A formal approach to negotiating agents development

This paper presents a formal and executable approach to capture the behaviour of parties involved in a negotiation. A party is modeled as a negotiating agent composed of a communication module, a control module, a reasoning module, and a knowledge base. The control module is expressed as a statechart, and the reasoning module as a defeasible logic program. A strategy specification therefore consists of a statechart, a set of defeasible rules, and a set of initial facts. Such a specification can be dynamically plugged into an agent shell incorporating a statechart interpreter and a defeasible logic inference engine, in order to yield an agent capable of participating in a given type of negotiations. The choice of statecharts and defeasible logic with respect to other formalisms is justified against a set of desirable criteria, and their suitability is illustrated through concrete examples of bidding and multi-lateral bargaining scenarios.     

Developing a vision-based auto-recharging system for mobile robots

This article describes a vision-based auto-recharging system that guides a mobile robot moving toward a docking station. The system contains a docking station and a mobile robot. The docking station contains a docking structure, a control device, a charger, a safety detection device, and a wireless RF interface. The mobile robot contains a power detection module (voltage and current), an auto-switch, a wireless RF interface, a controller, and a camera. The controller of the power detection module is a Holtek chip. The docking structure is designed with one active degree of freedom and two passive degrees of freedom. For image processing, the mobile robot uses a webcam to capture a real-time image. The image signal is transmitted to the controller of the mobile robot via a USB interface. We use an Otsu algorithm to calculate the distance and orientation of the docking station from the mobile robot. In the experiment, the proposed algorithm guided the mobile robot to the docking station.     

基于RFID的磁盘加密系统

文章在跟踪和分析最新磁盘加密技术研究成果的基础上,设计了一种基于RFID的磁盘分区加密系统。该系统由磁盘分区加密软件Partition Crypt与RFID射频卡、USB射频读写端等硬件模块共同组成。软件部分对计算机硬件系统要求低、安装方便、使用简单、加密效果好;硬件部分由单片机与射频模块完成。其中,USB接口采用虚拟USB接口的方法,降低硬件复杂性与成本,具有很高的性价比。经过测试,整个系统功能稳定、性价比高、保密性好,可为广泛使用的基于Windows操作系统的涉密计算机提供加密技术保障,应用前景广阔。     

关于一种网格运行时结构的若干注记

进程是传统计算机系统的一个核心概念，自1960年出现以来一直沿用至今，进程的一个主要目的是为主体提供一种运行时结构，在操作系统和处理器硬件支持下，代表主体访问和使用各种资源，与传统的单机和并行机计算平台相比，网格计算机中进程所对应的概念面临新的挑战，包括网格资源繁杂、自主控制的条件下的单一系统映像和资源的共享与协同、与特定操作系统的松耦合、时间和空间的流动性、更高级的交互性，提出一种称为网程(grip)的运行时结构，试图解决上述问题，网程运行在网格操作系统之上，代表网格主体，访问和使用网格资源。     

Stochastic colored Petri net models of flexible manufacturing systems: Material handling systems and machining

This paper presents an overview of SCPN theory, a set of three generic SCPN submodels, a behavior-preserving methodology for combining those submodels into a larger model, and a combined model. The three submodels include a machine with failures, repairs, and limited I/O buffers, and two types of conveyor submodels—a simple conveyor segment and a conveyor segment at a machine.     

Design of phononic materials/structures for surface wave devices using topology optimization

We develop a topology optimization approach to design two- and three-dimensional phononic (elastic) materials, focusing primarily on surface wave filters and waveguides. These utilize propagation modes that transmit elastic waves where the energy is contained near a free surface of a material. The design of surface wave devices is particularly attractive given recent advances in nano- and micromanufacturing processes, such as thin-film deposition, etching, and lithography, which make it possible to precisely place thin film materials on a substrate with submicron feature resolution. We apply our topology optimization approach to a series of three problems where the layout of two materials (silicon and aluminum) is sought to achieve a prescribed objective: (1) a grating to filter bulk waves of a prescribed frequency in two and three dimensions, (2) a surface wave device that uses a patterned thin film to filter waves of a single or range of frequencies, and (3) a fully three-dimensional structure to guide a wave generated by a harmonic input on a free surface to a specified output port on the surface. From the first to the third example, the resulting topologies increase in sophistication. The results demonstrate the power and promise of our computational framework to design sophisticated surface wave devices.     

CoolBar工具条的编写

介绍了如何使用Ｖｉｓｕａｌ Ｃ＋＋ ６．０来编写类似于Ｍｉｃｒｏｓｏｆｔ Ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ Ｅｘｐｌｏｒｅｒ中具有扁平按钮、把手、文本标签、下拉列表和热点图象等新特点的工具条。     

An Interactive Designing System with Virtual Sculpting and Virtual Woodcut Printing

In this paper, we propose an interactive designing method and a system based on it to create 3D objects and 2D images. This system consists of two subsystems for virtual sculpting to create a 3D shape and virtual printing to produce a picture with a printing block. In the virtual sculpting subsystem, a user can form solid objects with curved surfaces as if sculpting them. The user operates virtual chisels, and can remove or attach arbitrary shapes of ellipsoids or cubes from or to the workpiece. A 3D object generated by virtual sculpting looks like a real wooden sculpture. If using a board as a workpiece, a user can generate a virtual printing block. In the virtual printing subsystem, a user can synthesize a woodcut printing image from the virtual printing block mentioned above, a virtual paper sheet, and a printing brush. The user can synthesize a realistic woodcut print with a procedure similar to the actual woodcut printing.     

