Air pollution modelling using a graphics processing unit with CUDA

The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a powerful tool for parallel computing. In the past years the performance and capabilities of GPUs have increased, and the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) - a parallel computing architecture - has been developed by NVIDIA to utilize this performance in general purpose computations. Here we show for the first time a possible application of GPU for environmental studies serving as a basement for decision making strategies. A stochastic Lagrangian particle model has been developed on CUDA to estimate the transport and the transformation of the radionuclides from a single point source during an accidental release. Our results show that parallel implementation achieves typical acceleration values in the order of 80-120 times compared to CPU using a single-threaded implementation on a 2.33 GHz desktop computer. Only very small differences have been found between the results obtained from GPU and CPU simulations, which are comparable with the effect of stochastic transport phenomena in atmosphere. The relatively high speedup with no additional costs to maintain this parallel architecture could result in a wide usage of GPU for diversified environmental applications in the near future.Comment: 5 figure

Parametric Study of Changes in Human Balancing Skill by Repeated Balancing Trials on Rolling Balance Board

Dynamic balance conditions were realized by asking eight volunteers to stand on uniaxial balance board with adjustable geometry and to carry out 60 s long balancing trials. Four different balance board geometry were used, each associated with different difficulty level. Balancing trials were repeated five times weekly (learning period) in order to test improvement of balancing skill. The measurement was repeated eight weeks after the learning period in order to check the persistence of the balancing skill (confirmation session). Oscillations of ankle angle and hip angle were monitored by OptiTrack motion capture system and four stabilometry parameters were used to characterize improvement in balancing performance, namely, Standard Deviation (STD), Largest Amplitude (LA), Normalized Path Length (NPL) and Mean Power Frequency (MPF). STD and NPL show similar tendency to the preliminary expectations, therefore they can be considered as good measures to describe balancing performance. Results show that subjects used ankle strategy for the less difficult balance board configurations, while for the more difficult tasks, hip strategy was also involved. Changes in STD and NPL during the learning period showed that the improvement and the persistence in balancing skill is more significant for more difficult balancing tasks

Composing Control Barrier Functions for Complex Safety Specifications

The increasing complexity of control systems necessitates control laws that guarantee safety w.r.t. complex combinations of constraints. In this letter, we propose a framework to describe compositional safety specifications with control barrier functions (CBFs). The specifications are formulated as Boolean compositions of state constraints, and we propose an algorithmic way to create a single continuously differentiable CBF that captures these constraints and enables safety-critical control. We describe the properties of the proposed CBF, and we demonstrate its efficacy by numerical simulations.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE Control System Letters (L-CSS) and the 2024 American Control Conference (ACC). 6 pages, 3 figure

MECHANICAL MODEL FOR HUMAN BALANCING ON ROLLING BALANCE BOARD

A two-degree-of-freedom mechanical model was developed to analyze human balancing on rolling balance board in the frontal plane. The human nervous system is modeled as a proportionalderivative controller with constant feedback delay. The radius R of the wheels and the board distance h measured from the center of the wheel are adjustable parameters. Simulation results using the mechanical model were compared with real balancing trials recorded by an OptiTrack motion capture system. The goal of the paper is to investigate whether the two-degree-of-freedom model is accurate enough to model the balancing task and to introduce a stabilometry parameter in order to characterize balancing skill in case of different set of R and h. The conclusion is that the angle of the upper body and the angle of the head also play an important role in the balancing process therefore a three- or four-degree-of-freedom model is more appropriate

Safety-Critical Traffic Control by Connected Automated Vehicles

Connected automated vehicles (CAVs) have shown great potential in improving traffic throughput and stability. Although various longitudinal control strategies have been developed for CAVs to achieve string stability in mixed-autonomy traffic systems, the potential impact of these controllers on safety has not yet been fully addressed. This paper proposes safety-critical traffic control (STC) by CAVs -- a strategy that allows a CAV to stabilize the traffic behind it, while maintaining safety relative to both the preceding vehicle and the following connected human-driven vehicles (HDVs). Specifically, we utilize control barrier functions (CBFs) to impart collision-free behavior with formal safety guarantees to the closed-loop system. The safety of both the CAV and HDVs is incorporated into the framework through a quadratic program-based controller, that minimizes deviation from a nominal stabilizing traffic controller subject to CBF-based safety constraints. Considering that some state information of the following HDVs may be unavailable to the CAV, we employ state observer-based CBFs for STC. Finally, we conduct extensive numerical simulations -- that include vehicle trajectories from real data -- to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach in achieving string stable and, at the same time, provably safe traffic

