This unique book provides an introduction to a subject whose use has steadily increased over the past 40 years. An update of Ramon Moore s previous books on the topic, it provides broad coverage of the subject as well as the historical perspective of one of the originators of modern interval analysis. The authors provide a hands-on introduction to INTLAB, a high-quality, comprehensive MATLAB toolbox for interval computations, making this the first interval analysis book that does with INTLAB what general numerical analysis texts do with MATLAB. Readers will find the following features of interest: elementary motivating examples and notes that help maximize the reader s chance of success in applying the techniques; exercises and hands-on MATLAB-based examples woven into the text; INTLAB-based examples and explanations integrated into the text, along with a comprehensive set of exercises and solutions, and an appendix with INTLAB commands; an extensive bibliography and appendices that will continue to be valuable resources once the reader is familiar with the subject; and a Web page with links to computational tools and other resources of interest. Audience: Introduction to Interval Analysis will be valuable to engineers and scientists interested in scientific computation, especially in reliability, effects of roundoff error, and automatic verification of results. The introductory material is particularly important for experts in global optimization and constraint solution algorithms. This book is suitable for introducing the subject to students in these areas. Contents: Preface; Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: The Interval Number System; Chapter 3: First Applications of Interval Arithmetic; Chapter 4: Further Properties of Interval Arithmetic; Chapter 5: Introduction to Interval Functions; Chapter 6: Interval Sequences; Chapter 7: Interval Matrices; Chapter 8: Interval Newton Methods; Chapter 9: Integration of Interval Functions; Chapter 10: Integral and Differential Equations; Chapter 11: Applications; Appendix A: Sets and Functions; Appendix B: Formulary; Appendix C: Hints for Selected Exercises; Appendix D: Internet Resources; Appendix E: INTLAB Commands and Functions; References; Index.

Introduction to Interval Analysis

Constraint programming is a powerful paradigm for solving combinatorial search problems that draws on a wide range of techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, databases, programming languages, and operations research. Constraint programming is currently applied with success to many domains, such as scheduling, planning, vehicle routing, configuration, networks, and bioinformatics.

The aim of this handbook is to capture the full breadth and depth of the constraint programming field and to be encyclopedic in its scope and coverage. While there are several excellent books on constraint programming, such books necessarily focus on the main notions and techniques and cannot cover also extensions, applications, and languages. The handbook gives a reasonably complete coverage of all these lines of work, based on constraint programming, so that a reader can have a rather precise idea of the whole field and its potential. Of course each line of work is dealt with in a survey-like style, where some details may be neglected in favor of coverage. However, the extensive bibliography of each chapter will help the interested readers to find suitable sources for the missing details. Each chapter of the handbook is intended to be a self-contained survey of a topic, and is written by one or more authors who are leading researchers in the area.

The intended audience of the handbook is researchers, graduate students, higher-year undergraduates and practitioners who wish to learn about the state-of-the-art in constraint programming. No prior knowledge about the field is necessary to be able to read the chapters and gather useful knowledge. Researchers from other fields should find in this handbook an effective way to learn about constraint programming and to possibly use some of the constraint programming concepts and techniques in their work, thus providing a means for a fruitful cross-fertilization among different research areas.

The handbook is organized in two parts. The first part covers the basic foundations of constraint programming, including the history, the notion of constraint propagation, basic search methods, global constraints, tractability and computational complexity, and important issues in modeling a problem as a constraint problem. The second part covers constraint languages and solver, several useful extensions to the basic framework (such as interval constraints, structured domains, and distributed CSPs), and successful application areas for constraint programming.

- Covers the whole field of constraint programming
- Survey-style chapters
- Five chapters on applications

Table of Contents

Foreword (Ugo Montanari) 
Part I : Foundations
Chapter 1. Introduction (Francesca Rossi, Peter van Beek, Toby Walsh) 
Chapter 2. Constraint Satisfaction: An Emerging Paradigm (Eugene C. Freuder, Alan K. Mackworth) 
Chapter 3. Constraint Propagation (Christian Bessiere) 
Chapter 4. Backtracking Search Algorithms (Peter van Beek) 
Chapter 5. Local Search Methods (Holger H. Hoos, Edward Tsang) 
Chapter 6. Global Constraints (Willem-Jan van Hoeve, Irit Katriel)
Chapter 7. Tractable Structures for CSPs (Rina Dechter)
Chapter 8. The Complexity of Constraint Languages
(David Cohen, Peter Jeavons) 
Chapter 9. Soft Constraints (Pedro Meseguer, Francesca Rossi, Thomas Schiex) 
Chapter 10. Symmetry in Constraint Programming
(Ian P. Gent, Karen E. Petrie, Jean-Francois Puget)
Chapter 11. Modelling (Barbara M. Smith) 
Part II : Extensions, Languages, and Applications

