Singularity-free Aerial Deformation by Two-dimensional Multilinked Aerial Robot with 1-DoF Vectorable Propeller

Two-dimensional multilinked structures can benefit aerial robots in both maneuvering and manipulation because of their deformation ability. However, certain types of singular forms must be avoided during deformation. Hence, an additional 1 Degrees-of-Freedom (DoF) vectorable propeller is employed in this work to overcome singular forms by properly changing the thrust direction. In this paper, we first extend modeling and control methods from our previous works for an under-actuated model whose thrust forces are not unidirectional. We then propose a planning method for the vectoring angles to solve the singularity by maximizing the controllability under arbitrary robot forms. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed methods by experiments where a quad-type model is used to perform trajectory tracking under challenging forms, such as a line-shape form, and the deformation passing these challenging forms

Versatile Multilinked Aerial Robot with Tilting Propellers: Design, Modeling, Control and State Estimation for Autonomous Flight and Manipulation

Multilinked aerial robot is one of the state-of-the-art works in aerial robotics, which demonstrates the deformability benefiting both maneuvering and manipulation. However, the performance in outdoor physical world has not yet been evaluated because of the weakness in the controllability and the lack of the state estimation for autonomous flight. Thus we adopt tilting propellers to enhance the controllability. The related design, modeling and control method are developed in this work to enable the stable hovering and deformation. Furthermore, the state estimation which involves the time synchronization between sensors and the multilinked kinematics is also presented in this work to enable the fully autonomous flight in the outdoor environment. Various autonomous outdoor experiments, including the fast maneuvering for interception with target, object grasping for delivery, and blanket manipulation for firefighting are performed to evaluate the feasibility and versatility of the proposed robot platform. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study for the multilinked aerial robot to achieve the fully autonomous flight and the manipulation task in outdoor environment. We also applied our platform in all challenges of the 2020 Mohammed Bin Zayed International Robotics Competition, and ranked third place in Challenge 1 and sixth place in Challenge 3 internationally, demonstrating the reliable flight performance in the fields

The whole blood transcriptional regulation landscape in 465 COVID-19 infected samples from Japan COVID-19 Task Force

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19患者由来の血液細胞における遺伝子発現の網羅的解析 --重症度に応じた遺伝子発現の変化には、ヒトゲノム配列の個人差が影響する--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-23.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently-emerged infectious disease that has caused millions of deaths, where comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms is still unestablished. In particular, studies of gene expression dynamics and regulation landscape in COVID-19 infected individuals are limited. Here, we report on a thorough analysis of whole blood RNA-seq data from 465 genotyped samples from the Japan COVID-19 Task Force, including 359 severe and 106 non-severe COVID-19 cases. We discover 1169 putative causal expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) including 34 possible colocalizations with biobank fine-mapping results of hematopoietic traits in a Japanese population, 1549 putative causal splice QTLs (sQTLs; e.g. two independent sQTLs at TOR1AIP1), as well as biologically interpretable trans-eQTL examples (e.g., REST and STING1), all fine-mapped at single variant resolution. We perform differential gene expression analysis to elucidate 198 genes with increased expression in severe COVID-19 cases and enriched for innate immune-related functions. Finally, we evaluate the limited but non-zero effect of COVID-19 phenotype on eQTL discovery, and highlight the presence of COVID-19 severity-interaction eQTLs (ieQTLs; e.g., CLEC4C and MYBL2). Our study provides a comprehensive catalog of whole blood regulatory variants in Japanese, as well as a reference for transcriptional landscapes in response to COVID-19 infection

DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19疾患感受性遺伝子DOCK2の重症化機序を解明 --アジア最大のバイオレポジトリーでCOVID-19の治療標的を発見--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-10.Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2, 393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3, 289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target