Spherical Tuples of Hilbert Space Operators

We introduce and study a class of operator tuples in complex Hilbert spaces, which we call spherical tuples. In particular, we characterize spherical multi-shifts, and more generally, multiplication tuples on RKHS. We further use these characterizations to describe various spectral parts including the Taylor spectrum. We also find a criterion for the Schatten $S_p$-class membership of cross-commutators of spherical $m$-shifts. We show, in particular, that cross-commutators of non-compact spherical $m$-shifts cannot belong to $S_p$ for $p \le m$. We specialize our results to some well-studied classes of multi-shifts. We prove that the cross-commutators of a spherical joint $m$-shift, which is a $q$-isometry or a $2$-expansion, belongs to $S_p$ if and only if $p > m$. We further give an example of a spherical jointly hyponormal $2$-shift, for which the cross-commutators are compact but not in $S_p$ for any $p <\infty$.Comment: a version close to final on

Stable Prehensile Pushing: In-Hand Manipulation with Alternating Sticking Contacts

This paper presents an approach to in-hand manipulation planning that exploits the mechanics of alternating sticking contact. Particularly, we consider the problem of manipulating a grasped object using external pushes for which the pusher sticks to the object. Given the physical properties of the object, frictional coefficients at contacts and a desired regrasp on the object, we propose a sampling-based planning framework that builds a pushing strategy concatenating different feasible stable pushes to achieve the desired regrasp. An efficient dynamics formulation allows us to plan in-hand manipulations 100-1000 times faster than our previous work which builds upon a complementarity formulation. Experimental observations for the generated plans show that the object precisely moves in the grasp as expected by the planner. Video Summary -- youtu.be/qOTKRJMx6HoComment: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 201

Electrical Characteristics Inspection of Multiple PV Modules for Manufacturing Industry

This paper presents implementation of a real time system for inspection of electrical characteristics of multiple PV   modules from certain distance. PV module may have manufacturing defects which affect the I-V characteristics. In this work an experiment is performed in which multiple PV modules are kept in sunlight for inspection of I-V characteristics for a day,  their open circuit voltage and short circuit current are monitored from a distant node and displayed on computer screen. The measurements are taken after fixed intervals. Relay connected across PV module is switched ON and OFF to measure short circuit current and open circuit voltage. The measured electrical characteristics are monitored from distant. The characteristics are compared with known standard values and graph is displayed on workstation for examination. The system developed in this experiment offers several advantages like 1) it provides facility  to online monitor the characteristics  of multiple PV modules and compares it with standard characteristics 2) focus is on automation hence less human intervention is required  and 3) facility of inspection of  multiple PV modules simultaneously is provided in this work.

Adaptive Information Visualization for Personalized Access to Educational Digital Libraries

Personalization is one of the emerging ways to increase the power of modern Digital Libraries. The Knowledge Sea II system presented in this paper explores social navigation support, an approach for providing personalized guidance within the open corpus of educational resources. Following the concepts of social navigation we have attempted to organize a personalized navigation support that is based on past learners’ interaction with the system. The study indicates that Knowledge Sea II became the students' primary tool for accessing the open corpus documents used in a programming course. The social navigation support implemented in this system was considered useful by students participating in the study of Knowledge Sea II. At the same time, some user comments indicated the need to provide more powerful navigational support, such as the ability to rank the usefulness of a page