Investigations of surface degradation of high‐density polyethylene materials resulting from tracking,using physicochemical analysis

In the present work tracking phenomena were studied with high‐density polyethylene (HDPE) materials under dc voltage, with NH₄Cl and acid rain as contaminants. It was determined that the tracking time of the material depends on the conductivity and flow rate of the contaminant. Furthermore, physicochemical analysis by wide‐angle X‐ray diffraction studies, differential scanning calorimetry, and luminescence spectroscopy was carried out, whereupon it was concluded that the tracking process is a surface‐degradation process. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 83: 2843–2849, 2002; DOI 10.1002/app.10260     

Adaptive tracking control of leader–follower systems with unknown dynamics and partial measurements

In this paper, a decentralized adaptive tracking control is developed for a second-order leader–follower system with unknown dynamics and relative position measurements. Linearly parameterized models are used to describe the unknown dynamics of a self-active leader and all followers. A new distributed system is obtained by using the relative position and velocity measurements as the state variables. By only using the relative position measurements, a dynamic output–feedback tracking control together with decentralized adaptive laws is designed for each follower. At the same time, the stability of the tracking error system and the parameter convergence are analyzed with the help of a common Lyapunov function method. Some simulation results are presented to validate the proposed adaptive tracking control.     

主旋翼升力和机身姿态受限的模型直升机非线性控制（英文）

A nonlinear control is proposed for trajectory tracking of a 6-DOF model-scaled helicopter with constraints on main rotor thrust and fuselage attitude. In the procedure of control design, the mathematical model of helicopter is simplified into three subsystems: altitude subsystem, longitudinal-lateral subsystem and attitude subsystem. The proposed control is developed by combining the sub-controls for the corresponding subsystems. The sub-controls for altitude subsystem and longitudinal-lateral subsystem are designed with hyperbolic tangent functions to satisfy the constraints; the sub-control for attitude subsystem is based on backstepping technique such that fuselage attitude tracks the virtual control for longitudinallateral subsystem. It is proved theoretically that tracking errors are ultimately bounded, and control constraints are satisfied.Performances of the proposed controller are demonstrated by simulation results.     

A low-cost real time virtual system for postural stability assessment at home

Background and objective

The degeneration of the balance control system in the elderly and in many pathologies requires measuring the equilibrium conditions very often. In clinical practice, equilibrium control is commonly evaluated by using a force platform (stabilometric platform) in a clinical environment.In this paper, we demonstrate how a simple movement analysis system, based on a 3D video camera and a 3D real time model reconstruction of the human body, can be used to collect information usually recorded by a physical stabilometric platform.

Methods

The algorithm used to reconstruct the human body model as a set of spheres is described and discussed. Moreover, experimental measurements and comparisons with data collected by a physical stabilometric platform are also reported. The measurements were collected on a set of 6 healthy subjects to whom a change in equilibrium condition was stimulated by performing an equilibrium task.

Results

The experimental results showed that more than 95% of data collected by the proposed method were not significantly different from those collected by the classic platform, thus confirming the usefulness of the proposed system.

Conclusions

The proposed virtual balance assessment system can be implemented at low cost (about 500$) and, for this reason, can be considered a home use medical device. On the contrary, astabilometric platform has a cost of about 10,000$ and requires periodical calibration. The proposed system does not require periodical calibration, as is necessary for stabilometric force platforms, and it is easy to use. In future, the proposed system with little integration can be used, besides being an emulator of a stabilometric platform, also to recognize and track, in real time, head, legs, arms and trunk, that is to collect information actually obtained by sophisticated optoelectronic systems.     

Modeling and global trajectory tracking control for an over-actuated MAV

This paper deals with an original micro aerial vehicle (MAV) design, the Omnicopter MAV. It has two central coaxial rotors with fixed-pitch propellers and three perimeter mounted ducted fans with servo motors performing thrust vectoring. Compared with traditional rotary wing MAVs that have inherent underactuation, the Omnicopter possesses some advantages in mobility, for example, lateral translation with zero attitude and hover with nonzero attitude. The trajectory tracking control design, global stability analysis, and control allocation are demonstrated through numerical simulation. The advantage of zero attitude translation is illustrated through experimental results.     

