Extensions to “Output prediction under scarce data operation: control applications”

Albertos et al. (Automatica, 35 (1999) 1671–1681), proposed a simple and computationally cheap output estimation algorithm for systems where some output data is missing. In the original paper, a stability analysis of the algorithm is provided for the special case that every Nth sample of the output is observed. We here show how the stability can be analysed for arbitrary periodical missing data patterns.     

An ergonomic evaluation of VDTs“”

Eight VDTs of different trademarks were analysed in relation to the following properties:

( a) Contrasts of luminance between the screens on the one hand and source documents, as well as other surfaces of the VDT, on the other.

(b) Oscillation degree, sharpness and stability of characters.

( c) Face and legibility of characters.

( d) Dimensions, mobility and reflection degrees of the keyboards.

Special equipment was developed and standardized conditions were applied to the measurements.

The eight VDTs showed essential differences for all the parameters, which might be partially responsible for eye strain and postural complaints. It can be concluded that customers should pay more attention to ergonomic qualities when choosing a VDT. But such an endeavour remains useless if the customer does not, at the same time, look for a proper design of the whole workstation including the working environment.     

Comments on “Fully magnetic attitude control for spacecraft subject to gravity gradient”

The Lyapunov argument used in Wi niewski and Blanke, (Automatica 35 (1999) 1201) to establish asymptotic stability of a magnetic control law for an earth-orbiting spacecraft is incorrect. It is shown here that a small change to the assumed form of the control law can remedy the situation.     

A “mixed” small gain and passivity theorem in the frequency domain

We show that the negative feedback interconnection of two causal, stable, linear time-invariant systems, with a “mixed” small gain and passivity property, is guaranteed to be finite-gain stable. This “mixed” small gain and passivity property refers to the characteristic that, at a particular frequency, systems in the feedback interconnection are either both “input and output strictly passive”; or both have “gain less than one”; or are both “input and output strictly passive” and simultaneously both have “gain less than one”. The “mixed” small gain and passivity property is described mathematically using the notion of dissipativity of systems, and finite-gain stability of the interconnection is proven via a stability result for dissipative interconnected systems.     

Comments on “direct bilinear routh stability criteria for discrete systems”

The above paper¹ discusses useful Routh-like stability criteria for discrete systems. Unfortunately, however, previous work on the subject escaped the attention of the author. This note co-ordinates previous work with results obtained in the above paper. It also points out some of the more recent developments on the subject.     

On “uniformity” in definitions of global asymptotic stability for time-varying nonlinear systems

We discuss the lack of “uniformity” in definitions of uniform global asymptotic stability (UGAS) that have been used in various textbooks, monographs, and papers over the years. Sometimes UGAS is taken to be the combination of uniform local stability (ULS) and uniform global attractivity (UGA). Other times it also encompasses uniform global boundedness (UGB). This paper contains an explicit, smooth scalar example that shows that these definitions do not agree in general, even when the right-hand side is locally Lipschitz in the state uniformly in time (and thus bounded in time). We also discuss various notions of global asymptotic stability with relaxed uniformity (with respect to the initial time) requirements for the behavior of the solutions. In particular, we consider class- estimates and Lyapunov characterizations.     

Comments and improvement on “Robust control of state delayed systems with polytopic type uncertainties via parameter-dependent Lyapunov functionals”

The errors are pointed out in the above paper. And then, a new delay-dependent condition is presented for the robust stability of uncertain time-delay systems, which is an improvement on the corresponding results in the above paper.     

Visualizing “typical” and “exotic” Internet traffic data

The threat of cyber attacks motivates the need to monitor Internet traffic data for potentially abnormal behavior. Due to the enormous volumes of such data, statistical process monitoring tools, such as those traditionally used on data in the product manufacturing arena, are inadequate. “Exotic” data may indicate a potential attack; detecting such data requires a characterization of “typical” data. We devise some new graphical displays, including a “skyline plot,” that permit ready visual identification of unusual Internet traffic patterns in “streaming” data, and use appropriate statistical measures to help identify potential cyberattacks. These methods are illustrated on a moderate-sized data set (135,605 records) collected at George Mason University.     

