Sharif Digital Repository

This study presents an online motion planning algorithm for generating reference trajectories during flight phases of a planar monopedal robot to transfer the configuration of the mechanical system from a specified initial pose to a specified final one. The algorithm developed in this research is based on the reachability and optimal control formulations of a time-varying linear system with input and state constraints. A two-level control scheme is developed for asymptotic stabilisation of a desired period-one orbit during running of the robot. Within-stride controllers, including stance and flight phase controllers, are employed at the first level. The flight phase controller is a feedback... 

Singular spectrum analysis (SSA) is a well-studied approach in signal processing. SSA has originally been designed to extract information from short noisy chaotic time series and to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio. SSA is good for offline applications; however, many applications, such as modelling, analysis, and prediction of time-varying and non-stationary time series, demand for online analysis. This study introduces a recursive algorithm called recursive SSA as a modification to regular SSA for dynamic and online applications. The proposed method is based on eigenvector matrix perturbation approach. After recursively calculating the covariance matrix of the trajectory matrix, R-SSA... 

A semi-analytical method is presented to calculate the dynamic responses of a rectangular plate due to a moving oscillator. In previous analytical solutions of the moving oscillator problem, the elastic distributed structure has usually been modeled by an elastic beam structure. This restrictive assumption is removed in this study by assuming a general plate as two-dimensional elastic distributed structure. The method can be applied for any arbitrary path on the plate. A combination of the Fourier and Laplace transformation as well as the convolution theorem is used to solve the governing differential equations of the problem. A modified integration technique is then presented to solve the... 

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to present a novel approach in terrain following (TF) flight using fuzzy logic. The fuzzy controller as presented in this work decides where and how the aircraft needs to change its altitude. The fast decision-making nature of this method promises real-time applications even for tough terrains in terms of shape and peculiarities. The method could always assist to design trajectories in an off-line manner. Design/methodology/approach - To achieve the aforementioned goal, the method effectively incorporates the dynamics of the aircraft. Basically, the mathematical method employs special relationships among existing slope of the terrain and its derivative... 

This paper presents a fuzzy algorithm for controlling chaos in nonlinear systems via minimum entropy approach. The proposed fuzzy logic algorithm is used to minimize the Shannon entropy of a chaotic dynamics. The fuzzy laws are determined in such a way that the entropy function descends until the chaotic trajectory of the system is replaced by a regular one. The Logistic and the Henon maps as two discrete chaotic systems, and the Duffing equation as a continuous one are used to validate the proposed scheme and show the effectiveness of the control method in chaotic dynamical systems  

A robotic system was designed and developed to perform the camera handling task during laparoscopic surgery. The system employs an effective low cost mechanism, with a minimum number of actuated DOFs, enabling spherical movement around a remote centre of motion positioned at the the insertion point of the laparoscopic stem. Kinematic analysis showed a high manipulability measure for the system, with the left/right movements directly governed by rotation of the first rotary actuator, and zoom and up/down movements by the simultaneous motions of the linear and second rotary actuators. A prototype of the robot was developed for practical use in an operating room environment. Hands-free operator... 

In this study, a gait optimization routine is developed to generate walking patterns which demand the lowest friction forces for implementation. The aim of this research is to fully address the question “which walking pattern demands the lowest coefficient of friction amongst all feasible patterns?”. To this end, first, the kinematic structure of the considered 31 DOF (Degrees of Freedom) humanoid robot is investigated and a closed-form dynamics model for its lower-body is developed. Then, the medium through which the walking pattern generation is conducted is presented. In this medium, after designing trajectories for the feet and the pelvis, the joint space variables are obtained, using... 

A hyper-redundant manipulator is made by mounting the serial and/or parallel mechanisms on top of each other as modules. In discrete actuation, the actuation amounts are a limited number of certain values. It is not feasible to solve the kinematic analysis problems of discretely actuated hyper-redundant manipulators (DAHMs) by using the common methods, which are used for continuous actuated manipulators. In this paper, a new method is proposed to solve the trajectory tracking problem in a static prescribed obstacle field. To date, this problem has not been considered in the literature. The removing first collision (RFC) method, which is originally proposed for solving the inverse kinematic... 

Production logging is used to evaluate wells production performance. Interpretation of production log data provides velocity profile and contribution of each zone on total production. In multi-phase flow conditions, production log interpretation can be challenging since producing fluids do not have similar densities and travel with different speed depending on fluids properties and wellbore deviation. Production log interpretation in multi-phase producing wells requires identifying downhole flow regimes and determining velocity profile for each phase. There are different flow regimes and velocity models available, which are being used in production log interpretation to determine wells flow... 

Magnetic levitation is an appropriate solution for noncontact 3D manipulation. Workspace of the previously proposed maglev systems are confined to a relatively small cube, and this severely limits application of this technology. In addition, most of the previously given mechanisms require design and application of a subsystem for unifying their magnetic field. In this paper, a moving magnet is implemented which results in horizontally extendable work space; moreover, the field unifying section is not needed since one electromagnet only is used. Further, details of the mechanism and finite element based design procedure of the magnet are presented. Dynamic equations of the system derived by... 

