1,721,060 research outputs found

    A novel optimal path-planning and following algorithm for wheeled robots on deformable terrains

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    An immense body of research has focused on path-planning and following of wheeled robots in unstructured surfaces. Nonholonomic robots traveling over deformable terrains together with complex operating conditions, however, pose further challenges in terms of a higher demand for robustness and optimality. In this paper, a Chaos-enhanced Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimization (CAPSO) algorithm is employed for planning an optimal path of a wheeled robot, so as to ensure shortest path from the starting point to the target location together with safety through guaranteed avoidance of collisions with static and dynamic obstacles. The fundamental terramechanics concepts are employed to derive essential forces and moments acting on the wheeled robot. Subsequently, a kineto-dynamic model of the robot is developed for designing a novel robust control algorithm based on an exponential-integral-sliding mode (EISMC) scheme and a RBF-NN approximator. The results revealed that the proposed algorithm is responsive and robust to withstand adverse effects of structured and unstructured uncertainties by using the designed adaptation law according to the Lyapunov stability theorem. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is also validated against several reported frameworks.</p

    Modeling and analysis of off-road tire cornering characteristics

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    Cornering performance characteristics of wheeled vehicles substantially rely on the forces/moments generated from interactions between pneumatic tires and terrains. Accurate models are thus required to predict these forces/moments to be employed in vehicle simulations for development and design. The goal of this dissertation research is to provide a virtual testing environment in Pam-Crash software as an alternative to actual tests for Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) analysis of rolling tire interactions on deformable terrains. SPH method and hydrodynamics-elastic plastic material were used to simulate different soil types that are often utilized in vehicle-terrain interactions. Two pressure-sinkage and shear-strength experiments were used to calibrate the terrains. The simulation findings were compared with the measured data that showed good agreements. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the rolling resistance coefficient and cornering properties of the tire over various terrains is presented, as well as the development of Genetic Algorithms (GA) to determine the mathematical relations for the cornering force, self-aligning moment, and overturning moment as functions of important operating factors. Cornering tests were performed for the RHD tire operating over the mud soil to examine the validity of the GA-based cornering force, self-aligning moment, and overturning moment relationships. It was concluded that the identified mathematical relations could provide very good estimations of the cornering characteristics under a broad range of operating conditions and soils.University of Ontario Institute of Technolog

    Advanced vehicle handling dynamics and control

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    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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