Synchronized computational architecture for generalized bilateral control of robot arms

A master six degree of freedom Force Reflecting Hand Controller (FRHC) is available at a master site where a received image displays, in essentially real time, a remote robotic manipulator which is being controlled in the corresponding six degree freedom by command signals which are transmitted to the remote site in accordance with the movement of the FRHC at the master site. Software is user-initiated at the master site in order to establish the basic system conditions, and then a physical movement of the FRHC in Cartesean space is reflected at the master site by six absolute numbers that are sensed, translated and computed as a difference signal relative to the earlier position. The change in position is then transmitted in that differential signal form over a high speed synchronized bilateral communication channel which simultaneously returns robot-sensed response information to the master site as forces applied to the FRHC so that the FRHC reflects the feel of what is taking place at the remote site. A system wide clock rate is selected at a sufficiently high rate that the operator at the master site experiences the Force Reflecting operation in real time

A universal computer control system for motors

A control system for a multi-motor system such as a space telerobot, having a remote computational node and a local computational node interconnected with one another by a high speed data link is described. A Universal Computer Control System (UCCS) for the telerobot is located at each node. Each node is provided with a multibus computer system which is characterized by a plurality of processors with all processors being connected to a common bus, and including at least one command processor. The command processor communicates over the bus with a plurality of joint controller cards. A plurality of direct current torque motors, of the type used in telerobot joints and telerobot hand-held controllers, are connected to the controller cards and responds to digital control signals from the command processor. Essential motor operating parameters are sensed by analog sensing circuits and the sensed analog signals are converted to digital signals for storage at the controller cards where such signals can be read during an address read/write cycle of the command processing processor

The Political Economy of Government Debt in England (1693-1800): War, Liquidity, and Institutional Innovation

Economists and historians have offered several explanations for the significant fluctuations in 1 8th century British government interest rates. This article discusses their short-comings and supports the thesis that the fluctuations in interest rates were largely a function of England's participation in large-scale wars. The risks facing the government-being deposed in the event the war is lost or defaulting on loans because of a shortfall in revenues-hurt their "credit worthiness" in the eyes of investors. Thus, lenders demanded high interest rates to compensate themselves for investing in risky government loans

Technology transfer: an efficient means of knowledge flow

After the change in the political system, any necessary changes did not occur regarding many fields of the Hungarian economic and social life: after the millennium it started to lag behind the countries in East Central Europe, and in the increasingly growing competition it is forced to loose significant position. Defective decisions in field of economic policy resulted that the country became file-closer among altering economies. With the most significant macroeconomical indicators that are signed in the study, the loser Hungarian position is traceable.Предприятия сегодня более отзывчивы к техническому и технологическому прогрессу,управляют своими активами технологий более стратегически. Тем временем, решении технологий перешли к людям незнакомым с динамикой технологий в лаборатории или на рынке. Интеграция технологий и повторное их использование страдают, не координируя структуру или форумы планирования бизнеса. Решение, согласно некоторым, является методическим подходом к интегрированной технологии, планируя названный «Технологией Roadmapping», который получил более широкое развитие в прошлом десятилетии

The market analysis of branded, new generation hungaricums

Natural capabilities of Hungary are particularly favourable for agricultural and food production. There are good possibilities both in cultivation of plants and in animal husbandry on plough- and grasslands. Hungary's share and its competitive position, however, decreased on European and world market in the past years. Therefore our research was focused on developing new animal products meeting the changing consumers' demands by their nutritional benefits and by their natural way of production. The study highlights four product s, namely goose - liver produced by considerately fatten up, rabbit meat with low fat and cholesterol levels, beef rich in omega - 3 fatty acids and selenium enriched eggs. The final goal is to form the basis of test - marketing being necessary to sale new branded products. By performing it we can introduce marketable products on national and international markets.Export, New product, Nutritional benefits, Position, Marketing strategy, Competition, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing,

An 8-DOF dual-arm system for advanced teleoperation performance experiments

This paper describes the electro-mechanical and control features of an 8-DOF manipulator manufactured by AAI Corporation and installed at the Jet Propulsion Lab. (JPL) in a dual-arm setting. The 8-DOF arm incorporates a variety of features not found in other lab or industrial manipulators. Some of the unique features are: 8-DOF revolute configuration with no lateral offsets at joint axes; 1 to 5 payload to weight ratio with 20 kg (44 lb) payload at a 1.75 m (68.5 in.) reach; joint position measurement with dual relative encoders and potentiometer; infinite roll of joint 8 with electrical and fiber optic slip rings; internal fiber optic link of 'smart' end effectors; four-axis wrist; graphite epoxy links; high link and joint stiffness; use of an upgraded JPL Universal Motor Controller (UMC) capable of driving up to 16 joints. The 8-DOF arm is equipped with a 'smart' end effector which incorporates a 6-DOF forcemoment sensor at the end effector base and grasp force sensors at the base of the parallel jaws. The 8-DOF arm is interfaced to a 6 DOF force reflecting hand controller. The same system is duplicated for and installed at NASA-Langley

Impact of end effector technology on telemanipulation performance

Generic requirements for end effector design are briefly summarized as derived from generic functional and operational requirements. Included is a brief summary of terms and definitions related to end effector technology. The second part contains a brief overview of end effector technology work as JPL during the past ten years, with emphasis on the evolution of new mechanical, sensing and control capabilities of end effectors. The third and major part is devoted to the description of current end effector technology. The ongoing work addresses mechanical, sensing and control details with emphasis on mechanical ruggedness, increased resolution in sensing, and close electronic and control integration with overall telemanipulator control system

Performance capabilities of a JPL dual-arm advanced teleoperation system

The system comprises: (1) two PUMA 560 robot arms, each equipped with the latest JPL developed smart hands which contain 3-D force/moment and grasp force sensors; (2) two general purpose force reflecting hand controllers; (3) a NS32016 microprocessors based distributed computing system together with JPL developed universal motor controllers; (4) graphics display of sensor data; (5) capabilities for time delay experiments; and (6) automatic data recording capabilities. Several different types of control modes are implemented on this system using different feedback control techniques. Some of the control modes and the related feedback control techniques are described, and the achievable control performance for tracking position and force trajectories are reported. The interaction between position and force trajectory tracking is illustrated. The best performance is obtained by using a novel, task space error feedback technique

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