21075507
BP Networks Based Trajectory Planning and Inverse Kinematics of a Reconfigurable Mars Rover
The inverse kinematics of series manipulators presents an inherent complexity due to their various structures and kinematics constraints. To a novel reconfigurable Mars rover's arm, the inverse kinematics had been solved by numerical method combined with space geometry relations, but the complex calculating process can not be utilized in real-time control. In this paper, some actions in common use are programmed in the child rover, and the BP neural network was used to solve the inverse kinematics and trajectory planning. To a desired trajectory, some solutions by direct kinematics algorithms and geometry relations corresponding to the trajectory were used as the BP network's training data set, and the non-linear mapping from joint-variable space to operation-variable space was obtained with iterative training and learning method. The results show the output of training is consistent with the desired path, and the obtained reference trajectory is smooth.
152660
Gaits-transferable CPG controller for a snake-like robot
With slim and legless body, particular ball articulation, and rhythmic locomotion, a nature snake adapted itself to many terrains under the control of a neuron system. Based on analyzing the locomotion mechanism, the main functional features of the motor system in snakes are specified in detail. Furthermore, a bidirectional cyclic inhibitory (BCI) CPG model is applied for the first time to imitate the pattern generation for the locomotion control of the snake-like robot, and its characteristics are discussed, particularly for the generation of three kinds of rhythmic locomotion. Moreover, we introduce the neuron network organized by the BCI-CPGs connected in line with unilateral excitation to switch automatically locomotion pattern of a snake-like robot under different commands from the higher level control neuron and present a necessary condition for the CPG neuron network to sustain a rhythmic output. The validity for the generation of different kinds of rhythmic locomotion modes by the CPG network are verified by the dynamic simulations and experiments. This research provided a new method to model the generation mechanism of the rhythmic pattern of the snake.
483866
3D Locomotion of a Snake-like Robot Controlled by Cyclic Inhibitory CPG Model
With 3D (3-dimensional) movement's ability and rhythmic locomotion mode, a nature snake makes itself survive in rugged terrains. The rhythmic activities of most creatures are generated by the CPG (central pattern generator). Based on this fact, the sustained-type neuron has been adopted to construct a cyclic inhibitory CPG model for a snake-like robot whose joints are perpendicularly connected in series. Having compared with the sustained-type neuron and the mutual inhibitory CPG, the cyclic inhibitory CPG was proven to generate capably rhythmic output with the least number of differential equations. In this paper, we introduce the neuron network organized by the cyclic inhibitory CPGs connected in line with unilateral excitation to control the 3D locomotion of a snake-like robot, and present the necessary condition for the CPG neuron network to sustain a rhythmic output. By implementing this control architecture to a simulator with consideration of mechanical dynamics of a real snake-like robot "Perambulator", preliminary parameter setting of the CPG neuron network for its 3D locomotion is obtained. Moreover, it is shown that "Perambulator" can successfully exhibit 3D locomotion by using the output of the proposed CPG network. The obtained results have also provided a bran new approach to understand the unknown neuron network of nature snakes
206600042
Multiagent Reinforcement Learning for a Planetary Exploration Multirobot System
In a planetary rover system called “SMC rover”, the motion coordination between robots is a key problem to be solved. Multiagent reinforcement learning methods for multirobot coordination strategy learning are investigated. A reinforcement learning based coordination mechanism is proposed for the exploration system. Four-robot climbing a slope is studied in detail as an instance. The actions of the robots are divided into two layers and realized respectively, which simplified the complexity of the climbing task. A Q-Learning based multirobot coordination strategy mechanism is proposed for the climbing mission. An OpenGL 3D simulation platform is used to verify the strategy and the learning results.
45662594
Neural Network Based Kinematic Control of the Hyper-Redundant Snake-Like Manipulator
In a sinusoid like curve configuration, the snake-like manipulator (also called snake arm) has a wide range of potential applications for its redundancy to overcome conventional industrial robot's limitation when carrying out a complex task. It can perform many kinds of locomotion like the nature snake or the animal's tentacle to avoid obstacles, follow designated trajectories, and grasp objects. Effectively control of the snake-like manipulator is difficult for its redundancy. In this study, we propose an approach based on BP neural network to kinematic control the hyper-redundant snake-like manipulator. This approach, inspired by the Serpenoid curve and the concertina motion principle of the nature snake, is completely capable of solving the control problem of a planar snake-like manipulator with any number of links following any desired direction and trajectory. With shape transformation and base rotation, the manipulator's configuration changes accordingly and moves actively to perform the designated tasks. By using BP neural networks in modeling the inverse kinematics, this approach has such superiorities as few control parameters and high precision. Simulations have demonstrated that this control technique for the snake-like manipulator is available and effective.
