The goal of this research is to achieve close to real-time dynamics performance for allowing auto-pilot in-the-loop testing of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) for urban as well as off-road scenarios. The overall vehicle dynamics performance is governed by the multibody dynamics model for the vehicle, the wheel/terrain interaction dynamics and the onboard control system. The topic of this paper is the development of computationally efficient and accurate dynamics model for ground vehicles with complex suspension dynamics. A challenge is that typical vehicle suspensions involve closed-chain loops which require expensive DAE integration techniques. In this paper, we illustrate the use the alternative constraint embedding technique to reduce the cost and improve the accuracy of the dynamics model for the vehicle.

The article aims at the explanation of some distributional peculiarities of two high unrounded vowels [i] and [È] in Russian. More generally, it looks at some phonotactic constraints of Russian vowels which are directly related to a broader topic of palatalization and vowel reduction in this language. Although the discussion in this paper concerns only a tiny section of Russian phonology, which is the distribution of high unrounded vowels, it is necessary to introduce several facts from Russian phonology, such as palatalization, velarization, stress and vowel reduction. They, at first sight, may look pretty much irrelevant to the main topic of the paper but, as it will become evident, are closely related and actually indispensable to the understanding of vowel distribution including the two high unrounded vowels in Russian.

Hull consistency is a known technique to improve the efficiency of iterative interval methods for solving nonlinear systems describing steady-states in various circuits. Presently, hull consistency is checked in a scalar manner, i.e. successively for each equation of the nonlinear system with respect to a single variable. In the present poster, a new more general approach to implementing hull consistency is suggested which consists in treating simultaneously several equations with respect to the same number of variables.

Main topic of the paper is a problem of designing the input-output decoupling controllers for nonholonomic mobile manipulators. We propose a selection of output functions in much more general form than in [1,2]. Regularity conditions guaranteeing the existence of the input-output decoupling control law are presented. Theoretical considerations are illustrated with simulations for mobile manipulator consisting of RTR robotic arm mounted atop of a unicycle which moves in 3D-space.

Elastic optical networking is a potential candidate to support dynamic traffic with heterogeneous data rates and variable bandwidth requirements with the support of the optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing technology (OOFDM). During the dynamic network operation, lightpath arrives and departs frequently and the network status updates accordingly. Fixed routing and alternate routing algorithms do not tune according to the current network status which are computed offline. Therefore, offline algorithms greedily use resources with an objective to compute shortest possible paths and results in high blocking probability during dynamic network operation. In this paper, adaptive routing algorithms are proposed for shortest path routing as well as alternate path routing which make routing decision based on the maximum idle frequency slots (FS) available on different paths. The proposed algorithms select an underutilized path between different choices with maximum idle FS and efficiently avoids utilizing a congested path. The proposed routing algorithms are compared with offline routing algorithms as well as an existing adaptive routing algorithm in different network scenarios. It has been shown that the proposed algorithms efficiently improve network performance in terms of FS utilization and blocking probability during dynamic network operation.

Calibration is necessary for dual manipulator to complete operational tasks. This paper proposes an effective robot-robot and hand-eye calibration method based on virtual constraints. Firstly, a rotational error model and a translational error model are established based on the relationships between the transformation matrices of the dual manipulator calibration system. Then a poses-alignment method is designed to make the poses of the two robots satisfy the constructed virtual constraints. At the aligned positions, the joint angles of the two robots are saved and used to calculate the values of the variables in the error models. Finally, the robot-robot and hand-eye rotational errors are estimated by an iterative algorithm. These errors are then used to calculate translational errors based on the SVD (singular value decomposition) method. To show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments of robot-robot and hand-eye calibration for dual manipulators are performed. The experiment results demonstrate that the accuracy of the dual manipulator system is improved greatly.

In modelling flexure based mechanisms, generally flexures are modelled perfectly aligned and nominal values are assumed for the dimensions. To test the validity of these assumptions for a two Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) large stroke compliant mechanism, eigenfrequency and mode shape measurements are compared to results obtained with a flexible multibody model. The mechanism consists of eleven cross flexures and seven interconnecting bodies. From the measurements 30% lower eigenfrequencies are observed than those obtained with the model. With a simplified model, it is demonstrated that these differences can be attributed to wrongly assumed leaf spring thickness and misalignment of the leaf springs in the cross flexures. These manufacturing tolerances thus significantly affect the behaviour of the two DOF mechanism, even though it was designed using the exact constraint design principle. This design principle avoids overconstraints to limit internal stresses due to manufacturing tolerances, yet this paper shows clearly that manufacturing imperfections can still result in significantly different dynamic behaviour.

The paper describes a nonlinear controller design technique applied to a servo drive in the presence of hard state constraints. The approach presented is based on nonlinear state-space transformation and adaptive backstepping. It allows us to impose hard constraints on the state variables directly and to achieve asymptotic tracking of any reference trajectory inside the constraints, despite unknown plant parameters. Two control schemes (with and without integral action) are derived, investigated and then compared. Several examples demonstrate the main features of the design procedure and prove that it may be applied in case of motion control problems in electric drive automation.

Significant differences in the physical and mechanical properties exist between the rock masses on two sides of an ore-rock contact zone, which the production tunnels of an underground mine must pass through. Compared with a single rock mass, the mechanical behavior of the contact zone composite rock comprising two types of rock is more complex. In order to predict the overall strength of the composite rock with different contact angles, iron ore-marble composite rock sample uniaxial compression tests were conducted. The results showed that composite rock samples with different contact angles failed in two different modes under compression. The strengths of the composite rock samples were lower than those of both the pure iron ore samples and pure marble samples, and were also related to the contact angle. According to the stress-strain relationship of the contact surface in the composite rock sample, there were constraint stresses on the contact surface between the two types of rock medium in the composite rock samples. This stress state could reveal the effect of the constraint stress in the composite rock samples with different contact angles on their strengths. Based on the Mohr-Coulomb criterion, a strength model of the composite rock considering the constraint stress on the contact surface was constructed, which could provide a theoretical basis for stability researches and designs of contact zone tunnels.

The paper concerns a strength optimization of continuous beams with variable cross-section. The continuous beams are subjected to a dead weight and a useful load, the six (seven) combinations of loads were analyzed. Optimal design problems in structural mechanics can by mathematically formulated as optimal control tasks. To solve the above formulated optimization problems, the minimum principle was applied. The paper is an introductory and survey paper of the treatment of realistically modelled optimal control problems from application in the structural mechanics. Especially those problems are considered, which include different types of constraints. The optimization problem is reduced to the solution of multipoint boundary value problems (MPBVP) composed of differential equations. Dimension of MPBVP is usually a large number, what produces numerical difficulties. Optimal control theory does not give much information about the control structure. The correctness of the assumed control structure can be checked after obtaining the solution of the boundary problem.

The paper addresses the problem of constrained pole placement in discrete-time linear systems. The design conditions are outlined in terms of linear matrix inequalities for the Dstable ellipse region in the complex Z plain. In addition, it is demonstrated that the D-stable circle region formulation is the special case of by this way formulated and solved pole placement problem. The proposed principle is enhanced for discrete-lime linear systems with polytopic uncertainties.