Connected Cruise and Traffic Control for Pairs of Connected Automated Vehicles

This paper considers mixed traffic consisting of connected automated vehicles equipped with vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity and human-driven vehicles. A control strategy is proposed for communicating pairs of connected automated vehicles, where the two vehicles regulate their longitudinal motion by responding to each other, and, at the same time, stabilize the human-driven traffic between them. Stability analysis is conducted to find stabilizing controllers, and simulations are used to show the efficacy of the proposed approach. The impact of the penetration of connectivity and automation on the string stability of traffic is quantified. It is shown that, even with moderate penetration, connected automated vehicle pairs executing the proposed controllers achieve significant benefits compared to when these vehicles are disconnected and controlled independently.Comment: Accepted to the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. 11 pages, 10 figure

On the Safety of Connected Cruise Control: Analysis and Synthesis with Control Barrier Functions

Connected automated vehicles have shown great potential to improve the efficiency of transportation systems in terms of passenger comfort, fuel economy, stability of driving behavior and mitigation of traffic congestions. Yet, to deploy these vehicles and leverage their benefits, the underlying algorithms must ensure their safe operation. In this paper, we address the safety of connected cruise control strategies for longitudinal car following using control barrier function (CBF) theory. In particular, we consider various safety measures such as minimum distance, time headway and time to conflict, and provide a formal analysis of these measures through the lens of CBFs. Additionally, motivated by how stability charts facilitate stable controller design, we derive safety charts for existing connected cruise controllers to identify safe choices of controller parameters. Finally, we combine the analysis of safety measures and the corresponding stability charts to synthesize safety-critical connected cruise controllers using CBFs. We verify our theoretical results by numerical simulations.Comment: Accepted to the 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. 6 pages, 5 figure

Potrebe u ishrani mlađi štuke (esox lucius) gajene u recirkulacionom sistemu

Zahvaljujući napretku tehnologije, danas je moguće intenzivno gajenje juvenilne štuke u recirkulacionom sistemu korišćenjem formulisane komercijalne hrane (Wolnicki i Górny 1997). Komercijalna hrana koja se trenutno koristi za ishranu štuke je formulisana za druge vrste kao što su pastrmka, som i jesetra. Ova hrana se veoma razlikuje po sastavu proteina i sadržaju energije, što može da utiče na parametre proizvodnje. Smanjivanje odnosa svrarljivosti proteina/energetska efikasnost (DP/DE) u smešama može dovesti do većeg zadržavanja proteina, međutim može imati efekte na zdravlje riba i kvalitet proizvoda. Prvi cilj ove studije je bio da se istraži efekat komercijalnih smeša sa različitom koncentracijom proteina i lipida na juvenilne štuke manje od 20g (eksperiment I) i preko 70g (eksperiment II). Današnji trendovi u proizvodnji hrane za ribe su usmereni u pravcu zamene ribljeg brašna alternativnim izvorima proteina kao što su biljke, suvozemne životinje i nus-proizvodi. Ovi trendovi su dirigovani kako ekonomskim tako i etičkim pitanjima (Brinker and Reiter 2011). Drugi cilj ovog rada je bio da se istraži delimična zamena ribljeg brašna u smešama. U trećem eksperimentu, ispitivana je delimična zamena ribljeg brašna sa pšeničnim glutenom i živinskim brašnom

Verifying Safe Transitions between Dynamic Motion Primitives on Legged Robots

Functional autonomous systems often realize complex tasks by utilizing state machines comprised of discrete primitive behaviors and transitions between these behaviors. This architecture has been widely studied in the context of quasi-static and dynamics-independent systems. However, applications of this concept to dynamical systems are relatively sparse, despite extensive research on individual dynamic primitive behaviors, which we refer to as "motion primitives." This paper formalizes a process to determine dynamic-state aware conditions for transitions between motion primitives in the context of safety. The result is framed as a "motion primitive graph" that can be traversed by standard graph search and planning algorithms to realize functional autonomy. To demonstrate this framework, dynamic motion primitives -- including standing up, walking, and jumping -- and the transitions between these behaviors are experimentally realized on a quadrupedal robot