Η διπλωματική εργασία αναπτύσσει έναν προσαρμοστικό έλεγχο για την παρακολούθηση προπορευόμενου οχήματος από το ακόλουθο όχημα στην "κατεύθυνση του μήκους" και κάνει την προσομοίωση σε περιβάλλον Matlab. / This essay devolops with adaptive control a model of automatic vehicle following so that a following vehicle can follow a leading vehicle in the longitudinal direction. And simulates the model with Matlab.

This study was performed at Thomas Arena in Strängnäs, Sweden. The reason ofthe study was to see how to perform an enhancement in the orientatabilitybetween the entrance and the locker rooms. By looking at how the environmentinteract with the users when it comes to orientatability, the study should give agreater understanding in how the entrance should be evolved to enhance theorientatability. A qualitative study was performed, where observations andinterviews studies was used to collect the data. By the result you could see that theenvironment between the entrance en the looker rooms was hard to understand,and was affecting the users in their orientation. With the support of literature,earlier research and the results that the empiricism showed a draft was made, werespatial elements clarified the orientatability. / Denna studie är gjord vid Thomas Arena i Strängnäs. Syftet har varit attundersöka hur man kan öka orienterbarheten mellan entrén och sporthallensomklädningsrum. Genom att se hur miljön påverkar användarnas möjlighet attnavigera sig ges en större förståelse för hur entrén bör utformas för att stödjaderas orientering. En kvalitativ studie har gjorts där observation- ochintervjustudier använts för insamling av data. I resultatet kunde man konstatera attmiljön mellan entrén och sporthallens omklädningsrum är svårbegriplig ochpåverkar användarnas möjligheter att orientera sig. Med stöd av litteratur ochtidigare forskning och de resultat empirin visat på har ett förslag tagits fram, därolika rumsliga element tydliggör orienterbarheten.

Since smart homes will be more and more popular in the future, the needs of finding a friendly, comfortable and smart interface between users and home environments are growing. However, conventional interfaces have reached their limits. So, this paper describes a new concept of interface in a home environment. This work is distinguished by building a separable smart robot. A smart phone is used as a brain, and a robot car is used as a body. With the system, people will be allowed to carry the robot's brain when they are out of their home. In this case, the brain can not only be a normal smart phone, but also can monitor parameters such as the temperature at home. On the other hand, when people are at home, they will be allowed to put their phones on the robot car. By invoking the system, they will have an assist-robot. This assist-robot will act as a new interface in the smart home by following people and recognizing their voice commands in order to take notes, to read notes and to control smart home devices. This thesis also implements face recognition to improve the communication between users and the interface. Test results show that our proposed system is well accepted.

This thesis describes the design of a vision-based vehicle-following system that uses only on-board sensors to enable a convoy of follower vehicles to autonomously track the trajectory of a manually-driven lead vehicle. The tracking is done using the novel concept of a constant time delay, where a follower tracks the delayed trajectory of its leader. Two separate controllers, one linearized about a point ahead and the other linearized about a constant-velocity trajectory, were designed and tested in simulations and experiments. The experiments were conducted with full-sized military vehicles on a 1.3 km test track. Successful field trials with one follower for 10 laps and with two followers for 13.5 laps are presented.

This thesis describes the design of a vision-based vehicle-following system that uses only on-board sensors to enable a convoy of follower vehicles to autonomously track the trajectory of a manually-driven lead vehicle. The tracking is done using the novel concept of a constant time delay, where a follower tracks the delayed trajectory of its leader. Two separate controllers, one linearized about a point ahead and the other linearized about a constant-velocity trajectory, were designed and tested in simulations and experiments. The experiments were conducted with full-sized military vehicles on a 1.3 km test track. Successful field trials with one follower for 10 laps and with two followers for 13.5 laps are presented.

