1404264
A minimum principle for the dynamic analysis of systems with frictional contacts
The dynamic analysis and simulation of manufacturing processes and robot systems with multiple, concurrent frictional contacts are addressed. When principles of rigid body dynamics are used with empirical models for friction, inconsistencies and ambiguities may result. One approach to resolving this is to incorporate a model of the compliance at the contacts into the dynamic model. The principle of virtual work is used to derive a minimum principle which relates the contact forces and local deformations to the state and the applied external forces. A simplified, lumped-parameter model that always yields unique solutions is presented. Closed-form expressions for the contact forces are derived, and a simple algorithm for determination of the slip at each contact is developed. The analysis of whole-arm enveloping grasps is discussed using this method.<<ETX>>
29516211
Control of Contact Interactions with Acatastatic Nonholonomic Constraints
A robot arm performs many tasks by interacting with objects or other robots in the environment. It is important for the robot arm to be able to exhibit controlled interactions with the objects and other robots. The contact motion between the robot arm and an object can be rolling, sliding, or separation. In this article, we address the problem of maintaining rolling contact between the robot arm and an external moving object. We assume that a nominal model of the motion of the moving object is available. The dynamic system that characterizes the motion of the robot arm and the moving object in this case is acatastatic and nonholonomic. We have designed a nonlinear feedback for the control of such a system that successfully maintains rolling contact. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system.
7023425
A Paradigm for Dynamic Coordination of Multiple Robots
In this paper, we present a paradigm for coordinating multiple robots in the execution of cooperative tasks. The basic idea in the paper is to assign to each robot in the team, a role that determines its actions during the cooperation. The robots dynamically assume and exchange roles in a synchronized manner in order to perform the task successfully, adapting to unexpected events in the environment. We model this mechanism using a hybrid systems framework and apply it in different cooperative tasks: cooperative manipulation and cooperative search and transportation. Simulations and real experiments demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed paradigm are presented.
15738427
A potential field based approach to multi-robot manipulation
We describe a framework for controlling and coordinating a group of robots for cooperative manipulation tasks. The framework enables a decentralized approach to planning and control. It allows the robots to approach the object, organize themselves into a formation that will trap the object, and then transport the object to the desired destination. Our controllers and planners are derived from simple potential fields and the hierarchical composition of potential fields. We show how these potential field based controllers and planners benefit complex group interactions, specifically for manipulating and transporting objects in the plane. Theoretically, we show how we can derive results on formation stability with potential field based controllers in many cases. Simulation results demonstrate successful application to a wide range of examples without showing sensitivity to parameters. Because the framework is decentralized at both trajectory generation level and the estimation and control agent level, our framework can potentially scale to groups of tens and hundreds of robots.
6879835
Calibrating an air-ground control system from motion correspondences
In this paper we consider the problem of controlling the motion of a vehicle moving on a ground plane based on aerial imagery. In the course of this work we propose a novel analysis of the relationship between the velocity of the vehicle on the ground plane and the velocity of its projection in the image. We show that this relationship provides information about a subset of the parameters of the homography relating the ground plane to the aerial image plane and describe how we can recover this relationship from available measurements.
5542960
Metrics for analysis and optimization of grasps and fixtures
We develop two quality measures for the analysis and optimization of grasps and fixtures. The first metric is a measure of stability and is obtained by analyzing the effect of small perturbations in the position of the grasped object or small disturbance forces on the grasped object The second metric is a measure of robustness to errors in the positions of the fixture elements. In addition, we explore the effect that the stiffness of the fixture elements has on these two quality measures and propose a design optimization approach to maximize stability and robustness to errors.
15030712
Impact of mobility on transaction management
We examine the impact of mobility on three different options to managing mobile transactions. Using an analytic performance study we show that no one management approach is always the best and that the performance is impacted by the location management strategy used. The primary objective of this work is to illustrate that the underlying implementation strategies do indeed impact mobile transaction processing and should be considered when proposing mobile transaction processing techniques.
35078097
An adaptive location management algorithm for mobile computing
In mobile computing mobile hosts or mobile units move randomly from one place to another within a well-defined geographical area. This requires some mechanism for identifying the exact location of a mobile host. Such mechanisms are usually referred to as location management and is one of the essential components for supporting mobility. In the past a number of efficient location management schemes have been suggested but they lack adaptability. We believe that an adaptable location management scheme is more desirable because of frequent change in the location of mobile hosts. In this paper, we report a location management algorithm, which adapts to the constant changing scenario. Our algorithm makes use of some of the concepts of location management schemes proposed in the past.
45908534
KRISHNA - Concurrency Control Algorithms based on Dynamic Attributes
Three new concurrency control mechanisms that utilizes the dynamic attribute of concurrent transactions for resolving conflicts are presented. Our study shows that their performance is superior to all well-known two-phase concurrency control mechanisms. There are a large number of such algorithms but we report our findings since our approach has some unique features worth exploring.
8409648
Secured Web access
We discuss various secured Web access schemes using dynamic and static approaches. In a static approach the access environment, that is, the set of authorized users, the mode of access, their access rights, etc., are predefined. This approach is suitable only for a static set up where the user requirements do not change frequently. In the dynamic approach, on the other hand, the authorized user set is defined when Web pages access requests appear. An interested user to the Web is authenticated by necessary information provided by the user. Once the information is verified, the user is either given conditional access, timed access, or full access only to the information relevant to the user.
47278894
Equilibria in Topology Control Games for Ad Hoc Networks
We study topology control problems in ad hoc networks where network nodes get to choose their power levels in order to ensure desired connectivity properties. Unlike most other work on this topic, we assume that the network nodes are owned by different entities, whose only goal is to maximize their own utility that they get out of the network without considering the overall performance of the network. Game theory is the appropriate tool to study such selfish nodes: we define several topology control games in which the nodes need to choose power levels in order to connect to other nodes in the network to reach their communication partners while at the same time minimizing their costs. We study Nash equilibria and show that—among the games we define—these can only be guaranteed to exist if each network node is required to be connected to all other nodes (we call this the Strong Connectivity Game). For a variation called Connectivity Game, where each node is only required to be connected (possibly via intermediate nodes) to a given set of nodes, we show that Nash equilibria do not necessarily exist. We further study how to find Nash equilibria with incentive-compatible algorithms and compare the cost of Nash equilibria to the cost of a social optimum, which is a radius assignment that minimizes the total cost in a network where nodes cooperate. We also study variations of the games; one where nodes not only have to be connected, but k-connected, and one that we call the Reachability Game, where nodes have to reach as many other nodes as possible, while keeping costs low. We extend our study of the Strong Connectivity Game and the Connectivity Game to wireless networks with directional antennas and wireline networks, where nodes need to choose neighbors to which they will pay a link. Our work is a first step towards game-theoretic analyses of topology control in wireless and wireline networks.