Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Design Advantages of Four-bar Linkage Planar Robotic Arm for Upper-extremity Rehabilitation

Nowadays, rehabilitation with robots has become famous. Upper extremity rehabilitation is one of the most common requirements for stroke patients. The 2-DOF planar arm is the simplest mechanism used for rehabilitation robots. The series robot has the second motor located at the end of the first link, which causes high inertia around the first motor’s axis due to its mass. The counter moment of the second motor while accelerating the second link also affects the first link. To handle this problem, the four-bar linkage planar robot was introduced. The second motor was repositioned to the base with the axis coincident with the first motor. This paper emphasizes the advantages of the proposed four-bar parallel arm configuration over the conventional series design in terms of sensitivity and actuation torque. The calculation shows that the sensitivity of the endpoint position is improved from 25.7 mm to 25.3 mm per 0.05 radian of motor rotation. The actuation torque required from each motor for stabilizing the end-effector subjected to the interaction force was simulated. About 25.6% of actuation peak torque can be reduced for the first motor, which allows a lower gear reduction ratio with higher backdrivability to be chosen. The hardware prototype was built to validate the mapping between actuation torque and endpoint force. The correctness of the endpoint force is confirmed with the R-squared values over 0.95 in both cartesian axes. The result of this study provides a guideline for designing a planar robotic arm for rehabilitation.
Estimating the Failures and Silent Errors Rates of CPUs Across ISAs and Microarchitectures

Silent data corruptions (SDCs) pose a significant challenge to the reliable operation of modern microprocessors. As the need for enhanced performance and reliability continues to grow, it becomes essential to gain insight into the potential malfunctions and the occurrence of unnoticeable errors that microprocessors might encounter across different Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs) and microarchitectures. This study delves into assessing failures and rates of silent data corruptions within CPUs, shedding light on the variables that impact these rates and their consequences on system dependability. In this context, we present a comprehensive comparative investigation of SDC susceptibilities in CPU hardware structures, mainly targeting the L1 data cache, L1 instruction cache, physical register file, and a modern CPU's primary functional units (FUs). We carry out this investigation across three prominent CPU architectures: x86, Arm, and RISC-V. Our aim is to analyze both transient and permanent faults to evaluate the susceptibility of these architectures to SDCs.
An Optimized Correlation-based Full Waveform Inversion

The conventional correlation-based objective function for FWI has a limitation: the desired (accurate) solution is not exactly located at the global minimum (or maximum) since the auto-correlation of the observed wavefield has some energy at non-zero time-lags. We propose two optimized correlation-based objective functions incorporating the auto-correlation term. Including this term in the new objective functions as a reference for the cross-correlation to fit locates the desired solution at the global minimum (or maximum). We derive the gradient expressions of the new objective functions using the adjoint-state method, where only two modelling steps are needed to calculate the gradients. The numerical examples show that FWI based on the new objective functions generate good convergent results, whereas the conventional correlation-based FWI does not.
Fractional Kelvin-Voigt based Viscoelastic Control for self-Balancing Exoskeleton

Self-balancing exoskeleton robots enable hands-free walking for the wearer, and the problem of its stable walking has been a challenge. In this paper, to achieve compliant and stable walking of a self-balancing exoskeleton robot and reduce the shock between the robot and the ground, we propose a new fractional kelvin voigt viscoelastic controller (FKVC). The proposed FKVC incorporates the advantages of fractional order and the kelvin voigt viscoelastic to endow the self-balancing exoskeleton with stable and dynamic walking capabilities. Simulation results show that the actual CoM position of the exoskeleton well tracks the reference CoM position, and the actual ZMP converges to the reference ZMP position. The ZMP is always within the effective support region of the biped. Therefore, we experimentally proved the practicality and effectiveness of the FKVC method, and the self-balancing exoskeleton successfully realizes stable dynamic walking.
Research on the Influence of Temperature on Errors of Resonator Gyroscopes Related to Damping Imperfections

