An extension of the quickened display for manual control

It is very difficult (or even impossible) for a human to control plants of third order or more with little or no damping by just knowing the instantaneous error. It has been shown that adding first and/or higher order derivatives to the error signal and displaying the combined signal are effective in facilitating human control over such plants. This signal quickening technique by Birmingham and Taylor is further extended to incorporate the future trajectory variation into the displayed signal so as to minimize the tracking error. A method for tuning free parameters in ordinary and extended quickening is established by applying discrete-time optimal control. Experimental results for a triple integrator plant indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method to achieve high quality tracking

Vehicle Control for Automated Highway Systems for Improved Lateral Maneuverability

In this paper, longitudinal and lateral vehicle control for automated highway systems (AHS) are studied together for their coupling effects. It is shown that longitudinal controllers which directly control the wheel slip are inherently more stable, especially during lateral maneuvers on very slippery road conditions, than longitudinal controllers which do not take wheel slip into account

A Comprehensive Strategy for Longitudinal Vehicle Control with Fuzzy Supervisory Expert System

The main objectives of vehicle motion control on an automated highway system are stable and safe automatic longitudinal and/or lateral path following in a platoon of vehicles. Various controllers can be used to satisfy the same objectives, but they may require different variables to be sensed or different conditions to be met. Supervision can select a controller and switch to a different controller depending on the conditions. Specifically, a fuzzy supervisory expert system checks for various system conditions and chooses a controller from PID, PI, sliding mode and a fuzzy controller or gives a distress signal. The choice between PID and PI controllers is based on the availability of the error derivative. Robust and complex sliding mode control can counter the external disturbances which the PID and PI controllers cannot handle. The fuzzy controller is used when the sensors are not working perfectly but the sensor values are still reliable enough to define corresponding fuzzy linguistic variables

spl(2,1) dynamical supersymmetry and suppression of ferromagnetism in flat band double-exchange models

The low energy spectrum of the ferromagnetic Kondo lattice model on a N-site complete graph extended with on-site repulsion is obtained from the underlying spl(2,1) algebra properties in the strong coupling limit. The ferromagnetic ground state is realized for 1 and N+1 electrons only. We identify the large density of states to be responsible for the suppression of the ferromagnetic state and argue that a similar situation is encountered in the Kagome, pyrochlore, and other lattices with flat bands in their one-particle density of states.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

The preview control problem with application to man-machine system analysis

The preview control problem is formulated in a general form and its solution is obtained. The analytical tool used is discrete stochastic optimal control theory. Aiming the application to manual control situations with preview, time delay, observation noise, motor noise, etc. were included in formulating the problem. Manual preview control experiments were performed to qualitatively check the validity of the model, and it was found that the mechanism of the manual control problem was explained by the developed model

Analysis of Patients Visiting Niigata University Medical and Dental Hospital with Chief Complaints of Metal Allergy And/or Focal Infection in the Previous 8 Years

Dental metal allergy and dental focal infection are possible causes of dermatological diseases, but have been the subjects of few reports to date. We have been treating such patients in our special clinic for more than 20 years.The purpose of the present study was to investigate the mouths of patients visiting our dental hospital over an 8-year period, with the aim of clarifying whether dental metal allergy and/or dental focal infection affects their dermatologic conditions.We surveyed all clinical records of the 185 patients who visited Niigata University Medical and Dental Hospital with chief complaints of dental metal allergy since 2002. Diagnostics of skin diseases, periodontal records, periapical lesions, dental caries, dental metal series patch test results and Electron Probed Micro-Analysis (EPMA) data were investigated. Ninety-two (49%) patients were suffering from pustulosis palmaris et plantaris and 20 (11%) patients had lichen planus. Eighty-two (49%) patients showed positive reactions on patch testing. Based on the result of patch tests, Ni showed the highest positivity rate (62%, 51 patients), but on EPMA, the number of patients with Ni as an allergen was 14 (27%). On the other hand, more than 98% of patients who showed positive reactions on patch test to Pd and Au had these metals in their dental prostheses. In addition, 112 (60%) patients showed the possibility of dental focal infection

