This paper studies the use of pushing actions with a fence to orient and translate objects in the plane. It describes a planner which is guaranteed to construct a sequence of pushing actions to move any polygonal object from any initial con guration to any nal con guration. This planner, which utilizes an analysis of the mechanics of pushing an object, generates open-loop plans which do not req...

This paper presents a systematic approach to distillation column control. The main emphasis is on the steps which precede the actual controller design, namely the modelling of the column and the selection of the control con guration. By control con guration in this context we mean the two independent variables used for composition control (for example, L and V;D and V , or L D and V B ). The st...

Fitness landscapes can be decomposed into elementary landscapes using a Fourier transform that is determined by the structure of the underlying con guration space. The amplitude spectrum obtained from the Fourier transform contains information about the ruggedness of the landscape. It can be used for classi cation and comparison purposes. We consider here three very di erent types of landscapes...

This paper aims to determine the e!ect that support systems have upon the productivity of manufacturing systems is demonstrated in this paper. Two case studies were undertaken in two separate factories. The method encompassed: Determining the support system con"guration, identifying signi"cant production problems, problem-solving to identify root cause and the tracking of process routes. Links ...

We study metastability and nucleation for the Blume-Capel model: a ferromagnetic nearest neighbour two-dimensional lattice system with spin variables taking values in f 1; 0;+1g. We consider large but nite volume, small xed magnetic eld h and chemical potential in the limit of zero temperature; we analyze the rst excursion from the metastable 1 con guration to the stable +1 con guration. We com...

ing Dependencies between Software Con guration Items Carl A. Gunter University of Pennsylvania http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~gunter Abstract This paper studies an abstract model of dependencies between software con guration items based on a theory of concurrent computation over a class of Petri nets called production nets. A general theory of build optimizations and their correctness is developed b...

The analysis of e ective time loss during recon guration by Guilloteau (1999) is re-examined for the robustness of his conclusion that the time loss is minimized by moving only a small number of antennas each day. I am able to reproduce this analysis and found that this conclusion is independent of the assumptions on antenna move time and the length of post-move calibration. I nd, however, this...

Few tools exist to address the post development activities of con guring releasing in stalling updating recon guring and even de installing a software system Certainly there is no uni ed approach for all of these activities and none that can take full advantage of a wide area network The Software Dock represents an architecture for supporting post development activities in such a setting It is ...

Considering the standard abelian sandpile model in one dimension we construct an in nite volume Markov process corresponding to its thermodynamic in nite volume limit The main di culty we over come is the strong non locality of the dynamics by which depending on the sand con guration changes in the height variables far away can still in uence the origin in a single updating However using simila...

Most of the research on aggregate production planning has been focused on discrete parts manufacturing models. In environments where intermediate inventory cannot be stored, and multiple products are produced simultaneously using complex con$gurations of production machines, these models may produce erroneous results. In this paper, we present a con$guration-based formulation for one such manuf...