A shared position/force control methodology for teleoperation

A flexible and computationally efficient shared position/force control concept and its implementation in the Robot Control C Library (RCCL) are presented form the point of teleoperation. This methodology enables certain degrees of freedom to be position-controlled through real time manual inputs and the remaining degrees of freedom to be force-controlled by computer. Functionally, it is a hybrid control scheme in that certain degrees of freedom are designated to be under position control, and the remaining degrees of freedom to be under force control. However, the methodology is also a shared control scheme because some degrees of freedom can be put under manual control and the other degrees of freedom put under computer control. Unlike other hybrid control schemes, which process position and force commands independently, this scheme provides a force control loop built on top of a position control inner loop. This feature minimizes the computational burden and increases disturbance rejection. A simple implementation is achieved partly because the joint control servos that are part of most robots can be used to provide the position control inner loop. Along with this control scheme, several menus were implemented for the convenience of the user. The implemented control scheme was successfully demonstrated for the tasks of hinged-panel opening and peg-in-hole insertion

Correlation of the earth's rotation rate and the secular change of the geomagnetic field

Power spectral density analysis using Burg's maximum entropy method was applied to the geomagnetic dipole field and its rate of change for the years 1901 to 1969. Both spectra indicate relative maxima at 0.015 cycles/year and its harmonics. These maxima correspond approximately to 66, 33, 22, 17, 13, 11, and 9-year spectral lines. The application of the same analysis techniques to the length-of-day (l.o.d) fluctuations for the period 1865 to 1961 reveal similar spectral characteristics. Although peaks were observed at higher harmonics of the fundamental frequency, the 22-year and 11-year lines are not attributed unambiguously to the solar magnetic cycle and the solar cycle. It is suggested that the similarity in the l.o.d fluctuations and the dipole field variations is related to the motion within the earth's fluid core during the past one hundred years

Dynamical Image Charge Effect in Molecular Tunnel Junctions: Beyond Energy Level Alignment

When an electron tunnels between two metal contacts it temporarily induces an image charge (IC) in the electrodes which acts back on the tunneling electron. It is usually assumed that the IC forms instantaneously such that a static model for the image potential applies. Here we investigate how the finite IC formation time affects charge transport through a molecule suspended between two electrodes. For a single level model, an analytical treatment shows that the conductance is suppressed by a factor $Z^2$ (compared to the static IC approximation) where $Z$ is the quasiparticle renormalization factor. We show that $Z$ can be expressed either in terms of the plasma frequency of the electrode or as the overlap between the ground states of the electrode with and without an electron on the molecule. First-principles GW calculations for benzene-diamine connected to gold electrodes show that the dynamical corrections can reduce the conductance by more than a factor of two.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure