Singularity Avoidance for Cart-Mounted Hand-Guided Collaborative Robots: A Variational Approach

Most collaborative robots (cobots) can be taught by hand guiding: essentially, by manually jogging the robot, an operator teaches some configurations to be employed as via points. Based on those via points, Cartesian end-effector trajectories such as straight lines, circular arcs or splines are then constructed. Such methods can, in principle, be employed for cart-mounted cobots (i.e., when the jogging involves one or two linear axes, besides the cobot axes). However, in some applications, the sole imposition of via points in Cartesian space is not sufficient. On the contrary, albeit the overall system is redundant, (i) the via points must be reached at the taught joint configurations, and (ii) the undesirable singularity (and near-singularity) conditions must be avoided. The naive approach, consisting of setting the cart trajectory beforehand (for instance, by imposing a linear-in-time motion law that crosses the taught cart configurations), satisfies the first need, but does not guarantee the satisfaction of the second. Here, we propose an approach consisting of (i) a novel strategy for decoupling the planning of the cart trajectory and that of the robot joints, and (ii) a novel variational technique for computing the former in a singularity-aware fashion, ensuring the avoidance of a class of workspace singularity and near-singularity configurations

Closed-loop Control from Data-Driven Open-Loop Optimal Control Trajectories

We show how the recent works on data driven open-loop minimum-energy control for linear systems can be exploited to obtain closed-loop piecewise-affine control laws, by employing a state-space partitioning technique which is at the basis of the static relatively optimal control. In addition, we propose a way for employing portions of the experimental input and state trajectories to recover information about the natural movement of the state and dealing with non-zero initial conditions. The same idea can be used for formulating several open-loop control problems entirely based on data, possibly including input and state constraints

Star-forming galaxies versus low- and high-excitation radio AGN in the VLA-COSMOS 3GHz Large Project

We study the composition of the faint radio population selected from the VLA-COSMOS 3GHz Large Project, a radio continuum survey performed at 10 cm wavelength. The survey covers the full 2 square degree COSMOS field with mean $rms\sim2.3$ $\mu$Jy/beam, cataloging 10,899 source components above $5\times rms$. By combining these radio data with UltraVISTA, optical, near-infrared, and Spitzer/IRAC mid-infrared data, as well as X-ray data from the Chandra Legacy, and Chandra COSMOS surveys, we gain insight into the emission mechanisms within our radio sources out to redshifts of $z\sim5$. From these emission characteristics we classify our souces as star forming galaxies or AGN. Using their multi-wavelength properties we further separate the AGN into sub-samples dominated by radiatively efficient and inefficient AGN, often referred to as high- and low-excitation emission line AGN. We compare our method with other results based on fitting of the sources' spectral energy distributions using both galaxy and AGN spectral models, and those based on the infrared-radio correlation. We study the fractional contributions of these sub-populations down to radio flux levels of $\sim$10 $\mu$Jy. We find that at 3 GHz flux densities above $\sim$400 $\mu$Jy quiescent, red galaxies, consistent with the low-excitation radio AGN class constitute the dominant fraction. Below densities of $\sim$200 $\mu$Jy star-forming galaxies begin to constitute the largest fraction, followed by the low-excitation, and X-ray- and IR-identified high-excitation radio AGN.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, The many facets of extragalactic radio surveys: towards new scientific challenges, Bologna 20-23 October 201

Faint AGNs at z>4 in the CANDELS GOODS-S field: looking for contributors to the reionization of the Universe

In order to derive the AGN contribution to the cosmological ionizing emissivity we have selected faint AGN candidates at $z>4$ in the CANDELS GOODS-South field which is one of the deepest fields with extensive multiwavelength coverage from Chandra, HST, Spitzer and various groundbased telescopes. We have adopted a relatively novel criterion. As a first step high redshift galaxies are selected in the NIR $H$ band down to very faint levels ($H\leq27$) using reliable photometric redshifts. This corresponds at $z>4$ to a selection criterion based on the galaxy rest-frame UV flux. AGN candidates are then picked up from this parent sample if they show X-ray fluxes above a threshold of $F_X\sim 1.5\times 10^{-17}$ cgs (0.5-2 keV). We have found 22 AGN candidates at $z>4$ and we have derived the first estimate of the UV luminosity function in the redshift interval $4<z<6.5$ and absolute magnitude interval $-22.5\lesssim M_{1450} \lesssim -18.5$ typical of local Seyfert galaxies. The faint end of the derived luminosity function is about two/four magnitudes fainter at $z\sim 4-6$ than that derived from previous UV surveys. We have then estimated ionizing emissivities and hydrogen photoionization rates in the same redshift interval under reasonable assumptions and after discussion of possible caveats, the most important being the large uncertainties involved in the estimate of photometric redshift for sources with featureless, almost power-law SEDs and/or low average escape fraction of ionizing photons from the AGN host galaxies. We argue that, under reasonable evaluations of possible biases, the probed AGN population can produce at $z=4-6.5$ photoionization rates consistent with that required to keep highly ionized the intergalactic medium observed in the Lyman-$\alpha$ forest of high redshift QSO spectra, providing an important contribution to the cosmic reionization.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, A&A accepted, updated figure 6, corrected typo in table 3, updated reference

Type 2 Quasars at the heart of dust-obscured galaxies (DOGs) at high z

Dust‐obscured galaxies (DOGs) represent a recently‐discovered, intriguing class of mid‐IR luminous sources at high redshifts. Evidence is mounting that DOGs (selected on the basis of extreme optical/mid‐IR color cut and high mid‐IR flux level) may represent systems caught in the process of host galaxy formation and intense SMBH growth. Here we report the results of an X‐ray spectroscopic survey aimed at studying the X‐ray properties of these sources and establishing the fraction of Type 2 quasars among them

High-z X-ray Obscured Quasars in Galaxies with Extreme Mid-IR/Optical Colors

Extreme Optical/Mid‐IR color cuts have been used to uncover a population of dust‐enshrouded, mid‐IR luminous galaxies at high redshifts. Several lines of evidence point towards the presence of an heavily absorbed, possibly Compton‐thick quasar at the heart of these systems. Nonetheless, the X‐ray spectral properties of these intriguing sources still remain largely unexplored. Here we present an X‐ray spectroscopic study of a large sample of 44 extreme dust‐obscured galaxies (EDOGs) with F_(24μm)/F_R > 2000 and F_(24μm) > 1.3 mJy selected from a 6 deg^2 region in the SWIRE fields. The application of our selection criteria to a wide area survey has been capable of unveiling a population of X‐ray luminous, absorbed z > 1 quasars which is mostly missed in the traditional optical/X‐ray surveys performed so far. Advances in the understanding of the X‐ray properties of these recently‐discovered sources by Simbol‐X observations will be also discussed

The 2-10 keV unabsorbed luminosity function of AGN from the XMM-Newton LSS, CDFS and COSMOS surveys

The XMM-LSS, XMM-COSMOS, and XMM-CDFS surveys are complementary in terms of sky coverage and depth. Together, they form a clean sample with the least possible variance in instrument effective areas and PSF. Therefore this is one of the best samples available to determine the 2-10 keV luminosity function of AGN and its evolution. The samples and the relevant corrections for incompleteness are described. A total of 2887 AGN is used to build the LF in the luminosity interval 10^42-10^46 erg/s, and in the redshift interval 0.001-4. A new method to correct for absorption by considering the probability distribution for the column density conditioned on the hardness ratio is presented. The binned luminosity function and its evolution is determined with a variant of the Page-Carrera method, improved to include corrections for absorption and to account for the full probability distribution of photometric redshifts. Parametric models, namely a double power-law with LADE or LDDE evolution, are explored using Bayesian inference. We introduce the Watanabe-Akaike information criterion (WAIC) to compare the models and estimate their predictive power. Our data are best described by the LADE model, as hinted by the WAIC indicator. We also explore the 15-parameter extended LDDE model recently proposed by Ueda et al., and find that this extension is not supported by our data. The strength of our method is that it provides: un-absorbed non-parametric estimates; credible intervals for luminosity function parameters; model choice according to which one has more predictive power for future data.Comment: In press on A&A. The revised version corrects typos and the LF normalisations in tables 1,2,5 and figs.9-12, which were on an incorrect scale. Online material available at http://www.astro.lu.se/~piero/xlf/xlf-paper-tables2.tgz . The software is available on the author's website http://www.astro.lu.se/~piero/LFTools/index.html and on github: https://github.com/piero-ranalli/LFTool