Motion of a rigid cylinder between parallel plates in stokes flow : Part 1: Motion in a quiescent fluid and sedimentation

A general numerical scheme for solution of two-dimensional Stokes equations in a multiconnected domain of arbitrary shape [1, 2] is applied to the motion of a rigid circular cylinder between plane parallel boundaries. Numerically generated boundary-conforming coordinates are used to transform the flow domain into a domain with rectilinear boundaries. The transformed Stokes equations in vorticity-stream function form are then solved on a uniform grid using an iterative algorithm. In Part I coefficients of the resistance matrix representing the forces and torque on the cylinder due to its translational motion parallel or perpendicular to the boundaries or due to rotation about its axis are calculated. The solutions are obtained for a wide range of particle radii and positions across the channel. It is found that the force on a particle translating parallel to the boundaries without rotation exhibits a minimum at a position between the channel centerline and the wall and a local maximum on the centerline.

The resistance matrix is utilized to calculate translational and angular velocities of a free particle settling under gravity in a vertical channel. It is found that the translational velocity has a maximum at some lateral position and a minimum on the centerline; the particle angular velocity is opposite in sign to that of a particle rolling along the nearer channel wall except when the gap between the particle and the wall is very small. These results are compared with existing analytical solutions for a small cylindrical particle situated on the channel centerline, and with solutions of related 3-D problems for a spherical particle in a circular tube and in a place channel. It is shown that the behavior of cylindrical and spherical particles in a channel in many cases is qualitatively different. This is attributed to different flow patterns in these two cases. The motion of a spherical particle in a circular tube has qualitative and quantitative features similar to those for a cylindrical particle in a plane channel.     

A vertical and floor line-based monocular SLAM system for corridor environments

In this paper, we propose a vertical and floor line-based monocular simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system which utilizes vertical lines, floor lines, and vanishing points as sensory input to perform robust SLAM in corridor environments. By combining three map feature types, our design can help a robot to perform accurate pose estimation, repeatable loop closure, and to construct a more expressive environmental map. As a primitive element of a geometric structure, a line segment has one additional dimension compared to a point feature, thereby allowing the use of line segments to easily represent a geometric structure using a smaller number of features. This system presents map features on a 2D ground space: the vertical line as a projection point, the floor line as the original line, and the vanishing point as a directional vector. Although the vertical line, floor line, and vanishing point use different parameterization and initialization methods, their measurement models are integrated into a unified extended Kalman filter (EKF) framework. Experimental results show that our system can be deployed in a structured indoor environment as a suitable SLAM solution.     

On the equivalence between small-step and big-step abstract machines: a simple application of lightweight fusion

We show how Ohori and Sasano's recent lightweight fusion by fixed-point promotion provides a simple way to prove the equivalence of the two standard styles of specification of abstract machines: (1) in small-step form, as a state-transition function together with a ‘driver loop’, i.e., a function implementing the iteration of this transition function; and (2) in big-step form, as a tail-recursive function that directly maps a given configuration to a final state, if any. The equivalence hinges on our observation that for abstract machines, fusing a small-step specification yields a big-step specification. We illustrate this observation here with a recognizer for Dyck words, the CEK machine, and Krivine's machine with call/cc.The need for such a simple proof is motivated by our current work on small-step abstract machines as obtained by refocusing a function implementing a reduction semantics (a syntactic correspondence), and big-step abstract machines as obtained by CPS-transforming and then defunctionalizing a function implementing a big-step semantics (a functional correspondence).     

An experimental remote handling system

An experimental robotic remote handling system is described which has been constructed in order to investigate various engineering problems in advanced remote handling such as the man-machine interface, system control and communication. The device consists of a mobile and a control station. The mobile station comprises an electrical manipulator having seven degrees of freedom, a TV camera, a control sub-computer, a servo-control unit, radio transmitters and receivers, batteries, etc., which are mounted on a crawler-type vehicle. The control station is equipped with the master arm of the manipulator, radio transmitters and receivers, a TV monitor, a main control computer and its peripheral devices, etc. The manipulator can be operated in either a master-slave, a playback or a programmed control mode with the assistance of control computers. Communication between the mobile and the control stations is made using optical fibres or a radio link.     

