Infrastructure catalogue and criteria for a PBS approach of European heavy commercial vehicles regulation and smart access programme

26th PIARC World Road Congress, ABU DHABI, EMIRATS ARABES UNIS, 06-/10/2019 - 10/10/2019In Europe, regulation on weights and dimensions of trucks are prescriptive, rather than performance based, as it is introduced in some other countries (Australia, Canada, South Africa). The performance based standards (PBS) allow more flexibility in the vehicle design and optimize their performances with respect to the infrastructure constraints. Thus, PBS facilitate innovation and industrial progresses, while mitigating adverse effects on infrastructure and road safety. Therefore, the European project FALCON (2016-2018), supported by CEDR proposed a methodology for the development of performance-based criteria and future PBS in Europe. This paper presents the approach developed for bridges and pavements criteria assessment and implementation. For bridges, an exhaustive catalogue of structures has been developed, made of a pool of influence lines representative of the European bridge stock. Then, several design traffic load models used in the EU Member States, including the load models proposed in the Eurocode EN1991-2 Traffic loads on road bridges have been applied and compared on these structures. The governing load models and structures for the current traffic loads have been determined. This enabled proposing a performance-based standard approach, using either a bridge formula or a well-chosen upper limit of the load effects induced by the authorized heavy vehicles. For pavements, a catalogue representing the standard, bituminous and rigid, European pavement structures was developed. The various wears have been reviewed, and design criteria have been listed. The individual impacts of the vehicles of a reference fleet have been calculated, making possible to rank them in terms of aggressiveness for the pavement. That paves the way for a future PBS approach of heavy vehicle type approval, or a revision of the European Directive 2015/719 on commercial vehicles weights and dimensions. It also opens new perspectives to develop a SIAP (Smart Infrastructure Access Programme) to be implemented on the Trans-European road Network, as a tool to enhance the durability of the existing infrastructure with the lowest restrictions on the road freight movements

Comprehensive 3D modeling of steam cracking furnaces: influence of flue gas radiative properties, burner geometry and shadow effects

C

COST Action TU1208 – Working Group 2 – GPR surveying of pavements, bridges, tunnels and buildings; underground utility and void sensing

This work aims at presenting the main results achieved by Working Group (WG) 2 "GPR surveying of pavements, bridges, tunnels and buildings; underground utility and void sensing" of the COST (European COoperation in Science and Technology) Action TU1208 "Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar" (www.GPRadar.eu, www.cost.eu). The principal goal of the Action, started in April 2013 and ending in October 2017, is to exchange and increase scientific-technical knowledge and experience of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) techniques in civil engineering, whilst promoting throughout Europe the effective use of this safe non-destructive technique. The Action involves more than 300 Members from 28 COST Countries, a Cooperating State, 6 Near Neighbour Countries and 6 International Partner Countries

Counting Cells in a Grid

The goal of this paper is to estimate in a theoretical way the reduction of the number of cells of, and the overall number of neighbouring cells in, a grid when some cells in a uniform grid are replaced by a larger cell in an overlaying non-uniform grid. We assume that the grids are represented by a 2 k -tree and the replacement of cells preserves the representation. 1 Introduction. Considering the use of grids in the Robot Motion Planning Problem (e.g. [Barraquand & Latombe 91], [Conte, Longhi & Zulli 93], [Van Geem 94], [Van Geem 95], [Tournassoud & Faverjon 88]), we are interested in finding out how much better it is to use a non-uniform grid instead of a uniform grid. This paper is addressing this question. In Section 2 some definitions are given, needed throughout this paper. Then we discuss the number of cells in uniform and non-uniform grids in Sections 3 and 4. In Section 5 we give a first example. Section 6 consideres some properties of quantities introduced in the precedin..

Preparations With Workspace Information For Meaningful Robot Motion Planning in Configuration Space.

Robot Motion Planning using the Configuration Space (Cspace) consists of two subproblems: the construction of Cspace and planning a path for a point in Cspace. In this paper we firstly tackle the construction of Cspace. In particular we want to have an algorithm that computes a non-uniform grid on a 6 dimensional Cspace. We describe an algorithm for computing a non-uniform grid for a robot arm with 6 rotational joints, with links modelled by cylinders. Secondly we discuss several strategies for the construction of a potential field on the non-uniform grid. Finally we describe operations on the grid and on the potential field necessary when the position of an obstacle changed in Workspace. 1 Specification of the Problem. Robot Motion Planning using the Configuration Space (Cspace) consists of two subproblems: the construction of Cspace and planning a path for a point in Cspace. In this paper we consider the problem of the construction of a non-uniform grid on Cspace directly from inf..

