In this first paper, we consider how to putt a golf ball on an uneven green so that it arrives at the cup with minimal speed.

The Space Shuttle’s two-dimensional entry trajectory planning method is extended to three dimensions. Both angle-of-attack and angle-of-bank variations are used to control the entry trajectory. The trajectory planning is done with a third-order system of differential equations using the drag and lateral accelerations as intermediate controls. The reduced-order planning problem is solved first i...

This paper presents an inverse simulation methodology based on numerical optimization. The methodology is applied to a simplified version of the slalom maneuver in the ADS-33D helicopter handling qualities specifications. The inverse simulation is formulated as an optimization problem with trajectory and dynamic constraints, pilot inputs as design variables, and an objective function that depen...

Spinal Wistar Hannover rats trained to step bipedally on a treadmill with manual assistance of the hindlimbs have been shown to improve their stepping ability. Given the improvement in motor performance with practice and the ability of the spinal cord circuitry to learn to step more effectively when the mode of training allows variability, we examined why this intrinsic variability is an import...

Continuous-time Markov chains are used to model systems in which transitions between states as well as the time the system spends in each state are random. Many computational problems related to such chains have been solved, including determining state distributions as a function of time, parameter estimation, and control. However, the problem of inferring most likely trajectories, where a traj...

Future robots are expected to cooperate with humans in daily activities. Efficient cooperation requires new techniques for transferring human skills to robots. In this paper, we present a system that provides a robot with the ability to imitate a motion by observing how a human instructor conducts it. The system consists of the following modules: data acquisition, feature extraction and trackin...

In this paper, we introduce block insertion and deletion on trajectories, which provide us with a new framework to study properties of language operations. With the parallel syntactical constraint provided by trajectories, these operations properly generalize several sequential as well as parallel binary language operations such as catenation, sequential insertion, k-insertion, parallel inserti...

| This paper addresses trajectory planning in dynamic workspaces, i.e. trajectory planning for a robot subject to dynamic constraints and moving in a workspace with moving obstacles. First is introduced the novel concept of state-time space, i.e. the state space of the robot augmented of the time dimension. Like the concept of connguration space which is a tool to formulate path planning proble...

Graph transformation systems (GTS) are often used for modeling the behavior of complex systems. A common GTS analysis scenario is the exploration of its state space from an initial state to a state adhering to given goals through a proper trajectory. Guided trajectory exploration uses information from some more abstract analysis of the system as hints to reduce the traversed state space. These ...