Catadioptric Projective Geometry

Catadioptric sensors are devices which utilize mirrors and lenses to form a projection onto the image plane of a camera. Central catadioptric sensors are the class of these devices having a single effective viewpoint. In this paper, we propose a unifying model for the projective geometry induced by these devices and we study its properties as well as its practical implications. We show that a central catadioptric projection is equivalent to a two-step mapping via the sphere. The second step is equivalent to a stereographic projection in the case of parabolic mirrors. Conventional lens-based perspective cameras are also central catadioptric devices with a virtual planar mirror and are, thus, covered by the unifying model. We prove that for each catadioptric projection there exists a dual catadioptric projection based on the duality between points and line images (conics). It turns out that planar and parabolic mirrors build a dual catadioptric projection pair. As a practical example we describe a procedure to estimate focal length and image center from a single view of lines in arbitrary position for a parabolic catadioptric system.     

Direct Reconstruction of a Displaced Subdivision Surface from Unorganized Points

In this paper we describe the generation of a displaced subdivision surface directly from a set of unorganized points. The displaced subdivision surface is an efficient mesh representation that defines a detailed mesh with a displacement map over a smooth domain surface and has many benefits including compression, rendering, and animation, which overcome limitations of an irregular mesh produced by an ordinary mesh reconstruction scheme. Unlike previous displaced subdivision surface reconstruction methods, our method does not rely on a highly detailed reconstructed mesh. Instead, we efficiently create a coarse base mesh, which is used to sample displacements directly from unorganized points, and this results in a simple process and fast calculation. We suggest a shrink-wrapping-like shape approximation and a point-based mesh simplification method that uses the distance between a set of points and a mesh as an error metric to generate a domain surface that optimally approximates the given points. We avoid time-consuming energy minimization by employing a local subdivision surface fitting scheme. Finally, we show several reconstruction results that demonstrate the usability of our algorithm.     

High-Order Accurate Adaptive Kernel Compression Time-Stepping Schemes for Fractional Differential Equations

We present a goal-oriented a posteriori error estimator for finite element approximations of a class of homogenization problems. As a rule, homogenization problems are defined through the coupling of a macroscopic solution and the solution of auxiliary problems. In this work we assume that the homogenized problem is known and that it depends on a finite number of auxiliary problems. The accuracy in the goal functional depends therefore on the discretization error of the macroscopic and the auxiliary solutions. We show that it is possible to compute the error contributions of all solution components separately and use this information to balance the different discretization errors. Additionally, we steer a local mesh refinement for both the macroscopic problem and the auxiliary problems. The high efficiency of this approach is shown by numerical examples. These include the upscaling of a periodic diffusion tensor, the case of a Stokes flow over a porous bed, and the homogenization of a fuel cell model which includes the flow in a gas channel over a porous substrate coupled with a multispecies nonlinear transport equation.     

ROD-based hybrid TH precoding and combining for mmWave large-scale MIMO systems

Hybrid precoding is one of key techniques for millimeter wave (mmWave) large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. This paper considers a nonlinear hybrid precoding architecture which consists of a nonlinear unit, a reductive digital precoder and a constant modulus radio frequency (RF) precoder, and presents a novel hybrid Tomlinson-Harashima (TH) precoding and combining algorithm. Firstly, due to the intractability of the sum rates maximization problem for such a nonlinear hybrid precoding architecture, a tractable three-stage optimization problem is constructed through the lower bound of the sum rates, which allows the digital precoding matrix, the RF precoding matrix and the RF combining matrix to be optimized sequentially and independently. Then, in order to solve the three-stage optimization problem effectively, a novel row orthogonal decomposition (ROD) is defined. Based on the ROD, it is interesting that the necessary and sufficient condition of the optimal digital precoding matrix can be obtained, and a near-optimal RF precoding matrix can be derived. Finally, the optimization of the RF combining matrix is reformulated as a unimodular quadratic programming and solved by a generalized power method. Theoretical analyses and simulations indicate that the proposed ROD-based hybrid TH precoding and combining algorithm can offer a higher sum rates and a lower bit error rate with a comparable complexity in comparison to the previous works.     

Exact combinatorial bounds on the probability of overfitting for empirical risk minimization

Three general methods for obtaining exact bounds on the probability of overfitting are proposed within statistical learning theory: a method of generating and destroying sets, a recurrent method, and a blockwise method. Six particular cases are considered to illustrate the application of these methods. These are the following model sets of predictors: a pair of predictors, a layer of a Boolean cube, an interval of a Boolean cube, a monotonic chain, a unimodal chain, and a unit neighborhood of the best predictor. For the interval and the unimodal chain, the results of numerical experiments are presented that demonstrate the effects of splitting and similarity on the probability of overfitting.     

混合关系中的函数依赖及其相关规则

在实际应用中有这样一类关系数据库,其中数据项在某个属性上的取值本身又是一个关系。讨论这种混合关系中的函数依赖及其相应的相关规则具有一定的理论意义和实际应用价值。给出这种混合关系的形式定义、混合关系中4种类型的函数依赖关系以及相应的4种类型的相关规则;并给出混合关系到一般关系的转换,通过这个转换说明了混合关系与普通关系的联系及其差别。给出一个实际应用中的例子,来说明混合关系中的函数依赖和相关规则的形式多样性。