48,348 research outputs found
"The fridge door is open" : temporal verification of a robotic assistant's behaviours
Robotic assistants are being designed to help, or work with, humans in a variety of situations from assistance within domestic situations, through medical care, to industrial settings. Whilst robots have been used in industry for some time they are often limited in terms of their range of movement or range of tasks. A new generation of robotic assistants have more freedom to move, and are able to autonomously make decisions and decide between alternatives. For people to adopt such robots they will have to be shown to be both safe and trustworthy. In this paper we focus on formal verification of a set of rules that have been developed to control the Care-O-bot, a robotic assistant located in a typical domestic environment. In particular, we apply model-checking, an automated and exhaustive algorithmic technique, to check whether formal temporal properties are satisfied on all the possible behaviours of the system. We prove a number of properties relating to robot behaviours, their priority and interruptibility, helping to support both safety and trustworthiness of robot behaviours
Research opportunities in loss of red blood cell mass in space flight
Decreases of red blood cell mass and plasma volume have been observed consistently following manned space flights. Losses of red cell mass by United States astronauts have averaged 10 to 15% (range: 2 to 21%). Based on postflight estimates of total hemoglobin, Soviet cosmonauts engaged in space missions lasting from 1 to 7 months have exhibited somewhat greater losses. Restoration of red cell mass requires from 4 to 6 weeks following return to Earth, regardless of the duration of space flight
Maximum-Likelihood Comparisons of Tully-Fisher and Redshift Data: Constraints on Omega and Biasing
We compare Tully-Fisher (TF) data for 838 galaxies within cz=3000 km/sec from
the Mark III catalog to the peculiar velocity and density fields predicted from
the 1.2 Jy IRAS redshift survey. Our goal is to test the relation between the
galaxy density and velocity fields predicted by gravitational instability
theory and linear biasing, and thereby to estimate where is the linear bias parameter for IRAS galaxies.
Adopting the IRAS velocity and density fields as a prior model, we maximize the
likelihood of the raw TF observables, taking into account the full range of
selection effects and properly treating triple-valued zones in the
redshift-distance relation. Extensive tests with realistic simulated galaxy
catalogs demonstrate that the method produces unbiased estimates of
and its error. When we apply the method to the real data, we model the presence
of a small but significant velocity quadrupole residual (~3.3% of Hubble flow),
which we argue is due to density fluctuations incompletely sampled by IRAS. The
method then yields a maximum likelihood estimate
(1-sigma error). We discuss the constraints on and biasing that follow
if we assume a COBE-normalized CDM power spectrum. Our model also yields the
1-D noise noise in the velocity field, including IRAS prediction errors, which
we find to be be 125 +/- 20 km/sec.Comment: 53 pages, 20 encapsulated figures, two tables. Submitted to the
Astrophysical Journal. Also available at http://astro.stanford.edu/jeff
The Velocity Field from Type Ia Supernovae Matches the Gravity Field from Galaxy Surveys
We compare the peculiar velocities of nearby SNe Ia with those predicted by
the gravity fields of full sky galaxy catalogs. The method provides a powerful
test of the gravitational instability paradigm and strong constraints on the
density parameter beta = Omega^0.6/b. For 24 SNe Ia within 10,000 km/s we find
the observed SNe Ia peculiar velocities are well modeled by the predictions
derived from the 1.2 Jy IRAS survey and the Optical Redshift Survey (ORS). Our
best is 0.4 from IRAS, and 0.3 from the ORS, with beta>0.7 and
beta<0.15 ruled out at 95% confidence levels from the IRAS comparison.
Bootstrap resampling tests show these results to be robust in the mean and in
its error. The precision of this technique will improve as additional nearby
SNe Ia are discovered and monitored.Comment: 16 pages (LaTex), 3 postscript figure
An Upsilon Point in a Spin Model
We present analytic evidence for the occurrence of an upsilon point, an
infinite checkerboard structure of modulated phases, in the ground state of a
spin model. The structure of the upsilon point is studied by calculating
interface--interface interactions using an expansion in inverse spin
anisotropy.Comment: 18 pages ReVTeX file, including 6 figures encoded with uufile
IRAS versus POTENT Density Fields on Large Scales: Biasing and Omega
The galaxy density field as extracted from the IRAS 1.2 Jy redshift survey is
compared to the mass density field as reconstructed by the POTENT method from
the Mark III catalog of peculiar velocities. The reconstruction is done with
Gaussian smoothing of radius 12 h^{-1}Mpc, and the comparison is carried out
within volumes of effective radii 31-46 h^{-1}Mpc, containing approximately
10-26 independent samples. Random and systematic errors are estimated from
multiple realizations of mock catalogs drawn from a simulation that mimics the
observed density field in the local universe. The relationship between the two
density fields is found to be consistent with gravitational instability theory
in the mildly nonlinear regime and a linear biasing relation between galaxies
and mass. We measure beta = Omega^{0.6}/b_I = 0.89 \pm 0.12 within a volume of
effective radius 40 h^{-1}Mpc, where b_I is the IRAS galaxy biasing parameter
at 12 h^{-1}Mpc. This result is only weakly dependent on the comparison volume,
suggesting that cosmic scatter is no greater than \pm 0.1. These data are thus
consistent with Omega=1 and b_I\approx 1. If b_I>0.75, as theoretical models of
biasing indicate, then Omega>0.33 at 95% confidence. A comparison with other
estimates of beta suggests scale-dependence in the biasing relation for IRAS
galaxies.Comment: 35 pages including 10 figures, AAS Latex, Submitted to The
Astrophysical Journa
Overconstrained dynamics in galaxy redshift surveys
The least-action principle (LAP) method is used on four galaxy redshift
surveys to measure the density parameter Omega_m and the matter and
galaxy-galaxy power spectra. The datasets are PSCz, ORS, Mark III and SFI. The
LAP method is applied on the surveys simultaneously, resulting in an
overconstrained dynamical system that describes the cosmic overdensities and
velocity flows. The system is solved by relaxing the constraint that each
survey imposes upon the cosmic fields. A least-squares optimization of the
errors that arise in the process yields the cosmic fields and the value of
Omega_m that is the best fit to the ensemble of datasets. The analysis has been
carried out with a high-resolution Gaussian smoothing of 500 km/s and over a
spherical selected volume of radius 9,000 km/s. We have assigned a weight to
each survey, depending on their density of sampling, and this parameter
determines their relative influence in limiting the domain of the overall
solution. The influence of each survey on the final value of Omega_m, the
cosmographical features of the cosmic fields and the power spectra largely
depends on the distribution function of the errors in the relaxation of the
constraints. We find that PSCz and Mark III are closer to the final solution
than ORS and SFI. The likelihood analysis yields Omega_m= 0.37\pm 0.01 to
1sigma level. PSCz and SFI are the closest to this value, whereas ORS and Mark
III predict a somewhat lower Omega_m. The model of bias employed is a
scale-dependent one, and we retain up to 42 bias coefficients b_{rl} in the
spherical harmonics formalism. The predicted power spectra are estimated in the
range of wavenumbers 0.02-0.49h Mpc^{-1}, and we compare these results with
measurements recently reported in the literature.Comment: 10 pages, no figure
Summary of NASA landing-gear research
Research relative to tire tread, powered-wheel taxiing, air cushion landing systems, and crosswind landing gear is discussed
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