Finding antipodal point grasps on irregularly shaped objects

Two-finger antipodal point grasping of arbitrarily shaped smooth 2-D and 3-D objects is considered. An object function is introduced that maps a finger contact space to the object surface. Conditions are developed to identify the feasible grasping region, F, in the finger contact space. A “grasping energy function”, E , is introduced which is proportional to the distance between two grasping points. The antipodal points correspond to critical points of E in F. Optimization and/or continuation techniques are used to find these critical points. In particular, global optimization techniques are applied to find the “maximal” or “minimal” grasp. Further, modeling techniques are introduced for representing 2-D and 3-D objects using B-spline curves and spherical product surfaces

Modeling Magnetic Field Structure of a Solar Active Region Corona using Nonlinear Force-Free Fields in Spherical Geometry

We test a nonlinear force-free field (NLFFF) optimization code in spherical geometry using an analytical solution from Low and Lou. Several tests are run, ranging from idealized cases where exact vector field data are provided on all boundaries, to cases where noisy vector data are provided on only the lower boundary (approximating the solar problem). Analytical tests also show that the NLFFF code in the spherical geometry performs better than that in the Cartesian one when the field of view of the bottom boundary is large, say, $20^\circ \times 20^\circ$. Additionally, We apply the NLFFF model to an active region observed by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) both before and after an M8.7 flare. For each observation time, we initialize the models using potential field source surface (PFSS) extrapolations based on either a synoptic chart or a flux-dispersal model, and compare the resulting NLFFF models. The results show that NLFFF extrapolations using the flux-dispersal model as the boundary condition have slightly lower, therefore better, force-free and divergence-free metrics, and contain larger free magnetic energy. By comparing the extrapolated magnetic field lines with the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) observations by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board SDO, we find that the NLFFF performs better than the PFSS not only for the core field of the flare productive region, but also for large EUV loops higher than 50 Mm.Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Robust topology optimization of three-dimensional photonic-crystal band-gap structures

We perform full 3D topology optimization (in which "every voxel" of the unit cell is a degree of freedom) of photonic-crystal structures in order to find optimal omnidirectional band gaps for various symmetry groups, including fcc (including diamond), bcc, and simple-cubic lattices. Even without imposing the constraints of any fabrication process, the resulting optimal gaps are only slightly larger than previous hand designs, suggesting that current photonic crystals are nearly optimal in this respect. However, optimization can discover new structures, e.g. a new fcc structure with the same symmetry but slightly larger gap than the well known inverse opal, which may offer new degrees of freedom to future fabrication technologies. Furthermore, our band-gap optimization is an illustration of a computational approach to 3D dispersion engineering which is applicable to many other problems in optics, based on a novel semidefinite-program formulation for nonconvex eigenvalue optimization combined with other techniques such as a simple approach to impose symmetry constraints. We also demonstrate a technique for \emph{robust} topology optimization, in which some uncertainty is included in each voxel and we optimize the worst-case gap, and we show that the resulting band gaps have increased robustness to systematic fabrication errors.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Optics Expres

A spin glass model for reconstructing nonlinearly encrypted signals corrupted by noise

An encryption of a signal ${\bf s}\in\mathbb{R^N}$ is a random mapping ${\bf s}\mapsto \textbf{y}=(y_1,\ldots,y_M)^T\in \mathbb{R}^M$ which can be corrupted by an additive noise. Given the Encryption Redundancy Parameter (ERP) $\mu=M/N\ge 1$, the signal strength parameter $R=\sqrt{\sum_i s_i^2/N}$, and the ('bare') noise-to-signal ratio (NSR) $\gamma\ge 0$, we consider the problem of reconstructing ${\bf s}$ from its corrupted image by a Least Square Scheme for a certain class of random Gaussian mappings. The problem is equivalent to finding the configuration of minimal energy in a certain version of spherical spin glass model, with squared Gaussian-distributed random potential. We use the Parisi replica symmetry breaking scheme to evaluate the mean overlap $p_{\infty}\in [0,1]$ between the original signal and its recovered image (known as 'estimator') as $N\to \infty$, which is a measure of the quality of the signal reconstruction. We explicitly analyze the general case of linear-quadratic family of random mappings and discuss the full $p_{\infty} (\gamma)$ curve. When nonlinearity exceeds a certain threshold but redundancy is not yet too big, the replica symmetric solution is necessarily broken in some interval of NSR. We show that encryptions with a nonvanishing linear component permit reconstructions with $p_{\infty}>0$ for any $\mu>1$ and any $\gamma<\infty$, with $p_{\infty}\sim \gamma^{-1/2}$ as $\gamma\to \infty$. In contrast, for the case of purely quadratic nonlinearity, for any ERP $\mu>1$ there exists a threshold NSR value $\gamma_c(\mu)$ such that $p_{\infty}=0$ for $\gamma>\gamma_c(\mu)$ making the reconstruction impossible. The behaviour close to the threshold is given by $p_{\infty}\sim (\gamma_c-\gamma)^{3/4}$ and is controlled by the replica symmetry breaking mechanism.Comment: 33 pages, 5 figure

Application of the Yin-Yang grid to a thermal convection of a Boussinesq fluid with infinite Prandtl number in a three-dimensional spherical shell

A new numerical finite difference code has been developed to solve a thermal convection of a Boussinesq fluid with infinite Prandtl number in a three-dimensional spherical shell. A kind of the overset (Chimera) grid named ``Yin-Yang grid'' is used for the spatial discretization. The grid naturally avoids the pole problems which are inevitable in the latitude-longitude grids. The code is applied to numerical simulations of mantle convection with uniform and variable viscosity. The validity of the Yin-Yang grid for the mantle convection simulation is confirmed

A Hybrid Radial Basis Function - Pseudospectral Method for Thermal Convection in a 3-D Spherical Shell

A novel hybrid spectral method that combines radial basis function (RBF) and Chebyshev pseudospectral (PS) methods in a “2+1” approach is presented for numerically simulating thermal convection in a 3-D spherical shell. This is the first study to apply RBFs to a full 3D physical model in spherical geometry. In addition to being spectrally accurate, RBFs are not defined in terms of any surface based coordinate system such as spherical coordinates. As a result, when used in the lateral directions, as in this study, they completely circumvent the pole issue with the further advantage that nodes can be “scattered” over the surface of a sphere. In the radial direction, Chebyshev polynomials are used, which are also spectrally accurate and provide the necessary clustering near the boundaries to resolve boundary layers. Applications of this new hybrid methodology are given to the problem of convection in the Earth’s mantle,which is modeled by a Boussinesq fluid at infinite Prandtl number. To see whether this numerical technique warrants further investigation, the study limits itself to an isoviscous mantle.Benchmark comparisons are presented with other currently used mantle convection codes for Rayleigh number 7 · 103 and 105. The algorithmic simplicity of the code (mostly due to RBFs)allows it to be written in less than 400 lines of Matlab and run on a single workstation. We find that our method is very competitive with those currently used in the literature