Practical Implementation of Attitude-Control Algorithms for an Underactuated Satellite

The challenging problem of controlling the attitude of satellites subject to actuator failures has been the subject of increased attention in recent years. The problem of controlling the attitude of a satellite on all three axes with two reaction wheels is addressed in this paper. This system is controllable in a zero-momentum mode. Three-axis attitude stability is proven by imposing a singular quaternion feedback law to the angular velocity trajectories.Two approaches are proposed and compared to achieve three-axis control: The first one does not require angular velocity measurements and is based on the assumption of a perfect zero momentum, while the second approach consists of tracking the desired angular velocity trajectories. The full-state feedback is a nonlinear singular controller. In-orbit tests of the first approach provide an unprecedented practical proof of three-axis stability with two control torques. The angular velocity tracking approach is shown to be less efficient using the nonlinear singular controller. However, when inverse optimization theory is applied to enhance the nonlinear singular controller, the angular velocity tracking approach is shown to be the most efficient. The resulting switched inverse optimal controller allows for a significant enhancement of settling time, for a prescribed level of the integrated torque

Some Supervision Required: Incorporating Oracle Policies in Reinforcement Learning via Epistemic Uncertainty Metrics

An inherent problem of reinforcement learning is performing exploration of an environment through random actions, of which a large portion can be unproductive. Instead, exploration can be improved by initializing the learning policy with an existing (previously learned or hard-coded) oracle policy, offline data, or demonstrations. In the case of using an oracle policy, it can be unclear how best to incorporate the oracle policy's experience into the learning policy in a way that maximizes learning sample efficiency. In this paper, we propose a method termed Critic Confidence Guided Exploration (CCGE) for incorporating such an oracle policy into standard actor-critic reinforcement learning algorithms. More specifically, CCGE takes in the oracle policy's actions as suggestions and incorporates this information into the learning scheme when uncertainty is high, while ignoring it when the uncertainty is low. CCGE is agnostic to methods of estimating uncertainty, and we show that it is equally effective with two different techniques. Empirically, we evaluate the effect of CCGE on various benchmark reinforcement learning tasks, and show that this idea can lead to improved sample efficiency and final performance. Furthermore, when evaluated on sparse reward environments, CCGE is able to perform competitively against adjacent algorithms that also leverage an oracle policy. Our experiments show that it is possible to utilize uncertainty as a heuristic to guide exploration using an oracle in reinforcement learning. We expect that this will inspire more research in this direction, where various heuristics are used to determine the direction of guidance provided to learning.Comment: Under review at TML

5′′-(4-Chloro­benzyl­idene)-1′,1′′-dimethyl-3′-phenyl­acenaphthene-1-spiro-2′-pyrrolidine-3′-spiro-3′′-pyridine-2,4′′-dione

In the title compound, C34H28Cl2N2O2, the five-membered pyrrolidine ring adopts an envelope conformation and the six-membered piperidinone ring is in a distorted half-chair conformation. The mol­ecular structure shows three intra­molecular C—H⋯O inter­actions and the crystal packing is stabilized through inter­molecular C—H⋯O and C—H⋯π inter­actions

Synthesis and Characterization of Nanocrystalline NiO-GDC via sodium alginate- mediated ionic sol gel method

In this study, nanocrystalline nickel oxide gadolinium-doped ceria (NiO-GDC) powder was synthesized using an ionic sol-gel method. The effects of calcination time and temperature on the particle size and the physiochemical properties of nanocrystalline NiO-GDC are presented in this paper. Using this method, gel beads were formed by contacting sodium alginate solution as the gelling template and metal (gadolinium/cerium/Ni) nitrates as the precursor. The obtained nanocrystallites were characterized using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, thermo gravimetric analysis, nitrogen adsorption/desorption analysis, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. It was observed that the increasing calcination temperature had affected both the particle size and the surface area of the NiO-GDC, whereas the increasing calcination time had only impacted the size of the particles. The smallest mesoporous nanocrystalline NiO-GDC powder (12.1225 ± 0.005 m2/g surface area), composed of cubic GDC (5.18 nm crystallite size) and cubic NiO (7.99 nm crystallite size) were synthesized at a calcination temperature of 500 °C for 2 hours. This study hopes to inspire more researches on the ionic-gelation method for synthesizing other metal nanostructures as well as other reaction parameters

Subtle temperature increase can interact with individual size and social context in shaping phenotypic traits of a coldwater fish

Temperature and individual egg size have been long studied in the development of fishes because of their direct effects on individual fitness. Here we studied the combined effects of three important factors for fish development, i.e. egg size, social environment and water temperature. Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus), a coldwater fish known to be phenotypically plastic, was used to investigate how these factors may affect growth and foraging behaviour of juvenile fish in a benign environment. We accounted for the social environment during early development by comparing fish raised in groups and in isolation. We examined the effect of egg size and a 2 degrees C difference on foraging behaviour, activity and growth a few weeks after first feeding. Growth trajectories of fish originating from large and small eggs were similar within each temperature: larger fish coming large eggs were at all time larger than smaller fish. There was no indication that small fish raised at a higher temperature grew faster than larger fish raised at a lower temperature. A 2 degrees C difference in temperature affected the behaviour of fish differently according to body size and/or social context. The foraging probability difference between fish raised in groups and fish briefly isolated was higher at 4.5 degrees C than at 6.5 degrees C for both size fish. Finally, there was no repeatability in foraging behaviour and mobility for isolated individuals. These results highlight the importance of small changes in temperature when evaluating growth and behaviour of fishes, and reveal the importance of considering the interaction of temperature with other factors, e.g. individual size and social environment, especially at early stages of development in fishes. We discuss these findings in the context of rapid changes in temperature and how temperature and its interaction with other factors may affect the phenotypes, ecology and evolution of coldwater fishes

Ionic–gelation synthesis of gadolinium doped ceria (Ce0.8Gd0.2O1.90) nanocomposite powder using sodium-alginate

Nanocomposite powders of gadolinium-doped ceria (GDC, Ce0.8Gd0.2O1.9) were synthesized via thermal treatment of the gel formed by contacting ionic solutions of sodium alginate as the jelling template and metal (gadolinium/cerium) nitrates as the starting material. The influence of calcination temperature and sodium alginate loading fraction on the properties of the synthesized GDC nanocomposite powders was investigated. Characterization was performed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy, Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy and nitrogen adsorption/desorption analysis. It was observed that the particle size and the surface area of the produced GDC nanocomposite powders are dominantly controlled by the calcination temperature, while the effect of sodium alginate loading fraction is limited by the range of the calcination temperature. In this study, the smallest mesoporous GDC nanocomposite powder with cubic fluorite structure (8 nm crystallite size and 3.05 ± 0.005 m2/g surface area) was synthesized using 2 wt. % of sodium alginate at a calcination temperature of 550 °C (for 4 h).The results of this study could help to perceive the influence of the basic processing variables on the particle size and the other physiochemical properties of GDC nanocomposite powders produced by the ionic-gelation method