Tail Assisted Dynamic Self Righting: Full Derivations

This technical report is a companion document to the CLAWAR 2012 paper of the same name, for which we explicitly write out a full derivation of the kinematics and dynamics. Please refer to that document for motivation, experimentation, and discussion

Tail Assisted Dynamic Self Righting

In this paper we explore the design space of tails intended for self-righting a robot’s body during free fall. Conservation of total angular momentum imposes a dimensionless index of rotational efficacy upon the robot’s kinematic and dynamical parameters whose selection insures that for a given tail rotation, the body rotation will be identical at any size scale. In contrast, the duration of such a body reorientation depends upon the acceleration of the tail relative to the body, and power density of the tail’s actuator must increase with size in order to achieve the same maneuver in the same relative time. Assuming a simple controller and power-limited actuator, we consider maneuverability constraints upon two different types of parameters — morphological and energetic — that can be used for design. We show how these constraints inform contrasting tail design on two robots separated by a four-fold length scale, the 177g Tailbot and the 8.1kg X-RHex Lite (XRL). We compare previously published empirical self-righting behavior of the Tailbot with new, tailed XRL experiments wherein we drop it nose first from a 2.7 body length height and also deliberately run it off an elevated cliff to land safely on its springy legs in both cases. This was supported primarily by the ARL/GDRS RCTA and the NSF CiBER-IGERT under Award DGE-0903711. For more information: Kod*La

Series-Parallel and Parallel Identification Schemes for a Class of Continuous Nonlinear Systems

Fig. 4(a) shows the parameter estimates under the existence of the measmable disturbance (di = 5, a\ = 0) with the parameter estimates under the ideal condition (di = a\ = 0) overlaid. Since the inserted DDR's remove the disturbance from the inputoutput relation, the disturbance does not slow down the identification speed. Fig. 4(6) shows the parameter estimates under the existence of the unmeasurable disturbance (di = 0, d 2 = 1) with the parameter estimates under the ideal condition (di = di = 0) overlaid. There exists no difference between the two cases as far as the identification speed is concerned. In the simulation, the step disturbances, di and d 2 , were injected to the plant at k = 0. Thus, strictly speaking, at k = 0, di(k) and d 2 (fc) did not satisfy equation V Conclusions Adverse effects of deterministic disturbances in linear identification have been pointed out, and a method to remove such effects has been presented. This method works for measurable and unmeasurable disturbances which can be regarded as the outputs of free systems with known dynamics. The unmeasurable disturbance must always be removed to achieve successful identification. When the disturbance is measurable, however, it does not have to be removed if it can provide a positive contribution to identification. A constant disturbance was shown to slow down the identification speed. The best results will be obtained if one selects a DDR which removes only undesirable disturbances. In this technical brief, discrete series-parallel and parallel identification schemes for single-input, single-output systems were considered. The same principle, however, can be extended to other situations including the continuous time case and multi-input, and multi-output case. References 1 Astrom, K. J., and Eykhoff, P., "System Identification -A Survey," Automatica, Vol. 7, 1971, pp. 123-16

Manipulating transgenes using a chromosome vector

Recent technological advances have enabled us to visualize the organization and dynamics of local chromatin structures; however, the comprehensive mechanisms by which chromatin organization modulates gene regulation are poorly understood. We designed a human artificial chromosome vector that allowed manipulation of transgenes using a method for delivering chromatin architectures into different cell lines from human to fish. This methodology enabled analysis of de novo construction, epigenetic maintenance and changes in the chromatin architecture of specific genes. Expressive and repressive architectures of human STAT3 were established from naked DNA in mouse embryonic stem cells and CHO cells, respectively. Delivery of STAT3 within repressive architecture to embryonic stem cells resulted in STAT3 activation, accompanied by changes in DNA methylation. This technology for manipulating a single gene with a specific chromatin architecture could be utilized in applied biology, including stem cell science and regeneration medicine