Le secteur de la robotique domestique est en pleine expansion. Comme toute nouvelle technologie, les capacités offertes aux clients doivent évoluer pour conquérir de nouveaux marchés. Des bras manipulateurs sur ces robots augmenteraient considérablement leurs capacités d'interactions. Mais il faut des bras à la fois performants et sécuritaires avant d'introduire ce type robot dans les domiciles et les hôpitaux. Dans cette optique, le laboratoire IntRoLab a développé un bras muni d'un nouveau type d'actionneur appelé ADE (Actionneur différentiel élastique). Les ADE, de par leur conception, ont une compliance intrinsèque de par l'usage d'un ressort dans leur mécanisme, et permettent un contrôle en force afin d'effectuer les actions sécuritairement. L'objectif de cette maîtrise consiste à développer la partie logicielle permettant de contrôler ce type de bras pour qu'ils puissent réaliser un grand nombre d'actions tout en conservant l'aspect sécuritaire du robot pour les interactions humain-robot. Pour réaliser cela, le système de contrôle développé combine à la fois un contrôle d'impédance articulaire, un contrôle d'impédance cartésien et un contrôle en force. Ces trois types de contrôle permettent au bras d'effectuer des actions dans différentes configurations. Le contrôle d'impédance articulaire permet de placer le bras dans une configuration articulaire précise. Le contrôle cartésien permet de placer la pince à la position souhaitée dans l'espace. Le contrôle en force permet d'appliquer une force cartésienne dans une direction souhaitée ce qui permet de faire des actions comme écrire, repasser, etc. Un système de compensation de gravité a également été ajouté à ce contrôle afin d'améliorer la précision et que le bras soit plus simple à bouger. En effet, sans la compensation ces contrôles présentent une erreur statique causée par le poids du bras. Les tests réalisés permettent de démontrer les caractéristiques et les limites des différents types de contrôles réalisables. Ainsi, l'influence des coefficients de raideur et d'amortissement sur les contrôles et notamment sur leur bande passante est analysée. La précision des contrôles est également déterminée. Pour vérifier la sécurité des bras, des tests sur la vitesse atteignable sont réalisés à l'aide du contrôleur d'impédance articulaire et du contrôleur d'impédance cartésien.

Two different kinds of stabilising homeostatic behaviour have been observed in neurons. The first type involves the cell-autonomous maintenance of a cell-identity-based level of electrical activity. Neurons continually monitor their own electrical activity and can adjust many intracellular parameters, such as membrane ion channel densities, to keep this activity within a tight physiological range. The second type of homeostatic behaviour shares the same goal, to maintain a fixed level of electrical activity, but instead of adjusting intracellular parameters, the neuron recruits its synaptic partners to assist in maintaining a genetically prescribed activity level. This behaviour is most easily observed when a neuron is either electrically silenced by expressing an inwardly-rectifying potassium channel or rendered less sensitive to neurotransmitter through mutation of its postsynaptic receptors. Both of these perturbations result in increased synaptic drive from the presynaptic cells, either through increasing the number of neurotransmitter release sites or increasing the probability of release from single release sites. Many genes that are instrumental in the second type of homeostatic behaviour have been identified, mainly at the neuromuscular junction in the peripheral nervous system. However, studies on transsynaptic homeostatic compensation in an intact central nervous system have been few and far between. Also, which, if any, of the homeostatic genes are transcriptionally regulated in the nucleus after the onset of transsynaptic homeostatic adjustment, has not been adequately addressed. This thesis has developed a system to measure transcriptome-wide gene expression levels in presynaptic circuit elements after altering the firing properties of the downstream circuit in the CNS. Many transcriptionally regulated genes have been identified and are now being tested for their potential use as reporters for transsynaptic transcriptional regulation. It might be possible to capitalise on endogenous homeostatic signalling pathways to gain genetic access to synaptically connected neurons.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / November 04-07, 1991 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Early in the 1980s White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) began studying the problem of updating the Telemetry Tracking Systems (TTS) used to support test range missions. The information and equipment available at that time indicated that very little technology advancement had occurred in the area of TTS. Because the TTS usually have a long service life, it was imperative that the new or updated systems be as good as the state-of-the-art in todays technology could produce. Because of the lack of technology advancements, it was evident that drastic measures would be required to achieve the objectives of the update effort. These findings resulted in a program called the Advanced Telemetry Tracking System Integration and Development (ATTSID). Its objective was to determine if it was possible to apply advanced computer technology to the solution of servosystem problems characteristic in most TTS. This paper and three related papers, The Advanced Telemetry Tracking Servosystem; An Automated Testing System for a Telemetry Tracking System; and The Microcomputer-based Digital Controller for the Advanced Telemetry Tracking System; document the objectives, design considerations, fabrication and evaluation of a prototype TTS. It utilizes a dedicated computer system to control, compensate the servo position loop, and provide automated testing of the servo and RF receiving systems. This computer system was installed and evaluated in one of the WSMR Transportable Telemetry Acquisition Systems (TTAS) for evaluation and refinement of the system. The results of this program will determine the evolution of TTS and extend the use of computer technology to providing more reliable and accurate telemetry tracking support of test range operations.

