Piecewise Straight-Line Correlation Algorithm for Feedback Navigation Systems with Robotic Applications

Author(s):  
A. Berman ◽  
J. Dayan
Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Luiz F. P. Oliveira ◽  
António P. Moreira ◽  
Manuel F. Silva

The development of robotic systems to operate in forest environments is of great relevance for the public and private sectors. In this sense, this article reviews several scientific papers, research projects and commercial products related to robotic applications for environmental preservation, monitoring, wildfire firefighting, inventory operations, planting, pruning and harvesting. After conducting critical analysis, the main characteristics observed were: (a) the locomotion system is directly affected by the type of environmental monitoring to be performed; (b) different reasons for pruning result in different locomotion and cutting systems; (c) each type of forest, in each season and each type of soil can directly interfere with the navigation technique used; and (d) the integration of the concept of swarm of robots with robots of different types of locomotion systems (land, air or sea) can compensate for the time of executing tasks in unstructured environments. Two major areas are proposed for future research works: Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart forest and navigation systems. It is expected that, with the various characteristics exposed in this paper, the current robotic forest systems will be improved, so that forest exploitation becomes more efficient and sustainable.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Parque

Abstract Curves are essential concepts that enable compounded aesthetic curves, e.g., to assemble complex silhouettes, match a specific curvature profile in industrial design, and construct smooth, comfortable, and safe trajectories in vehicle-robot navigation systems. New mechanisms able to encode, generate, evaluate, and deform aesthetic curves are expected to improve the throughput and the quality of industrial design. In recent years, the study of (log) aesthetic curves have attracted the community’s attention due to its ubiquity in natural phenomena such as bird eggs, butterfly wings, falcon flights, and manufactured products such as Japanese swords and automobiles. A (log) aesthetic curve renders a logarithmic curvature graph approximated by a straight line, and polar aesthetic curves enable to mode user-defined dynamics of the polar tangential angle in the polar coordinate system. As such, the curvature profile often becomes a by-product of the tangential angle. In this paper, we extend the concept of polar aesthetic curves and establish the analytical formulations to construct aesthetic curves with user-defined criteria. In particular, we propose the closed-form analytic characterizations of polar log-aesthetic curves meeting user-defined criteria of curvature profiles and dynamics of polar tangential angles. We present numerical examples portraying the feasibility of rendering the logarithmic curvature graphs represented by a straight line. Our approach enables the seamless characterization of aesthetic curves in the polar co-ordinate system, which can model aesthetic shapes with desirable aesthetic curvature profiles.


Author(s):  
Andrew Narvesen ◽  
Majura Selekwa

Most modern navigation systems solve the localization problem by extensively using global positioning system (GPS) data. Unfortunately the GPS data quality depends on several factors, which can lead to large positioning errors. Known GPS errors fall in two groups: either atmospheric errors, or multipath errors. Because of these errors, differential GPS systems have been developed using both ground based and satellite based reference systems. The cost of a differential GPS unit such as a Novatel range from a little over $2000 to over $9000, which can be prohibitive for use on certain home service robotic vehicles such as autonomous snow plows or autonomous lawn mowers. This paper discusses ways of mitigating GPS errors on low cost single frequency GPS units such as Copernicus II, Skytraq and U-Blox, which cost far less than $100 each, and hence are attractive for use in many robotic applications such as those mentioned above. The paper will present a model of GPS noise and use that model to process GPS data for use in navigation of an autonomous snow plow designed for use in residential driveways and side-walks; it will be supported by experimental results only.


Author(s):  
D.R. Ensor ◽  
C.G. Jensen ◽  
J.A. Fillery ◽  
R.J.K. Baker

Because periodicity is a major indicator of structural organisation numerous methods have been devised to demonstrate periodicity masked by background “noise” in the electron microscope image (e.g. photographic image reinforcement, Markham et al, 1964; optical diffraction techniques, Horne, 1977; McIntosh,1974). Computer correlation analysis of a densitometer tracing provides another means of minimising "noise". The correlation process uncovers periodic information by cancelling random elements. The technique is easily executed, the results are readily interpreted and the computer removes tedium, lends accuracy and assists in impartiality.A scanning densitometer was adapted to allow computer control of the scan and to give direct computer storage of the data. A photographic transparency of the image to be scanned is mounted on a stage coupled directly to an accurate screw thread driven by a stepping motor. The stage is moved so that the fixed beam of the densitometer (which is directed normal to the transparency) traces a straight line along the structure of interest in the image.


Author(s):  
Joseph A. Zasadzinski

At low weight fractions, many surfactant and biological amphiphiles form dispersions of lamellar liquid crystalline liposomes in water. Amphiphile molecules tend to align themselves in parallel bilayers which are free to bend. Bilayers must form closed surfaces to separate hydrophobic and hydrophilic domains completely. Continuum theory of liquid crystals requires that the constant spacing of bilayer surfaces be maintained except at singularities of no more than line extent. Maxwell demonstrated that only two types of closed surfaces can satisfy this constraint: concentric spheres and Dupin cyclides. Dupin cyclides (Figure 1) are parallel closed surfaces which have a conjugate ellipse (r1) and hyperbola (r2) as singularities in the bilayer spacing. Any straight line drawn from a point on the ellipse to a point on the hyperbola is normal to every surface it intersects (broken lines in Figure 1). A simple example, and limiting case, is a family of concentric tori (Figure 1b).To distinguish between the allowable arrangements, freeze fracture TEM micrographs of representative biological (L-α phosphotidylcholine: L-α PC) and surfactant (sodium heptylnonyl benzenesulfonate: SHBS)liposomes are compared to mathematically derived sections of Dupin cyclides and concentric spheres.


Author(s):  
Norman L. Dockum ◽  
John G. Dockum

Ultrastructural characteristics of fractured human enamel and acid-etched enamel were compared using acetate replicas shadowed with platinum and palladium. Shadowed replications of acid-etched surfaces were also obtained by the same method.Enamel from human teeth has a rod structure within which there are crystals of hydroxyapatite contained within a structureless organic matrix composed of keratin. The rods which run at right angles from the dentino-enamel junction are considered to run in a straight line perpendicular to the perimeter of the enamel, however, in many areas these enamel rods overlap, interlacing and intertwining with one another.


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