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Although today’s bipeds are capable of demonstrating impressive locomotion skills, in many aspects, there’s still a big gap compared to the capabilities observed in humans. Partially, this is due to the deployed control paradigms that are mostly based on analytical approaches. The analytical nature of those approaches entails strong model dependencies – regarding the robotic platform as well as the environment – which makes them prone to unknown disturbances. Recently, an increasing number of biologically-inspired control approaches have been presented from which a human-like bipedal gait emerges. Although the control structures only rely on proprioceptive sensory information, the smoothness of the motions and the robustness against external disturbances is impressive. Due to the lack of suitable robotic platforms, until today the controllers have been mostly applied to
simulations.
Therefore, as the first step towards a suitable platform, this thesis presents the Compliant Robotic Leg (CARL) that features mono- as well as biarticular actuation. The design is driven by a set of core-requirements that is primarily derived from the biologically-inspired behavior-based bipedal locomotion control (B4LC) and complemented by further functional aspects from biomechanical research. Throughout the design process, CARL is understood as a unified dynamic system that emerges from the interplay of the mechanics, the electronics, and the control. Thus, having an explicit control approach and the respective gait in mind, the influence of each subsystem on the characteristics of the overall system is considered
carefully.
The result is a planar robotic leg whose three joints are driven by five highly integrated linear SEAs– three mono- and two biarticular actuators – with minimized reflected inertia. The SEAs are encapsulated by FPGA-based embedded nodes that are designed to meet the hard application requirements while enabling the deployment of a full-featured robotic framework. CARL’s foot is implemented using a COTS prosthetic foot; the sensor information is obtained from the deformation of its main structure. Both subsystems are integrated into a leg structure that matches the proportions of a human with a size of 1.7 m.
The functionality of the subsystems, as well as the overall system, is validated experimentally. In particular, the final experiment demonstrates a coordinated walking motion and thereby confirms that CARL can produce the desired behavior – a natural looking, human-like gait is emerging from the interplay of the behavior-based walking control and the mechatronic system. CARL is robust regarding impacts, the redundant actuation system can render the desired joint torques/impedances, and the foot system supports the walking structurally while it provides the necessary sensory information. Considering that there is no movement of the upper trunk, the angle and torque profiles are comparable to the ones found in humans.
Interconnection networks enable fast data communication between components of a digital system. The selection of an appropriate interconnection network and its architecture plays an important role in the development process of the system. The selection of a bad network architecture may significantly delay the communication between components and decrease the overall system performance.
There are various interconnection networks available. Most of them are blocking networks. Blocking means that even though a pair of source and target components may be free, a connection between them might still not be possible due to limited capabilities of the network. Moreover, routing algorithms of blocking networks have to avoid deadlocks and livelocks, which typically does only allow poor real-time guarantees for delivering a message. Nonblocking networks can always manage all requests that are coming from their input components and can therefore deliver all messages in guaranteed time, i.e, with strong real-time guarantees. However, only a few networks are nonblocking and easy to implement. The simplest one is the crossbar network which is a comparably simple circuit with also a simple routing algorithm. However, while its circuit depth of O(log(n)) is optimal, its size increases with O(n^2) and quickly becomes infeasible for large networks. Therefore, the construction of nonblocking networks with a quasipolynomial size O(nlog(n)^a) and polylogarithmic depth O(log(n)^b) turned out as a research problem.
Benes [Clos53; Bene65] networks were the first non blocking networks having an optimal size of O(nlog(n)) and an optimal depth of O(log(n)), but their routing algorithms are quite complicated and require circuits of depth O(log(n)^2) [NaSa82].
Other nonblocking interconnection networks are derived from sorting networks. Essentially, there are merge-based (MBS) and radix-based (RBS) sorting networks. MBS and RBS networks can be both implemented in a pipelined fashion which leads to a big advantage for their circuit implementation. While these networks are nonblocking and can implement all n! permutations, they cannot directly handle partial permutations that frequently occur in practice since not every input component communicates at every point of time with an output component. For merge-based sorting networks, there is a well known general solution called the Batcher-Banyan network. However, for the larger class of radix-based sorting networks this does not work, and there is only one solution known for a particular permutation network.
In this thesis, new nonblocking radix-based interconnection networks are presented. In particular, for a certain permutation network, three routing algorithms are developed and their circuit implementations are evaluated concerning their size, depth, and power consumption. A special extension of these networks allows them to route also partial permutations. Moreover, three general constructions to convert any binary sorter into a ternary split module were presented which is the key to construct a radix-based interconnection network that can cope with partial permutations. The thesis compares also chip designs of these networks with other radix-based sorting networks as well as with the Batcher-Banyan networks as competitors. As a result, it turns out that the proposed radix-based networks are superior and could form the basis of larger manycore architectures.
