A novel spherical actuator: Design and control

The paper describes the design and control of a novel spherical permanent magnet actuator which is capable of two-degrees-freedom and a high specific torque. Based on an analytical actuator model, an optimal design procedure is developed to yield maximum output torque or maximum system acceleration for a given payload. The control of the actuator, whose dynamics are similar to those of robotic manipulators, is facilitated by the establishment of a complete actuation system model. A robust control law is applied, and its effectiveness is demonstrated by computer simulatio

Quadrature Points via Heat Kernel Repulsion

We discuss the classical problem of how to pick $N$ weighted points on a $d-$dimensional manifold so as to obtain a reasonable quadrature rule $$\frac{1}{|M|}\int_{M}{f(x) dx} \simeq \frac{1}{N} \sum_{n=1}^{N}{a_i f(x_i)}.$$ This problem, naturally, has a long history; the purpose of our paper is to propose selecting points and weights so as to minimize the energy functional \sum_{i,j =1}^{N}{ a_i a_j \exp\left(-\frac{d(x_i,x_j)^2}{4t}\right) } \rightarrow \min, \quad \mbox{where}~t \sim N^{-2/d}, $d(x,y)$ is the geodesic distance and $d$ is the dimension of the manifold. This yields point sets that are theoretically guaranteed, via spectral theoretic properties of the Laplacian $-\Delta$, to have good properties. One nice aspect is that the energy functional is universal and independent of the underlying manifold; we show several numerical examples

On Born's conjecture about optimal distribution of charges for an infinite ionic crystal

We study the problem for the optimal charge distribution on the sites of a fixed Bravais lattice. In particular, we prove Born's conjecture about the optimality of the rock-salt alternate distribution of charges on a cubic lattice (and more generally on a d-dimensional orthorhombic lattice). Furthermore, we study this problem on the two-dimensional triangular lattice and we prove the optimality of a two-component honeycomb distribution of charges. The results holds for a class of completely monotone interaction potentials which includes Coulomb type interactions. In a more general setting, we derive a connection between the optimal charge problem and a minimization problem for the translated lattice theta function.Comment: 32 pages. 3 Figures. To appear in Journal of Nonlinear Science. DOI :10.1007/s00332-018-9460-