L. Castañeda

Robust Trajectory Tracking of a Delta Robot Through Adaptive Active Disturbance Rejection Control

This paper describes the adaptive control design to solve the trajectory tracking problem of a Delta robot with uncertain dynamical model. This robot is a fully actuated, parallel closed-chain device. The output-based adaptive control was designed within the active disturbance rejection framework. An adaptive nonparametric representation for the uncertain section of the robot model was obtained using an adaptive least mean squares procedure. The adaptive algorithm was designed without considering the velocity measurements of the robot joints. Therefore, a simultaneous observer-identifier scheme was the core of the control design. A set of experimental tests were developed to prove the performance of the algorithm presented in this paper. Some reference trajectories were proposed which were successfully tracked by the robot. In all the experiments, the adaptive scheme showed a better performance than the regular proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller with feed-forward actions as well as a nonadaptive active disturbance rejection controller. A set of numerical simulations was developed to show that even under five times faster reference trajectories, the adaptive controller showed better results than the PID controller.

Caustics in a meridional plane produced by plano-convex conic lenses

We study the formation of caustic surfaces formed in both convex-plano and plano-convex conic lenses by considering a plane wave incident on the lens along the optical axis. By using the caustic formulas and a paraxial approximation, we derive analytic expressions to evaluate the spherical aberration to the third order, and a formula to reduce this aberration is provided. Furthermore, we apply the formulas to evaluate the circle of least confusion for a positive lens as a function of all parameters involved in the process of refraction through the conic lenses.

Chromium and ruthenium-doped zinc oxide thin films for propane sensing applications.

Chromium and ruthenium-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Cr) and (ZnO:Ru) thin solid films were deposited on soda-lime glass substrates by the sol-gel dip-coating method. A 0.6 M solution of zinc acetate dihydrate dissolved in 2-methoxyethanol and monoethanolamine was used as basic solution. Chromium (III) acetylacetonate and Ruthenium (III) trichloride were used as doping sources. The Ru incorporation and its distribution profile into the films were proved by the SIMS technique. The morphology and structure of the films were studied by SEM microscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements, respectively. The SEM images show porous surfaces covered by small grains with different grain size, depending on the doping element, and the immersions number into the doping solutions. The sensing properties of ZnO:Cr and ZnO:Ru films in a propane (C3H8) atmosphere, as a function of the immersions number in the doping solution, have been studied in the present work. The highest sensitivity values were obtained for films doped from five immersions, 5.8 and 900, for ZnO:Cr and ZnO:Ru films, respectively. In order to evidence the catalytic effect of the chromium (Cr) and ruthenium (Ru), the sensing characteristics of undoped ZnO films are reported as well.

Inhibition of the two-photon absorption response exhibited by a bilayer TiO2 film with embedded Au nanoparticles

We use two different synthesis approaches for the preparation of TiO(2) films in order to study their resulting third order optical nonlinearity, and its modification by the inclusion of Au nanoparticles in one of the samples. An ultrasonic spray pyrolysis method was used for preparing a TiO(2) film in which we found two-photon absorption as a dominant nonlinear effect for 532 nm and 26 ps pulses; and a purely electronic nonlinearity at 830 nm for 80 fs pulses. A strong optical Kerr effect and the inhibition of the nonlinear optical absorption in 532 nm can be obtained for the first sample if Au nanoparticles embedded in a second TiO(2) film prepared by a sol-gel technique are added to it. We used an optical Kerr gate, z-scan, a multi-wave mixing experiment and an input-output transmittance experiment for measuring the optical nonlinearities.

Physical Characterization and Effect of Effective Surface Area on the Sensing Properties of Tin Dioxide Thin Solid Films in a Propane Atmosphere

The physical properties and the effect of effective surface area (ESA) on the sensing properties of tin dioxide [SnO2] thin films in air and propane [C3H8] atmosphere as a function of operating temperature and gas concentration have been studied in this paper. SnO2 thin films with different estimated thicknesses (50, 100 and 200 nm) were deposited on glass substrates by the chemical spray technique. Besides, they were prepared at two different deposition temperatures (400 and 475 °C). Tin chloride [SnCl4 · 5H2O] with 0.2 M concentration value and ethanol [C2H6O] were used as tin precursor and solvent, respectively. The morphological, and structural properties of the as-prepared films were analyzed by AFM and XRD, respectively. Gas sensing characteristics of SnO2 thin solid films were measured at operating temperatures of 22, 100, 200, and 300 °C, and at propane concentration levels (0, 5, 50, 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500 ppm). ESA values were calculated for each sample. It was found that the ESA increased with the increasing thickness of the films. The results demonstrated the importance of the achieving of a large effective surface area for improving gas sensing performance. SnO2 thin films deposited by spray chemical were chosen to study the ESA effect on gas sensing properties because their very rough surfaces were appropriate for this application.

