Evaluating Autonomous Urban Perception and Planning in a 1/10th Scale MiniCity.

We present the MiniCity, a multi-vehicle evaluation platform for testing perception hardware and software for autonomous vehicles. The MiniCity is a 1/10th scale city consisting of realistic urban scenery, intersections, and multiple fully autonomous 1/10th scale vehicles with state-of-the-art sensors and algorithms. The MiniCity is used to evaluate and test perception algorithms both upstream and downstream in the autonomy stack, in urban driving scenarios such as occluded intersections and avoiding multiple vehicles.

Social behavior for autonomous vehicles.

Deployment of autonomous vehicles on public roads promises increased efficiency and safety. It requires understanding the intent of human drivers and adapting to their driving styles. Autonomous vehicles must also behave in safe and predictable ways without requiring explicit communication.

Adaptive Q control for tapping-mode nanoscanning using a piezoactuated bimorph probe.

A new approach, called adaptive Q control, for tapping-mode atomic force microscopy (AFM) is introduced and implemented on a homemade AFM setup utilizing a laser Doppler vibrometer and a piezoactuated bimorph probe. In standard Q control, the effective Q factor of the scanning probe is adjusted prior to the scanning depending on the application. However, there is a trade-off in setting the effective Q factor of an AFM probe.