Human tracking system based on adaptive multi-feature mean-shift for robot under the double-layer locating mechanism

Human tracking has been a challenging task for robot in the past decades. In this paper, to realize the human following in a cluttered environment, a human tracking system based on adaptive multi-feature mean-shift (AMF-MS) under the double-layer locating mechanism (DLLM) is proposed to solve the problem of distinguishing target, occlusion, and quick turning. The DLLM, considering the course location processing and fine location processing, is designed to estimate the person’s position using the fusion of heterogeneous data. As an ID tag attached on target can be detected by RF antennas, the course locating method can track the target easily and quickly. The Bayes rule is introduced to calculate the probability where the tag exists due to the instability of RF signals. In the fine locating step, the AMF-MS is proposed because it can reduce computational load and represent target by multi-feature histogram function. Meanwhile, we combine extended Kalman filter and AMF-MS to overcome MS’s inability of occlusion. To control the robot following the target person precisely, an intelligent gear shift strategy based on fuzzy control is implemented by analyzing the robot structure. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach is robust to handle complex tracking conditions, and show the system has an optimum performance.     

Online learning and fusion of orientation appearance models for robust rigid object tracking

We introduce a robust framework for learning and fusing of orientation appearance models based on both texture and depth information for rigid object tracking. Our framework fuses data obtained from a standard visual camera and dense depth maps obtained by low-cost consumer depth cameras such as the Kinect. To combine these two completely different modalities, we propose to use features that do not depend on the data representation: angles. More specifically, our framework combines image gradient orientations as extracted from intensity images with the directions of surface normals computed from dense depth fields. We propose to capture the correlations between the obtained orientation appearance models using a fusion approach motivated by the original Active Appearance Models (AAMs). To incorporate these features in a learning framework, we use a robust kernel based on the Euler representation of angles which does not require off-line training, and can be efficiently implemented online. The robustness of learning from orientation appearance models is presented both theoretically and experimentally in this work. This kernel enables us to cope with gross measurement errors, missing data as well as other typical problems such as illumination changes and occlusions. By combining the proposed models with a particle filter, the proposed framework was used for performing 2D plus 3D rigid object tracking, achieving robust performance in very difficult tracking scenarios including extreme pose variations.     

Automatic annotation of tennis games: An integration of audio,vision, and learning

Fully automatic annotation of tennis game using broadcast video is a task with a great potential but with enormous challenges. In this paper we describe our approach to this task, which integrates computer vision, machine listening, and machine learning. At the low level processing, we improve upon our previously proposed state-of-the-art tennis ball tracking algorithm and employ audio signal processing techniques to detect key events and construct features for classifying the events. At high level analysis, we model event classification as a sequence labelling problem, and investigate four machine learning techniques using simulated event sequences. Finally, we evaluate our proposed approach on three real world tennis games, and discuss the interplay between audio, vision and learning. To the best of our knowledge, our system is the only one that can annotate tennis game at such a detailed level.     

不同重力环境的空间机械臂自抗扰轨迹跟踪控制

针对空间机械臂在地面装调与空间应用时,由于重力环境变化导致机械臂模型发生变化的问题,提出了一种自抗扰控制算法,用于完成空间机械臂轨迹跟踪控制的任务.该算法通过将系统模型及未知外扰作为系统的总和扰动,并利用扩张状态观测器对该扰动进行观测且给予补偿,从而提高了系统抗扰的性能.当机械臂模型随重力环境变化而发生变化时,使用同一个自抗扰控制器对其末端轨迹进行控制,均能取得较好的控制效果.通过对系统的稳定性进行分析,证明了所设计控制器的有效性.将仿真结果与PD控制及自适应鲁棒控制做比较,结果表明该控制算法不仅能适应机械臂模型的变化而且还能有效抵抗系统的扰动,从而使系统具有较强的鲁棒性.     

Dynamic output feedback control of a flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicle via T–S fuzzy approach

By utilising Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy set approach, this paper addresses the robust H_∞ dynamic output feedback control for the non-linear longitudinal model of flexible air-breathing hypersonic vehicles (FAHVs). The flight control of FAHVs is highly challenging due to the unique dynamic characteristics, and the intricate couplings between the engine and fight dynamics and external disturbance. Because of the dynamics’ enormous complexity, currently, only the longitudinal dynamics models of FAHVs have been used for controller design. In this work, T–S fuzzy modelling technique is utilised to approach the non-linear dynamics of FAHVs, then a fuzzy model is developed for the output tracking problem of FAHVs. The fuzzy model contains parameter uncertainties and disturbance, which can approach the non-linear dynamics of FAHVs more exactly. The flexible models of FAHVs are difficult to measure because of the complex dynamics and the strong couplings, thus a full-order dynamic output feedback controller is designed for the fuzzy model. A robust H_∞ controller is designed for the obtained closed-loop system. By utilising the Lyapunov functional approach, sufficient solvability conditions for such controllers are established in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed T–S fuzzy dynamic output feedback control method is demonstrated by numerical simulations.