206537669
Optimal control of systems with unilateral constraints
Problems in robotics and biomechanics such as trajectory planning or resolution of redundancy can be effectively solved using optimal control. Such systems are often subject to unilateral constraints. Examples include tasks involving contacts (e.g., walking, running, multifingered or multiarm manipulation), and other tasks that may not involve contacts but in which the system state or the inputs must satisfy inequality conditions (e.g., limits on actuator forces). This paper shows how problems of optimal control in robotics that involve unilateral constraints can be efficiently solved by first formulating the constrained optimal control problem as an unconstrained problem of the calculus of variations and then solving it using an integral formulation. This method has several advantages over the Pontryagin minimum principle which is traditionally employed to solve such problems. An example of two-arm manipulation with inequality constraints due to Coulomb friction is used to demonstrate the formulation of the problem and the algorithms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
39362526
Main memory database recovery algorithms and their performance
In main memory systems recovery becomes more complex mainly due to the volatility of main memory and the elimination of the separation of data storage (disk) and data processing locations (main memory). In a disk based database system, it is the disk copy that represents the stable database restored after a system failure; but in MDBSs, the main memory copy of the database must be recovered. The paper discusses the recovery issues in MDBSs and presents a somewhat detailed performance study of two recovery algorithms, one using a shadow approach and the other update-in-place.<<ETX>>
11125586
The Behavior of Database Concurrency Control Mechanisms under Bursty Arrivals
The robustness and sensitivity of four two-phase databases concurrency control mechanisms are studied under a dynamically changing workload due to the bursty arrival of transactions. The concurrency control mechanisms are studied under closely controlled conditions in which the only variable is the coefficient of variance of the arrival rate distribution. This paper shows that bursty traffic does impact the performance of the concurrency control mechanisms at both high and low loads, and that the degree of this impact is different for the different mechanisms investigated. We also show that the behavior of some CCMs change significantly under such environment.
33192154
Performance measurement of some main memory database recovery algorithms
The performance of two main-memory database system (MDBS) algorithms is studied. M.H. Eich's (Proc. of the Fifth Int. Workshop on Database Machines., Oct. 1987) and T.J. Lehman's (Ph. D. Thesis, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Aug 1986) algorithms are selected for this study. The investigation indicates that the shadow approach, as used by Eich, has some advantages over the update in-place strategy of Lehman. The shadow approach has faster response for normal transactions even though transaction commit is slower compared to update in-place approach. It is concluded that irrespective of the recovery algorithm an efficient load balancing plays an important part in the performance of the system. It is suggested that processors should be allocated to any kind of activity on a demand basis. It is discovered that individual recovery of lockable units as used in Lehman's algorithm is a better choice since it increases the system availability after a system failure. It also allows background recovery to go in parallel to normal transaction processing.<<ETX>>
1921533
A superior two-phase locking algorithm and its performance
Abstract Concurrent transactions, during their execution, may conflict over common data entities. Such conflicts are resolved by concurrency control mechanisms by use of operations such as transaction rollback and/or transaction blocking. There are a number of mechanisms available and each applies these operations in different ways to resolve conflicts and claims some performance advantages. In this work we have analyzed the behavior of a new deadlock-free two-phase locking mechanism, called Cautious Waiting, and have compared its performance with other well-known mechanisms. The mechanism is conceptually quite simple; therefore it is not likely to be difficult to implement. We show that this mechanism performs consistently better under a wide range of parameter values than the other mechanisms investigated here. We also show that it is more robust, in the sense that it is less sensitive to load increases and other changes in parameter settings. In contrast, we show that one of the most commonly used mechanisms is not as robust and efficient under stress situations.
37917309
Management of Concurrency in Interpolation Based Grid File Organization and its Performance
The mathematical structure of the interpolation based grid file organization provides a suitable platform for supporting a high degree of concurrency under a concurrency control mechanism. To demonstrate this capability, we first identified its useful properties for designing a concurrency control mechanism and then developed a deadlock-free two-phase locking based mechanism using dynamic attributes of transactions. To establish the usefulness of our system (concurrency control and the file organization), we measured its performance through simulation modeling. We show that our system handles a number of different types of workloads efficiently and the directory overhead does not strictly depend on the type of workload.