Design and Control of a Hyper-Redundant Manipulator for Mobile Manipulating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Manipulating objects using arms mounted to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is attractive because UAVs may access many locations that are otherwise inaccessible to other mobile manipulation platforms such as ground vehicles. Despite recent work, several major challenges remain to be overcome before it will be practical to manipulate objects from UAVs. Among these challenges are: (a) The constantly moving UAV platform and compliance of manipulator arms make it difficult to position the UAV and end-effector relative to an object of interest precisely enough for manipulation, and (b) The motions of the manipulator impact the stability of the host UAV, further complicating positioning. Solving these challenges will bring UAVs one step closer to being able to perform meaningful tasks such as infrastructure repair, disaster response, casualty extraction, and cargo resupply. Toward solutions to these challenges, this paper describes a hyper-redundant manipulator, manipulator control approaches and system design considerations to position the manipulator relative to objects of interest in such a way that impacts on platform stability are minimized.     

An Architecture for Human‐Guided Autonomy: Team TROOPER at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals

Recent robotics efforts have automated simple, repetitive tasks to increase execution speed and lessen an operator's cognitive load, allowing them to focus on higher‐level objectives. However, an autonomous system will eventually encounter something unexpected, and if this exceeds the tolerance of automated solutions, there must be a way to fall back to teleoperation. Our solution is a largely autonomous system with the ability to determine when it is necessary to ask a human operator for guidance. We call this approach human‐guided autonomy. Our design emphasizes human‐on‐the‐loop control where an operator expresses a desired high‐level goal for which the reasoning component assembles an appropriate chain of subtasks. We introduce our work in the context of the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Finals. We describe the software architecture Team TROOPER developed and used to control an Atlas humanoid robot. We employ perception, planning, and control automation for execution of subtasks. If subtasks fail, or if changing environmental conditions invalidate the planned subtasks, the system automatically generates a new task chain. The operator is able to intervene at any stage of execution, to provide input and adjustment to any control layer, enabling operator involvement to increase as confidence in automation decreases. We present our performance at the DRC Finals and a discussion about lessons learned.     

Cardiovascular responses of Oriental and Caucasian men to alcohol: some psychological correlates

After drinking a small dose of alcohol, Orientals flushed, their heart rates increased and their diastolic pressures decreased; Caucasians' skin reflectance did not change, but their heart rates and systolic blood pressures decreased. In both groups, flushing was associated with an increase in feelings of vigor. Other mood correlates depended on condition.     

FISCHERPLOTS: An Excel spreadsheet for computing Fischer plots of accommodation change in cyclic carbonate successions in both the time and depth domains

Fischer plots are plots of accommodation (derived by calculating cumulative departure from mean cycle thickness) versus cycle number or stratigraphic distance (proxies for time), for cyclic carbonate platforms. Although many workers have derived programs to do this, there are currently no published, easily accessible programs that utilize Excel. In this paper, we present an Excel-based spreadsheet program for Fischer plots, illustrate how the data are input, and how the resulting plots may be interpreted. The plots can be used to derive periods of increased accommodation, shown on the plots as a rising limb (which commonly matches times of more open marine, subtidal parasequence development). Times of decreased accommodation, shown on the plots as a falling limb, generally are coincident with thin, shallow, peritidal parasequences.     

Expression of deletion-containing dystrophins in mdx muscle: implications for gene therapy and dystrophin function

The expression of full-length dystrophin and various dystrophin deletion mutants was monitored in mdx mouse muscle after intramuscular injection of dystrophin-encoding plasmid DNAs. Recombinant dystrophin proteins, including those lacking either the amino terminus, carboxyl terminus, or most of the central rod domain, showed localization to the plasma membrane. This suggests that there are multiple attachment sites for dystrophin to the plasma membrane. Only those constructs containing the carboxyl terminus were able to stabilize dystrophin-associated proteins (DAP) at the membrane, consistent with other studies that suggest that this domain is critical to DAP binding. Colocalization with DAP was not necessary for membrane localization of the various dystrophin molecules. However, stabilization and co-localization of the DAP did seem to be a prerequisite for expression and/or stabilization of mutant dystrophins beyond 1 wk and these same criteria seemed important for mitigating the histopathological consequences of dystrophin deficiency.     