The Coriolis vibratory gyroscopes (CVGs) have prominent advantages in high measurement accuracy, outstanding reliability, and relatively small cost, size, weight and power (C-SWaP), etc. For this type of gyroscopes, control scheme and error compensation technology are equally important to precision manufacturing of the key elements of resonator gyroscopes. This paper aims to compensate for the angle-dependent bias induced by anisodamping and investigate the effect of temperature on anisodamping compensation parameters of CVGs working in the whole-angle mode. In this paper, an identification and compensation method for the anisodamping errors was demonstrated based on fitting the energy maintaining force around the circumferential direction. The influence of anisodamping errors on the amplitude maintaining force is theoretically and experimentally investigated. Experimental results reveal that with anisodamping compensation, the fluctuation of the energy maintaining force along the circumferential direction is greatly decreased, and the $4 \theta$ harmonics in ADB of two RIGs were decreased by 95% from $0.0206^{\circ} / \mathrm{s}$ to $0.001^{\circ} / \mathrm{s}$, and by 94.4% from $0.0011^{\circ} / \mathrm{s}$ to $0.00006^{\circ} / \mathrm{s}$, respectively. The anisodamping coefficient and the azimuth angle of the primary damping axes changed irregularly for two CVGs, and exhibiting a second-order correlation with temperature for the third one. Results show that compensation for anisodamping at this stage is hardly feasible by applying a force to directly cancels the angle drift caused by anisodamping through one-time characterization of error parameters with temperature.Suggestions are made for future efforts.
VitRob Pipeline: A Seamless Teleoperation Pipeline for Advanced Virtual Reality - Robot Interface Applied for Precision Agriculture

The evolution of robots is continuously advancing to greater heights. Virtual reality as a tool provides an immersive experience in a 3D environment that allows users to visualise and interact with robots in such environments. This human-robot interaction benefits users with better situational awareness to effectively perform remote tasks. This paper proposes a seamless teleoperation pipeline that interfaces virtual reality with robots for precision agriculture tasks. This pipeline allows users to visualise and control robots from a virtual environment thereby giving a telepresence advantage to users. Robotics Operating System (ROS) is utilised to accept data from a Unity gaming platform. A jackal robot and panda robotic manipulator equipped with the required sensors are utilised to evaluate this pipeline. The camera data, odometry data, velocity data and joystick commands are interchanged between the virtual environment and real platforms. Further evaluation is conducted for 6DoF pose application where a target fruit pose is estimated and manipulated within the virtual world while imitating similar actions in the real world to grasp/harvest the fruit. This attempt exhibit the possibility of remote agricultural task through this pipeline. The results of the evaluation prove the efficiency and robustness of the pipeline.
Physiological Effects of a Back-Support Exoskeleton Control to Assist Carrying Activities

To mitigate the risk of musculoskeletal disorders and injuries at the back, occupational back-support exoskeletons are being introduced in the workplace because of their ability to reduce workers’ lumbar loading during the execution of demanding activities. Nevertheless, back-support exoskeletons’ assistance has not been developed extensively for activities different from lifting.This work presents a control strategy for an active back-support exoskeleton specifically tailored for assisting carrying task and analyzes the physiological effects on the user. The control strategy modulates the exoskeleton torques to assist the back without hindering the user’s legs’ during gait. A gait phase detection framework that uses sensorized insoles is employed to control the modulation of the assistive torques. The strategy is assessed through an experimental test on nine subjects. Participants performed a simplified carrying task without and with the exoskeleton. The experimental evaluation found a statistically significant increase in the normalized heart rate when using the exoskeleton compared to not using it. No statistically significant changes were found in the mental effort between the conditions with and without the exoskeleton aid.
RCS: Automatic Navigation Framework for Legged Robots with Incremental RGB and Consistent Semantics Information

Autonomous movement of legged robots in outdoor scenes requires accurate state estimation and environment navigation maps. Different from wheeled and tracked mobile robots, legged robots can adjust parameters such as gait type, step height, gait frequency, torso height, foot friction, and other coefficients to better adapt to the geometric characteristics and physical properties of verstile terrains. To this end, in this paper, we propose a framework for autonomous navigation of legged robots, including the construction of geometric-property RGB consistent semantic map (RCS) and the autonomous navigation method under the RCS map. The method for building RCS map formulates lidar-inertial odometry based on a factor graph. Through end-to-end semantic segmentation of images, terrain information is projected and saved while mapping. For achieving pose and point cloud consistency, local and global lidar boudle adjustment (BA) is introduced to the optimization process. We demonstrated the effectiveness of RCS through outdoor navigation experiments on a quadruped robot. The experiment shows that our terrain detection method can achieve an average detection time of 30 ms on an embedded board.
Using Formative Assessment and Feedback to Train Novice Modelers in Business Process Modeling

Process models play a vital role in modern busi-nesses, specifically in the software development lifecycle to (re)design and (re)engineer business processes. There exists a large body of research on classifying errors in business process modeling (BPM) and on the importance of higher-quality process models in the early design stages. Some works have defined quality frameworks and listed guidelines for modeling to help modelers achieve higher-quality diagrams. But there is no established way in which BPM should be taught, and there is a research gap in connecting instructional design and BPM. The current study addresses this gap by presenting a teaching module on BPM at a higher education institute in blended learning contexts. To improve the skill sets of novice modelers it is crucial to teach them how to interpret and integrate quality into BPM by giving them feedback on errors they make. We achieve this by leveraging pedagogy, incorporating formative assessments and an error typology.
Turn Waste Into Wealth: Alleviating Read/Write Interference in ZNS SSDs

The emerging NVMe Zoned Namespace (ZNS) solid-state drive (SSD) is built on high-density NAND flash memories. As write latency is much longer than read latency in NAND flash memories, the read performance of ZNS SSD is subject to the chip-blocking writes. However, current works on alleviating read/write interference are usually designed for traditional SSDs, which cannot be applied to the ZNS SSD due to its unique constraints. In this work, we find that many zones marked as full actually have some empty and wasted spaces, to which we refer as idle space. We back up popular read data with idle space. To minimize the overhead, we leverage device-side information to ensure that only one backup is needed. Secondly, we propose an I/O scheduling method through request splitting to ensure that the sole backup is not blocked by any writes and can always serve blocked reads. Experiments show that when compared to the current ZNS SSDs, our work significantly improves average read response time and read tail latency of 99th and 99.9th percentile by up to 44.28%, 50.09%, and 46.68%. Moreover, our work prevails over the read-prioritizing scheme on read performance and write tail latency.
Adaptive impedance control of manipulators in human-robot interaction

This study focuses on investigating an adaptive impedance control strategy for facilitating human-robot collaborative tasks. Traditional impedance control methods may lead to significant position tracking and force tracking errors when accurate environmental information is not available. A force feedback-based impedance control algorithm is proposed to enhance control accuracy. The algorithm utilizes a neural network adaptive control approach to adjust the parameters of the impedance control algorithm, as well as estimate and compensate for unknown environmental information. The proposed control approach utilizes radial basis function neural networks (RBFNN) to enhance tracking performance by compensating for dynamic uncertainties. The proposed approach was tested under various conditions to ensure its performance across different situations.
Design and Experimental Characterization of a Soft Bending Actuator for Morphing Aerofoils

This paper presents the design, simulation, and experimental validation of a vacuum-driven, soft-bending actuator for morphing wing development for small fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The actuator uses an origami-inspired folding mechanism as its control skeleton. A flexible 3D printed structure employing the NACA 2415 aerofoil was used for the development of the morphing aerofoil, driven by the proposed soft actuator. An experimental evaluation of the bending angle and blocking force characteristics of the proposed actuator was conducted. The actuator has achieved a maximum bending angle of 18.75°, while the maximum blocked force at the tip measured $4.8\mathrm{~N}$ at 40kPa (abs) pressure. Furthermore, aerodynamic simulations revealed that increasing the length of the morphing section with respect to the aerofoil length (Morphing Section Ratio: MSR) resulted in elevated Cl and Cd, while the maximum $\mathrm{C}_{l}/\mathrm{C}_{d}$ values are achieved near the trailing edge morphing. The findings of this study suggest the suitability of soft actuators in the development of flexible morphing wing structures for smallscale UAVs.
Study of Tunnel Support Methods Based on RMR and Q-System Methods at Kerinci Merangin Hydropower Jambi Province

Excavation of tunnel construction at the Kerinci Merangin Hydropower in Jambi Province is a complex job, because it will use the tunnel as a waterway which will always be faced with unstable conditions. One of the way to deal with instability is to classify the mass and determine the type of support on the roof and walls using empirical methods. The parameters in rock mass classification include mapping the structure, physical and mechanical properties of the material. Empirical analysis was carried out using the Rock Mass Rating (RMR) classification and the Q-System to determine the condition of the rock mass in the tunnel and determine the type of support that will be used and in accordance with the rock mass class. The rock mass classes in the study area of STA 8+869, 8+872 and 8+879 based on the RMR classification are included in rock class III, namely rocks that have moderate conditions (fair quality rock mass) and rock class IV, namely rocks that have poor conditions (poor quality rock mass). Meanwhile, the rock mass class based on the Q-System includes very poor rock mass. The recommendation for supporting the tunnel face according to RMR in the study area is to use a combination of rockbolt, shotcrete and wiremesh supports, while the support recommendation according to the Q-System uses a combination of rockbolt and shotcrete supports.
Makassar City Air Pollution Forecast in 2045

Air pollution is a problem for all countries in the world, especially for urban areas, because most sources of air pollution are in urban areas. In 2019, it was predicted that ambient air pollution from PM2.5 caused 4.2 million premature deaths globally. It contributes to cancer, respiratory, and cardiovascular problems. Makassar is the most populous city in South Sulawesi Province, with a population of 1,427,619 in 2021. The number of motorized vehicles in 2021 is 1,740,793 units and 1,113 industries. With these conditions, Makassar City has a high potential for air pollution. This research aims to forecast the air pollution level of Makassar City in 2045. The forecasting results can be a reference in developing an air pollution control plan in Makassar City. The forecasting model used is LSTM which is the development of RNN architecture. The results of air pollution forecasting are displayed in the form of an air pollution standard index (ISPU) for easy understanding by the general public. Based on the forecasting results in 2045, the level of air pollution in Makassar City is in the moderate and unhealthy categories. Despite still being dominated by the moderate category, it should be a concern that air quality is no longer in the good category.
Revitalizing Buffered I/O: Optimizing Page Reclaim and I/O Throttling

Buffered I/O is commonly used as a default mechanism in most file systems because it provides high performance by keeping recently accessed data in memory as page caches. We discovered that the long-standing code within the memory management of the Linux kernel performs unnecessary and indiscriminate operations during the page reclaiming and writing procedures, leading to a degradation in the performance of buffered I/O. Current memory management performs aging tasks, moving pages from the active state list to the inactive state list, even during page reclamation for urgent memory acquisition. It also unnecessarily holds the lock used for modifying the least recently used (LRU) list. These non-essential tasks results in performance degradation when buffered I/O is allocating pages and adding them into the LRU list. Furthermore, in write-intensive situations, the performance of writes is degraded by blindly forcing the write thread to sleep in order to maintain dirty pages at a pre-determined ratio in total memory. In this paper, we improve the memory management system by eliminating these unnecessarily or blindly performed aging, locks, and sleep tasks, thereby enhancing the performance of buffered I/O. We implemented our proposed approaches in the Linux kernel and evaluated these impacts on the performance of buffered I/O using FIO, FileBench, and YCSB on RocksDB. Our approach reduced the tail latency of random reads and improved the throughput of random writes in most workloads.
An Integrated Real-time Monocular Human Pose & Shape Estimation Pipeline for Edge Devices

Human pose and shape estimation is crucial in perceiving gestures and actions intended by the human. It is necessary to perform this task in real-time so that consistency and safety can be ensured in practical settings. It is also important that this task is executable on practically affordable hardware. We thereby come up with an integrated pipeline for robustly perceiving human poses and shapes on an edge device. The pipeline is a combination of YOLOv8, AlphaPose, MotionBERT, and ExPose. Using these models, the pipeline performs bounding box detection, 2D skeleton estimation, 2D-to-3D pose lifting, and 3D mesh reconstruction, respectively. Results of the related experiments show that our pipeline can accurately and precisely process input images in real-time on the Jetson TX, a typical example of an edge device.
Functionalities of Purines in Health and Disease

Purines conduct several vital cellular functions as in the production of the numeric-precursors of nucleic acids, whereas excess formation of uric acid generated from purines metabolism has been expansively implicated in human disease. The physiological functions and pathogenic attributes of uric acid have been linked to the imminent presentations of cardiovascular abnormalities, diabetes and stroke. Inasmuch as the overproduction of uric acid results in gout, it is established that uric acid constitutes a potent antioxidant in the shielding of DNA from single-strand breaks due to free radicals culminating in a protective effect in neurodegenerative disorders for an extended life span. Thus, this paper describes certain contronymic effects in the functionalities of purines in health and disease.
PLASMA METABOLOMICS OF VIGOR TO FRAILTY AMONG OLDER BLACK AND WHITE MEN AND WOMEN

Abstract Older women and Black individuals are more likely to experience frailty. Metabolomics can provide a metabolic characterization of frailty that can help inform more effective interventions aimed at improving health, reducing disparities, and preventing frailty with aging. We sought to identify metabolites and pathways associated with vigor to frailty and determine whether these associations differed by gender and/or race among N=2189 older Black and White men and women from the Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) study. Fasting plasma metabolites were measured using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Vigor to frailty was based on weight change, physical activity, gait speed, grip strength, and energy level. We used linear regression of a single metabolite on vigor to frailty, adjusting for age, gender, race, study site, and multiple comparisons using a Bonferroni correction. Among 500 metabolites, 113 were associated with vigor to frailty (p< 0.0001). Associations between metabolites and vigor to frailty did not differ significantly by race and/or gender. Lower amino acids, glycerophospholipids, & sphingolipids and higher acylcarnitines, fatty acids, amino acid derivatives, carboximidic acids, benzenoids, nucleosides, organoheterocyclic compounds, carbohydrates, and trimethylamine oxide were associated with frailer scores. Pathway analyses identified the citrate cycle (p=0.00005), where higher levels of measured metabolites involved in the citrate cycle were associated with frailer scores. Daily calories and protein intake did not differ by vigor to frailty. Frailer Health ABC participants may have lower utilization of energy pathways, potentially a result of less efficient utilization of similar amounts of nutrients and energy demand than more vigorous participants.