Motor coordination: when two have to act as one.

Trying to pass someone walking toward you in a narrow corridor is a familiar example of a two-person motor game that requires coordination. In this study, we investigate coordination in sensorimotor tasks that correspond to classic coordination games with multiple Nash equilibria, such as "choosing sides," "stag hunt," "chicken," and "battle of sexes". In these tasks, subjects made reaching movements reflecting their continuously evolving "decisions" while they received a continuous payoff in the form of a resistive force counteracting their movements. Successful coordination required two subjects to "choose" the same Nash equilibrium in this force-payoff landscape within a single reach. We found that on the majority of trials coordination was achieved. Compared to the proportion of trials in which miscoordination occurred, successful coordination was characterized by several distinct features: an increased mutual information between the players' movement endpoints, an increased joint entropy during the movements, and by differences in the timing of the players' responses. Moreover, we found that the probability of successful coordination depends on the players' initial distance from the Nash equilibria. Our results suggest that two-person coordination arises naturally in motor interactions and is facilitated by favorable initial positions, stereotypical motor pattern, and differences in response times.

High speed wavelength conversion utilising an integrated amplifier/DFB laser

Wavelength conversion in the 1.55-μm regime was achieved for the first time in an integrated SOA/DFB laser by modulating the output power of the laser with a light beam of a different wavelength externally injected into the SOA section. In terms of speed, response times as low as 13ps were observed, though at the expense of reduced extinction ratio. Generally, these results indicate that operation in the 10s of GB/s should be possible.

Photoisomerising effects in nitroazo flexoelectric dimeric nematic systems

The photoisomerisation of a flexoelectric chiral nematic bimesogen system dyed with an azo dye has been investigated. The host material has a pitch and field dependent tilt angle that are temperature independent. Upon illumination by ultra violet, the azo dye molecules undergo a shape change from their trans to cis isomer. The effect of the shape change of the dye on the mixture is to decrease the I-N* transition temperatures, to increase the response times and to decrease the transmitted optical intensity. For the same reduced temperatures, the tilt angles, pitch and threshold voltages for the transition from focal conic to homeotropic textures are unchanged. The macroscopic parameters observed suggest that the orientational order parameter of the system is reduced by UV illumination. The cis isomers do not appear to separate from the host material or significantly change the flexoelectric coefficient. © 2001 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.V. Published by license under the Gordon and Breach Science Publishers imprint, a member of the Taylor & Francis Group.

Bimesogenic liquid crystals: New materials for high performance flexoelectric and blue phase displays

In this paper we will describe new bimesogenic nematic liquid crystals that have high flexoelectro-optic coefficients (e/K),of the order of 1.5 CN 1 m-1, high switching angles, up to 100° and fast response times, of the order of 100μs or less. We will describe devices constructed, using the ULH texture that may be switched to the optimum angle of 45° for a birefringence based device with the fields of 4Vμm-1 over a wide temperature range. Such devices use an "in plane" optical switching mode, have gray scale capability and a wide viewing angle. We will describe devices using the USH or Grandjean texture that have an optically isotropic "field off" black state, uses "in plane" switching E fields, to give an induced birefringence phase device, with switching times of the order of 20μs. We will briefly describe new highly reflective Blue Phase devices stable over a 50V temperature range in which an electric field is used to switch the reflection from red to green, for example. Full RGB reflections may be obtained with switching times of a few milliseconds. Finally we will briefly mention potential applications including high efficiency RGB liquid crystal laser sources. © 2006 SID.

Ultrafast switching liquid crystals for electro-optic transmissive and reflective displays and microscopic lasers

We have used novel liquid crystals with extremely large flexoelectric coefficients in a range of ultra-fast photonic/display modes, namely 1) the uniform lying helix, that leads to in-plain switching, birefringence based displays with 100 μs switching times at low fields, i.e.2-5 V/μm, wide viewing angle and analogue or grey scale capability, 2) the uniform standing helix, using planar surface alignment and in-plane fields, with sub ms response times and optical contrasts in excess of 5000:1 with a perfect black "off state", 3) the wide temperature range blue phase that leads to field controlled reflective color and 4) high slope efficiency, wide wavelength range tunable narrow linewidth microscopic liquid crystal lasers.

Multiplexed model predictive control

Most academic control schemes for MIMO systems assume all the control variables are updated simultaneously. MPC outperforms other control strategies through its ability to deal with constraints. This requires on-line optimization, hence computational complexity can become an issue when applying MPC to complex systems with fast response times. The multiplexed MPC scheme described in this paper solves the MPC problem for each subsystem sequentially, and updates subsystem controls as soon as the solution is available, thus distributing the control moves over a complete update cycle. The resulting computational speed-up allows faster response to disturbances, and hence improved performance, despite finding sub-optimal solutions to the original problem. The multiplexed MPC scheme is also closer to industrial practice in many cases. This paper presents initial stability results for two variants of multiplexed MPC, and illustrates the performance benefit by an example. Copyright copy; 2005 IFAC. Copyright © 2005 IFAC.

Fast-switching phase gratings using in-plane addressed short-pitch polymer stabilized chiral nematic liquid crystals

We demonstrate a fast-switching (sub-millisecond) phase grating based upon a polymer stabilized short-pitch chiral nematic liquid crystal that is electrically addressed using in-plane electric fields. The combination of the short-pitch and the polymer stabilization enables the diffraction pattern to be switched “on” and “off” reversibly in 600 µs. Results are presented on the far-field diffraction pattern along with the intensity of the diffraction orders as a function of the applied electric field and the response times.

