1,720,994 research outputs found
Friction Variability in Planar Pushing Data: Anisotropic Friction and Data-Collection Bias
Friction plays a key role in manipulating objects. Most of what we do with
our hands, and most of what robots do with their grippers, is based on the
ability to control frictional forces. This paper aims to better understand the
variability and predictability of planar friction. In particular, we focus on
the analysis of a recent dataset on planar pushing by Yu et al. [1] devised to
create a data-driven footprint of planar friction.
We show in this paper how we can explain a significant fraction of the
observed unconventional phenomena, e.g., stochasticity and multi-modality, by
combining the effects of material non-homogeneity, anisotropy of friction and
biases due to data collection dynamics, hinting that the variability is
explainable but inevitable in practice.
We introduce an anisotropic friction model and conduct simulation experiments
comparing with more standard isotropic friction models. The anisotropic
friction between object and supporting surface results in convergence of
initial condition during the automated data collection. Numerical results
confirm that the anisotropic friction model explains the bias in the dataset
and the apparent stochasticity in the outcome of a push. The fact that the data
collection process itself can originate biases in the collected datasets,
resulting in deterioration of trained models, calls attention to the data
collection dynamics
A probabilistic data-driven model for planar pushing
This paper presents a data-driven approach to model planar pushing interaction to predict both the most likely outcome of a push and its expected variability. The learned models rely on a variation of Gaussian processes with input-dependent noise called Variational Heteroscedastic Gaussian processes (VHGP) [1] that capture the mean and variance of a stochastic function. We show that we can learn accurate models that outperform analytical models after less than 100 samples and saturate in performance with less than 1000 samples. We validate the results against a collected dataset of repeated trajectories, and use the learned models to study questions such as the nature of the variability in pushing, and the validity of the quasi-static assumption
Experimental Validation of Contact Dynamics for In-Hand Manipulation
This paper evaluates state-of-the-art contact models at predicting the motions and forces involved in simple in-hand robotic manipulations. In particular it focuses on three primitive actions—linear sliding, pivoting, and rolling—that involve contacts between a gripper, a rigid object, and their environment. The evaluation is done through thousands of controlled experiments designed to capture the motion of object and gripper, and all contact forces and torques at 250 Hz. We demonstrate that a contact modeling approach based on Coulomb’s friction law and maximum energy principle is effective at reasoning about interaction to first order, but limited for making accurate predictions. We attribute the major limitations to (1) the non-uniqueness of force resolution inherent to grasps with multiple hard contacts of complex geometries, (2) unmodeled dynamics due to contact compliance, and (3) unmodeled geometries due to manufacturing defects.
Keywords: Contact Force, Contact Model, Grasp Object, Contact Compliance, Grip Force Increas
A novel nonlinear compliant link on simple grippers
This paper presents a novel nonlinear compliant link. It has two major properties: bi-directionality and stiffening compliance. Bi-directionality means it can be stretched and compressed, and is realized by antagonistic arrangement of an extension spring and a compression spring. Stiffening compliance means it becomes stiffer as it is stretched, and is realized by asymmetric geometry. The links are parts of Simple Hand. Because Simple Hand gives limited space for links, current iteration of links is not obviously nonlinear. However, nonlinearity should be more obvious if links are designed for larger grippers
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
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
“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
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
Identifiability Analysis of Planar Rigid-Body Frictional Contact
This paper addresses the identifiability of the inertial parameters and the contact forces associated with an object making and breaking frictional contact with the environment. Our goal is to explore under what conditions, and to what degree, the observation of physical interaction, in the form of motions and/or forces, is indicative of the underlying dynamics that governs it. In this initial study we consider the cases of passive interaction, where an object free-falls under gravity, and active interaction, where known external perturbations act on the object at contact. We assume that both object and environment are planar and rigid, and exploit the well-known complementarity formulation for contact resolution to establish a closed-form relationship between inertial parameters, contact forces, and observed motions. Consistent with intuition, the analysis indicates that without the application of known external forces, the identifiable set of parameters remains coupled, i.e., the ratio of mass moment of inertia to mass and the ratio of contact forces to the mass. Interestingly, the analysis also shows that known external forces can lead to decoupling and identifiability of mass, mass moment of inertia, and normal and tangential contact forces. We evaluate the identifiability formulation both in simulation and with real experiments
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
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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