The 3-D vision system integrated dexterous hand

Most multifingered hands use a tendon mechanism to minimize the size and weight of the hand. Such tendon mechanisms suffer from the problems of striction and friction of the tendons resulting in a reduction of control accuracy. A design for a 3-D vision system integrated dexterous hand with motor control is described which overcomes these problems. The proposed hand is composed of three three-jointed grasping fingers with tactile sensors on their tips, a two-jointed eye finger with a cross-shaped laser beam emitting diode in its distal part. The two non-grasping fingers allow 3-D vision capability and can rotate around the hand to see and measure the sides of grasped objects and the task environment. An algorithm that determines the range and local orientation of the contact surface using a cross-shaped laser beam is introduced along with some potential applications. An efficient method for finger force calculation is presented which uses the measured contact surface normals of an object

A Sensor Self-aware Distributed Consensus Filter for Simultaneous Localization and Tracking

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this recordBackground/Introduction: Simultaneous localization and tracking (SLAT) has become a very hot topic in both academia and industry for its potential wide applications in robotic equipment, sensor networks and smart devices. In order to exploit the advantages supported by state filtering and parameter estimation, researchers have proposed adaptive structures for solving SLAT problems. Existing solutions for SLAT problems that rely on belief propagation often have limited accuracy or high complexity. To adapt the brain decision mechanism for solving SLAT problems, we introduce a specific framework that is suitable for wireless sensor networks. Methods: Motivated by the high efficiency and performance of brain decision making built upon partial information and information updating, we propose a cognitively distributed SLAT algorithm based on an adaptive distributed filter, which is composed of two stages for target tracking and sensor localization. The first stage is consensus filtering that updates the target state with respect to each sensor. The second stage employs a recursive parameter estimation that exploits an on-line optimization method for refining the sensor localization. As an integrated framework, each consensus filter is specific to a separate sensor subsystem and gets feedback information from its parameter estimation. Results: The performance comparison in terms of positioning accuracy with respect to RMSE is shown and the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ICF-RML performs better than the BPF-RML. This is expected since the distributed estimation with sufficient communication mechanism often achieves higher accuracy than that of less sufficient cases. Furthermore, the performance of the ICF-RML is comparable with that of the BPF-RML even if the latter assumes known prior network topology. We also observe from the results of tracking errors that ICF-RML accomplishes a remarkable improvement in the precision of target tracking and achieves more stable convergence than BPF-RML, in the scenario that all sensors are used to calculate the effect from data association errors. Conclusion: We apply this approach to formulate the SLAT problem and propose an effective solution, summarized in the paper. For small-size sensor networks with Gaussian distribution, our algorithm can be implemented through a distributed version of weighted information filter and a consensus protocol. Comparing the existing method, our solution shows a higher accuracy in estimation but with less complexity.National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaShandong Provincial Natural Science FoundationShandong Outstanding Young Scientist FundRoyal SocietyFundamental Research Funds for the Central Universitie

Integer quantum Hall effect and topological phase transitions in silicene

We numerically investigate the effects of disorder on the quantum Hall effect (QHE) and the quantum phase transitions in silicene based on a lattice model. It is shown that for a clean sample, silicene exhibits an unconventional QHE near the band center, with plateaus developing at $\nu=0,\pm2,\pm6,\ldots,$ and a conventional QHE near the band edges. In the presence of disorder, the Hall plateaus can be destroyed through the float-up of extended levels toward the band center, in which higher plateaus disappear first. However, the center $\nu=0$ Hall plateau is more sensitive to disorder and disappears at a relatively weak disorder strength. Moreover, the combination of an electric field and the intrinsic spin-orbit interaction (SOI) can lead to quantum phase transitions from a topological insulator to a band insulator at the charge neutrality point (CNP), accompanied by additional quantum Hall conductivity plateaus.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Dual smoothing for marine oil spill segmentation

This is the author accepted manuscriptWe present a novel marine oil spill segmentation method that characterizes two smoothing modules at the label level and the pixel level separately. At the label level, we exploit the rolling guidance filter for smoothing the label cost volumes. It enables scale-aware labeling and thus alleviates the ambiguous segmentation that blurs the detailed structures of oil spills. At the pixel level, we adapt a cooperative model for smoothing higher order pixel variations, which has the potential of preserving elongated strips that often arise in oil spills. We integrate the two smoothing modules operating at different levels into an energy minimization formulation, which is referred to as dual smoothing. The coupling of the two smoothing modules enables an effective complement to each other such that the specific structures of oil spills are accurately characterized. We compute the optimal labeling of the dual-smoothing framework based on graph cuts. The proposed dual-smoothing framework is especially effective in segmenting elongated and detailed oil spills, and the experimental results demonstrate its advantages over thresholding- and graph-cut-based segmentations.Royal Societ

Construction of a polarization insensitive lens from a quasi-isotropic metamaterial slab

We propose to employ the quasiisotropic metamaterial (QIMM) slab to construct a polarization insensitive lens, in which both E- and H-polarized waves exhibit the same refocusing effect. For shallow incident angles, the QIMM slab will provide some degree of refocusing in the same manner as an isotropic negative index material. The refocusing effect allows us to introduce the ideas of paraxial beam focusing and phase compensation by the QIMM slab. On the basis of angular spectrum representation, a formalism describing paraxial beams propagating through a QIMM slab is presented. Because of the negative phase velocity in the QIMM slab, the inverse Gouy phase shift and the negative Rayleigh length of paraxial Gaussian beam are proposed. We find that the phase difference caused by the Gouy phase shift in vacuum can be compensated by that caused by the inverse Gouy phase shift in the QIMM slab. If certain matching conditions are satisfied, the intensity and phase distributions at object plane can be completely reconstructed at image plane. Our simulation results show that the superlensing effect with subwavelength image resolution could be achieved in the form of a QIMM slab.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure

On the Study of Wireless Signal Noise for Designing Network Infrastructure of Knowledge Management Systems

Copyright © 2015 IEEEKnowledge and information management systems are usually supported by wireless networks that strongly rely on reliable received signal strength. The interruption and outage of such system may lead to significant performance disruption. In order to deal with one of the major contributors: noise, this paper investigates the fundamentals of wireless signals and proposes a method to identify and model the noise components quantitatively. We investigate the theoretical method and empirically study two wireless system configurations - one with omnidirectional antennas and one with directional antennas. Results based on real-world experiments confirm the existence and exact contributions of coloured noise components. Based on the preliminary results of this study, future information management systems can be designed with enhanced network support to cope with the variation of signals for improved performance.This paper is sponsored by the Research Councils UK Digital Economy Theme Sustainable Society Network+ and Royal Society-NSFC Grant No. IE131036, and partially supported by DHI Scotland through the Smartcough/Macmasters project

Superluminal group velocity in an anisotropic metamaterial

Based on boundary condition and dispersion relation, the superluminal group velocity in an anisotropic metamaterial (AMM) is investigated. The superluminal propagation is induced by the hyperbolic dispersion relation associated with the AMM. It is shown that a modulated Gaussian beam exhibits a superluminal group velocity which depends on the choice of incident angles and optical axis angles. The superluminal propagation does not violate the theory of special relativity because the group velocity is the velocity of the peak of the localized wave packet which does not carry information. It is proposed that a triglycine sulfate (TGS) crystal can be designed and the superluminal group velocity can be measured experimentally.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure