Search

Soft robot arms have made significant progress towards completing human-scale tasks, but designing arms for tasks with specific load and workspace requirements remains difficult. A key challenge is the lack of model-based design tools, forcing advancement to occur through empirical iteration and observation. Existing models are focused on control and rely on parameter fits, which means they cannot provide general conclusions about the mapping between design and performance or the influence of factors outside the fitting data. As a first step toward model-based design tools, we introduce a novel method of analyzing whether a proposed arm design can complete desired tasks. Our method is informative, interpretable, and fast; it provides novel metrics for quantifying a proposed arm design's ability to perform a task, it yields a graphical interpretation of performance through segment forces, and computing it is over 80x faster than optimization based methods. Our formulation focuses on antagonistic, pneumatically-driven soft arms. We demonstrate our approach through example analysis, and also through consideration of antagonistic vs non-antagonistic designs. Our method enables fast, direct and task-specific comparison of these two architectures, and provides a new visualization of the comparative mechanics. While only a first step, the proposed approach will support advancement of model-based design tools, leading to highly capable soft arms., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Submission for the 8th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2025). For code, proofs, and other supplementary information, see https://github.com/wfan19/antagonistic-task-competency

The bouncing neutron is one of the rare system where gravity can be studied in a quantum framework. To this end it is crucial to be able to select some specific gravitational quantum state (GQS). The GRANIT apparatus is the first physics experiment connected to a superthermal helium UCN source. We report on the methods developed for this instrument showing how specific GQS can be favored using a step between mirrors and an absorbing slit. We explore the increase of GQS separation efficiency by increasing the absorber roughness amplitude, and find it is feasible but requires a high adjustment precision. We also quantify the transmission of the absorbing slit leading to a measurement of the spatial extension of the neutron vertical wave function $z_0 = \hbar^{2/3}\left(2m^2g\right)^{-1/3} = 5.9\pm0.3\,\mu$m., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We present characterization results of a neutron Anger camera based on a lithium-6 loaded cerium activated silicate glass scintillator (33.3 x 33.3 x 1 mm3) and an array of 64 silicon photomultipliers. Reconstruction of the scintillation events is performed with a statistical method, implemented on a graphics processing unit (GPU). We demonstrate that the light response model of the detector can be obtained from flood irradiation calibration data using an unsupervised iterative procedure. The useful field of view is 28 x 28 mm2. The spatial resolution measured at 2.5 A neutron beam is better than 0.6 mm FWHM and the energy resolution at the neutron peak is 11%.

A time-of-flight device was developed to characterize wavelength distribution and uniformity of a cold neutron beam. This device is very compact -- the distance of flight is $60$ cm -- but achieves very high resolution -- the intrinsic resolution $\Delta \lambda/\lambda=2.4\cdot 10^{-3}$ at $\lambda=0.89$ nm. The time-of-flight device is composed of a fixed slit, a disk rotating up to $216$ Hz and a neutron detector with a thin spherical conversion layer with the chopper slit in its focus. The device accepts the complete angular divergence of the initial neutron beam. The efficiency of neutron detection is constant over the detector area. Systematic corrections caused by neutron scattering in air are minimized due to the reduction of the time-of-flight length. Measurements have been performed on the beamline of the GRANIT experiment at ILL (part of the H172 beamline) on level C, and the first order diffraction peak of the crystal monochromator used for the GRANIT beamline was found to be at $\lambda=0.8961(11)$ nm, and having a width of $\sigma=0.0213(13)$ nm.

The GRANIT facility is a follow-up project, which is motivated by the recent discovery of gravitational quantum states of ultracold neutrons. The goal of the project is to approach the ultimate accuracy in measuring parameters of such quantum states and also to apply this phenomenon and related experimental techniques to a broad range of applications in particle physics as well as in surface and nanoscience studies. We overview the current status of this facility, the recent test measurements and the nearest prospects., Comment: 11 pages, 20 figures, Proceedings of the GRANIT-2014 WORKSHOP "Quantum gravitational spectroscopy with ultracold systems"(Les Houches)

We consider different methods to probe chameleons with slow neutrons. Chameleon modify the potential of bouncing neutrons over a flat mirror in the terrestrial gravitational field. This induces a shift in the energy levels of the neutrons which could be detected in current experiments like GRANIT. Chameleons between parallel plates have a field profile which is bubble-like and which would modify the phase of neutrons in interferometric experiments. We show that this new method of detection is competitive with the bouncing neutron one, hopefully providing an efficient probe of chameleons when strongly coupled to matter.

We prove that the control polygon of a Bezier curve B becomes homeomorphic and ambient isotopic to B via subdivision, and we provide closed-form formulas to compute the number of iterations to ensure these topological characteristics. We first show that the exterior angles of control polygons converge exponentially to zero under subdivision., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1211.0353

For Bezier curves, subdivision algorithms create control polygons as piecewise linear (PL) approximations that converge in terms of Hausdorff distance. We prove that the exterior angles of control polygons under subdivision converge to 0 at the rate of $O(\sqrt{\frac{1}{2^i}})$, where $i$ is the number of subdivisions. This angular convergence is useful for determining topological features. We use it to show homeomorphism between a Bezier curve and its control polygon under subdivision. The constructive geometric proofs yield closed-form formulas to compute sufficient numbers of subdivision iterations to obtain small exterior angles and achieve homeomorphism., Comment: This result has been combined with another result in a single paper "Isotopic Equivalence from Bezier Curve Subdivision.", arXiv:1211.0354

Properties of a parametric curve in R^3 are often determined by analysis of its piecewise linear (PL) approximation. For Bezier curves, there are standard algorithms, known as subdivision, that recursively create PL curves that converge to the curve in distance . The exterior angles of PL curves under subdivision are shown to converge to 0 at the rate of $O(\sqrt{\frac{1}{2^i}})$, where i is the number of subdivisions. This angular convergence is useful for determining self-intersections and knot type.