On Using a Manhattan Distance-like Function for Robot Motion Planning on a Non-Uniform Grid in Configuration Space.

The general Robot Motion Planning Problem, to find a collision-free path from a given start position to a given goal position amidst obstacles, can be extended in several ways, e.g. by taking into account kinematics and dynamic constraints, by allowing obstacles to move slightly, by asking for a path that can be seen as a good pay-off between safest and shortest path, by planning with uncertainty,... All these extensions are usually treated separately from each other in the literature. We will consider a combination of some of these extensions. We propose an approach using a Manhattan Distance-like Function on a non-uniform grid that models the space of all Free Positions in the Configuration Space of the robot. The path from start to goal position follows the descent of this potential field and visits the shortest sequence of cells between them. The non-uniformity of the grid keeps the number of cells low and makes a repulsive potential superfluous. The grid can be represented by a ge..

Manipulation of a Data Structure for Potential Fields on a Non-Uniform Grid on C-Space for a Robot Arm Motion Planning Problem.

Keywords: Robotics, Computational Geometry, Data Structures. Motivated by the kinematic motion planning problem for robot arms we present a solution method based on the combination of the concept of Configuration Space (C-Space), the method of potential fields, and the hierarchical manipulation of a compact representation of a 2 k -tree (the GET-Rep). The k-dimensional C-Space obstacles are approximated by a non-uniform grid. The grid is organized in a 2 k -tree. The tree is represented by two lists with binary entries: the GET-Rep. An attractive potential field is placed on the grid, represented by a list U . Both GET-Rep and U can be constructed hierarchically. We present algorithms for building up and modifying the data structures GET-Rep and U . The resulting path is a good pay-off between a short path in C-Space, a safe path, and a path consisting of moves by preferred joints. 1 Introduction. 1.1 Brief outline of approach. In this paper we consider a particular instance of..

Enclosing Robot Links By Superellipses and Superellipsoids

As a part of an approach for solving the robot motion planning problem for robot arms, we want to decide whether or not a link collides with an obstacle for a given range of values for (some of) the joint parameters. We want to use the so called Roider Method for fast collision checking, and want to model the link by enclosing it by a superellips (in 2 dimensional space) or by a superellipsoid (in 3 dimensional space). We show in this paper that it is possible to model these swept areas using some elementary geometrical and trigonometrical tools. We describe for all swept volumes occuring for some robot arm topologies the extreme points needed for the enclosure of solids by a superellips or by a superellipsoid. We also compute the volume of the swept areas and of the enclosing superellips or superellipsoid. The rate between these volumes is a measure for the accuracy of the enclosure

Path Planning for Manipulators with Many Degrees of Freedom Using a Discrete Representation of Configuration Space Extensively.

In order to plan a short and safe path for a manipulator, given a fixed initial configuration, to any configuration as goal position, we propose to approximate the Configuration Space (Cspace) of the manipulator by a non-uniform grid, built up in a hierarchical way, adding one dimension to the Cspace in each step. During this hierarchical procedure a discrete attractive potential field on the grid is extended into the new dimension. We use the so called GETRepresentation for the grid. The potential field can be adapted locally when slight changes in the positioning of objects occurs after the complete construction of grid and potential field. Thus our representation does not have to be recomputed completely when unexpectedly some slight changes in the environment are observed. In this paper we describe the construction of the GET-Representation using the fast Roider collision checking algorithm and we describe techniques nece..

On Using a Manhattan Distance-like Function for Robot Motion Planning on a Non-Uniform Grid in Configuration Space.

The general Robot Motion Planning Problem, to find a collision-free path from a given start position to a given goal position amidst obstacles, can be extended in several ways, e.g. by taking into account kinematics and dynamic constraints, by allowing obstacles to move slightly, by asking for a path that can be seen as a good pay-off between safest and shortest path, by planning with uncertainty,... All these extensions are usually treated separately from each other in the literature. We will consider a combination of some of these extensions. We propose an approach using a Manhattan Distance-like Function on a non-uniform grid that models the space of all Free Positions in the Configuration Space of the robot. The path from start to goal position follows the descent of this potential field and visits the shortest sequence of cells between them. The non-uniformity of the grid keeps the number of cells low and makes a repulsive potential superfluous. The grid can be represented by a ge..