6,865 research outputs found
A report on the sea otter, Enhydra lutris L., in California
This report discusses in detail findings and observations
of 5 years of research on the sea otter population and its
relationship to the nearshore marine environment in California. Initial efforts were directed at providing some relief to the commercial abalone fishery in the Cambria - Point Estero area north of Morro Bay. This fishery has subsequently collapsed along with other commercial and sport abalone and sport crab fisheries throughout the sea otter's range due to continued sea otter foraging. Capturing, tagging and translocation studies, censusing studies, examination of sea otter remains, habitat surveys, food habits observations and studies on otters in captivity provide a broad base of information on the expanding
sea otter population in California and its effects on
resources utilized by man. Recommendations for sea otter
management consistent with esthetic, recreational, and commercial uses of marine resources are included in this report. (95pp.
Convex optimization for the planted k-disjoint-clique problem
We consider the k-disjoint-clique problem. The input is an undirected graph G
in which the nodes represent data items, and edges indicate a similarity
between the corresponding items. The problem is to find within the graph k
disjoint cliques that cover the maximum number of nodes of G. This problem may
be understood as a general way to pose the classical `clustering' problem. In
clustering, one is given data items and a distance function, and one wishes to
partition the data into disjoint clusters of data items, such that the items in
each cluster are close to each other. Our formulation additionally allows
`noise' nodes to be present in the input data that are not part of any of the
cliques. The k-disjoint-clique problem is NP-hard, but we show that a convex
relaxation can solve it in polynomial time for input instances constructed in a
certain way. The input instances for which our algorithm finds the optimal
solution consist of k disjoint large cliques (called `planted cliques') that
are then obscured by noise edges and noise nodes inserted either at random or
by an adversary
A geometric approach to three-dimensional hipped bipedal robotic walking
This paper presents a control law that results in stable walking for a three-dimensional bipedal robot with a hip. To obtain this control law, we utilize techniques from geometric reduction, and specifically a variant of Routhian reduction termed functional Routhian reduction, to effectively decouple the dynamics of the three-dimensional biped into its sagittal and lateral components. Motivated by the decoupling afforded by functional Routhian reduction, the control law we present is obtained by combining three separate control laws: the first shapes the potential energy of the sagittal dynamics of the biped to obtain stable walking gaits when it is constrained to the sagittal plane, the second shapes the total energy of the walker so that functional Routhian reduction can be applied to decoupling the dynamics of the walker for certain initial conditions, and the third utilizes an output zeroing controller to stabilize to the surface defining these initial conditions. We numerically verify that this method results in stable walking, and we discuss certain attributes of this walking gait
Upside and Downside Risk Exposures of Currency Carry Trades via Tail Dependence
Currency carry trade is the investment strategy that involves selling low
interest rate currencies in order to purchase higher interest rate currencies,
thus profiting from the interest rate differentials. This is a well known
financial puzzle to explain, since assuming foreign exchange risk is
uninhibited and the markets have rational risk-neutral investors, then one
would not expect profits from such strategies. That is, according to uncovered
interest rate parity (UIP), changes in the related exchange rates should offset
the potential to profit from such interest rate differentials. However, it has
been shown empirically, that investors can earn profits on average by borrowing
in a country with a lower interest rate, exchanging for foreign currency, and
investing in a foreign country with a higher interest rate, whilst allowing for
any losses from exchanging back to their domestic currency at maturity. This
paper explores the financial risk that trading strategies seeking to exploit a
violation of the UIP condition are exposed to with respect to multivariate tail
dependence present in both the funding and investment currency baskets. It will
outline in what contexts these portfolio risk exposures will benefit
accumulated portfolio returns and under what conditions such tail exposures
will reduce portfolio returns.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1303.431
Safe Policy Synthesis in Multi-Agent POMDPs via Discrete-Time Barrier Functions
A multi-agent partially observable Markov decision process (MPOMDP) is a
modeling paradigm used for high-level planning of heterogeneous autonomous
agents subject to uncertainty and partial observation. Despite their modeling
efficiency, MPOMDPs have not received significant attention in safety-critical
settings. In this paper, we use barrier functions to design policies for
MPOMDPs that ensure safety. Notably, our method does not rely on discretization
of the belief space, or finite memory. To this end, we formulate sufficient and
necessary conditions for the safety of a given set based on discrete-time
barrier functions (DTBFs) and we demonstrate that our formulation also allows
for Boolean compositions of DTBFs for representing more complicated safe sets.
We show that the proposed method can be implemented online by a sequence of
one-step greedy algorithms as a standalone safe controller or as a
safety-filter given a nominal planning policy. We illustrate the efficiency of
the proposed methodology based on DTBFs using a high-fidelity simulation of
heterogeneous robots.Comment: 8 pages and 4 figure
Control Barrier Function Based Quadratic Programs for Safety Critical Systems
Safety critical systems involve the tight coupling between potentially
conflicting control objectives and safety constraints. As a means of creating a
formal framework for controlling systems of this form, and with a view toward
automotive applications, this paper develops a methodology that allows safety
conditions -- expressed as control barrier functions -- to be unified with
performance objectives -- expressed as control Lyapunov functions -- in the
context of real-time optimization-based controllers. Safety conditions are
specified in terms of forward invariance of a set, and are verified via two
novel generalizations of barrier functions; in each case, the existence of a
barrier function satisfying Lyapunov-like conditions implies forward invariance
of the set, and the relationship between these two classes of barrier functions
is characterized. In addition, each of these formulations yields a notion of
control barrier function (CBF), providing inequality constraints in the control
input that, when satisfied, again imply forward invariance of the set. Through
these constructions, CBFs can naturally be unified with control Lyapunov
functions (CLFs) in the context of a quadratic program (QP); this allows for
the achievement of control objectives (represented by CLFs) subject to
conditions on the admissible states of the system (represented by CBFs). The
mediation of safety and performance through a QP is demonstrated on adaptive
cruise control and lane keeping, two automotive control problems that present
both safety and performance considerations coupled with actuator bounds
Barrier Functions for Multiagent-POMDPs with DTL Specifications
Multi-agent partially observable Markov decision processes (MPOMDPs) provide a framework to represent heterogeneous autonomous agents subject to uncertainty and partial observation. In this paper, given a nominal policy provided by a human operator or a conventional planning method, we propose a technique based on barrier functions to design a minimally interfering safety-shield ensuring satisfaction of high-level specifications in terms of linear distribution temporal logic (LDTL). To this end, we use sufficient and necessary conditions for the invariance of a given set based on discrete-time barrier functions (DTBFs) and formulate sufficient conditions for finite time DTBF to study finite time convergence to a set. We then show that different LDTL mission/safety specifications can be cast as a set of invariance or finite time reachability problems. We demonstrate that the proposed method for safety-shield synthesis can be implemented online by a sequence of one-step greedy algorithms. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method using experiments involving a team of robots
Solvent action of nitrification and sulfofication
Cover title.Bibliography: p. 257.Mode of access: Internet
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