61,241 research outputs found
Feasibility study of a synthesis procedure for array feeds to improve radiation performance of large distorted reflector antennas
Surface errors on parabolic reflector antennas degrade the overall performance of the antenna. Space antenna structures are difficult to build, deploy and control. They must maintain a nearly perfect parabolic shape in a harsh environment and must be lightweight. Electromagnetic compensation for surface errors in large space reflector antennas can be used to supplement mechanical compensation. Electromagnetic compensation for surface errors in large space reflector antennas has been the topic of several research studies. Most of these studies try to correct the focal plane fields of the reflector near the focal point and, hence, compensate for the distortions over the whole radiation pattern. An alternative approach to electromagnetic compensation is presented. The proposed technique uses pattern synthesis to compensate for the surface errors. The pattern synthesis approach uses a localized algorithm in which pattern corrections are directed specifically towards portions of the pattern requiring improvement. The pattern synthesis technique does not require knowledge of the reflector surface. It uses radiation pattern data to perform the compensation
Reverse Engineering Trimmed NURB Surfaces From Laser Scanned Data
A common reverse engineering problem is to convert several hundred thousand points
collected from the surface of an object via a digitizing process, into a coherent geometric
model that is easily transferred to a CAD software such as a solid modeler for either design
improvement or manufacturing and analysis. These data are very dense and make data-set
manipulation difficult and tedious. Many commercial solutions exist but involve time
consuming interaction to go from points to surface meshes such as BSplines or NURBS (Non
Uniform Rational BSplines). Our approach differs from current industry practice in that we
produce a mesh with little or no interaction from the user. The user can produce degree 2 and
higher BSpline surfaces and can choose the degree and number ofsegments as parameters to
the system. The BSpline surface is both compact and curvature continuous. The former
property reduces the large storage overhead, and the later implies a smooth can be created
from noisy data. In addition, the nature ofthe BSpline allows one to easily and smoothly alter
the surface, making re-engineering extremely feasible. The BSpline surface is created using
the principle ofhigher orders least squares with smoothing functions at the edges. Both linear
and cylindrical data sets are handled using an automated parameterization method. Also,
because ofthe BSpline's continuous nature, a multiresolutional-triangulated mesh can quickly
be produced. This last fact means that an STL file is simple to generate. STL files can also be
easily used as input to the system.Mechanical Engineerin
Real-time High Resolution Fusion of Depth Maps on GPU
A system for live high quality surface reconstruction using a single moving
depth camera on a commodity hardware is presented. High accuracy and real-time
frame rate is achieved by utilizing graphics hardware computing capabilities
via OpenCL and by using sparse data structure for volumetric surface
representation. Depth sensor pose is estimated by combining serial texture
registration algorithm with iterative closest points algorithm (ICP) aligning
obtained depth map to the estimated scene model. Aligned surface is then fused
into the scene. Kalman filter is used to improve fusion quality. Truncated
signed distance function (TSDF) stored as block-based sparse buffer is used to
represent surface. Use of sparse data structure greatly increases accuracy of
scanned surfaces and maximum scanning area. Traditional GPU implementation of
volumetric rendering and fusion algorithms were modified to exploit sparsity to
achieve desired performance. Incorporation of texture registration for sensor
pose estimation and Kalman filter for measurement integration improved accuracy
and robustness of scanning process
Robot trajectory planning using OLP and structured light 3D machine vision
This paper proposes a new methodology for robotic offline programming (OLP) addressing the issue of automatic program generation directly from 3D CAD models and verification through online 3D reconstruction. Limitations of current OLP include manufacturing tolerances between CAD and workpieces and inaccuracies in workpiece placement and modelled work cell. These issues are addressed and demonstrated through surface scanning, registration, and global and local error estimation. The method allows the robot to adjust the welding path designed from the CAD model to the actual workpiece. Alternatively, for non-repetitive tasks and where a CAD model is not available, it is possible to interactively define the path online over the scanned surface
Unwind: Interactive Fish Straightening
The ScanAllFish project is a large-scale effort to scan all the world's
33,100 known species of fishes. It has already generated thousands of
volumetric CT scans of fish species which are available on open access
platforms such as the Open Science Framework. To achieve a scanning rate
required for a project of this magnitude, many specimens are grouped together
into a single tube and scanned all at once. The resulting data contain many
fish which are often bent and twisted to fit into the scanner. Our system,
Unwind, is a novel interactive visualization and processing tool which
extracts, unbends, and untwists volumetric images of fish with minimal user
interaction. Our approach enables scientists to interactively unwarp these
volumes to remove the undesired torque and bending using a piecewise-linear
skeleton extracted by averaging isosurfaces of a harmonic function connecting
the head and tail of each fish. The result is a volumetric dataset of a
individual, straight fish in a canonical pose defined by the marine biologist
expert user. We have developed Unwind in collaboration with a team of marine
biologists: Our system has been deployed in their labs, and is presently being
used for dataset construction, biomechanical analysis, and the generation of
figures for scientific publication
Extension of Bethe's diffraction model to conical Geometry: application to near field optics
The generality of the Bethe's two dipole model for light diffraction through
a subwavelength aperture in a conducting plane is studied in the radiation zone
for coated conical fiber tips as those used in near field scanning optical
microscopy. In order to describe the angular radiated power of the tip
theoretically, we present a simple, analytical model for small apertures
(radius < 40 nm) based on a multipole expansion. Our model is able to reproduce
the available experimental results. It proves relatively insensitive to cone
angle and aperture radius and contains, as a first approximation, the empirical
two-dipole model proposed earlier
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