The Smartphone revolution and the Internet of Things (IoTs) have triggered rapid advances in complex system-on-chips (SoCs) that increasing provide more functionality within a tight power budget. Highly power efficient on die switched-capacitor voltage regulators suffer from large output voltage ripple preventing their widespread use in modern integrated circuits. With technology scaling and increasing architectural complexity, the number of transistors switching in a power domain is growing rapidly leading to major issues with respect to voltage noise. The large voltage and frequency guard-bands present in current microprocessor designs to combat voltage noise both degrade the performance and erode the energy efficiency of the design. In an effort to reduce guard-bands, adaptive clocking based systems combat the problem of voltage noise by adjusting the clock frequency during a voltage droop to avoid timing failure. This thesis presents an integrated power management and clocking scheme that utilizes clock-data compensation to achieve adaptive clocking. The design is capable of automatically con figuring the supply voltage given a target clock frequency for the load circuit. Furthermore, during a voltage droop the design adjusts clock frequency to meet critical path timing margins while simultaneously increasing the current delivered to the load to recover from the droop. The design was implemented in IBM's 130nm technology and simulation results show that the design is able to clock the load circuit from 30 MHz to 800 Mhz with current efficiencies as high as 97%.

The decline in private sector wages in the aftermath of the Great Recession reopened a longstanding debate about whether public sector employees make more than private sector employees. However, much of this debate has only focused on the difference in wages over the past few years. This paper uses the Current Population Survey from 1995-2013 to examine how the federal-private wage differential has evolved over time. Wage regressions are estimated by year for federal and private sector workers. I then use these estimates to calculate the federal-private wage differential. This is augmented with selectivity bias corrections for each year. Probit estimates of the probability of receiving employer-provided health insurance and a pension plan are also estimated for each year. The findings suggest that the federal pay differential is invariably positive, but fell during the 1990s, began to rise in the early 2000s, and has continued to rise to the end of the sample period. In this paper, I also examine the difference in wage and fringe benefit between state/local government employees and private sector employees. For the analysis, this paper uses the American Community Survey from 2012-2014 to examine how the state/local-private wage gaps vary by state. Probit estimates of the probability of receiving employer-sponsored health insurance are also estimated. The findings present a wide range of the wage differentials between state/local government employees and private sector counterparts. On the other hand, public employees enjoy higher probability of receiving health insurance through a current employer.