“Paraprogramming” manufacturing information systems

Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) is creating unexpected problems for a growing number of manufacturing companies. Manufacturers are finding it especially difficult to attract programmers who are both willing and able to develop the highly complex software that integrates existing accounting, sales, production, engineering, and quality control information subsystems. Consequently, many companies abdicate their responsibility for manufacturing information systems and seek third party support ranging from consulting assistance to a total takeover of the company's information resources and operations. Companies that “give away” their internal information system capabilities to third parties will ultimately lose control of their enterprise information, a danger to be avoided. Off-the-shelf software for desktop computers has become sufficiently powerful to help solve a major portion of this serious problem. We hypothesize that manufacturing engineers (and others) can be trained to use packaged software to leverage their company's systems programming capabilities. In effect they would become “paraprogrammers” who would help design, develop, and maintain manufacturing information systems. This new type of professional would not require a computer science or similar educational background, but could be trained to satisfy many specialized programming needs in a manner similar to how paramedics and paralegals are trained and used in the medical and legal professions, respectively. This paper reports on the early stages of research to determine whether or not product design engineers can use a desktop relational database management system and its various command languages to develop a master bill of material information system (BOMIS). The purpose of the research is to evaluate the amount of programming complexity reduction and increased operational effectiveness that can be achieved through paraprogramming by manufacturing engineers.     

Alias types for “environment-aware” computations

In previous work with Bono we introduced a calculus for modelling “environment-aware” computations, that is computations that adapt their behavior according to the capabilities of the environment. The calculus is an imperative, object-based language (with extensible objects and primitives for discriminating the presence or absence of attributes of objects) equipped with a small-step operational semantics.In this paper we define a type and effect system for the calculus. The typing judgements specify, via constraints, the shape of environments which guarantees the correct execution of expressions and the typing rules track the effect of expression evaluation on the environment. The type and effect system is sound w.r.t. the operational semantics of the language.     

Information retrieval expert system “matchmaker”

This paper describes the information system used to search for a potential matrimonial partner. The search is based on comparison of the subject's record, which consists of his/her answers to about 400 items of a specially designed questionnaire, to the records of the potential partners. The basic principle of the system is representation of the set of candidates for the client with psychological warnings about potential “conflict zones” in relationships between client and candidate rather than a ranking of candidates based on hypothetical “psychological compatibility” indices.     

A Calculus for “environment-aware” computation

We present a calculus for modelling “environment-aware” computations, that is computations that adapt their behaviour according to the capabilities of the environment. The calculus is an imperative, object-based language with extensible objects, equipped with a labelled transition semantics. A notion of bisimulation, lifting to computations a correspondence between the capabilities of different environments, is provided. Bisimulation can be used to prove that a program is “cross-environment”, i.e., it has the same behaviour when run in different environments.     

A broadband inverted umbrella shaped cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna for “WLAN” and “C” band applications

The main objective of the present article is to improve the bandwidth of a low profile Cylindrical Dielectric Resonator Antenna (CDRA) and operate it for WLAN and “C” band applications. An inverted umbrella shaped CDRA excited by a microstrip feedline with single stub is proposed here. Efficient coupling has been achieved by means of a single stub microstrip feed between DRA and the feed. The new shape of DRA and a single stub microstrip feed improves the bandwidth significantly as high as 28% from 5 to 6.67 GHz which is quite useful for both WLAN and “C” band applications. The proposed antenna is simple in construction, easy to fabricate, low profile and thickness of CDRA is only 5 mm. A parametric study is performed using Ansoft HFSS simulation software to optimize the antenna performance. The proposed CDRA is fabricated and the characteristics of the antenna are measured.     