In order to perform the drug delivery via lung, tracking the trajectories of fine inhaled particles in the acinar airways is of high importance. The causes of irreversibility in the motion of fine particles (0.1 - 1 micron) and chaotic flow deep in the acinar region of lung has been always under investigation. In this study we demonstrate the importance of geometric hystersis and asynchrony of lung deformation on the issue. We adapted a 2D axisymmetric geometry of alveolated duct from recent relative works and deformed it in a way that some hystersis would appear in a respiration period. The overall deformation of duct was corresponding to the transpulmonary pressure of lung reported in... 

Spacecraft rendezvous and docking are two processes in which a chaser pursues and meets a leader spacecraft in order to perform several mission based tasks. Although in some preliminary design analysis, these two operations may be pursued independently there could be circumstances in which the spacecraft trajectory and attitudes are coupled and interdependent. The present study is based on the presumption that the often independent translational and rotational motions of the spacecraft are coupled as a result of thrust misalignment. So the thrusters not only contribute to the rendezvous translational motion, but also affect the docking reorientation maneuver through their disturbing effects.... 

The Hough transform is known to be an effective technique for target detection and track initiation in search radars. However, most papers have focused on the simplistic applications of this technique which consider a 2-D data space for the Hough transform. In this paper, a new method based on xthe Hough transform is introduced for detecting targets in a 3-D data space. The data space is constructed from returned surveillance radar signal using the range and bearing information of several successive scans. This information is mapped into a 3-D x-y-t Cartesian data space. Targets are modeled with four parameters in this data space. The proposed 3-D Hough detector is then used to detect the... 

Aerosol measurement is used in a variety of fields such as nanotechnology, materials science, pollution monitoring, air quality measurements, combustion and engine exhaust analysis, inhalation toxicology, and medical studies. One of the most prevalent methods for aerosol measurement is to use electrical mobility. An electrical mobility spectrometer (EMS) is used to measure aerosol particles size distribution ranging from 10-1000 nanometers, under the influence of an electric field. The accuracy of this distribution is influenced by flow conditions, the geometry of the EMS, the electric field, and the number of electrode rings. In this work, a multi-channel EMS is studied using computational... 

This paper deals with investigations of droplet dynamics in rotating flows. In many previous studies droplet dynamics was analyzed in simple unidirectional flows. To fill this gap, the focus of this study is an overview on investigations of droplet dynamics in a complex rotating flow. A Lattice Boltzmann Method with high potential in simulation of two-phase unsteady flows is applied to simulate the physics of the problem in a lid-driven cavity. In spite of its simple geometry, there is a complex rotating flow field containing different vortices and shear regions. The Reynolds number based on the cavity length scale and the upper wall velocity, ReL, is considered to be 1000. We discuss here... 

Particle dispersion in the vortex flow has been one of the most interesting subjects in recent years. Bidirectional vortex flow field is an industrial sample of rotating flow which is used to obtain advantages of better mixing and combustion. In this work penetration and dispersion quality of particles which are entering from various positions on the vortex engine walls have been numerically predicted. Head side, end side, and sidewall are considered as the entering positions. The particle has been assumed to be a rigid sphere. Initial velocity, diameter, and density of entering particles are assumed to be known. If the particle length scale is considered not to be comparable with the... 

In this paper, the synchronization of a pair of pacemaker cells as Sino-Atrial (SA) and Atrio-Ventricullar (AV) nodes have been studied and a new approach for synchronization, based on the concept of Phase Response Curve (PRC), has been proposed. The paper starts with presenting the necessary and sufficient conditions for synchronization in terms of the PRC parameters. Such conditions are time dependent and thus, the paper proceeds with deriving some sufficient conditions, which are not time dependent. The time-delay between the firing time of SA node and when it reaches the AV node is also considered. When the conditions for spontaneous synchronization are not valid, the synchronization is... 

This paper deals with the decentralized polynomial trajectory generation for the formation flight of a leader-follower network of quadrotors. The proposed decentralized trajectory planning method guarantees stability of the formation in missions with aggressive trajectories or low information exchange frequencies or data loss. Moreover, designed formation protocol ensures robustness of the formation against variations of the network communication topology. First, quadrotor translational dynamics is represented as a quadruple integrator by linearizing and differentiating its equations of translational motion. Then, a formation control law for a leader-follower network of the quadruple... 

Reference Governor is an important component of Active Fault Tolerant Control. One of the main reasons for using Reference Governor is to adjust/modify the reference trajectories to maintain the stability of the post-fault system, especially when a series of actuator faults occur and the faulty system can not retain the pre-fault performance. Fault estimation error and delay are important properties of Fault Detection and Diagnosis and have destructive effects on the performance of the Active Fault Tolerant Control. It is shown that, if the fault estimation provided by the Fault Detection and Diagnosis (initial “fault estimation”) is assumed to be precise (an ideal assumption), the... 

This study considers the detector design and performance analysis in a statistical multiple-input-multiple-output radar. The authors studied this subject under some assumptions such as single point target, Swerling scattering models for radar cross-section and Gaussian interference. The target is assumed to move in a piecewise linear trajectory and multi-scan data is stored. So, the target cell may have changed during the time. A three-dimensional data signal space is generated that involved in observations from multiple scans, then a generalised likelihood ratio test detector is derived that employs consecutive observations in a central unit. Then a sub-optimum detector is introduced in...