Data-Driven Approach to Simulating Realistic Human Joint Constraints

Modeling realistic human joint limits is important for applications involving physical human-robot interaction. However, setting appropriate human joint limits is challenging because it is pose-dependent: the range of joint motion varies depending on the positions of other bones. The paper introduces a new technique to accurately simulate human joint limits in physics simulation. We propose to learn an implicit equation to represent the boundary of valid human joint configurations from real human data. The function in the implicit equation is represented by a fully connected neural network whose gradients can be efficiently computed via back-propagation. Using gradients, we can efficiently enforce realistic human joint limits through constraint forces in a physics engine or as constraints in an optimization problem.Comment: To appear at ICRA 2018; 6 pages, 9 figures; for associated video, see https://youtu.be/wzkoE7wCbu

Hyperon Axial Charges in Two-Flavor Chiral Perturbation Theory

We use two-flavor heavy baryon chiral perturbation theory to investigate the isovector axial charges of the spin one-half hyperons. Expressions for these hyperon axial charges are derived at next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion. We utilize phenomenological and lattice QCD inputs to assess the convergence of the two-flavor theory, which appears to be best for cascades.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figures, published versio

Chip-scale cavity optomechanics in lithium niobate

We develop a chip-scale cavity optomechanical system in single-crystal lithium niobate that exhibits high optical quality factors and a large frequency-quality product as high as $3.6\times 10^{12}$ Hz at room temperature and atmosphere. The excellent optical and mechanical properties together with the strong optomechanical coupling allow us to efficiently excite the coherent regenerative optomechanical oscillation operating at 375.8 MHz with a threshold power of 174 ${\rm \mu W}$ in the air. The demonstrated lithium niobate optomechanical device enables great potential for achieving electro-optic-mechanical hybrid systems for broad applications in sensing, metrology, and quantum physics