility of the technique for printed electronics applications

    Band width estimates with lower scalar curvature bounds

    Get PDF
    A band is a connected compact manifold X together with a decomposition ∂X = ∂−X t ∂+X where ∂±X are non-empty unions of boundary components. If X is equipped with a Riemannian metric, the pair (X, g) is called a Riemannian band and the width of (X, g) is defined to be the distance between ∂−X and ∂+X with respect to g. Following Gromov’s seminal work on metric inequalities with scalar curvature, the study of Riemannian bands with lower curvature bounds has been an active field of research in recent years, which led to several breakthroughs on longstanding open problems in positive scalar curvature geometry and to a better understanding of the positive mass theorem in general relativity In the first part of this thesis we combine ideas of Gromov and Cecchini-Zeidler and use the variational calculus surrounding so called µ-bubbles to establish a scalar and mean curvature comparison principle for Riemannian bands with the property that no closed embedded hypersurface which separates the two ends of the band admits a metric of positive scalar curvature. The model spaces we use for this comparison are warped product over scalar flat manifolds with log-concave warping functions. We employ ideas from surgery and bordism theory to deduce that, if Y is a closed orientable manifold which does not admit a metric of positive scalar curvature, dim(Y ) 6= 4 and Xn≤7 = Y ×[−1, 1], the width of X with respect to any Riemannian metric with scalar curvature ≥ n(n − 1) is bounded from above by 2π n. This solves, up to dimension 7, a conjecture due to Gromov in the orientable case. Furthermore, we adapt and extend our methods to show that, if Y is as before and Mn≤7 = Y × R, then M does not admit a metric of positive scalar curvature. This solves, up to dimension 7 a conjecture due to Rosenberg and Stolz in the orientable case. In the second part of this thesis we explore how these results transfer to the setting where the lower scalar curvature bound is replaced by a lower bound on the macroscopic scalar curvature of a Riemannian band. This curvature condition amounts to an upper bound on the volumes of all unit balls in the universal cover of the band. We introduce a new class of orientable manifolds we call filling enlargeable and prove: If Y is filling enlargeable, Xn = Y × [−1, 1] and g is a Riemannian metric on X with the property that the volumes of all unit balls in the universal cover of (X, g) are bounded from above by a small dimensional constant εn, then width(X, g) ≤ 1. Finally, we establish that whether or not a closed orientable manifold is filling enlargeable or not depends on the image of the fundamental class under the classifying map of the universal cover
    • …
    corecore