arXiv subjects

Zhiming Chen

Publications and source records attributed to Zhiming Chen.

33 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Autonomous Social Distancing in Urban Environments using a Quadruped Robot

COVID-19 pandemic has become a global challenge faced by people all over the world. Social distancing has been proved to be an effective practice to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Against this backdrop, we propose that the surveillance robots can not only monitor but also promote social distancing. Robots can be flexibly deployed and they can take precautionary actions to remind people of practicing social distancing. In this paper, we introduce a fully autonomous surveillance robot based on a quadruped platform that can promote social distancing in complex urban environments. Specifically, to achieve autonomy, we mount multiple cameras and a 3D LiDAR on the legged robot. The robot then uses an onboard real-time social distancing detection system to track nearby pedestrian groups. Next, the robot uses a crowd-aware navigation algorithm to move freely in highly dynamic scenarios. The robot finally uses a crowd-aware routing algorithm to effectively promote social distancing by using human-friendly verbal cues to send suggestions to over-crowded pedestrians. We demonstrate and validate that our robot can be operated autonomously by conducting several experiments in various urban scenarios.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2020

PIoU Loss: Towards Accurate Oriented Object Detection in Complex Environments

Object detection using an oriented bounding box (OBB) can better target rotated objects by reducing the overlap with background areas. Existing OBB approaches are mostly built on horizontal bounding box detectors by introducing an additional angle dimension optimized by a distance loss. However, as the distance loss only minimizes the angle error of the OBB and that it loosely correlates to the IoU, it is insensitive to objects with high aspect ratios. Therefore, a novel loss, Pixels-IoU (PIoU) Loss, is formulated to exploit both the angle and IoU for accurate OBB regression. The PIoU loss is derived from IoU metric with a pixel-wise form, which is simple and suitable for both horizontal and oriented bounding box. To demonstrate its effectiveness, we evaluate the PIoU loss on both anchor-based and anchor-free frameworks. The experimental results show that PIoU loss can dramatically improve the performance of OBB detectors, particularly on objects with high aspect ratios and complex backgrounds. Besides, previous evaluation datasets did not include scenarios where the objects have high aspect ratios, hence a new dataset, Retail50K, is introduced to encourage the community to adapt OBB detectors for more complex environments.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2020

Role of rotational coherence in femtosecond-pulse-driven nitrogen ion lasing

We experimentally investigated the rotationally resolved polarization characteristics of N$_2^+$ lasing at 391 and 428 nm using a pump-seed scheme. By varying the relative angle between the linear polarizations of the pump and seed, it is found that the polarizations of the P and R branches of 391-nm lasing are counter-rotated. By contrast, both branches of 428-nm lasing remain polarized along the pump. The origin of the puzzled abnormal polarization characteristics is found based on a complete physical model that simultaneously includes the transient photoionization and the subsequent coupling among the electronic, vibrational and rotational quantum states of ions.It suggests that the cascaded resonant Raman processes following ionization create negative coherence between the rotational states of $J$ and $J$+2 in the ionic ground state X$^2Σ_g^+(ν=0)$, which leads to mirror-symmetrical polarization for the P and R branches of 391-nm lasing. Both the experiment and theory indicate that the demonstrated rotational coherence plays an extremely pivotal role in clarifying the gain mechanism of N$_2^+$ lasing and opens up the route toward quantum optics under ultrafast strong fields.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2019

Sub-cycle coherent control of ionic dynamics via transient ionization injection

We investigate the interwoven dynamic evolutions of neutral nitrogen molecules together with nitrogen ions created through transient tunnel ionization in an intense laser field. By treating the molecules as open quantum systems, it is found that considering real-time injection of ions and strong couplings among their electronic states, nitrogen molecular ions are primarily populated in the electronically excited states, rather than staying in the ground state as predicted by the well-known tunneling theory. The unexpected result is attributed to sub-cycle switch-on of time-dependent polarization by transient ionization and dynamic Stark shift mediated near-resonant multiphoton transitions. Their combined contribution also causes that the vibrational distribution of N$_2^+$ does not comply with Franck-Condon principle. These findings corroborate the mechanism of nitrogen molecular ion lasing and are likely to be universal. The present work opens a new route to explore the important role of transient ionization injection in strong-field induced non-equilibrium dynamics.

physics.atom-ph↗

arXiv2018

A Direct Imaging Method for Half-Space Inverse Elastic Scattering Problems

We propose a direct imaging method based on the reverse time migration to reconstruct extended obstacles in the half space with finite aperture elastic scattering data at a fixed frequency. We prove the resolution of the reconstruction method in terms of the aperture and the depth of the obstacle embedded in the half space. The resolution analysis is studied by virtue of the point spread function and implies that the imaginary part of the cross-correlation imaging function always peaks on the upper boundary of the obstacle. Numerical examples are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the method.

