Tracking Control of an Autonomous Head Feeding Combine

This study aims to develop an autonomous combine harvester. A manual steering combine harvester was modified autonomously using navigation systems of an RTK-DGPS, a gyroscope, and crawler speed sensors. These sensors could determine the combine position and heading required to guide the path. The control system is processed for these navigation sensors' data to make the decision of combine movement. Moreover, it commands the actuator to move the steering lever mechanism. The steering control's desired heading angle was determined from lateral error, heading error, and the traveling speed. In this study, the combined harvester's average forward traveling speed was set at 0.17 m/s, adjusted to a navigation sensor's sampling rate of 5 Hz and the steering mechanism delay. The preliminary test showed the combine could turn by pivoting one of its tracks which turned the radius was into 0.4 m. Furthermore, a guidance control system of the combine harvester was developed based on this test result. The developed guidance control system was successfully guiding the combine to follow the harvesting path. The test results showed that the root mean square of the lateral error was less than 0.1 m.

Robbins, Jerome (1918–1998)

Jerome Robbins was one of the master choreographers of the twentieth century who transformed musical theater and ballet. Beginning with Fancy Free (1944), Robbins left his mark on both disciplines by his use of humor and character, and by his ability to combine movement originating in multiple idioms. This auspicious beginning led to more ballets—Interplay (1945), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), and The Concert (1956)—as well as a number of hit Broadway shows: On the Town (1944), West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). He traversed different genres with ease, moving from Broadway to ballet, dance to choreography, and then to directing plays, films, and television programmes. Although he made his earliest ballets for Ballet Theatre (now the American Ballet Theatre), his longest affiliation was with the New York City Ballet, where he was appointed associate artistic director in 1949, and to which—after a hiatus of more than a decade—he returned in 1969 to choreograph some of his most acclaimed ballets, including Dances at a Gathering (1969) and The Goldberg Variations (1971). Robbins’s work often defined the historic moment, marrying music, movement, and expression with such quality and intensity that his works have endured as historical and artistic landmarks.

Measure Energy Consumption Combined Heart Rate and Acceleration

This paper put forward a new kind of motion energy expenditure calculation model that combine movement heart rate, acceleration, height, gender, age, weight and other personalized parameters. In this model, using heart rate and personalized parameters to calculate the based energy consumption (BEE). Using acceleration and personalized parameters to calculate the movement work (EEact). The experimental results show that this method has a high accuracy in movement energy expenditure. So using this method can eliminate the contradiction between measurement accuracy and measuring cost.

Active touch sensing

Active sensing systems are purposive and information-seeking sensory systems. Active sensing usually entails sensor movement, but more fundamentally, it involves control of the sensor apparatus, in whatever manner best suits the task, so as to maximize information gain. In animals, active sensing is perhaps most evident in the modality of touch. In this theme issue, we look at active touch across a broad range of species from insects, terrestrial and marine mammals, through to humans. In addition to analysing natural touch, we also consider how engineering is beginning to exploit physical analogues of these biological systems so as to endow robots with rich tactile sensing capabilities. The different contributions show not only the varieties of active touch—antennae, whiskers and fingertips—but also their commonalities. They explore how active touch sensing has evolved in different animal lineages, how it serves to provide rapid and reliable cues for controlling ongoing behaviour, and even how it can disintegrate when our brains begin to fail. They demonstrate that research on active touch offers a means both to understand this essential and primary sensory modality, and to investigate how animals, including man, combine movement with sensing so as to make sense of, and act effectively in, the world.