An autonomous mobile robot with a 3D laser range finder for 3D exploration and digitalization of indoor environments

Digital 3D models of the environment are needed in rescue and inspection robotics, facility managements and architecture. This paper presents an automatic system for gaging and digitalization of 3D indoor environments. It consists of an autonomous mobile robot, a reliable 3D laser range finder and three elaborated software modules. The first module, a fast variant of the Iterative Closest Points algorithm, registers the 3D scans in a common coordinate system and relocalizes the robot. The second module, a next best view planner, computes the next nominal pose based on the acquired 3D data while avoiding complicated obstacles. The third module, a closed-loop and globally stable motor controller, navigates the mobile robot to a nominal pose on the base of odometry and avoids collisions with dynamical obstacles. The 3D laser range finder acquires a 3D scan at this pose. The proposed method allows one to digitalize large indoor environments fast and reliably without any intervention and solves the SLAM problem. The results of two 3D digitalization experiments are presented using a fast octree-based visualization method.     

Perceived density of road maps

Maps should be designed so that users can comprehend and use the information. Display decisions, such as choosing the scale at which an area is shown, depend on properties of the displayed information such as the perceived density (PD) of the information. Taking a psychophysical approach we suggest that the PD of information in a road map is related to the scale and properties of the mapped area. 54 participants rated the PD of 60 maps from different regions. We provide a simple model that predicts the PD of electronic road map displays, using the logarithm of the number of roads, the logarithm of the number of junctions and the length of the shown roads. The PD model was cross-validated using a different set of 60 maps (n = 44). The model can be used for automatically adjusting display scales and for evaluating map designs, considering the required PD to perform a map-related task.     

Die Sicherheitsaspekte von Java

Zusammenfassung   Java stellt, insbesondere hinsichtlich des Applet-Konzepts, eine ?u?erst interessante Technologie dar, die darauf beruht, Programme über ein Netz zu transportieren und auszuführen. Aus der Sicht der IT–Sicherheit ist ein solches Vorgehen jedoch nicht unproblematisch. Im folgenden wird diese Problematik n?her beleuchtet, das Java zugrundeliegende Konzept erl?utert und eingeordnet. Das Ziel ist, den Leser in die Lage zu versetzen, die tats?chlich mit dem Einsatz von Java verbundenen Sicherheitsrisiken bei Anwendungen einsch?tzen zu k?nnen. Eingegangen am 11.08.1997, in überarbeiteter Form am 30.10.1997     

Numerical optimization of the thickness distribution of three-dimensional structures with respect to their structural acoustic properties

This paper describes a numerical method to optimize the thickness distribution of three-dimensional structures with respect to various vibrational and structural properties. A combination of a commercially available finite element (FE) software package and additional user-written programs is used to modify the shape (but not the number of nodes and elements) of FE models of the structures to be optimized. The design variables are the structure's local thickness values at selected surface nodes. Possible objectives of the optimization include the minimization of the vibration level, the minimization of the structural mass, the maximization of the fundamental frequency, and the maximization of the difference between two arbitrarily chosen natural frequencies. The optimization procedure is applied to three example structures, namely, a rectangular plate, two plates joined at 90°, and a gearbox. Depending on the particular structure and on the choice of the objective function and constraints, the vibrational and structural properties can be substantially improved.     

Variational optical flow computation in real time.

