643,596 research outputs found
Coupling device for moving vehicles
A mechanical system is disclosed to capture and/or deploy a device or vehicle having relative motion with respect to another vehicle. The mechanism includes an onboard controlled collapsible iris assembly located at the end of a controlled manipulator system carried by one moving vehicle. The iris assembly by means of the manipulator system encircles a probe located on the other moving vehicle whereupon the iris assembly is activated and one or more iris elements close around the probe, thus capturing, and axially aligning the other vehicle with the iris assembly. Additionally, a rotator assembly is included for spinning the iris assembly in a manner adapted to engage the probe of a spinning vehicle. Deployment of the other vehicle is accomplished by reversing the capture procedure
Closed loop ranging system Patent
Closed loop radio communication ranging system to determine distance between moving airborne vehicle and fixed ground statio
Short-range laser obstacle detector
Detector, designed for slow-moving vehicle to explore surface of Mars, will automatically divert vehicle from obstacles as small as 0.5 m in its path. Detector comprises injection laser operating in pulse time-delay measurement, or radar, mode. It is capable of scanning area extending from few meters to approximately 30 m
Microscopic features of moving traffic jams
Empirical and numerical microscopic features of moving traffic jams are
presented. Based on a single vehicle data analysis, it is found that within
wide moving jams, i.e., between the upstream and downstream jam fronts there is
a complex microscopic spatiotemporal structure. This jam structure consists of
alternations of regions in which traffic flow is interrupted and flow states of
low speeds associated with "moving blanks" within the jam. Empirical features
of the moving blanks are found. Based on microscopic models in the context of
three-phase traffic theory, physical reasons for moving blanks emergence within
wide moving jams are disclosed. Structure of moving jam fronts is studied based
in microscopic traffic simulations. Non-linear effects associated with moving
jam propagation are numerically investigated and compared with empirical
results.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure
Field-test of a robust, portable, frequency-stable laser
We operate a frequency-stable laser in a non-laboratory environment where the
test platform is a passenger vehicle. We measure the acceleration experienced
by the laser and actively correct for it to achieve a system acceleration
sensitivity of = /g, /g, and /g for accelerations in three orthogonal
directions at 1 Hz. The acceleration spectrum and laser performance are
evaluated with the vehicle both stationary and moving. The laser linewidth in
the stationary vehicle with engine idling is 1.7(1) Hz
Probabilistically safe vehicle control in a hostile environment
In this paper we present an approach to control a vehicle in a hostile environment with static obstacles and moving adversaries. The vehicle is required to satisfy a mission objective expressed as a temporal logic specification over a set of properties satisfied at regions of a partitioned environment. We model the movements of adversaries in between regions of the environment as Poisson processes. Furthermore, we assume that the time it takes for the vehicle to traverse in between two facets of each region is exponentially distributed, and we obtain the rate of this exponential distribution from a simulator of the environment. We capture the motion of the vehicle and the vehicle updates of adversaries distributions as a Markov Decision Process. Using tools in Probabilistic Computational Tree Logic, we find a control strategy for the vehicle that maximizes the probability of accomplishing the mission objective. We demonstrate our approach with illustrative case studies
- …