This thesis investigates the control of motion for a general class of vehicles that rotate and translate in three-space, and are propelled by a thrust vector which has fixed direction in body frame. The thesis addresses the problems of path following and position control. For path following, a feedback linearization controller is presented that makes the vehicle follow an arbitrary closed curve while simultaneously allowing the designer to specify the velocity profile of the vehicle on the path and its heading. For position control, a two-stage approach is presented that decouples position control from attitude control, allowing for a modular design and yielding almost global asymptotic stability of any desired hovering equilibrium. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified both in simulation and experimentally by means of a hardware-in-the-loop setup emulating a co-axial helicopter.

Rule following is a central concept in the philosophy of Wittgenstein who was one of the pioneers of modern philosophy. Wittgenstein criticizes the traditional concepts of rule, because they were vague, ambiguous, and idealized. He thinks that it is not possible to isolate rules from practice and that a rule takes its meaning in a certain context or in practice. Wittgenstein&rsquo / s concept of rule following is closely related to a set of concepts: internal relation, understanding, criterion. These concepts explains the intimate relation between rule following and practice. Wittgenstein believes that his theory of rule following does not generate some problems such as paradox of interpretation and regression. Furthermore, the concept of practice plays a central role in Wittgenstein&rsquo / s view of rule following. He removes metaphysical speculations that are put forward concerning the &ldquo / essence&rdquo / of rule following and locates rule following in a form of life, that is in a natural context. With this, he provides an explanation that clarifies misuses of language and establishes a correct relation between theory and practice.

[pt] A presente tese traz como título: Mística e Compaixão: A Teologia do Seguimento de Jesus em Thomas Merton. Ela aborda a teologia espiritual de um dos maiores místicos do século XX, que fez a síntese harmônica entre espiritualidade e solidariedade, contemplação e ação. Sua mística é apresentada aqui como o encontro existencial com o mistério sublime de Deus, da criação e do ser humano. No encontro com esse tríplice mistério (mística), o ser humano se constitui como tal e sem ele a vida perde profundidade e transparência. Pois ainda hoje, em plena era espacial, ecológica e nuclear, o centro do universo continua a ser o coração humano, feito para o Transcendente. O mistério da criação consiste no fato de ela ter o ser e a vida a partir de Outro, ex nihilo, que não Se comporta como usuário ou proprietário, apesar de ver que tudo é bom e belo. Um tal amor infinito, respeitador da alteridade, ocultando-se e se tornando invisível para deixar suas criaturas ser, é paradigmático para nós hoje e inspira o cuidado responsável por todas as formas de vida, humanas e não-humanas. Destarte, a mística mertoniana apresenta um duplo movimento, a saber ascendente: de abertura para Deus e descendente: de abertura ao mundo (na metáfora includente da compaixão), que consiste no empenho por promover a paz, a justiça e cuidado responsável pela criação/ecologia. E pelo fato de a teologia do seguimento de Jesus em Merton ter profundas bases bíblicas, interpretadas numa dimensão libertadora, ecumênica e macroecumênica, ela é capaz de embasar a espiritualidade da libertação latinoamericana: Uma espiritualidade de resistência profética diante das forças desumanizadoras e opressoras do mundo globalizado excludente; uma espiritualidade da solidariedade, que se coloca ao lado das vítimas em seu sofrimento e se engaja na utopia de minimizar a fome e miséria no mundo, até se tornar topia; e, finalmente uma espiritualidade da criação, morada de Deus e do humano. Destarte, nosso objetivo será mostrar que Merton é de fato um dos precursores da espiritualidade da paz na América do Norte, e da teologia da libertação latino-americana. / [en] The theme of this thesis is: Mysticism and Compassion: The theology of following of Jesus according to Thomas Merton. It focuses on the spiritual theology of one of the best known mystics of the 20th century, who made a harmonic synthesis between spirituality and solidarity, contemplation and action. His mysticism is presented here as the existential encounter between the sublime mystery of God, of creation and of the human being. In the encounter with this threefold mystery (mysticism), the human being constitutes herself and without it life loses its deepness and tranparency. Even today, when we live in a spacial, ecological and nuclear era, the center of the universe still continues to be the human heart, made for the Transcendent. The mystery of creation consists in having its being from Another one, ex nihilo, Who does not behave as user or owner, in spite of seeing that everything is good and beautiful. Such an infinite love, respecting variety, hiding Herself and becoming Invisible in order to let Her creatures be, is paradigmatic for us nowadays, and inspires a responsible care for all forms of life, both human and non-humans. Mertonian mysticism has a double movement, namely: ascendent: opening toward God and descendent: opening to the world (compassion), who endeavors to promote peace, justice and the responsible care for creation/ecology. So, his spirituality of following of Jesus is able to embrace the Latin American spirituality of liberation: a spirituality of prophetic resistance against the dehumanizing, oppressive and excluding causes of Globalization; a spirituality of solidarity, that shares the suffering of its victims and the utopia of minimizing hunger and misery in the world, till it becomes topia; and, finally, a spirituality of creation. So, our argument is to prove that Merton is the forerunner of the spirituality of peace, feminism and macroecumenism in North America; and the forerunner of theology and the spirituality of liberation in Latin America.