Since they appeared, wireless technologies have deeply transformed our society. Today, wireless internet access and other wireless applications demandincreasingly more traffic. However, the continuous traffic increase can be unbearableand requires rethinking and redesigning the wireless technologies inmany different aspects. Aiming to respond to the increasing needs of wirelesstraffic, we are witnessing a rapidly evolving wireless technology scenario.This thesis addresses various aspects of the transmitters used in wireless communications.Transmitters present several hardware (HW) impairments thatcreate distortions, polluting the radio spectrum and decreasing the achievabletraffic in the network. Digital platforms are now flexible, robust and cheapenough to enable compensation of HW impairments at the digital base-bandsignal. This has been coined as ’dirty radio’. Dirty radio is expected in future transmitters where HW impairments may arise to reduce transmitter cost or to enhance power efficiency. This thesis covers the software (SW) compensation schemes of dirty radio developed for wireless transmitters. As describedin the thesis, these schemes can be further enhanced with knowledge of thespecific signal transmission or scenarios, e.g., developing cognitive digital compensationschemes. This can be valuable in today’s rapidly evolving scenarioswhere multiple signals may co-exist, sharing the resources at the same radiofrequency (RF) front-end. In the first part, this thesis focuses on the instrumentation challenges andHWimpairments encountered at the transmitter. A synthetic instrument (SI)that performs network analysis is designed to suit the instrumentation needs.Furthermore, how to perform nonlinear network analysis using the developedinstrument is discussed. Two transmitter HW impairments are studied: themeasurement noise and the load impedance mismatch at the transmitter, asis their coupling with the state-of-the-art digital compensation techniques.These two studied impairments are inherent to measurement systems and areexpected in future wireless transmitters. In the second part, the thesis surveys the area of behavioral modeling and digital compensation techniques for wireless transmitters. Emphasis is placed on low computational complexity techniques. The low complexity is motivated by a predicted increase in the number of transmitters deployed in the network, from base stations (BS), access points and hand-held devices. A modeling methodology is developed that allows modeling transmitters to achieve both reduced computational complexity and low modeling error. Finally, the thesis discusses the emerging architectures of multi-channel transmittersand describes their digital compensation techniques. It revises the MIMOVolterra series formulation to address the general modeling problem anddrafts possible solutions to tackle its dimensionality. In the framework of multi-channel transmitters, a technique to compensate nonlinear multi-carrier satellite transponders is presented. This technique is cognitive because it uses the frequency link planning and the pulse-shaping filters of the individual carriers. This technique shows enhanced compensation ability at reduced computational complexity compared to the state-of-the-art techniques and enables the efficient operation of satellite transponders. / <p>QC 20150526</p>

<p>Finns det ett samband mellan belöningssystem och finansiell aktieägartillväxt i publika</p><p>svenska företag? En intressant och högaktuell fråga, som det visade sig, och som kommer</p><p>att försöka besvaras i denna uppsats.</p><p>Inledningsvis undersöktes om det fanns någon relevant svensk statistik som kunde belysa</p><p>de exekutiva ledarnas förtjänstutveckling under senare år. Statistiska Centralbyråns</p><p>inkomststatistik gav inte svar på frågan. LO-ekonomernas statistik visade sig vara relevant</p><p>och bekräftade mitt antagande att inkomstutveckling för denna grupp varit osedvanligt god.</p><p>Med antagandet bekräftad och således stärkt i tron ställdes tre frågor som uppsatsens syfte</p><p>var att besvara:</p><p>Fråga 1 Hur ser de belöningsmodeller ut som tillämpas av svenska företag avseende</p><p>ersättningar till medlemmar i företagens exekutiva ledningsgrupper?</p><p>Fråga 2 Hur förhåller sig de tillämpade belöningsmodellerna till relevant belöningsoch</p><p>motivationsteori?</p><p>Fråga 3 Finns det ett samband mellan aktieägarnas finansiella utveckling i dessa företag</p><p>och företagens belöningar till den studerade yrkesgruppen?</p><p>Lämpliga teorier att applicera på de undersökta företagens belöningsmodeller visade sig</p><p>vara agentteorin och förväntansteorin. Dessa två teorier jämfördes med de fyra undersökta</p><p>företagens, Ericsson, Handelsbanken, IKEA och Skandia belöningssystem genom studier</p><p>av dessa bolags årsredovisningar för åren 2000-2004. Det visade sig härvid att de företag</p><p>(två st.) som hade de högsta belöningsnivåerna redovisade sämst resultatutveckling och</p><p>negativ avkastning till aktieägarna, medan det företag (en st.) med den lägsta</p><p>belöningsnivån, hade en god resultatutveckling och en fördelaktig avkastning till</p><p>aktieägarna. För IKEA var studiematerialet för knapphändigt för att kunna uttala sig om</p><p>hur belöningsnivån utvecklats även om aktieägarens avkastning var den mest fördelaktiga</p><p>bland de undersökta företagen. Samtliga företag, IKEA undantagen, har konstaterats</p><p>ersätta sina exekutiva ledare med grundlön, rörlig lön, anställningsförmåner och</p><p>pensionslösningar även om Handelsbanken uppger att man inte tillämpar rörlig bonus eller</p><p>rörligt tantiem.</p><p>Slutledningsvis konstaterades att det inte i något fall förelåg något samband mellan hur</p><p>företagen ersätter sina exekutiva ledare och aktieägarnas finansiella tillväxt.</p>

