SRI International

About: SRI International is a nonprofit organization based out in Menlo Park, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Ionosphere & Laser. The organization has 7222 authors who have published 13102 publications receiving 660724 citations. The organization is also known as: Stanford Research Institute & SRI.

The open agent architecture: A framework for building distributed software systems

Abstract: The Open Agent Architecture (OAA), developed and used for several years at SRI International, makes it possible for software services to be provided through the cooperative efforts of distributed collections of autonomous agents. Communication and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators, which are responsible for matching requests, from users and agents, with descriptions of the capabilities of other agents. Thus it is not generally required that a user or agent know the identities, locations, or number of other agents involved in satisfying a request. OAA is structured so as to minimize the effort involved in creating new agents and "wrapping" legacy applications, written in various languages and operating on various platforms; to encourage the reuse of existing agents; and to allow for dynamism and flexibility in the makeup ofagent communities. Distinguishing features of OAA as compared with related work include extreme flexibility in using facilitator-based delegation of com...

Remote center positioner

Abstract: The invention is directed to a remote center positioner (23) used to support an instrument and provide a center of spherical rotation, remote from any bearings or mechanical supports, at a desired location of the instrument. The remote center positioner (23) is particularly useful in laparoscopic surgery to constrain a surgical instrument to move around a fixed center of rotation remote from any bearings or mechanical supports and coincident with an entry incision in the abdominal wall.

Electroactive polymer devices

Abstract: The present invention relates to transducers, their use and fabrication. The transducers convert between mechanical and electrical energy. Some transducers of the present invention include a pre-strained polymer. The pre-strain improves the conversion between electrical and mechanical energy. The present invention also relates to devices including an electroactive polymer to convert between electrical and mechanical energy. The present invention further relates to compliant electrodes that conform to the shape of a polymer included in a transducer. The present invention provides methods for fabricating electromechanical devices including one or more electroactive polymers.

Diabatic and adiabatic representations for atomic collision problems.

Abstract: The equations of the general Born-Oppenheimer separation into electronic and heavy-particle coordinates are re-examined, and the coupled equations that result for the heavy-particle motion are expressed in a particularly simple form. This is accomplished by introducing a generalized matrix operator for the effective momentum associated with the heavy particles; the matrix portion of this operator represents a coupling of the nuclear momentum with the electronic motion. The commutator between the momentum and potential matrices is a force matrix, which provides an alternative means of evaluating the momentum matrix. The momentum coupling has both radial and angular parts; the angular momentum coupling agrees with Thorson's expression. In the usual adiabatic molecular representation, the potential energy matrix is diagonalized, and all the coupling is thrown into the radial and angular momentum matrices. For collision problems it is often more important to diagonalize the radial momentum matrix, putting the radial off-diagonal coupling into the potential matrix; this generates a family of diabatic representations, the most important of which dissociates to unique separated atom states. This standard diabatic representations has the properties called for by Lichten, is uniquely defined even with the inclusion of configuration interaction, and leads immediately to the Landau-Zener-Stueckelberg limiting case under appropriate conditions.