Structure and mechanism formation of polyelectrolyte complex obtained from PSS/PAH system: effect of molar mixing ratio, base–acid conditions, and ionic strength

Colloidal dispersions of polyelectrolyte complexes were prepared in aqueous solutions. We have used mixtures containing the strongly charged anionic polyelectrolyte sodium polystyrene sulfonate (PSS) and the weak cationic polyelectrolyte polyallylamine hydrochloride (PAH). Both polymers have the same molecular weight. The complexes were obtained by adding drop by drop a solution of the anionic polyelectrolyte to excess cationic polyelectrolyte. In these conditions, sodium polystyrene sulfonate and polyallylamine hydrochloride self-assembled in nanometer-range complexes; the self-assembly is driven by electrostatic interactions, as well as by entropy changes due to counterion release. The electrostatic interactions were controlled in several ways: by changing the CPSS/CPAH concentration ratio, by modifying the pH (and thus the protonation degree of polyallylamine hydrochloride), and by adding sodium chloride (screened interactions). Dynamic light scattering experiments demonstrated that the hydrodynamics radius of the polyelectrolyte complex increases, changing from soluble to insoluble complex formation, when some physicochemical parameters are increased: the concentration ratio between polyelectrolytes, the sodium chloride concentration, and pH. Zeta potential measurements, as a function of the CPSS/CPAH concentration ratio, as well as of pH and ionic strength, allow us to state that the resulting particles have a structure constituted by a neutral core surrounded by a positively charged shell. The polyelectrolyte complexes have globular shapes, as observed by electron microscopy.

Formation of Indium-Doped Zinc Oxide Thin Films Using Ultrasonic Spray Pyrolysis: The Importance of the Water Content in the Aerosol Solution and the Substrate Temperature for Enhancing Electrical Transport

Indium doped zinc oxide [ZnO:In] thin films have been deposited at 430°C on soda-lime glass substrates by the chemical spray technique, starting from zinc acetate and indium acetate. Pulverization of the solution was done by ultrasonic excitation. The variations in the electrical, structural, optical, and morphological characteristics of ZnO:In thin films, as a function of both the water content in the starting solution and the substrate temperature, were studied. The electrical resistivity of ZnO:In thin films is not significantly affected with the increase in the water content, up to 200 mL/L; further increase in water content causes an increase in the resistivity of the films. All films show a polycrystalline character, fitting well with the hexagonal ZnO wurtzite-type structure. No preferential growth in samples deposited with the lowest water content was observed, whereas an increase in water content gave rise to a (002) growth. The surface morphology of the films shows a consistency with structure results, as non-geometrical shaped round grains were observed in the case of films deposited with the lowest water content, whereas hexagonal slices, with a wide size distribution were observed in the other cases. In addition, films deposited with the highest water content show a narrow size distribution.

Ultrafast nonlinear optical response of photoconductive ZnO films with fluorine nanoparticles

The absorptive and refractive third order nonlinear optical properties exhibited by a ZnO thin solid film with fluorine nanoparticles were studied with picosecond and femtosecond pulses using different techniques. We were able to evaluate the photoconductivity of the material and the quenching of the induced birefringence observed in the presence of two-photon absorption. The samples were prepared by a chemical spray deposition technique. In order to investigate the different contributions of the third order nonlinearities of the film, we analyzed the vectorial self-diffraction effect and the optical Kerr transmittance observed in the sample. A dominantly absorptive nonlinearity was measured at a 532 nm wavelength with 50 ps pulses, while nonlinear refraction was found to be negligible in this regime. On the other side, a pure electronic refractive third order nonlinearity without the contribution of nonlinear absorption was detected at 830 nm with 80 fs pulse duration. A quasi-instantaneous optical response and a strong enhancement in the ultrafast nonlinear refraction with the inhibition of the picosecond two-photon absorption mechanism were measured for the case of the femtosecond excitation.

Null Ronchi-Hartmann test for a lens

A method to design Ronchi-Hartmann screens for improved alignment in the testing of fast plano-convex spherical lenses is presented. We design null screens that produce aligned straight fringes for observed patterns. The designs of these null screens are based on knowledge of the caustic by refraction. A qualitative test for a lens is presented.

Robust disturbance rejection control of a biped robotic system using high-order extended state observer☆

This study addressed the problem of robust control of a biped robot based on disturbance estimation. Active disturbance rejection control was the paradigm used for controlling the biped robot by direct active estimation. A robust controller was developed to implement disturbance cancelation based on a linear extended state observer of high gain class. A robust high-gain scheme was proposed for developing a state estimator of the biped robot despite poor knowledge of the plant and the presence of uncertainties. The estimated states provided by the state estimator were used to implement a feedback controller that was effective in actively rejecting the perturbations as well as forcing the trajectory tracking error to within a small vicinity of the origin. The theoretical convergence of the tracking error was proven using the Lyapunov theory. The controller was implemented by numerical simulations that showed the convergence of the tracking error. A comparison with a high-order sliding-mode-observer-based controller confirmed the superior performance of the controller using the robust observer introduced in this study. Finally, the proposed controller was implemented on an actual biped robot using an embedded hardware-in-the-loop strategy.