Fast-switching phase gratings using in-plane addressed short-pitch polymer stabilized chiral nematic liquid crystals

We demonstrate a fast-switching (sub-millisecond) phase grating based upon a polymer stabilized short-pitch chiral nematic liquid crystal that is electrically addressed using in-plane electric fields. The combination of the short-pitch and the polymer stabilization enables the diffraction pattern to be switched on and off reversibly in 600 μs. Results are presented on the far-field diffraction pattern along with the intensity of the diffraction orders as a function of the applied electric field and the response times. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.

Multiplexed model predictive control

This paper proposes a form of MPC in which the control variables are moved asynchronously. This contrasts with most MIMO control schemes, which assume that all variables are updated simultaneously. MPC outperforms other control strategies through its ability to deal with constraints. This requires on-line optimization, hence computational complexity can become an issue when applying MPC to complex systems with fast response times. The Multiplexed MPC (MMPC) scheme described in this paper solves the MPC problem for each subsystem sequentially, and updates subsystem controls as soon as the solution is available, thus distributing the control moves over a complete update cycle. The resulting computational speed-up allows faster response to disturbances, which may result in improved performance, despite finding sub-optimal solutions to the original problem. This paper describes nominal and robust MMPC, states some stability results, and demonstrates the effectiveness of MMPC through two examples. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ultrafast switching liquid crystals for electro-optic transmissive and reflective displays and microscopic lasers

We report on novel liquid crystals with extremely large flexoelectric coefficients in a range of ultra-fast photonic modes, namely 1) the uniform lying helix, that leads to in-plain switching, birefringence phase devices with 100 μs switching times at low fields, i.e.2-5 V/μm, and analogue or grey scale capability, 2) the uniform standing helix, using planar surface alignment and in-plane fields, with sub ms response times and optical contrasts in excess of 5000:1 with a perfect optically isotropic or black "off state", 3) the wide temperature range blue phase that leads to field controlled reflective color, 4) chiral nematic optical reflectors electric field tunable over a wide wavelength range and 5) high slope efficiency, wide wavelength range tunable narrow linewidth microscopic liquid crystal lasers. © 2011 Materials Research Society.

Spontaneous induction of the uniform lying helix alignment in bimesogenic liquid crystals for the flexoelectro-optic effect

Using in-plane electric fields, the electrical induction of the uniform lying helix (ULH) alignment in chiral nematic liquid crystals is reported. This process permits spontaneous induction of the ULH alignment to give an in-plane optic axis, without the need for complex processing. Flexoelectro-optic switching is subsequently obtained by holding the in-plane electrodes at a common voltage and addressing via a third, plane-parallel electrode on a second, or upper, substrate to give a field across the device in the viewing direction. For this device, in optimized bimesogenic materials, we demonstrate full intensity modulation and sub-millisecond response times at typical device temperatures. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.

Investigation of gain recovery for InAs/GaAs quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers by rate equation simulation

The gain recoveries in quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers (QD SOAs) are numerically studied by rate equation simulation. Similar to the optical pump-probe experiment, the injection of double 150 fs optical pulses is used to simulate the gain recovery of a weak continuous signal under different injection levels, inhomogeneous broadenings, detuning wavelengths, and pulse signal energies for the QD SOAs. The obtained gain recoveries are then fitted by a response function with multiple exponential terms to determine the response times. The gain recovery can be described by three exponential terms with the time constants, which can be explained as carrier relaxation from the excited state to the ground state, carrier captured by the excited state from the wetting layer, and the supply of the wetting layer carriers. The fitted lifetimes decrease with the increase of the injection currents under gain unsaturation, slightly decrease with the decrease of inhomogeneous broadening of QDs, and increase with the increase of detuning wavelength between continuous signal and pulse signal and the increase of the pulse energy.

Influence of thermal isolating grooves on the performance of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer-type thermo-optic variable optical attenuator

Two types of silicon-on-insulator thermo-optic variable optical attenuators (VOAs) based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and a multimode-interference coupler are fabricated, one with thermal isolating grooves to improve heating efficiency and the other without Comparison of optical and electrical properties, such as insertion losses, the maximum attenuation levels and the corresponding power consumptions, and the response times, is carried out between the two types of VOAs. The comparison results Indicate that use of thermal isolating grooves leads to better values for most characteristics and is an effective way to improve the performance of Mach-Zehnder interferometer-type thermo-optic devices. (c) 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

Web应用程序运行响应时间的实验研究

性能测试是保证Web应用程序成功的重要手段 ,但是如果不能采用正确的方法测试或者不能完全理解测试结果对测试环境的依赖性 ,那么测试结果很可能会起误导作用 响应时间则是性能的一个重要指标 ,特别是从用户的角度来看 因此进行了一系列探索性的实验来研究Web应用程序运行响应时间的特性 ,用统计的方法对实验结果做了分析 ,发现Web事务的响应时间和用户数之间呈线性关系 ,测试的时间和测试配置对响应时间也有一定影响

电机转速自适应测量方法及其在DSP上的实现

本文在分析几种常用的基于编码器测速方法的基础上,提出了一种高性能的自适应速度测量方法。该方法选择一个可变的时间周期和编码器脉冲数来测量单位时间内的编码器脉冲数,再通过简单的计算得到转速的测量值。数字信号处理器(DSP)芯片集成有正交脉冲编码电路,并且数据处理速度快,实时性强。本文中提出的方法在电机控制专用DSP芯片TMS320 LF2407A上进行了实现。实验研究表明,可以在提高低速时的测速准确度的同时,提高系统的响应时间。该方法已经在自主研发的全数字伺服驱动系统中得到了成功应用。