“Electric” Zip Tips™, Preliminary Results

Induction based fluidics (IBF), a new, simple patented approach for transporting liquids in the micro and the macro world, is discussed. Electric fields are shown to energize liquid/s in a container/s to execute an array of purposes. IBF is shown uniquely to energize N liquids in simple off the shelf devices, inductively. We discuss calibration and other issues, as we demonstrate how simple devices can dispense nanoliters and microliters with high precision and accuracy. Furthermore, we show preliminary single and eight channel data for the Zip Tip™ made by Millipore where the device transports liquids “electrically.” We briefly consider how such new devices, “electric” Zip Tips™, might automate desalting and the placement of digests for MALDI TOF analysis.     

“Probability transforms” of digital pictures

Let g be any local property (e.g., gray level or gradient magnitude) defined on a digital picture. Let p_g(z) be the relative frequency with which g has value z. At each point (x,y) of the picture we can display p_g[g(x,y)], appropriately scaled; the result is called the p_g transform of the picture. Alternatively, we can use joint or conditional frequencies of pairs of local properties to define transforms. This note gives examples of such transforms for various gs and discusses their possible uses and limitations.     

“Vague-to-Crisp” Neural Mechanism of Perception

This brief describes neural modeling fields (NMFs) for object perception, a bio-inspired paradigm. We discuss previous difficulties in object perception algorithms encountered since the 1950s, and describe how NMF overcomes these difficulties. NMF mechanisms are compared to recent experimental neuroimaging observations, which have demonstrated that initial top-down signals are vague and during perception they evolve into crisp representations matching the bottom-up signals from observed objects. Neural and mathematical mechanisms are described and future research directions outlined.      

Robot control system using “intelligent” integrators

Integral control is important in practice, but in many applications for robot systems this control is unsatisfactory, due to large initial conditions or disturbances. The overshoot becomes large, the speed of response not fast enough, and path tracking is needed. One cure for this problem is the use of the intelligent integral controller, which is very simple in implementation. This control scheme, as part of a PID controller, is applied to a robot system and its superiority, from the conventional one, becomes clear. The main advantage of this controller is that it gives very satisfactory results, while being rather simple.     

Integration of “Components” to Test Software Components

We present an ongoing research project aimed at developing a framework for component-based testing, in which we re-use and suitably combine some existing tools: the system architecture and the components are specified by the UML, and specifically the recently proposed UML Components methodology; the test cases are derived by applying the Cow_Suite, an environment for UML-based testing, previously conceived for the integration testing of OO systems; and the tests are codified and executed within the CDT, a framework under development, allowing for the decoupling between the abstract specification of tests, which is made against an architectural model, and their concrete execution, which needs to take into account the component implementations.     

The “dead reckoning” signed distance transform

Consider a binary image containing one or more objects. A signed distance transform assigns to each pixel (voxel, etc.), both inside and outside of any objects, the minimum distance from that pixel to the nearest pixel on the border of an object. By convention, the sign of the assigned distance value indicates whether or not the point is within some object (positive) or outside of all objects (negative). Over the years, many different algorithms have been proposed to calculate the distance transform of an image. These algorithms often trade accuracy for efficiency, exhibit varying degrees of conceptual complexity, and some require parallel processors. One algorithm in particular, the Chamfer distance [J. ACM 15 (1968) 600, Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process. 34 (1986) 344], has been analyzed for accuracy, is relatively efficient, requires no special computing hardware, and is conceptually straightforward. It is understandably, therefore, quite popular and widely used. We present a straightforward modification to the Chamfer distance transform algorithm that allows it to produce more accurate results without increasing the window size. We call this new algorithm Dead Reckoning as it is loosely based on the concept of continual measurements and course correction that was employed by ocean going vessel navigation in the past. We compare Dead Reckoning with a wide variety of other distance transform algorithms based on the Chamfer distance algorithm for both accuracy and speed, and demonstrate that Dead Reckoning produces more accurate results with comparable efficiency.     

The depth of monotone Boolean functions with multi input “AND” and “OR” gates

The problem of maximum depth of monotone Boolean functions is investigated when k-input AND and OR gates are used for realisation.