Laser Bending of Aluminum Foam Sandwich Panels

Aluminum foam sandwich panels were laser bent by means of a diode laser. Two panels different in thickness were used in bending tests; the effect of the main process parameters (laser power and scan velocity) on the bending efficiency was investigated as well as the contribution of the panel skin, and the protective gas. As a result, a very good formability was observed for the laser processed panels.     

Uniform Flow of Modified Bingham Fluids in Narrow Cross Sections

A model of modified Bingham fluid is used to investigate uniform mudflows in narrow cross sections of the kind typical of hillslope incisions. The problem is tackled both numerically and experimentally. Experiments were performed using carboxymethylcellulose, a shear thinning fluid whose rheological behavior can be interpreted by a modified Bingham fluid model. For narrow rectangular, trapezoidal, and triangular cross sections, the capability to flow has been expressed by a general relationship that defines a dimensionless coefficient (f) as a function of two dimensionless parameters: the Bingham number and an aspect ratio of the channel. We also derive plots for the critical Bingham number for incipient flow of modified Bingham fluids as a function of the aspect ratio of the channel. The present calculations and the experimental results demonstrate that the narrow character of the channel as well as its shape strongly affect the flow conductance and the critical value of the Bingham number.     

PD control with on-line gravity compensation for robots with elastic joints: Theory and experiments

A proportional-derivative (PD) control with on-line gravity compensation is proposed for regulation tasks of robot manipulators with elastic joints. The work extends a previous PD control with constant gravity compensation at the desired configuration. The control law requires measuring only position and velocity on the motor side of the elastic joints, while the on-line gravity compensation torque uses a biased measure of the motor position. It is proved via a Lyapunov argument that the control law globally asymptotically stabilizes the desired robot configuration. A simulation study on a two-joint arm reveals the better performance that can be obtained with the new scheme as compared to the case of constant gravity compensation. Moreover, the proposed controller is experimentally tested on an eight-joint cable-driven robot manipulator, in combination with a point-to-point interpolating trajectory, showing the practical advantages of the on-line compensation.     

H∞ generalized minimum sensitivity control design

This paper presents a two-stage approach to the H_∞ generalized sensitivity minimization problem (H_∞-GSM) for SISO, continuous-time plants. Besides some possible advantages in the control law evaluation with respect to alternative polynomial methods, the proposed approach provides a direct link with the solution of an underlying generalized minimum variance (H₂-GMV) problem and allows one to identify the class of the joint H₂/H_∞-GMV (equalizing H₂-GMV) optimal controllers.     

Numerical conditioning and asymptotic variance of subspace estimates

New formulas for the asymptotic variance of the parameter estimates in subspace identification, show that the accuracy of the parameter estimates depends on certain indices of ‘near collinearity’ of the state and future input subspaces of the system to be identified. This complements the numerical conditioning analysis of subspace methods presented in the companion paper (On the ill-conditioning of subspace identification with inputs, Automatica, doi:10.1016/j.automatica.2003.11.009).     

Localized Techniques for Broadcasting in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper we tackle the problem of designing simple, localized, low energy consuming, reliable protocols for one-to-all communication in large scale wireless sensor networks. Our first proposed technique, called the Irrigator protocol, relies on the idea to first build a sparse overlay network, and then flood over it. The overlay network is set up by means of a simple, distributed, localized probabilistic protocol and spans all the sensor nodes with high probability. Based on the algorithmic ideas of the Irrigator protocol we then develop a second protocol, dubbed Fireworks, with similar performance that does not require any overlay network to be set up in advance. Asymptotic analytical results are provided which assess the reliability of the Irrigator and Fireworks techniques. The theoretical analysis of the proposed protocols is complemented and validated by a (simulation based) comparative performance evaluation that assesses several advantages of our new protocols with respect to gossiping and simple flooding. Differently from previous studies, we analyze and demonstrate the performance of our protocols for two different node distributions: The typical uniform distribution and a newly defined “hill” distribution, here introduced to capture some of the important and more realistic aspects of node deployment in heterogeneous terrain. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes achieve very good trade-offs between low overhead, low energy consumption and high reliability. In particular, the Irrigator and Fireworks protocols are more reliable than gossiping, and significantly reduce the number of links along which a message is sent over both flooding and gossiping.     

A multimodal annotated corpus of consensus decision making meetings

In this paper we present an annotated audio–video corpus of multi-party meetings. The multimodal corpus provides for each subject involved in the experimental sessions six annotation dimensions referring to group dynamics; speech activity and body activity. The corpus is based on 11 audio and video recorded sessions which took place in a lab setting appropriately equipped with cameras and microphones. Our main concern in collecting this multimodal corpus was to explore the possibility of providing feedback services to facilitate group processes and to enhance self awareness among small groups engaged in meetings. We therefore introduce a coding scheme for annotating relevant functional roles that appear in a small group interaction. We also discuss the reliability of the coding scheme and we present the first results for automatic classification.     

Canopy spectral invariants for remote sensing and model applications

The concept of canopy spectral invariants expresses the observation that simple algebraic combinations of leaf and canopy spectral transmittance and reflectance become wavelength independent and determine a small set of canopy structure specific variables. This set includes the canopy interceptance, the recollision and the escape probabilities. These variables specify an accurate relationship between the spectral response of a vegetation canopy to the incident solar radiation at the leaf and the canopy scale and allow for a simple and accurate parameterization for the partitioning of the incoming radiation into canopy transmission, reflection and absorption at any wavelength in the solar spectrum. This paper presents a solid theoretical basis for spectral invariant relationships reported in literature with an emphasis on their accuracies in describing the shortwave radiative properties of the three-dimensional vegetation canopies. The analysis of data on leaf and canopy spectral transmittance and reflectance collected during the international field campaign in Flakaliden, Sweden, June 25-July 4, 2002 supports the proposed theory. The results presented here are essential to both modeling and remote sensing communities because they allow the separation of the structural and radiometric components of the measured/modeled signal. The canopy spectral invariants offer a simple and accurate parameterization for the shortwave radiation block in many global models of climate, hydrology, biogeochemistry, and ecology. In remote sensing applications, the information content of hyperspectral data can be fully exploited if the wavelength-independent variables can be retrieved, for they can be more directly related to structural characteristics of the three-dimensional vegetation canopy.