With the technological advancement in the field of robotics, it is now quite practical to acknowledge the actuality of social robots being a part of human's daily life in the next decades. Concerning HRI, the basic expectations from a social robot are to perceive words, emotions, and behaviours, in order to draw several conclusions and adapt its behaviour to realize natural HRI. Henceforth, assessment of human personality traits is essential to bring a sense of appeal and acceptance towards the robot during interaction.
Knowledge of human personality is highly relevant as far as natural and efficient HRI is concerned. The idea is taken from human behaviourism, with humans behaving differently based on the personality trait of the communicating partners. This thesis contributes to the development of personality trait assessment system for intelligent human-robot interaction.
The personality trait assessment system is organized in three separate levels. The first level, known as perceptual level, is responsible for enabling the robot to perceive, recognize and understand human actions in the surrounding environment in order to make sense of the situation. Using psychological concepts and theories, several percepts have been extracted. A study has been conducted to validate the significance of these percepts towards personality traits.
The second level, known as affective level, helps the robot to connect the knowledge acquired in the first level to make higher order evaluations such as assessment of human personality traits. The affective system of the robot is responsible for analysing human personality traits. To the best of our knowledge, this thesis is the first work in the field of human-robot interaction that presents an automatic assessment of human personality traits in real-time using visual information. Using psychology and cognitive studies, many theories has been studied. Two theories have been been used to build the personality trait assessment system: Big Five personality traits assessment and temperament framework for personality traits assessment.
By using the information from the perceptual and affective level, the last level, known as behavioural level, enables the robot to synthesize an appropriate behaviour adapted to human personality traits. Multiple experiments have been conducted with different scenarios. It has been shown that the robot, ROBIN, assesses personality traits correctly during interaction and uses the similarity-attraction principle to behave with similar personality type. For example, if the person is found out to be extrovert, the robot also behaves like an extrovert. However, it also uses the complementary attraction theory to adapt its behaviour and complement the personality of the interaction partner. For example, if the person is found out to be self-centred, the robot behaves like an agreeable in order to flourish human-robot interaction.
In this thesis we study a variant of the quadrature problem for stochastic differential equations (SDEs), namely the approximation of expectations \(\mathrm{E}(f(X))\), where \(X = (X(t))_{t \in [0,1]}\) is the solution of an SDE and \(f \colon C([0,1],\mathbb{R}^r) \to \mathbb{R}\) is a functional, mapping each realization of \(X\) into the real numbers. The distinctive feature in this work is that we consider randomized (Monte Carlo) algorithms with random bits as their only source of randomness, whereas the algorithms commonly studied in the literature are allowed to sample from the uniform distribution on the unit interval, i.e., they do have access to random numbers from \([0,1]\).
By assumption, all further operations like, e.g., arithmetic operations, evaluations of elementary functions, and oracle calls to evaluate \(f\) are considered within the real number model of computation, i.e., they are carried out exactly.
In the following, we provide a detailed description of the quadrature problem, namely we are interested in the approximation of
\begin{align*}
S(f) = \mathrm{E}(f(X))
\end{align*}
for \(X\) being the \(r\)-dimensional solution of an autonomous SDE of the form
\begin{align*}
\mathrm{d}X(t) = a(X(t)) \, \mathrm{d}t + b(X(t)) \, \mathrm{d}W(t), \quad t \in [0,1],
\end{align*}
with deterministic initial value
\begin{align*}
X(0) = x_0 \in \mathbb{R}^r,
\end{align*}
and driven by a \(d\)-dimensional standard Brownian motion \(W\). Furthermore, the drift coefficient \(a \colon \mathbb{R}^r \to \mathbb{R}^r\) and the diffusion coefficient \(b \colon \mathbb{R}^r \to \mathbb{R}^{r \times d}\) are assumed to be globally Lipschitz continuous.
For the function classes
\begin{align*}
F_{\infty} = \bigl\{f \colon C([0,1],\mathbb{R}^r) \to \mathbb{R} \colon |f(x) - f(y)| \leq \|x-y\|_{\sup}\bigr\}
\end{align*}
and
\begin{align*}
F_p = \bigl\{f \colon C([0,1],\mathbb{R}^r) \to \mathbb{R} \colon |f(x) - f(y)| \leq \|x-y\|_{L_p}\bigr\}, \quad 1 \leq p < \infty.
