6,682 research outputs found
Asymptotically Stable Walking of a Five-Link Underactuated 3D Bipedal Robot
This paper presents three feedback controllers that achieve an asymptotically
stable, periodic, and fast walking gait for a 3D (spatial) bipedal robot
consisting of a torso, two legs, and passive (unactuated) point feet. The
contact between the robot and the walking surface is assumed to inhibit yaw
rotation. The studied robot has 8 DOF in the single support phase and 6
actuators. The interest of studying robots with point feet is that the robot's
natural dynamics must be explicitly taken into account to achieve balance while
walking. We use an extension of the method of virtual constraints and hybrid
zero dynamics, in order to simultaneously compute a periodic orbit and an
autonomous feedback controller that realizes the orbit. This method allows the
computations to be carried out on a 2-DOF subsystem of the 8-DOF robot model.
The stability of the walking gait under closed-loop control is evaluated with
the linearization of the restricted Poincar\'e map of the hybrid zero dynamics.
Three strategies are explored. The first strategy consists of imposing a
stability condition during the search of a periodic gait by optimization. The
second strategy uses an event-based controller. In the third approach, the
effect of output selection is discussed and a pertinent choice of outputs is
proposed, leading to stabilization without the use of a supplemental
event-based controller
Characterizations of Pseudo-Codewords of LDPC Codes
An important property of high-performance, low complexity codes is the
existence of highly efficient algorithms for their decoding. Many of the most
efficient, recent graph-based algorithms, e.g. message passing algorithms and
decoding based on linear programming, crucially depend on the efficient
representation of a code in a graphical model. In order to understand the
performance of these algorithms, we argue for the characterization of codes in
terms of a so called fundamental cone in Euclidean space which is a function of
a given parity check matrix of a code, rather than of the code itself. We give
a number of properties of this fundamental cone derived from its connection to
unramified covers of the graphical models on which the decoding algorithms
operate. For the class of cycle codes, these developments naturally lead to a
characterization of the fundamental polytope as the Newton polytope of the
Hashimoto edge zeta function of the underlying graph.Comment: Submitted, August 200
Heat transport by laminar boundary layer flow with polymers
Motivated by recent experimental observations, we consider a steady-state
Prandtl-Blasius boundary layer flow with polymers above a slightly heated
horizontal plate and study how the heat transport might be affected by the
polymers. We discuss how a set of equations can be derived for the problem and
how these equations can be solved numerically by an iterative scheme. By
carrying out such a scheme, we find that the effect of the polymers is
equivalent to producing a space-dependent effective viscosity that first
increases from the zero-shear value at the plate then decreases rapidly back to
the zero-shear value far from the plate. We further show that such an effective
viscosity leads to an enhancement in the drag, which in turn leads to a
reduction in heat transport.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl
A wall interference assessment/correction system
A Wall Signature method, the Hackett method, has been selected to be adapted for the 12-ft Wind Tunnel wall interference assessment/correction (WIAC) system in the present phase. This method uses limited measurements of the static pressure at the wall, in conjunction with the solid wall boundary condition, to determine the strength and distribution of singularities representing the test article. The singularities are used in turn for estimating wall interferences at the model location. The Wall Signature method will be formulated for application to the unique geometry of the 12-ft Tunnel. The development and implementation of a working prototype will be completed, delivered and documented with a software manual. The WIAC code will be validated by conducting numerically simulated experiments rather than actual wind tunnel experiments. The simulations will be used to generate both free-air and confined wind-tunnel flow fields for each of the test articles over a range of test configurations. Specifically, the pressure signature at the test section wall will be computed for the tunnel case to provide the simulated 'measured' data. These data will serve as the input for the WIAC method-Wall Signature method. The performance of the WIAC method then may be evaluated by comparing the corrected parameters with those for the free-air simulation. Each set of wind tunnel/test article numerical simulations provides data to validate the WIAC method. A numerical wind tunnel test simulation is initiated to validate the WIAC methods developed in the project. In the present reported period, the blockage correction has been developed and implemented for a rectangular tunnel as well as the 12-ft Pressure Tunnel. An improved wall interference assessment and correction method for three-dimensional wind tunnel testing is presented in the appendix
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