Chapter 12. Constraint Logic Programming (Kim Marriott, Peter J. Stuckey, Mark Wallace) 
Chapter 13. Constraints in Procedural and Concurrent Languages (Thom Fruehwirth, Laurent Michel, Christian Schulte)
Chapter 14. Finite Domain Constraint Programming Systems (Christian Schulte, Mats Carlsson) 
Chapter 15. Operations Research Methods in Constraint Programming (John Hooker) 
Chapter 16. Continuous and Interval Constraints(Frederic Benhamou, Laurent Granvilliers) 
Chapter 17. Constraints over Structured Domains
(Carmen Gervet) 
Chapter 18. Randomness and Structure (Carla Gomes, Toby Walsh)
Chapter 19. Temporal CSPs (Manolis Koubarakis)
Chapter 20. Distributed Constraint Programming
(Boi Faltings) 
Chapter 21. Uncertainty and Change (Kenneth N. Brown, Ian Miguel)
Chapter 22. Constraint-Based Scheduling and Planning
(Philippe Baptiste, Philippe Laborie, Claude Le Pape, Wim Nuijten)
Chapter 23. Vehicle Routing (Philip Kilby, Paul Shaw) 
Chapter 24. Configuration (Ulrich Junker)
Chapter 25. Constraint Applications in Networks
(Helmut Simonis)
Chapter 26. Bioinformatics and Constraints (Rolf Backofen, David Gilbert)

/pdf/handbook-of-constraint-programming-53srutguo2.pdf

Handbook of Constraint Programming

해외산업간호정보 - 미국 산업안전보건연구원(National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) 소개

Although the concepts of Jacobian matrix, manipulability, and condition number have existed since the very early beginning of robotics their real significance is not always well understood. In this paper we revisit these concepts for parallel robots as accuracy indices in view of optimal design. We first show that the usual Jacobian matrix derived from the input-output velocities equations may not be sufficient to analyze the positioning errors of the platform. We then examine the concept of manipulability and show that its classical interpretation is erroneous. We then consider various common local dexterity indices, most of which are based on the condition number of the Jacobian matrix. It is emphasized that even for a given robot in a particular pose there are a variety of condition numbers and that their values are not coherent between themselves but also with what we may expect from an accuracy index. Global conditioning indices are then examined. Apart from the problem of being based on the local accuracy indices that are questionable, there is a computational problem in their calculation that is neglected most of the time. Finally, we examine what other indices may be used for optimal design and show that their calculation is most challenging.

/pdf/jacobian-manipulability-condition-number-and-accuracy-of-5ecm213mgd.pdf

Jacobian, Manipulability, Condition Number, and Accuracy of Parallel Robots

Parallel robots are nowadays leaving academic laboratories and are finding their way in an increasingly larger number of application fields such as telescopes, fine positioning devices, fast packaging, machine-tool, medical application. A key issue for such use is optimal design as performances of parallel robots are very sensitive to their dimensioning. Optimal design methodologies have to rely on kinetostatic performance indices and accuracy is clearly a key-issue for many applications. It has also be a key-issue for serial robots and consequently this problem has been extensively studied and various accuracy indices have been defined. The results have been in general directly transposed to parallel robots. We will now review how well these indices are appropriate for parallel robots.

/pdf/jacobian-manipulability-condition-number-and-accuracy-of-3enayjm37o.pdf

Jacobian, manipulability, condition number and accuracy of parallel robots

The design of a mechanical transmission tak- ing into account the transmitted forces is reported in this paper. This transmission is based onSlide-o-Cam, a cam mechanism with multiple rollers mounted on a common translating follower. The design of Slide-o-Cam, a trans- mission intended to produce a sliding motion from a turning drive, or vice versa, was reported elsewhere. This trans- mission provides pure-rolling motion, thereby reducing th e friction of rack-and-pinions and linear drives. The pres- sure angle is a suitable performance index for this trans- mission because it determines the amount of force trans- mitted to the load vs. that transmitted to the machine frame. To assess the transmission capability of the mechanism, the Hertz formula is introduced to calculate the stresses on the rollers and on the cams. The final transmission is intended to replace the current ball-screws in theOrthoglide, a three- DOF parallel robot for the production of translational mo- tions, currently under development for machining applica- tions at ´