An experimental investigation of the safe distance for internal orbital dissection

Six 3-dialkylaminomethyl-1-azaanthraquinones and five 4-dialkylaminomethyl-1-azaanthraquinones were synthesized and evaluated in vitro cytotoxicity against four human cancer cell lines. The compounds retained much of their cytotoxic activity against the multi-drug-resistant cell line (KB-V-1) as shown by resistance index.     

Effects of intracellular Na+/K+ ratio on expression of c-fos oncogene and beta-actin gene in ascitic cells of leukemia P-388 and Ehrlich tumor

The intracellular Na+/K+ ratio was studied for its effect on expression gene beta-actin and oncogene c-fos and activity of these genes during the mitotic cycle in ascites cells of leukemia P-388 and Ehrlich tumour. It was established that gene beta-actin was activated at high and low ratios of Na+/K+, while c-fos only at high ones. The expression of these genes during the mitotic cell cycle was due to changes in the intracellular Na+/K+ ratio. The obtained data showed an important role of intracellular homeostasis of monovalent cations in regulation of gene expression during the mitotic cell cycle.     

Soil and vegetable compositional relationships of eight potentially toxic metals in urban garden fields from northern Nigeria

BACKGROUND: Human exposure to heavy metals is attributed to consumption of vegetables raised in polluted soil environment. We examined the concentrations of As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn in soils and lettuce (Latuca sativa) and amaranthus (Amaranthus caudatus) in 15 garden fields under long‐term wastewater irrigation. RESULTS: The concentrations of As (0.3–2.1 mg kg^?1), Cd (0.07–0.3 mg kg^?1), Co (4.6–9.1 mg kg^?1) and Cr (21.6–36.2 mg kg^?1) in the gardens were consistent with background concentrations in soils, but Ni (12.6–25.7 mg kg^?1), Cu (12.5–24.6 mg kg^?1), Pb (25.7–71.6 mg kg^?1) and Zn (52.3–158 mg kg^?1) concentrations were double the concentrations normally encountered in arable fields in the region. The concentrations of Cd and As in the vegetables were within safe limits, but Co (0.14–0.67 mg kg^?1 fresh weight (fw)) and Ni (1.0–2.7 mg kg^?1 fw) concentrations in lettuce were relatively high for leaf vegetables. The concentration of Pb (0.65–4.80 mg kg^?1 fw) was above safe limit of 0.3 mg kg^?1 fw, while the concentrations of Cu (1.3–2.7 mg kg^?1 fw and Zn (10.2–23.6 mg kg^?1 fw) were close to the unsafe limits for leaf vegetables. There were no strong linear correlations between soil metal concentrations and bio‐concentrations in the vegetable crops. CONCLUSION: We surmise that leaf vegetables can accumulate metals in their tissues to unsafe levels even when total metal concentrations in these soils are below the allowable concentrations in agricultural soils. Copyright © 2008 Society of Chemical Industry     

Structural,mechanical, and antibacterial features of curcumin/polyurethane nanocomposites

Various types of bacteria inhabit many surfaces thus causing problems which can have very strong impact on human health. Here we present a study of photophysical, mechanical, and antibacterial properties of curcumin/polyurethane nanocomposites prepared by swell-encapsulation-shrink method. The prepared nanocomposites have been characterized for degree of swelling, surface morphology, mechanical properties, chemical contents, photoluminescence, hydrophobicity, potentials for singlet oxygen generation, and antibacterial activity. Dynamic mechanical analysis has shown slight changes of glass temperature of curcumin/polyurethane nanocomposites due to blue light irradiation. It was found that nanocomposites have very strong photoluminescence, become photoactive upon blue light irradiation at 470 nm and generate singlet oxygen. Conducted antibacterial tests have shown very strong activity of these nanocomposites especially toward Escherichia coli. These bacteria strains have been eliminated completely only after 1 h irradiation by blue light. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 47283.