Design Optimization for Rough Terrain Traversal Using a Compliant, Continuum-Joint, Quadruped Robot.

Legged robots have the potential to cover terrain not accessible to wheel-based robots and vehicles. This makes them better suited to perform tasks such as search and rescue in real-world unstructured environments. In addition, pneumatically-actuated, compliant robots may be more suited than their rigid counterparts to real-world unstructured environments with humans where unintentional contact or impact may occur.

US Food Industry Progress Toward Salt Reduction, 2009-2018.

To determine the extent to which reductions in sodium during the National Salt Reduction Initiative (NSRI) target-setting period (2009-2014) continued after 2014. We used the NSRI Packaged Food Database, which links products in the top 80% of US packaged food sales to nutrition information, to assess the proportion of products meeting the NSRI targets and the sales-weighted mean sodium density (mg/100 g) of 54 packaged food categories between 2009 and 2018. There was an 8.

Using First Principles for Deep Learning and Model-Based Control of Soft Robots.

Model-based optimal control of soft robots may enable compliant, underdamped platforms to operate in a repeatable fashion and effectively accomplish tasks that are otherwise impossible for soft robots. Unfortunately, developing accurate analytical dynamic models for soft robots is time-consuming, difficult, and error-prone. Deep learning presents an alternative modeling approach that only requires a time history of system inputs and system states, which can be easily measured or estimated.

Model Reference Predictive Adaptive Control for Large-Scale Soft Robots.

Past work has shown model predictive control (MPC) to be an effective strategy for controlling continuum joint soft robots using basic lumped-parameter models. However, the inaccuracies of these models often mean that an integral control scheme must be combined with MPC. In this paper we present a novel dynamic model formulation for continuum joint soft robots that is more accurate than previous models yet remains tractable for fast MPC.

Impact of a Municipal Policy Restricting Trans Fatty Acid Use in New York City Restaurants on Serum Trans Fatty Acid Levels in Adults.

Objectives: To estimate the impact of the 2006 policy restricting use of trans fatty acids (TFAs) in New York City restaurants on change in serum TFA concentrations in New York City adults.

Methods: Two cross-sectional population-based New York City Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys conducted in 2004 (n = 212) and 2013-2014 (n = 247) provided estimates of serum TFA exposure and average frequency of weekly restaurant meals. We estimated the geometric mean of the sum of serum TFAs by year and restaurant meal frequency by using linear regression.