Robust output maneuvering for a class of nonlinear systems

The output maneuvering problem involves two tasks. The first, called the geometric task, is to force the system output to converge to a desired path parametrized by a continuous scalar variable θ. The second task, called the dynamic task, is to satisfy a desired dynamic behavior along the path. This dynamic behavior is further specified via a time, speed, or acceleration assignment. While the main concern is to satisfy the geometric task, the dynamic task ensures that the system output follows the path with the desired speed. A robust recursive design technique is developed for uncertain nonlinear plants in vectorial strict feedback form. First the geometric part of the problem is solved. Then an update law is constructed that bridges the geometric design with the speed assignment. The design procedure is illustrated through several examples.     

Process planning for Floor machining of 2½D pockets based on a morphed spiral tool path pattern

This work proposes a process planning for machining of a Floor which is the most prominent elemental machining feature in a 2½D pocket. Traditionally, the process planning of 2½D pocket machining is posed as stand-alone problem involving either tool selection, tool path generation or machining parameter selection, resulting in sub-optimal plans. For this reason, the tool path generation and feed selection is proposed to be integrated with an objective of minimizing machining time under realistic cutting force constraints for given pocket geometry and cutting tool. A morphed spiral tool path consisting of G¹ continuous biarc and arc spline is proposed as a possible tool path generation strategy with the capability of handling islands in pocket geometry. Proposed tool path enables a constant feed rate and consistent cutting force during machining in typical commercial CNC machine tool. The constant feed selection is based on the tool path and cutting tool geometries as well as dynamic characteristics of mechanical structure of the machine tool to ensure optimal machining performance. The proposed tool path strategy is compared with those generated by commercial CAM software. The calculated tool path length and measured dry machining time show considerable advantage of the proposed tool path. For optimal machining parameter selection, the feed per tooth is iteratively optimized with a pre-calibrated cutting force model, under a cutting force constraint to avoid tool rupture. The optimization result shows around 32% and 40% potential improvement in productivity with one and two feed rate strategies respectively.     

Process planning for Floor machining of 2½D pockets based on a morphed spiral tool path pattern

This work proposes a process planning for machining of a Floor which is the most prominent elemental machining feature in a 2½D pocket. Traditionally, the process planning of 2½D pocket machining is posed as stand-alone problem involving either tool selection, tool path generation or machining parameter selection, resulting in sub-optimal plans. For this reason, the tool path generation and feed selection is proposed to be integrated with an objective of minimizing machining time under realistic cutting force constraints for given pocket geometry and cutting tool. A morphed spiral tool path consisting of G¹ continuous biarc and arc spline is proposed as a possible tool path generation strategy with the capability of handling islands in pocket geometry. Proposed tool path enables a constant feed rate and consistent cutting force during machining in typical commercial CNC machine tool. The constant feed selection is based on the tool path and cutting tool geometries as well as dynamic characteristics of mechanical structure of the machine tool to ensure optimal machining performance. The proposed tool path strategy is compared with those generated by commercial CAM software. The calculated tool path length and measured dry machining time show considerable advantage of the proposed tool path. For optimal machining parameter selection, the feed per tooth is iteratively optimized with a pre-calibrated cutting force model, under a cutting force constraint to avoid tool rupture. The optimization result shows around 32% and 40% potential improvement in productivity with one and two feed rate strategies respectively.     

Static reachability and static decoupling of linear time-invariantsystems

The geometric concepts of holdability and static reachability for time-invariant linear multivariable systems are introduced. The geometric structure of multivariable linear systems are analyzed with respect to these concepts. The problem of static decoupling by dynamic feedback is defined, and the necessary and sufficient conditions for its solution for square systems is found to be a generalization of Wolowich's (1973) results on the same problem with state feedback. It is shown that the concept of static reachability is the key one in this problem's solution     

A constraint-based dynamic geometry system

Dynamic geometry systems are tools for geometric visualization. They allow the user to define geometric elements, establish relationships between them and explore the dynamic behavior of the remaining geometric elements when one of them is moved. The main problem in dynamic geometry systems is the ambiguity that arises from operations that lead to more than one possible solution. Most dynamic geometry systems deal with this problem in such a way that the solution selection method leads to a fixed dynamic behavior of the system. This is specially annoying when the behavior observed is not the one the user intended.In this work we propose a modular architecture for dynamic geometry systems built upon a set of functional units which will allow us to apply some well-known results from the Geometric Constraint Solving field. A functional unit called filter will provide the user with tools to unambiguously capture the expected dynamic behavior of a given geometric problem.     