This paper investigates the usefulness of bidirectional multigrid methods for variational optical flow computations. Although these numerical schemes are among the fastest methods for solving equation systems, they are rarely applied in the field of computer vision. We demonstrate how to employ those numerical methods for the treatment of variational optical flow formulations and show that the efficiency of this approach even allows for real-time performance on standard PCs. As a representative for variational optic flow methods, we consider the recently introduced combined local-global method. It can be considered as a noise-robust generalization of the Horn and Schunck technique. We present a decoupled, as well as a coupled, version of the classical Gauss-Seidel solver, and we develop several multgrid implementations based on a discretization coarse grid approximation. In contrast, with standard bidirectional multigrid algorithms, we take advantage of intergrid transfer operators that allow for nondyadic grid hierarchies. As a consequence, no restrictions concerning the image size or the number of traversed levels have to be imposed. In the experimental section, we juxtapose the developed multigrid schemes and demonstrate their superior performance when compared to unidirectional multgrid methods and nonhierachical solvers. For the well-known 316 x 252 Yosemite sequence, we succeeded in computing the complete set of dense flow fields in three quarters of a second on a 3.06-GHz Pentium4 PC. This corresponds to a frame rate of 18 flow fields per second which outperforms the widely-used Gauss-Seidel method by almost three orders of magnitude.     

Cloning and Functional Characterization of Dog OCT1 and OCT2: Another Step in Exploring Species Differences in Organic Cation Transporters

OCT1 and OCT2 are polyspecific membrane transporters that are involved in hepatic and renal drug clearance in humans and mice. In this study, we cloned dog OCT1 and OCT2 and compared their function to the human and mouse orthologs. We used liver and kidney RNA to clone dog OCT1 and OCT2. The cloned and the publicly available RNA-Seq sequences differed from the annotated exon-intron structure of OCT1 in the dog genome CanFam3.1. An additional exon between exons 2 and 3 was identified and confirmed by sequencing in six additional dog breeds. Next, dog OCT1 and OCT2 were stably overexpressed in HEK293 cells and the transport kinetics of five drugs were analyzed. We observed strong differences in the transport kinetics between dog and human orthologs. Dog OCT1 transported fenoterol with 12.9-fold higher capacity but 14.3-fold lower affinity (higher K_M) than human OCT1. Human OCT1 transported ipratropium with 5.2-fold higher capacity but 8.4-fold lower affinity than dog OCT1. Compared to human OCT2, dog OCT2 showed 10-fold lower transport of fenoterol and butylscopolamine. In conclusion, the functional characterization of dog OCT1 and OCT2 reported here may have implications when using dogs as pre-clinical models as well as for drug therapy in dogs.     

Evolutionary functional black-box testing in an industrial setting

During the past years, evolutionary testing research has reported encouraging results for automated functional (i.e. black-box) testing. However, despite promising results, these techniques have hardly been applied to complex, real-world systems and as such, little is known about their scalability, applicability, and acceptability in industry. In this paper, we describe the empirical setup used to study the use of evolutionary functional testing in industry through two case studies, drawn from serial production development environments at Daimler and Berner & Mattner Systemtechnik, respectively. Results of the case studies are presented, and research questions are assessed based on them. In summary, the results indicate that evolutionary functional testing in an industrial setting is both scalable and applicable. However, the creation of fitness functions is time-consuming. Although in some cases, this is compensated by the results, it is still a significant factor preventing functional evolutionary testing from more widespread use in industry.     

Ionic Space‐Charge Depletion in Lithium Fluoride Thin Films on Sapphire (0001) Substrates

Lithium fluoride thin films with various thicknesses have been grown on c‐plane sapphire substrates by radio‐frequency sputtering. The thin films are granular with a preferential [111] orientation of the grains. Thickness‐dependent measurements allow the separation of bulk and interface conductions. The normalized conductance decreases linearly with decreasing LiF layer thickness with a negative extrapolated intercept. DC polarization, AC impedance spectroscopy and electromotive force measurement indicate depletion of lithium ion vacancies as majority charge carriers and hence a negative space‐charge potential. A generalized Mott–Schottky approach within the model of heterogeneous doping fully explains the entire boundary defect chemistry.     

Counting decomposable multivariate polynomials

A polynomial f (multivariate over a field) is decomposable if f=g °h{f=g circ h} with g univariate of degree at least 2. We determine the dimension (over an algebraically closed field) of the set of decomposables, and an approximation to their number over a finite field. The relative error in our approximations is exponentially decaying in the input size.