\end{align*}
we have established the following.
\[\]
\(\textit{Theorem 1.}\)
There exists a random bit multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) algorithm \(M\) using
\[
L = L(\varepsilon,F) = \begin{cases}\lceil{\log_2(\varepsilon^{-2}}\rceil, &\text{if} \ F = F_p,\\
\lceil{\log_2(\varepsilon^{-2} + \log_2(\log_2(\varepsilon^{-1}))}\rceil, &\text{if} \ F = F_\infty
\end{cases}
\]
and replication numbers
\[
N_\ell = N_\ell(\varepsilon,F) = \begin{cases}
\lceil{(L+1) \cdot 2^{-\ell} \cdot \varepsilon^{-2}}\rceil, & \text{if} \ F = F_p,\\
\lceil{(L+1) \cdot 2^{-\ell} \cdot \max(\ell,1) \cdot \varepsilon^{-2}}\rceil, & \text{if} \ F=f_\infty
\end{cases}
\]
for \(\ell = 0,\ldots,L\), for which exists a positive constant \(c\) such that
\begin{align*}
\mathrm{error}(M,F) = \sup_{f \in F} \bigl(\mathrm{E}(S(f) - M(f))^2\bigr)^{1/2} \leq c \cdot \varepsilon
\end{align*}
and
\begin{align*}
\mathrm{cost}(M,F) = \sup_{f \in F} \mathrm{E}(\mathrm{cost}(M,f)) \leq c \cdot \varepsilon^{-2} \cdot \begin{cases}
(\ln(\varepsilon^{-1}))^2, &\text{if} \ F=F_p,\\
(\ln(\varepsilon^{-1}))^3, &\text{if} \ F=F_\infty
\end{cases}
\end{align*}
for every \(\varepsilon \in {]0,1/2[}\).
\[\]
Hence, in terms of the \(\varepsilon\)-complexity
\begin{align*}
\mathrm{comp}(\varepsilon,F) = \inf\bigl\{\mathrm{cost}(M,F) \colon M \ \text{is a random bit MC algorithm}, \mathrm{error}(M,F) \leq \varepsilon\bigr\}
\end{align*}
we have established the upper bound
\begin{align*}
\mathrm{comp}(\varepsilon,F) \leq c \cdot \varepsilon^{-2} \cdot \begin{cases}
(\ln(\varepsilon^{-1}))^2, &\text{if} \ F=F_p,\\
(\ln(\varepsilon^{-1}))^3, &\text{if} \ F=F_\infty
\end{cases}
\end{align*}
for some positive constant \(c\). That is, we have shown the same weak asymptotic upper bound as in the case of random numbers from \([0,1]\). Hence, in this sense, random bits are almost as powerful as random numbers for our computational problem.
Moreover, we present numerical results for a non-analyzed adaptive random bit MLMC Euler algorithm, in the particular cases of the Brownian motion, the geometric Brownian motion, the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck SDE and the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross SDE. We also provide a numerical comparison to the corresponding adaptive random number MLMC Euler method.
A key challenge in the analysis of the algorithm in Theorem 1 is the approximation of probability distributions by means of random bits. A problem very closely related to the quantization problem, i.e., the optimal approximation of a given probability measure (on a separable Hilbert space) by means of a probability measure with finite support size.
Though we have shown that the random bit approximation of the standard normal distribution is 'harder' than the corresponding quantization problem (lower weak rate of convergence), we have been able to establish the same weak rate of convergence as for the corresponding quantization problem in the case of the distribution of a Brownian bridge on \(L_2([0,1])\), the distribution of the solution of a scalar SDE on \(L_2([0,1])\), and the distribution of a centered Gaussian random element in a separable Hilbert space.
Activity recognition has continued to be a large field in computer science over the last two decades. Research questions from 15 years ago have led to solutions that today support our daily lives. Specifically, the success of smartphones or more recent developments of other smart devices (e.g., smart-watches) is rooted in applications that leverage on activity analysis and location tracking (fitness applications and maps). Today we can track our physical health and fitness and support our physical needs by merely owning (and using) a smart-phone. Still, the quality of our lives does not solely rely on fitness and physical health but also more increasingly on our mental well-being. Since we have learned how practical and easy it is to have a lot of functions, including health support on just one device, it would be specifically helpful if we could also use the smart-phone to support our mental and cognitive health if need be.