SAT–LP–IIS joint-directed path-oriented bounded reachability analysis of linear hybrid automata

As discrete jumps and continuous flows tangle in the behavior of linear hybrid automata (LHA), the bounded model checking (BMC) for reachability of LHA is a challenging problem. Current works try to handle this problem by encoding all the discrete and continuous behaviors in the bound into a set of SMT formulas which can then be solved by SMT solvers. However, when the system size is large, the object SMT problem could be huge and difficult to solve. Instead of encoding everything into one constraint set, this paper proposes a SAT–LP–IIS joint-directed solution to conduct the BMC for reachability of LHA in a layered way. First, the bounded graph structure of LHA is encoded into a propositional formula set, and solved by SAT solvers to find potential paths which can reach the target location on the graph. Then, the feasibility of certain path is encoded into a set of linear constraints which can then be solved by linear programming (LP) efficiently. If the path is not feasible, irreducible infeasible set (IIS) technique is deployed to locate an infeasible path segment which will be fed to the SAT solver to accelerate the enumerating process. Experiments show that by this SAT–LP–IIS joint-directed solution, the memory usage of the BMC of LHA is well-controlled and the performance outperforms the state-of-the-art SMT-style competitors significantly.     

Adaptive maneuvering, with experiments, for a model ship in a marine control laboratory

The maneuvering problem involves two tasks. The first, called the geometric task, is to force the system output to converge to a desired path continuously parametrized by a scalar θ. The second task, called the dynamic task, is to satisfy a desired dynamic behavior along the path. In this paper, this dynamic behavior is further specified as a speed assignment for θ(t). While the main concern is to satisfy the geometric task, the dynamic task ensures that the system output follows the path with the desired speed. An adaptive recursive design technique is developed for a parametrically uncertain nonlinear plant describing the dynamics of a ship. First the geometric part of the problem is solved. Then an update law is constructed that bridges the geometric design with the dynamic task. The design procedure is performed and tested by several experiments for a model ship in a marine control laboratory.     

大图上跳数受限的可达查询算法研究与优化

判断有向图上两个顶点之间是否存在一条路径是一个经典问题,而对于一些路由规划和图分析等实际应用,要求查找是否存在跳数受限的可达路径,这是一个变种的图可达查询问题.对于大图上跳数受限的查询算法,不仅仅要对大图查询的时间效率和空间效率进行权衡,而且还要利用跳数受限的特性进行优化.普通的可达查询算法存在小度数顶点索引项占用空间过多的问题,造成空间浪费严重.为此我们提出了一种面向跳数受限的2-hop部分索引方法,采用改进的索引方法并结合局部搜索,实现跳数受限的有效可达性查询.实验结果表明,在Orkut社交网络数据集上与已有算法相比,该算法索引空间节省了32％,同时查询时间略微增加,使得我们算法可以计算更大规模图的跳数受限可达问题.     

Shortest Path Geometric Rounding

Exact implementations of algorithms of computational geometry are subject to exponential growth in running time and space. In particular, coordinate bit-complexity can grow exponentially when algorithms are cascaded : the output of one algorithm becomes the input to the next. Cascading is a significant problem in practice. We propose a geometric rounding technique: shortest path rounding . Shortest path rounding trades accuracy for space and time and eliminates the exponential cost introduced by cascading. It can be applied to all algorithms which operate on planar polygonal regions, for example, set operations, transformations, convex hull, triangulation, and Minkowski sum. Unlike other geometric rounding techniques, shortest path rounding can round vertices to arbitrary lattices, even in polar coordinates, as long as the rounding cells are connected. (Other rounding techniques can only round to the integer grid.) On the integer grid, shortest path rounding introduces less combinatorial change and geometric error than the other rounding methods. Three algorithms are given for shortest path rounding, one of which we have used in industrial application software since 1992. In combination with recent advances in exact floating point evaluation of numerical primitives, shortest path geometric rounding yields a practical solution to numerical issues in computational geometry. Geometric algorithms can be implemented exactly on floating point input coordinates; the exact output coordinates can be rounded to accurate floating point approximations; and the cost of each arithmetic operation is only a little more than if it were implemented as a single hardware floating point operation. Received February 7, 1997; revised September 9, 1998.     

参数曲面上的插值与混合

如何表示曲面上的曲线,在处理诸如数控加工中的路径设计以及CAD/CAM等领域频繁出现的曲面裁剪问题时显得日益重要.给出了数据点的切方向(切方向及曲率向量或测地曲率值)指定而G¹连续(G²连续)插值曲面上任意点列的方法.作为曲面上曲线插值问题的特例,还讨论了曲面上曲线的混合问题.基本思想是借助于微分几何的有关结论,曲面上曲线的插值问题被转化为其参数平面上类似的曲线插值问题.该方法能够用二维隐式方程来表示曲面上的插值曲线,从而把在显示该曲线时所面对的曲面求交的几何问题转化为计算隐式曲线的代数问题.实验证明该方法是可行的,而且适用于CAD/CAM及计算机图形学等领域.     

