Shell Perturbations of an Acoustic Thermometer Determined from Speed of Sound in Gas Mixtures

With the goal of achieving a better understanding of gas–shell coupling perturbations in the acoustic resonators used at INRiM for the determination of the Boltzmann constant, we measured the variation of their acoustic and microwave resonances induced by changing the composition of a binary He–Ar mixture which filled the cavity at constant temperature and pressure. As a consequence of the progressive dilution of a sample of initially pure He with Ar, the radial acoustic modes of the resonator spanned decreasing frequency intervals, partially overlapping, for several modes. In addition to the expected breathing mode of the shell, the results evidenced the presence of several other shell resonances at lower and higher frequencies, confirming that the elastic response of the assembled resonator significantly differs from that of a simple spherical shell. Experimental results are reported for two resonators which differ in design, dimensions, and constructing material. In spite of their being preliminary and susceptible of significant improvement, these results favor the interpretation of acoustic thermometry measurements with pure gases.     

Robust stabilization of second-order image-based affine systems

In this paper, the problem of robust relative positioning between a 6-DOF robot camera and an object of interest is considered. Assuming weak perspective camera model and local linear approximation of visible object's surface, an image-based state space representation of robot camera–object interaction model is derived, based on the matrix of 2-D affine transformations. Dynamic extension of the visual model permits to estimate 3-D parameters directly as functions of state variables. The proposed nonlinear robust control law ensures asymptotic stability but at image singularities, assuming exact model and state measurements. In the presence of bounded uncertainties, under appropriate choice of control gains, ultimate boundedness of the state error is also formally proved. Simulation results validate the theoretical framework both in terms of system convergence and control robustness.     

Necessary conditions for asymptotic tracking in nonlinear systems

In the literature, it has been shown that if a single-input single-output analytic nonlinear plant 1) has a well-defined relative degree and 2) is minimum-phase, it is possible to achieve asymptotic tracking for an open set of output trajectories containing the origin in C^N [0, ∞), the space of N-times continuously differentiable functions taking values in R. When either of these sufficient conditions is not met, various authors have investigated approximate analytic solutions, discontinuous solutions and solutions for restricted sets of trajectories. In this paper, it is shown that conditions 1) and 2) are necessary for the existence of an analytic compensator which yields asymptotic tracking for an open set of output trajectories. Analogous results are established for multi-input multi-output systems     

A complexity reduction approach to detectability of switching systems

In this article, we address detectability for the class of linear switching systems. We focus on some hybrid state-space decompositions of the original switching system based on hybrid invariant subspaces, which yield a complexity reduction in checking detectability. We show that the reduced system extracted from the original system is the minimal bisimilar switching system associated with it. An example is also included which shows the applicability and benefits of the proposed approach.     

Exploiting transition locality in automatic verification of finite-state concurrent systems

In this paper we show that statistical properties of the transition graph of a system to be verified can be exploited to improve memory or time performances of verification algorithms.We show experimentally that protocols exhibit transition locality. That is, with respect to levels of a breadth-first state space exploration, state transitions tend to be between states belonging to close levels of the transition graph. We support our claim by measuring transition locality for the set of protocols included in the Mur verifier distribution .We present a cache-based verification algorithm that exploits transition locality to decrease memory usage and a disk-based verification algorithm that exploits transition locality to decrease disk read accesses, thus reducing the time overhead due to disk usage. Both algorithms have been implemented within the Mur verifier.Our experimental results show that our cache-based algorithm can typically save more than 40% of memory with an average time penalty of about 50% when using (Mur) bit compression and 100% when using bit compression and hash compaction, whereas our disk-based verification algorithm is typically more than ten times faster than a previously proposed disk-based verification algorithm and, even when using 10% of the memory needed to complete verification, it is only between 40 and 530% (300% on average) slower than (RAM) Mur with enough memory to complete the verification task at hand. Using just 300 MB of memory our disk-based Mur was able to complete verification of a protocol with about 10⁹ reachable states. This would require more than 5 GB of memory using standard Mur .     

Hybrid visual servoing: A combination of nonlinear control and linear vision

In this paper, the visual servoing problem is addressed by coupling nonlinear control theory with a convenient representation of the visual information used by the robot. The visual representation, which is based on a linear camera model, is extremely compact to comply with active vision requirements. The devised control law is proven to ensure global asymptotic stability in the Lyapunov sense, assuming exact model and state measurements. It is also shown that, in the presence of bounded uncertainties, the closed-loop behavior is characterized by a global attractor. The well known pose ambiguity arising from the use of linear camera models is solved at the control level by choosing a hybrid visual state vector including both image space (2D) information and 3D object parameters. A method is expounded for on-line visual state estimation that avoids camera calibration. Simulation and real-time experiments validate the theoretical framework in terms of both system convergence and control robustness.     

A time-domain optical transmission system simulation packageaccounting for nonlinear and polarization-related effects in fiber

The fast-paced evolution of long-haul and high-bit-rate terrestrial and submarine optical transmission links requires powerful analysis tools that take into account all the relevant phenomena in the fiber. To provide such a tool, we developed a time-domain optical system simulation package, integrated in the TOPSIM simulation environment. The fiber simulation module makes use of the vector form of the propagation equations to account for the quasi-degenerate two-mode (the two polarizations) medium propagation characteristics. This way, all polarization-related effects and their interplay with the other linear and nonlinear phenomena in the fiber can be accurately modeled. In particular, the fiber third-order susceptivity, responsible for all major nonlinear effects, is expressed in its actual vector form, so that nonlinear polarization mode coupling could be accounted for. Conventional birefringence and PMD are generated using appropriate random models. A novel feature of the simulator is that it uses time-domain digital filters to simulate dispersion effects, as opposed to the usual FFT-based algorithms. This approach leads to more efficient computing for a wide range of bandwidth and dispersion values. We present the fiber simulation module in detail. As an example of the use of the simulation package, the analysis of a long-haul two-channel transoceanic WDM transmission system is presented