The ultimate goal of this work is to use sensor-assisted location and motion analysis to support various aspects of medically valid cognitive assessments.
In this regard, this thesis builds on Hypothesis 3: Sensors in our ubiquitous environment can collect information about our cognitive state, and it is possible to extract that information. In addition, these data can be used to derive complex cognitive states and to predict possible pathological changes in humans. After all, not only is it possible to determine the cognitive state through sensors but also to assist people in difficult situations through these sensors.
Thus, in the first part, this thesis focuses on the detection of mental state and state changes.
The primary purpose is to evaluate possible starting points for sensor systems in order to enable a clinically accurate assessment of mental states. These assessments must work on the condition that a developed system must be able to function within the given limits of a real clinical environment.
Despite the limitations and challenges of real-life deployments, it was possible to develop methods for determining the cognitive state and well-being of the residents. The analysis of the location data provides a correct classification of cognitive state with an average accuracy of 70% to 90%.
Methods to determine the state of bipolar patients provide an accuracy of 70-80\% for the detection of different cognitive states (total seven classes) using single sensors and 76% for merging data from different sensors. Methods for detecting the occurrence of state changes, a highlight of this work, even achieved a precision and recall of 95%.
The comparison of these results with currently used standard methods in psychiatric care even shows a clear advantage of the sensor-based method. The accuracy of the sensor-based analysis is 60% higher than the accuracy of the currently used methods.
The second part of this thesis introduces methods to support people’s actions in stressful situations on the one hand and analyzes the interaction between people during high-pressure activities on the other.
A simple, acceleration based, smartwatch instant feedback application was used to help laypeople to learn to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) in an emergency on the fly.
The evaluation of this application in a study with 43 laypersons showed an instant improvement in the CPR performance of 50%. An investigation of whether training with such an instant feedback device can support improved learning and lead to more permanent effects for gaining skills was able to confirm this theory.
Last but not least, with the main interest shifting from the individual to a group of people at the end of this work, the question: how can we determine the interaction between individuals within a group of people? was answered by developing a methodology to detect un-voiced collaboration in random ad-hoc groups. An evaluation with data retrieved from video footage provides an accuracy of up to more than 95%, and even with artificially introduced errors rates of 20%, still an accuracy of 70% precision, and 90% recall can be achieved.
All scenarios in this thesis address different practical issues of today’s health care. The methods developed are based on real-life datasets and real-world studies.
This work describes the development of a continuum phase field model that can describe static as well as dynamic wetting scenarios on the nano- and microscale.
The model reaches this goal by a direct integration of an equation of state as well as a direct integration of the dissipative properties of a specific fluid, which are both obtained from molecular simulations. The presented approach leads to good agreement between the predictions of the phase field model and the physical properties of the regarded fluid.
The implementation of the model employs a mixed finite element formulation, a newly developed semi-implicit time integration scheme, as well as the concept of hyper-dual numbers. This ensures a straightforward and robust exchangeability of the constitutive equation for the regarded fluid.
The presented simulations show good agreement between the results of the present phase field model and results from molecular dynamics simulations. Furthermore, the results show that the model enables the investigation of wetting scenarios on the microscale. The continuum phase field model of this work bridges the gap between the molecular models on the nanoscale and the phenomenologically motivated continuum models on the macroscale.
As visualization as a field matures, the discussion about the development of a
theory of the field becomes increasingly vivid. Despite some voices claiming that
visualization applications would be too different from each other to generalize,
there is a significant push towards a better understanding of the principles underlying
visual data analysis. As of today, visualization is primarily data-driven.
Years of experience in the visalization of all kinds of different data accumulated
a vast reservoir of implicit knowledge in the community of how to best represent
data according to its shape, its format, and what it is meant to express.
This knowledge is complemented by knowledge imported to visualization from
a variety of other fields, for example psychology, vision science, color theory,
and information theory. Yet, a theory of visualization is still only nascent. One
major reason for that is the field's too strong focus on the quantitative aspects
of data analysis. Although when designing visualizations major design decisions
also consider perception and other human factors, the overall appearance
of visualizations as of now is determined primarily by the type and format of
the data to be visualized and its quantitative attributes like scale, range, or
density. This is also reflected by the current approaches in theoretical work on
visualization. The models developed in this regard also concentrate primarily
on perceptual and quantitative aspects of visual data analysis. Qualitative considerations
like the interpretations made by viewers and the conclusions drawn
by analysts currently only play a minor role in the literature. This Thesis contributes
to the nascent theory of visualization by investigating approaches to
the explicit integration of qualitative considerations into visual data analysis.