Computing parameter ranges in constructive geometric constraint solving: Implementation and correctness proof

In parametric design, changing values of parameters to get different solution instances to the problem at hand is a paramount operation. One of the main issues when generating the solution instance for the actual set of parameters is that the user does not know in general which is the set of parameter values for which the parametric solution is feasible. Similarly, in constraint-based dynamic geometry, knowing the set of critical points where construction feasibility changes would allow to avoid unexpected and unwanted behaviors.We consider parametric models in the Euclidean space with one internal degree of freedom. In this scenario, in general, the set of values of the variant parameter for which the parametric model is realizable and defines a valid shape is a set of intervals on the real line.In this work we report on our experiments implementing the van der Meiden Approach to compute the set of parameter values that bound intervals for which the parametric object is realizable. The implementation is developed on top of a constructive, ruler-and-compass geometric constraint solver. We formalize the underlying concepts and prove that our implementation is correct, that is, the approach exactly computes all the feasible interval bounds.     

Reachability and connectivity queries in constraint databases

It is known that standard query languages for constraint databases lack the power to express connectivity properties. Such properties are important in the context of geographical databases, where one naturally wishes to ask queries about connectivity (What are the connected components of a given set?) or reachability (Is there a path from A to B that lies entirely in a given region?). No existing constraint query languages that allow closed-form evaluation can express these properties. In the first part of the paper, we show that, in principle, there is no obstacle to getting closed languages that can express connectivity and reachability queries. In fact, we show that adding any topological property to standard languages like FO+Lin and FO+Poly results in a closed language. In the second part of the paper, we look for tractable closed languages for expressing reachability and connectivity queries. We introduce path logic, which allows one to state properties of paths with respect to given regions. We show that it is closed, has polynomial time data complexity for linear and polynomial constraints, and can express a large number of reachability properties beyond simple connectivity. Query evaluation in the logic involves obtaining a discrete abstraction of a continuous path, and model-checking of temporal formulae on the discrete structure.     

A Deductive Database Approach to Automated Geometry Theorem Proving and Discovering

We report our effort to build a geometry deductive database, which can be used to find the fixpoint for a geometric configuration. The system can find all the properties of the configuration that can be deduced using a fixed set of geometric rules. To control the size of the database, we propose the idea of a structured deductive database. Our experiments show that this technique could reduce the size of the database by one hundred times. We propose the data-based search strategy to improve the efficiency of forward chaining. We also make clear progress in the problems of how to select good geometric rules, how to add auxiliary points, and how to construct numerical diagrams as models automatically. The program is tested with 160 nontrivial geometry configurations. For these geometric configurations, the program not only finds most of their well-known properties but also often gives unexpected results, some of which are possibly new. Also, the proofs generated by the program are generally short and totally geometric.     

A search algorithm for motion planning with six degrees of freedom

The motion planning problem is of central importance to the fields of robotics, spatial planning, and automated design. In robotics we are interested in the automatic synthesis of robot motions, given high-level specifications of tasks and geometric models of the robot and obstacles. The “Movers'” problem is to find a continuous, collision-free path for a moving object through an environment containing obstacles. We present an implemented algorithm for the classical formulation of the three-dimensional Movers' problem: Given an arbitrary rigid polyhedral moving object P with three translational and three rotational degrees of freedom, find a continuous, collision-free path taking P from some initial configuration to a desired goal configuration.This paper describes an implementation of a complete algorithm (at a given resolution) for the full six degree of freedom Movers' problem. The algorithm transforms the six degree of freedom planning problem into a point navigation problem in a six-dimensional configuration space (called C-space). The C-space obstacles, which characterize the physically unachievable configurations, are directly represented by six-dimensional manifolds whose boundaries are five-dimensional C-surfaces. By characterizing these surfaces and their intersections, collision-free paths may be found by the closure of three operators which (i) slide along five-dimensional level C-surfaces parallel to C-space obstacles; (ii) slide along one- to four-dimensional intersections of level C-surfaces; and (iii) jump between six-dimensional obstacles. These operators are employed by a best-first search algorithm in C-space. We will discuss theoretical properties of the algorithm, including completeness (at a resolution). This paper describes the heuristic search, with particular emphasis on the heuristic strategies that evaluate local geometric information. At the heart of this paper lie the design and implementation of these strategies for planning paths along level C-surfaces and their intersection manifolds, and for reasoning about motions with three degrees of rotational freedom. The problems of controlling the interaction of these strategies, and of integrating diverse local experts for geometric reasoning provide an interesting application of search to a difficult domain with significant practical implications. The representations and algorithms we develop impact many geometric planning problems, and extend to Cartesian manipulators with six degrees of freedom.     

