Geometric sensing of known planar shapes

Industrial assembly involves sensing the pose (orientation and position) of a part. Efficient and reliable sensing strategies can be developed for an assembly task if the shape of the part is known in advance. In this article we investigate two problems of determining the pose of a polygonal part of known shape for the cases of a continuum and a finite number of possible poses respectively. The first problem, named sensing by inscription, involves determining the pose of a convex n-gon from a set of m supporting cones. An algorithm with running time O(nm) that almost always reduces to O(n+m log n) is presented to solve for all possible poses of the polygon. We prove that the number of possible poses cannot exceed 6n, given m ≥ 2 supporting cones with distinct vertices. Simulation experiments demonstrate that two supporting cones are sufficient to determine the real pose of the n-gon in most cases. Our results imply that sensing in practice can be carried out by obtaining viewing angles of a planar part at multiple exterior sites in the plane. On many occasions a parts feeder will have reduced the number of possible poses of a part to a small finite set. Our second problem, named sensing by point sampling

Pose and motion from contact

In the absence of vision, grasping an object often relies on tactile feedback from the fingertips. As the finger pushes the object, the fingertip can feel the contact point move. If the object is known in advance, from this motion the finger may infer the location of the contact point on the object and thereby the object pose. This paper primarily investigates the problem of determining the pose (orientation and position) and motion (velocity and angular velocity) of a planar object with known geometry from such contact motion generated by pushing. A dynamic analysis of pushing yields a nonlinear system that relates through contact the object pose and motion to the finger motion. The contact motion on the fingertip thus encodes certain information about the object pose. Nonlinear observability theory is employed to show that such information is sufficient for the finger to “observe ” not only the pose but also the motion of the object. Therefore a sensing strategy can be realized as an observer of the nonlinear dynamical system. Two observers are subsequently introduced. The first observer, based on the result of [15], has its “gain ” determined by the solution of a Lyapunov-like equation; it can be activated at any time instant during a push. The second observer, based on Newton’s method, solves for the initial (motionless) object pose from three intermediate contact points during a push. Under the Coulomb friction model, the paper copes with support friction in the plane and/or contact friction between the finger and the object. Extensive simulations have been done to demonstrate the feasibility of the two observers. Preliminary experiments (with an Adept robot) have also been conducted. A contact sensor has been implemented using strain gauges.

Development of a radiation hard version of the Analog Pipeline Chip APC128

The Analog Pipeline Chip (APC) is a low noise, low power readout chip for silicon micro strip detectors with 128 channels containing an analog pipeline of 32 buffers depth. The chip has been designed for operation at HERA with a power dissipation of 300-400 muW per channel and has been used also in several other particle physics experiments. In this paper we describe the development of a radiation hard version of this chip that will be used in the H1 vertex detector for operation at the luminosity upgraded HERA machine. A 128 channel prototyping chip with several amplifier variations has been designed in the radiation hard DMILL technology and measured. The results of various parameter variations are presented in this paper. Based on this, the design choice for the final production version of the APC128-DMILL has been made.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure

Ethnicity, voter alignment and political party affiliation - an African case: Zambia

Conventional wisdom holds that ethnicity provides the social cleavage for voting behav-iour and party affiliation in Africa. Because this is usually inferred from aggregate data of national election results, it might prove to be an ecological fallacy. The evidence based on individual data from an opinion survey in Zambia suggests that ethnicity matters for voter alignment and even more so for party affiliation, but it is certainly not the only factor. The analysis also points to a number of qualifications which are partly methodology-related. One is that the degree of ethnic voting can differ from one ethno-political group to the other depending on various degrees of ethnic mobilisation. Another is that if smaller eth-nic groups or subgroups do not identify with one particular party, it is difficult to find a significant statistical correlation between party affiliation and ethnicity - but that does not prove that they do not affiliate along ethnic lines.Wahlverhalten und Mitgliedschaft in politischen Parteien Afrikas ist nur wenig untersucht worden. Gewöhnlich wird argumentiert, dass Ethnizität als soziale Konfliktlinie das Wahlverhalten und die Parteienmitgliedschaft strukturiert. Da dieses Argument auf hoch aggregierten Wahldaten beruht, kann hier ein ökologischer Fehlschuss vorliegen. Die vorliegende Analyse beruht deshalb auf individuellen Umfragedaten aus Sambia. Das Ergebnis ist, dass Ethnizität tatsächlich eine Rolle für das Wahlverhalten und die Parteienmitgliedschaft spielt, aber keineswegs den einzigen Erklärungsfaktor darstellt. Die Analyse offenbart zudem eine Reihe von Einschränkungen und Qualifizierungen, die teilweise methodischer Natur sind. Eine ist, dass ethnisches Wahlverhalten und Parteienmitgliedschaft von einer ethnischen Gruppe zur anderen unterschiedlich ist, dass, wenn sich kleinere ethnische Gruppen oder Untergruppen mit keiner Partei identifizieren, es schwierig wird, statistisch signifikante Korrelationen zu finden - was indessen noch nicht beweist, dass Ethnizität keine Rolle spielt

5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Is Not Present in Appreciable Quantities in Arabidopsis DNA

5-Hydroxymethylcytosine (5-hmC) is an intermediate in active demethylation in metazoans, as well as a potentially stable epigenetic mark. Previous reports investigating 5-hydroxymethylcytosine in plants have reached conflicting conclusions. We systematically investigated whether 5-hmC is present in plant DNA using a range of methods. Using the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana, in addition to other plant species, we assayed the amount or distribution of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine by thin-layer chromatography, immunoprecipitation-chip, ELISA, enzymatic radiolabeling, and mass spectrometry. The failure to observe 5-hydroxymethylcytosine by thin-layer chromatography established an upper bound for the possible fraction of the nucleotide in plant DNA. Antibody-based methods suggested that there were low levels of 5-hmC in plant DNA, but these experiments were potentially confounded by cross-reactivity with the abundant base 5-methylcytosine. Enzymatic radiolabeling and mass spectrometry, the most sensitive methods for detection that we used, failed to detect 5-hydroxymethylcytosine in A. thaliana genomic DNA isolated from a number of different tissue types and genetic backgrounds. Taken together, our results led us to conclude that 5-hmC is not present in biologically relevant quantities within plant genomic DNA.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship Progra