To this end, it promotes qualitative visual analysis, the explicit discussion of
the interpretation of artifacts and structures in the visualization, of efficient
workflows designed to optimally support an analyst's reasoning strategy and
capturing information about insight provenance, and of design methodology
tailoring visualizations towards the insights they are meant to provide rather
than to the data they show. Towards this aim, three central qualitative principles
of visual information encodings are identified during the development of
a model for the visual data analysis process that explicitly includes the anticipated
reasoning structure into the consideration. This model can be applied
throughout the whole life cycle of a visualization application, from the early
design phase to the documentation of insight provenance during analysis using
the developed visualization application. The three principles identified inspire
novel visual data analysis workflows aiming for an insight-driven data analysis
process. Moreover, two case studies prove the benefit of following the qualitative
principles of visual information encodings for the design of visualization
applications. The formalism applied to the development of the presented theoretical
framework is founded in formal logics, mathematical set theory, and the
theory of formal languages and automata. The models discussed in this Thesis
and the findings derived from them are therefore based on a mathematically
well-founded theoretical underpinning. This Thesis establishes a sound theoretical
framework for the design and description of visualization applications and
the prediction of the conclusions an analyst is capable of drawing from working
with the visualization. Thereby, it contributes an important piece to the yet
unsolved puzzle of developing a visualization theory.
This thesis investigates how smart sensors can quantify the process of learning. Traditionally, human beings have obtained various skills by inventing technologies. Those who integrate technologies into daily life and enhance their capabilities are called augmented humans. While most existing augmenting human technologies focus on directly assisting specific skills, the objective of this thesis is to assist learning -- the meta-skill to master new skills -- with the aim of long-term augmentations.
Learning consists of cognitive activities such as reading, writing, and watching. It has been considered that tracking them by motion sensors (in the same way as the recognition of physical activities) is a challenging task because dynamic body movements could not be observed during cognitive activities. I have solved this problem with smart sensors monitoring eye movements and physiological signals.
I propose activity recognition methods using sensors built into eyewear computers. Head movements and eye blinks measured by an infrared proximity sensor on Google Glass could classify five activities including reading with 82% accuracy. Head and eye movements measured by electrooculography on JINS MEME could classify four activities with 70% accuracy. In a wild experiment involving seven participants who wore JINS MEME more than two weeks, deep neural networks could detect natural reading activities with 74% accuracy. I demonstrate Wordometer 2.0, an application to estimate the number of rear words on JINS MEME, which was evaluated in a dataset involving five readers with 11% error rate.
Smart sensors can recognize not only activities but also internal states during the activities. I present an expertise recognition method using an eye tracker which performs 70% classification accuracy into three classes using one minute data of reading a textbook, a positive correlation between interest and pupil diameter (p < 0.01), a negative correlation between mental workload and nose temperature measured by an infrared thermal camera (p < 0.05), an interest detection on newspaper articles, and effective gaze and physiological features to estimate self-confidence while solving multiple choice questions and spelling tests of English vocabulary.
The quantified learning process can be utilized for feedback to each learner on the basis of the context. I present HyperMind, an interactive intelligent digital textbook. It can be developed on HyperMind Builder which may be employed to augment any electronic text by multimedia aspects activated via gaze.
Applications mentioned above have already been deployed at several laboratories including Immersive Quantified Learning Lab (iQL-Lab) at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).
Synapses are connections between different nerve cells that form an essential link in neural signal transmission. It is generally distinguished between electrical and chemical synapses, where chemical synapses are more common in the human brain and are also the type we deal with in this work.
In chemical synapses, small container-like objects called vesicles fill with neurotransmitter and expel them from the cell during synaptic transmission. This process is vital for communication between neurons. However, to the best of our knowledge no mathematical models that take different filling states of the vesicles into account have been developed before this thesis was written.
In this thesis we propose a novel mathematical model for modeling synaptic transmission at chemical synapses which includes the description of vesicles of different filling states. The model consists of a transport equation (for the vesicle growth process) plus three ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and focuses on the presynapse and synaptic cleft.
The well-posedness is proved in detail for this partial differential equation (PDE) system. We also propose a few different variations and related models. In particular, an ODE system is derived and a delay differential equation (DDE) system is formulated. We then use nonlinear optimization methods for data fitting to test some of the models on data made available to us by the Animal Physiology group at TU Kaiserslautern.