Slave-making ants are specialized social parasites that steal the young from colonies of their host species to augment their slave supply. The degree of parasite-host specialization has been shown to shape the trajectory along which parasites and hosts coevolve and is a prime contributor to the geographic mosaic of coevolution. However, virtually nothing is known about extrinsic influences on p...

Evidence on adverse selection in slave markets remains inconclusive. A necessary prerequisite is that buyers and sellers have different information. We study informational asymmetry on the slave markets through notarial acts on public slave auctions in Mauritius between 1825 and 1835, involving 4,286 slaves. In addition to slave characteristics, the acts document the identities of buyers and se...

This paper describes a distributed software control structure developed for the CMU Rover, an advanced mobile robot equipped with a variety of sensors. Expert modules are used to control the operation of the sensors and actuators, interpret sensory and feedback data, build an internal model of the robot's environment, devise strategies to accomplish proposed tasks and execute these strategies. ...

Abstract: This paper deals with the problem of nonlinearH∞ synchronization for Lur’e systems using time-delay feedback control. Making use of a vector field modulation in the master system by a filtered binary valued message signal, applying a static output feedback control with timedelay to the slave system, and taking into account L2-norm bounded noise in the channel, the master-slave synchro...

In this paper, a parameters self-learning PID controller algorithm based on modified BP neural network is proposed to eliminate the influence of time delay on the stability and maneuverability of tele-operation manipulators. This control algorithm adjusts the three parameters of PID controller on line through BP neural network. Conjugate gradient method is used for real-time adjustment of weigh...

A novel control algorithm based on the modified wave-variable controllers is proposed to achieve accurate position synchronization and reasonable force tracking of the nonlinear single-master-multiple-slave teleoperation system and simultaneously guarantee overall system's stability in the presence of large timevarying delays. The system stability in different scenarios of human and environment...

Impedance control is used to control the relationship between the applied forces and the position of the manipulator when it interacts with the environment. In bilateral teleoperation systems, communication time delay could make the system unstable and certainly degrade the operator’s intuition and performance. In this paper, a scheme for impedance control of bilateral teleoperation systems in ...

This paper addresses the problem of partially controlling a set of two unidirectionally coupled, nonlinear (possibly chaotic) subsystems in order that the whole system performs some stable behaviors of interest. In this purpose, the proposed approach mainly consists in regulating the whole system energy (implicitly related to system trajectories), by means of an Energy based Sliding Mode Contro...

In this paper, a systematic overview of PLL-based closed-loop control methods for interleaved DCM/CCM boundary boost PFC converters is presented. It is shown that the PLL-based closed-loop methods always provide stable operation, unlike the open-loop control methods, where the only method which results in stable operation is the slave synchronization to the turn-on instant of the master with cu...