10605413
Center-configuration selection technique for the reconfigurable modular robot
The reconfigurable modular robot has an enormous amount of configurations to adapt to various environments and tasks. It greatly increases the complexity of configuration research in that the possible configuration number of the reconfigurable modular robot grows exponentially with the increase of module number. Being the initial configuration or the basic configuration of the reconfigurable robot, the center-configuration plays a crucial role in system’s actual applications. In this paper, a novel center-configuration selection technique has been proposed for reconfigurable modular robots. Based on the similarities between configurations’ transformation and graph theory, configuration network has been applied in the modeling and analyzing of these configurations. Configuration adjacency matrix, reconfirmation cost matrix, and center-configuration coefficient have been defined for the configuration network correspondingly. Being similar to the center-location problem, the center configuration has been selected according to the largest center-configuration coefficient. As an example of the reconfigurable robotic system, AMOEBA-I, a three-module reconfigurable robot with nine configurations which was developed in Shenyang Institute of Automation (SIA), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has been introduced briefly. According to the numerical simulation result, the center-configuration coefficients for these nine configurations have been calculated and compared to validate this technique. Lastly, a center-configuration selection example is provided with consideration of the adjacent configurations. The center-configuration selection technique proposed in this paper is also available to other reconfigurable modular robots.
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.
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.
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.
15051068
Study on Epipolar Geometry Restoration of Parallel Binocular Vision
The epipolar geometry restoration offline and online for the parallel binocular vision system were discussed in this paper. For the former, a method that uses a common calibration board to realize automatic and accurate matching of the image corner pairs was developed; for the latter, a connotative constraint was proved by geometry theory and the corresponding cross-correlation sparse matching algorithm was introduced. The constraint was that for any space point projected into two images, the horizontal coordinate in the left image of this point is bigger than that in the right image. Standard and real images experiments were made for each kind of problem and the results show that the algorithms for each problem were valid.
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.
44704902
Detection of Individual Microbubbles Using Wavelet Transform Based on a Theoretical Bubble Oscillation Model
Detecting individual microbubbles is important for the quantification of the amount of bubbles in the tissues, determination of microvascular volume and targeted microbubble imaging. We took the advantage of a theoretical bubble oscillation model to construct a matched wavelet, i.e. bubble wavelet as mother wavelet to detect individual microbubble using wavelet transform. The experimental echoes with different levels of added noises were processed. The results showed significant improvement even for an Echo-Noise-Ratio (ENRin) of -20 dB and the spatial location demonstrated very close agreement with the original experimental echo. This technique was much better than those based on harmonic analysis especially under the circumstance of short pulse insonation.
672476
Can Movies and Books Collaborate? Cross-Domain Collaborative Filtering for Sparsity Reduction
The sparsity problem in collaborative filtering (CF) is a major bottleneck for most CF methods. In this paper, we consider a novel approach for alleviating the sparsity problem in CF by transferring useritem rating patterns from a dense auxiliary rating matrix in other domains (e.g., a popular movie rating website) to a sparse rating matrix in a target domain (e.g., a new book rating website). We do not require that the users and items in the two domains be identical or even overlap. Based on the limited ratings in the target matrix, we establish a bridge between the two rating matrices at a cluster-level of user-item rating patterns in order to transfer more useful knowledge from the auxiliary task domain. We first compress the ratings in the auxiliary rating matrix into an informative and yet compact cluster-level rating pattern representation referred to as a codebook. Then, we propose an efficient algorithm for reconstructing the target rating matrix by expanding the codebook. We perform extensive empirical tests to show that our method is effective in addressing the data sparsity problem by transferring the useful knowledge from the auxiliary tasks, as compared to many state-of-the-art CF methods.
16164261
Relevance Feedback for Sketch Retrieval Based on Linear Programming Classification
Relevance feedback plays as an important role in sketch retrieval as it does in existing content-based retrieval. This paper presents a method of relevance feedback for sketch retrieval by means of Linear Programming (LP) classification. A LP classifier is designed to do online training and feature selection simultaneously. Combined with feature selection, it can select a set of user-sensitive features and perform classification well facing a small number of training samples. Experiments prove the proposed method both effective and efficient for relevance feedback in sketch retrieval.
16889097
Limited Feedback Precoding Based on Hierarchical Codebook and Linear Receiver
The analysis shows that the conventional codebook construction of Grassmannian subspace packing can not control the performance loss caused by a linear receiver, while a proper unitary perturbation to the codebook is capable of compensating for this performance loss. This paper therefore proposes a novel hierarchical codebook to exploit the gain of unitary perturbation. The hierarchical codebook consists of a Grassmannian subcodebook and a proposed perturbation subcodebook. To implement precoding, this paper also presents a successive codeword selection scheme, thus the receiver would successively selects two preferred codewords from Grassmannian and perturbation subcodebooks. With the feedback binary indices of these selections, the transmitter uses the product of two preferred codewords as the precoder. The theoretical analysis of the proposed precoding technique shows that the usage of the perturbation subcodebook can improve to a certain degree the system performance in terms of throughput as well as BER, with a small additional feedback overhead, and the proposed codebook would reduce the computational and storage requirements in contrast to the conventional codebook. It is also shown via computer simulations that the proposed technique gives a better BER performance than the single Grassmannian codebook based precoding technique does, even if the feedback overhead remains the same.
9082157
CHAMP: A Prototype for Automated Cellular Churn Prediction
We describe CHAMP (CHurn Analysis, Modeling, and Prediction), an automated system for modeling cellular customer behavior on a large scale. Using historical data from GTE's data warehouse for cellular phone customers, every month CHAMP identifies churn factors for several geographic regions and updates models to generate churn scores predicting who is likely to churn within the near future. CHAMP is capable of developing customized monthly models and churn scores for over one hundred GTE cellular phone markets totaling over 5 million customers.