Industrial robots rapidly gained popularity as they can perform tasks quickly, repeatedly and accurately in static environments. However, in modern manufacturing, robots should also be able to safely interact with arbitrary objects and dynamically adapt their behavior to various situations. The large masses and rigid constructions of industrial robots prevent them from easily being re-tasked. In this context, this work proposes an immediate solution to make rigid manipulators compliant and able to efficiently handle object interactions, with only an add-on module (a custom designed instrumented compliant wrist) and an original control framework which can easily be ported to different manipulators. The proposed system utilizes both offline and online trajectory planning to achieve fully automated object interaction and surface following with or without contact where no prior knowledge of the objects is available. To minimize the complexity of the task, the problem is formulated into four interaction motion modes: free, proximity, contact and a blend of those. The free motion mode guides the robot towards the object of interest using information provided by a RGB-D sensor. The RGB-D sensor is used to collect raw 3D information on the environment and construct an approximate 3D model of an object of interest in the scene. In order to completely explore the object, a novel coverage path planning technique is proposed to generate a primary (offline) trajectory. However, RGB-D sensors provide only limited accuracy on the depth measurements and create blind spot when it reaches close to surfaces. Therefore, the offline trajectory is then further refined by applying the proximity motion mode and contact motion mode or a blend of them (blend motion mode) that allow the robot to dynamically interact with arbitrary objects and adapt to the surfaces it approaches or touches using live proximity and contact feedback from the compliant wrist. To achieve seamless and efficient integration of the sensory information and smoothly switch between different interaction modes, an original hybrid switching scheme is proposed that applies a supervisory (decision making) module and a mixture of hard and blend switches to support data fusion from multiple sensing sources by combining pairs of the main motion modes. Experimental results using a CRS-F3 manipulator demonstrate the feasibility and performance of the proposed method.

Since smart homes will be more and more popular in the future, the needs of finding a friendly, comfortable and smart interface between users and home environments are growing. However, conventional interfaces have reached their limits. So, this paper describes a new concept of interface in a home environment. This work is distinguished by building a separable smart robot. A smart phone is used as a brain, and a robot car is used as a body. With the system, people will be allowed to carry the robot's brain when they are out of their home. In this case, the brain can not only be a normal smart phone, but also can monitor parameters such as the temperature at home. On the other hand, when people are at home, they will be allowed to put their phones on the robot car. By invoking the system, they will have an assist-robot. This assist-robot will act as a new interface in the smart home by following people and recognizing their voice commands in order to take notes, to read notes and to control smart home devices. This thesis also implements face recognition to improve the communication between users and the interface. Test results show that our proposed system is well accepted.