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Issues as to the suitability of executive compensation packages have obtained an ever increasing profile in recent years. Whilst there has been quite extensive empirical investigation of pay-performance sensitivity, the framework of performance-pay has received less attention in the literature and examination to date. Besides this - whilst there has been a quantum of investigation of relationships between compensation and performance, there has been less focus on case study based analysis. In this context, the current study makes a twofold contribution to the examination of executive directors’ remuneration in FTSE 350 companies. First, this research aims to empirically investigate linkages between the nature and amount of compensation packages and company performance with a particular focus on examining the extent of interrelationships between pay and performance over a ten year period from 1999 to 2008. Within the scope of a variety of theoretical perspectives, this deductive study puts a focus on addressing the question of whether managerial compensation is the greater influence on firm performance or whether it is the latter which has the greater influence on the former. Second, this study seeks to qualitatively add to the relevant literature by means of a longitudinal case study of remuneration at UK based major multi-national company, BP, over a ten year period from 2001 till 2010. Within the context of a variety of theoretical and institutional perspectives, this inductive study explores, by means of investigation of BP’s Directors Remuneration Reports, the role of the BP remuneration committee in setting the mechanisms and structures which determine the nature and extent of executive remuneration packages at BP and considers the wider generalisability of the findings therefrom. Overall the current study utilises a mixed methods approach via a combination both quantitative and qualitative modes of analysis – an approach which is relatively rare in the discipline of research into corporate governance and related issues. The outcomes from the empirical work show evidence of the presence of dual positive associations between executive compensation and company performance. However, the results do indicate that executive compensation is more influential in its effect on firm performance than the framework of performance-related pay. This finding is interpreted as lending support to the stewardship and/or tournament theories as to underlying drivers of executive remuneration in comparison with agency theory, represented by agent-principal or managerial hegemony perspectives, as an explanatory of the construction of executive remuneration and the link with firm performance. Similar to prior literature, the empirical findings indicate that equity-based compensation is more robust in the linkage with firm performance than cash pay dominated packages. However, the results showed that the existence of remuneration committees in general reveals insignificant and negatively related to total CEO/executive remuneration. This finding highlights therefore the need to put a focus on the actual role of compensation committee in setting the type and extent of executive pay packages in a large UK company. The outcomes from the archival case study also suggest that it is difficult to find significant support for a pure agency theory approach whereby shareholders seek to align their interests directly with those of their managers as a driver of executive compensation packages. There is more evidence suggestive of a managerial power/hegemony perspective which is heavily mediated by the presence of powerful non-executive directors and the institutional presence of the remuneration committee. Perhaps the most significant aspects to emerge from the case study are the importance of personal relationships and power at boardroom level. Beyond this the inferences of the supplementary content analysis conducted specifically on the Directors Remuneration Reports are suggestive of a focus on overall BP performance rather than on the specific activities and achievements of individual executive directors. In conclusion, the findings of the present study provide a wealth of detail both quantitative and qualitative as to the manner in which executive remuneration has been set in the UK in recent years and as to linkages both with corporate performance and underlying theories of the determinants of executive remuneration. As such it sheds light on an area of importance and one of continued private and public concern and may be of interest to those responsible for governance within firms and to wider public and regulatory interest as well as future researchers in the field.

After the Great Recession of 2007 there was a spotlight on executive compensation. The magnitude and structure of executive pay became an area of concern to the public. As a result, company management across all sectors had to find a way to offer competitive compensation plans that aligned the interest of shareholders with that of executives. The outcome was an increased focus on tying executive pay to company performance. The level of fixed-pay incorporated into target compensation began to decreases rapidly and was replaced by “at-risk” compensation. For some, this was a major achievement in the world of executive compensation, however, others view this change as potentially dangerous. I chose to analyze the pay-mix structure and annual incentive plans of a group of bellwether companies to see if this transition is increasing company’s exposure to fraud. In this essay I attempt to tie increases in at-risk pay to increases in fraud risk, while identifying incentive goals affected by common fraud practices.