Computer-Integrated Design and Manufacture of Integrated Circuits

Contains reports on three research projects.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency DABT 63-95-C-0088Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency N00174-93-K-0035Stanford UniversityLeaders for Manufacturing Progra

Robotics Education and Research at Scale: A Remotely Accessible Robotics Development Platform

This paper introduces the KUKA Robot Learning Lab at KIT - a remotely accessible robotics testbed. The motivation behind the laboratory is to make state-of-the-art industrial lightweight robots more accessible for education and research. Such expensive hardware is usually not available to students or less privileged researchers to conduct experiments. This paper describes the design and operation of the Robot Learning Lab and discusses the challenges that one faces when making experimental robot cells remotely accessible. Especially safety and security must be ensured, while giving users as much freedom as possible when developing programs to control the robots. A fully automated and efficient processing pipeline for experiments makes the lab suitable for a large amount of users and allows a high usage rate of the robots

The use of telematics in the context of teacher education

Comunicação apresentada no II Congresso Online do Observatório para a Cibersociedade, 2-14 Novembro 2004.Telematics and the availability of the Internet for schools and the educational community are currently the subject of active discussion. This has stimulated a need to reflect on and research their role in education and in particular teacher education. This research is particularly important when considering the ?forces? of change, the challenges to education and the demands for a learning society. Therefore, the present research, which was conducted in the context of a PhD at the University of Exeter School of Education, supervised by Professors Niki Davis and Martin Hughes, aimed to find out how telematics can enhance the education and professional development of teachers

System for intelligent teleoperation research

The Automation Technology Branch of NASA Langley Research Center is developing a research capability in the field of artificial intelligence, particularly as applicable in teleoperator/robotics development for remote space operations. As a testbed for experimentation in these areas, a system concept has been developed and is being implemented. This system, termed DAISIE (Distributed Artificially Intelligent System for Interacting with the Environment), interfaces the key processes of perception, reasoning, and manipulation by linking hardware sensors and manipulators to a modular artificial intelligence (AI) software system in a hierarchical control structure. Verification experiments have been performed: one experiment used a blocksworld database and planner embedded in the DAISIE system to intelligently manipulate a simple physical environment; the other experiment implemented a joint-space collision avoidance algorithm. Continued system development is planned

Measuring NFS Performance in Wireless Networks

Technological trends suggest that soon communication networks will consist of a high speed wired backbone with numerous wireless Local Area Networks. Mobile computing and wireless subnetworks are increasingly in demand. Mobile routing solutions provide wireless LANs with seamless connectivity to backbone wired systems. However, these solutions do not provide acceptable performance. Wireless networks have distinct transmission characteristics which present challenges to achieving efficient performance. Performance over wireless links is limited by high error rates, mobility, and low bandwidth. We have studied the performance of TCP and NFS over a wireless network. The prevalence of these protocols means that mobile hosts will frequently use them when communicating with stationary hosts. Measurements have been collected to determine the response of these protocols in the presence of various error patterns. These measurements show that NFS and TCP performance suffer extreme degradation due to these wireless link characteristics. Unexpectedly, NFS performance is not better than an TCP FTP file transfer. NFS performance over wireless links is limited by large packet sizes, long retransmission timeouts, and slow response to losses. Our goal is to understand the effects of wireless communication on these protocols and improve performance without requiring changes to the current network Infrastructure. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-95-125

Distance learning applied to control engineering education

At the College of Engineering, Oregon State University, we have successfully developed and demonstrated a distance learning application utilizing emerging communications technologies in a new way to allow control engineering teaching laboratories to be accessed remotely. Second Best to Being There (SBBT) provides the remote user with all the capabilities of a local lab user through the laboratory environment control interface. This allows the remote student to develop, compile, debug, and run controllers in real-time on the experiments in our laboratory. The students are provided with live video and audio tools, giving them the sense of presence in the laboratory, and collaboration tools, facilitating interactions among users. SBBT has been implemented by effectively interfacing the student and the laboratory to the Internet

ISOTOPE SHIFT SPECTROSCOPY OF ULTRACOLD STRONTIUM

We describe the design, construction, and performance of a laser system to probe the ultra-narrow (Γ/2π ≈ mHz) clock transition 1S0 → 3P0 in strontium. We present the first reported spectroscopy of this transition in two of the bosonic isotopes, 84Sr and 86Sr. Furthermore, we measure the complete set of isotope shifts between all four stable isotopes on the clock line and the narrow intercombination line 1S0 → 3P1, permitting a King plot analysis of the isotope shifts. Complications arising from the unambiguous determination of a line center in 87Sr 3P1 prevent us from making claims about the King linearity, but we provide a statistical boot- strap analysis of the isotope shifts 88−84Sr and 88−86Sr to compute a field shift ratio F698/F689 = 0.9979, with a 95% confidence interval [0.9952,1.0008]. The intercept term K698 − (F698/F689) K689 is similarly determined to be -2.0 GHz-amu, with a 95% confidence interval [−3.9, −0.3] GHz-amu. Finally, we describe the design of a next-generation apparatus that will enable improvements on the results described here, as well as other studies that involve coherent manipulation of strontium atoms on the clock line