Improving control engineering education with TRIK cybernetic system

International audienceWe present our experience in the application of a new cybernetic system, TRIK, for control engineering education at university level. The TRIK system is composed of an embedded controller, analogue and digital input-output interface and an inertial measurement unit which can be easily programmed with visual and text based computer languages. The system can be efficiently used for robotic and control engineering prototyping and education. In the present paper, we describe and discuss various applications of the system in education covering basic control theory problems and advanced robotic system development. Our experience with TRIK has demonstrated that the developed system and corresponding curricula improves the efficiency of control engineering education at university level, and has significant potential to promote science and technology at secondary school level

Signal invariance and trajectory steering problem for an autonomous wheeled robot

We give a new convenient parametrization of linear controllers that solve the problem of signal invariance (or disturbance cancellation) for MIMO plants. As an example of application of the obtained results we consider the trajectory tracking problem for non-holonomic wheeled transport robots

Mitf and Tfe3, two members of the Mitf-Tfe family of bHLH-Zip transcription factors, have important but functionally redundant roles in osteoclast development

The Mitf-Tfe family of basic helix–loop–helix-leucine zipper (bHLH-Zip) transcription factors encodes four family members: Mitf, Tfe3, Tfeb, and Tfec. In vitro, each protein in the family can bind DNA as a homo- or heterodimer with other family members. Mutational studies in mice have shown that Mitf is essential for melanocyte and eye development, whereas Tfeb is required for placental vascularization. Here, we uncover a role for Tfe3 in osteoclast development, a role that is functionally redundant with Mitf. Although osteoclasts seem normal in Mitf or Tfe3 null mice, the combined loss of the two genes results in severe osteopetrosis. We also show that Tfec mutant mice are phenotypically normal, and that the Tfec mutation does not alter the phenotype of Mitf, Tfeb, or Tfe3 mutant mice. Surprisingly, our studies failed to identify any phenotypic overlap between the different Mitf–Tfe mutations. These results suggest that heterodimeric interactions are not essential for Mitf-Tfe function in contrast to other bHLH-Zip families like Myc/Max/Mad, where heterodimeric interactions seem to be essential