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00164982/document

The Kinetostatic Optimization of a Novel Prismatic Drive

The subject of this paper is a special class of closed-chain manipulators. First, we analyze a family of two-degree-of-freedom (dof) five-bar planar linkages. Two Jacobian matrices appear in the kinematic relations between the joint-rate and the Cartesian-velocity vectors, which are called the ``inverse kinematics" and the "direct kinematics" matrices. It is shown that the loci of points of the workspace where the condition number of the direct-kinematics matrix remains constant, i.e., the isoconditioning loci, are the coupler points of the four-bar linkage obtained upon locking the middle joint of the linkage. Furthermore, if the line of centers of the two actuated revolutes is used as the axis of a third actuated revolute, then a three-dof hybrid manipulator is obtained. The isoconditioning loci of this manipulator are surfaces of revolution generated by the isoconditioning curves of the two-dof manipulator, whose axis of symmetry is that of the third actuated revolute.

The Isoconditioning Loci of A Class of Closed-Chain Manipulators

The neck in birds has been characterized as a highly complex system that positions the head during all kinds of behavior (Zweers et al. 1994; Bohmer et al. 2018). This involves a variety of highly ...

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02265058/document

Combining precision and power to maximize performance: a case study of the woodpecker’s neck


 In this paper, a planar mechanism formed by stacking tensegrity mechanisms has been designed. This mechanism is formed by three segments but the approach can be applied to a larger number of segments. This mechanism is studied to serve as a stapler for laparoscopic rectal cancer surgery where conventional tools cannot be easily accessed. To do this, two identical mechanisms will be used and operated similarly: one to carry the clips and the cutting knife and the second in parallel to allow the closing of the clips by bringing the two mechanisms together. The parameterization of the segments allows a variation of all lengths. Thus, the size of the segments can decrease proportionally from the base to the top, resulting in a tapered shape from the base to the tip like an elephant trunk. The mechanism has linear springs and cables for its actuation. The singularities, as well as the stability of the parallel mechanism, were analyzed using the minimum energy principle. Optimization was also performed to obtain the largest angular deflection for a segment based on a ratio between the size of the base and the moving platform of the robotic system. The result of this work is a family of mechanisms that can generate the same workspace for different stability properties. After optimization, the radius of curvature of the mechanism will be studied to allow insertion into the patient’s belly.

/pdf/stapler-design-with-stacked-tensegrity-mechanisms-for-2ksrqdye.pdf

Stapler Design With Stacked Tensegrity Mechanisms for Surgical Procedures

In order to optimize the costs and time of design of the new products while improving their quality, concurrent engineering is based on the digital model of these products, the numerical model. However, in order to be able to avoid definitively physical model, old support of the design, without loss of information, new tools must be available. Especially, a tool making it possible to check simply and quickly the maintainability of complex mechanical sets using the numerical model is necessary. Since one decade, our team works on the creation of tool for the generation and the analysis of trajectories of virtual mannequins. The simulation of human tasks can be carried out either by robot-like simulation or by simulation by motion capture. This paper presents some results on the both two methods. The first method is based on a multi-agent system and on a digital mock-up technology, to assess an efficient path planner for a manikin or a robot for access and visibility task taking into account ergonomic constraints or joint and mechanical limits. In order to solve this problem, the human operator is integrated in the process optimization to contribute to a global perception of the environment. This operator cooperates, in real-time, with several automatic local elementary agents. In the case of the second approach, we worked with the CEA and EADS/CCR to solve the constraints related to the evolution of human virtual in its environment on the basis of data resulting from motion capture system. An approach using of the virtual guides was developed to allow to the user the realization of precise trajectory in absence of force feedback. The result of this work validates solutions through the digital mock-up; it can be applied to simulate maintenability and mountability tasks.

/pdf/animation-of-virtual-mannequins-robot-like-simulation-or-4t64t563nt.pdf

Damien Chablat

Papers

The Kinetostatic Optimization of a Novel Prismatic Drive

The Isoconditioning Loci of A Class of Closed-Chain Manipulators

Combining precision and power to maximize performance: a case study of the woodpecker’s neck

Stapler Design With Stacked Tensegrity Mechanisms for Surgical Procedures

Animation of virtual mannequins, robot-like simulation or motion captures