5812894
Configuration Analysis for Reconfigurable Modular Planetary Robots Based on MSV and CSM
A reconfigurable modular planetary robot system (RMPRS) consists of the parent body and multiple asymmetric wheel-manipulator child-robot modules. The module, which can independently locomote and manipulate, possesses the orientation of posture and the direction of locomotion. The modules have reconfiguration capability so that a group of the modules can construct a variety of configurations. The aim of the robot reconfiguration is to generate better configuration with respect to the directional locomotion adapted to the environment. Module state vector (MSV) and configuration state matrix (CSM) are presented and constructed for representing the asymmetric module and the configurations, and supporting the transformation operation for triggering the elementary motions of the module and the reconfiguration. The algorithm for optimizing the assembly reconfiguration of discrete modules is proposed and the result is evaluated through numerical simulation in an example
5295208
Bit rate reduction of H.264/AVC video coding for mobile applications
The increasing use of mobile applications requires higher compression efficiency for video coding. However, in mobile applications, the capability of the processor is limited and the channel is unreliable. Since the emerging H.264/AVC video coding standard provides superior compression performance compared to all the existing video coding standards, many research efforts concentrate on the compression efficiency of intra-frame coding in H.264/AVC. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to reduce the bit rate compressed by H.264/AVC intra-frame coding. We focus on the method to code the intra-frame prediction modes. Our proposed method significantly reduces the bits used to code the modes and do not change the syntax of the bit stream. Experimental results demonstrate it is effective and efficient
13758087
Support cluster machine
For large-scale classification problems, the training samples can be clustered beforehand as a downsampling pre-process, and then only the obtained clusters are used for training. Motivated by such assumption, we proposed a classification algorithm, Support Cluster Machine (SCM), within the learning framework introduced by Vapnik. For the SCM, a compatible kernel is adopted such that a similarity measure can be handled not only between clusters in the training phase but also between a cluster and a vector in the testing phase. We also proved that the SCM is a general extension of the SVM with the RBF kernel. The experimental results confirm that the SCM is very effective for largescale classification problems due to significantly reduced computational costs for both training and testing and comparable classification accuracies. As a by-product, it provides a promising approach to dealing with privacy-preserving data mining problems.
13763246
Semi-automatic dynamic auxiliary-tag-aided image annotation
Image annotation is the foundation for many real-world applications. In the age of Web 2.0, image search and browsing are largely based on the tags of images. In this paper, we formulate image annotation as a multi-label learning problem, and develop a semi-automatic image annotation system. The presented system chooses proper words from a vocabulary as tags for a given image, and refines the tags with the help of the user's feedback. The refinement amounts to a novel multi-label learning framework, named Semi-Automatic Dynamic Auxiliary-Tag-Aided (SADATA), in which the classification result for one certain tag (target tag) can be boosted by the classification results of a subset of the other tags (auxiliary tags). The auxiliary tags, which have strong correlations with the target tag, are determined in terms of the normalized mutual information. We only select those tags whose correlations exceed a threshold as the auxiliary tags, so the auxiliary set is sparse. How much an auxiliary tag can contribute is dependent on the image, so we also build a probabilistic model conditioned on the auxiliary tag and the input image to adjust the weight of the auxiliary tag dynamically. For an given image, the user feedback on the tags corrects the outputs of the auxiliary classifiers and SADATA will recommend more proper tags next round. SADATA is evaluated on a large collection of Corel images. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of our dynamic auxiliary-tag-aided method. Furthermore, the performance also benefits from user feedbacks such that the annotation procedure can be significantly speeded up.
25793288
Polaris: A System-Level Roadmapping Toolchain for On-Chip Interconnection Networks
Technology trends are driving parallel on-chip architectures in the form of multiprocessor systems-on-a-chip (MPSoCs) and chip multiprocessors (CMPs). In these systems, the increasing on-chip communication demand among the computation elements necessitates the use of scalable, high-bandwidth network-on-chip (NoC) fabrics instead of dedicated interconnects and shared buses. As transistor feature sizes are further miniaturized, more complicated NoC architectures become feasible that can support more demanding applications. Given the myriad emerging software-hardware combinations, for cost-effectiveness, a system designer critically needs to prune this widening NoC design-space to predict the interconnect fabric(s) that best balance(s) cost/performance, before the actual design process begins. This prompted us to develop Polaris, a system-level roadmapping toolchain for on-chip interconnection networks that helps designers predict the most suitable interconnection network design(s) tailored to their performance needs and power/silicon area constraints with respect to a range of applications that the system will run. Polaris explores the plethora of NoC designs based on projections of network traffic, architectures, and process characteristics. While Polaris's toolchain is extensible so new traffic, network designs, and technology processes can be added, the current version already incorporates 7872 NoC design points. Polaris is rapid, efficiently iterating over thousands of NoC design points, while maintaining high relative and absolute accuracies when validated against detailed NoC synthesis results.
11982779
A Wireless Intrusion Detection Method Based on Dynamic Growing Neural Network
In this paper an intrusion detection method based on dynamic growing neural network (DGNN) for wireless networking is presented. DGNN is based on the Hebbian learning rule and adds new neurons under certain conditions. When DGNN performs supervised learning, resonance will happen if the winner can't match the training example; this rule combines the ART/ARTMAP neural network and WTA learning rule. When DGNN performs unsupervised learning, post-prune is carried out to prevent overfitting the training data just like decision tree learning. The intrusion detection method is an anomaly detection method and the feature is selected from the packets. In the experiments, we first check the ability of the neural network and then use it to perform detection in a WLAN. The results show that it can detect new intrusion behavior and some improving methods are presented in the conclusions