Cartesian path generation of robot manipulators using continuous genetic algorithms

In this paper, the authors describe a novel technique based on continuous genetic algorithms (CGAs) to solve the path generation problem for robot manipulators. We consider the following scenario: given the desired Cartesian path of the end-effector of the manipulator in a free-of-obstacles workspace, off-line smooth geometric paths in the joint space of the manipulator are obtained. The inverse kinematics problem is formulated as an optimization problem based on the concept of the minimization of the accumulative path deviation and is then solved using CGAs where smooth curves are used for representing the required geometric paths in the joint space through out the evolution process. In general, CGA uses smooth operators and avoids sharp jumps in the parameter values. This novel approach possesses several distinct advantages: first, it can be applied to any general serial manipulator with positional degrees of freedom that might not have any derived closed-form solution for its inverse kinematics. Second, to the authors’ knowledge, it is the first singularity-free path generation algorithm that can be applied at the path update rate of the manipulator. Third, extremely high accuracy can be achieved along the generated path almost similar to analytical solutions, if available. Fourth, the proposed approach can be adopted to any general serial manipulator including both nonredundant and redundant systems. Fifth, when applied on parallel computers, the real time implementation is possible due to the implicit parallel nature of genetic algorithms. The generality and efficiency of the proposed algorithm are demonstrated through simulations that include 2R and 3R planar manipulators, PUMA manipulator, and a general 6R serial manipulator.     

Geometric Performance Analysis of Periodic Behavior

A fundamental problem in designing parallel programs is the ability to exactly analyze program performance, given a specification of the process synchronization structure and the execution timings of all code segments. This paper derives, for two process programs that synchronize for mutual exclusion only, a representation of all possible periodic behaviors for all possible process starting times. The paper employs a novel analysis method, based on geometry, using timed progress graphs (TPGs). TPGs represent the progress of each process by an axis in a Cartesian graph; process synchronization by line segments; and each possible program execution by a directed, continuous path that does not cross a segment. The geometric problem is solved by an analytic method, rather than the method popular with many (untimed) progress graphs papers—computational geometry.     

Verifying parallel programs with dynamic communication structures

We address the verification problem of networks of communicating pushdown systems modeling communicating parallel programs with procedure calls. Processes in such networks can read the control state of the other processes according to a given communication structure (specifying the observability rights between processes). The reachability problem of such models is undecidable in general. First, we define a class of networks that effectively preserves recognizability (hence, its reachability problem is decidable). Then, we consider networks where the communication structure can change dynamically during the execution according to a phase graph. The reachability problem for these dynamic networks being undecidable in general, we define a subclass for which it becomes decidable. Then, we consider reachability when the switches in the communication structures are bounded. We show that this problem is undecidable even for one switch. We define a natural class of models for which this problem is decidable. This class can be used in the definition of an efficient semi-decision procedure for the analysis of the general model of dynamic networks. Our techniques allowed to find bugs in two versions of a Windows NT Bluetooth driver.     

Decremental algorithm for adaptive routing incorporating traveler information

Routing in a stochastic and dynamic (time-dependent) network is a crucial transportation problem. A new variant of adaptive routing, which assumes perfect online information of continuous real-time link travel time, is proposed. Driver's speed profile is taken into consideration to realistically estimate travel times, which also involves the stochasticity of links in a dynamic network. An adaptive approach is suggested to tackle the continuous dynamic shortest path problem. A decremental algorithm is consequently developed to reduce optimization time. The impact of the proposed adaptive routing and the performance of the decremental approach are evaluated in static and dynamic networks under different traffic conditions. The proposed approach can be incorporated into vehicle navigation systems.     

UML时间顺序图的可达性分析

对于实时系统来说,UML顺序图描述了对象之间的交互。对象之间的交互展现了系统行为的场景。本文中,我们针对描述多场景的UML顺序图组合中的可达性问题进行研究。尽管这个问题可以转换为相应的时间自动机,然后进行处理,但其转化为之后,状态空间巨大,解决的开销比较大,效率不高。针对部分可达性问题,本文采用更为高效的基于线性规划的解决方案,其思想如下:首先遍历所有到达给定节点的简单路径片断来验证可达性,随后遍历到达给定节点的并且包含所有循环至多一次的路径片断来验证可达性。由于我们并没有遍历所有路径片断,因此用本文的方法判定给定节点的可达性的时候,结果会有三种:可达,不可达和不确定。由于有些循环与可达性是无关的,我们进一步通过识别哪些循环与可达性无关,对算法进行改进。