math.NA↗

arXiv2017

A finite element method for elliptic problems with observational boundary data

In this paper we propose a finite element method for solving elliptic equations with the observational Dirichlet boundary data which may subject to random noises. The method is based on the weak formulation of Lagrangian multiplier. We show the convergence of the random finite element error in expectation and, when the noise is sub-Gaussian, in the Orlicz 2- norm which implies the probability that the finite element error estimates are violated decays exponentially. Numerical examples are included.

math.NA↗

arXiv2017

Stochastic Convergence of A Nonconforming Finite Element Method for the Thin Plate Spline Smoother for Observational Data

The thin plate spline smoother is a classical model for fnding a smooth function from the knowledge of its observation at scattered locations which may have random noises. We consider a nonconforming Morley finite element method to approximate the model. We prove the stochastic convergence of the finite element method which characterizes the tail property of the probability distribution function of the finite element error. We also propose a self-consistent iterative algorithm to determine the smoothing parameter based on our theoretical analysis. Numerical examples are included to confirm the theoretical analysis and to show the competitive performance of the self- consistent algorithm for finding the smoothing parameter.

math.NA↗

arXiv2016

Storage and retrieval of (3+1)-dimensional weak-light bullets and vortices in a coherent atomic gas

A robust light storage and retrieval (LSR) in high dimensions is highly desirable for light and quantum information processing. However, most schemes on LSR realized up to now encounter problems due to not only dissipation, but also dispersion and diffraction, which make LSR with a very low fidelity. Here we propose a scheme to achieve a robust storage and retrieval of weak nonlinear high-dimensional light pulses in a coherent atomic gas via electromagnetically induced transparency. We show that it is available to produce stable (3+1)-dimensional light bullets and vortices, which have very attractive physical property and are suitable to obtain a robust LSR in high dimensions.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2016

Trapping of Weak Signal Pulses by Soliton and Trajectory Control in a Coherent Atomic Gas

We propose a method for trapping weak signal pulses by soliton and realizing its trajectory control via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). The system we consider is a cold, coherent atomic gas with a tripod or multipod level configuration. We show that, due to the giant enhancement of Kerr nonlinearity contributed by EIT, several weak signal pulses can be effectively trapped by a soliton and cotravel stably with ultraslow propagating velocity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the trajectories of the soliton and the trapped signal pulses can be manipulated by using a Stern-Gerlach gradient magnetic field. As a result, the soliton and the trapped signal pulses display a Stern-Gerlach deflection and both of them can bypass an obstacle together. The results predicted here may be used to design all-optical switching at very low light level.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2016

Stern-Gerlach effect of multi-component ultraslow optical solitons via electromagnetically induced transparency

We propose a scheme to exhibit a Stern-Gerlach effect of n-component (n > 2) high-dimensional ultraslow optical solitons in a coherent atomic system with (n + 1)-pod level configuration via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). Based on Maxwell-Bloch equations, we derive coupled (3+1)-dimensional nonlinear Schrodinger equations governing the spatial-temporal evolution of n probe-field envelopes. We show that under EIT condition significant deflections of the n components of coupled ultraslow optical solitons can be achieved by using a Stern-Gerlach gradient magnetic field. The stability of the ultraslow optical solitons can be realized by an optical lattice potential contributed from a far-detuned laser field.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2015

Phaseless Imaging by Reverse Time Migration: Acoustic Waves

We propose a reliable direct imaging method based on the reverse time migration for finding extended obstacles with phaseless total field data. We prove that the imaging resolution of the method is essentially the same as the imaging results using the scattering data with full phase information. The imaginary part of the cross-correlation imaging functional always peaks on the boundary of the obstacle. Numerical experiments are included to illustrate the powerful imaging quality.

math.NA↗

arXiv2014

Detection and classification from electromagnetic induction data

In this paper we introduce an efficient algorithm for identifying conductive objects using induction data derived from eddy currents. Our method consists of first extracting geometric features from the induction data and then matching them to precomputed data for known objects from a given dictionary. The matching step relies on fundamental properties of conductive polarization tensors and new invariants introduced in this paper. A new shape identification scheme is introduced and studied. We test it numerically in the presence of measurement noise. Stability and resolution capabilities of the proposed identification algorithm are quantified in numerical simulations.

math.AP↗

arXiv2014

Reverse Time Migration for Reconstructing Extended Obstacles in Planar Acoustic Waveguides

We propose a new reverse time migration method for reconstructing extended obstacles in the planar waveguide using acoustic waves at a fixed frequency. We prove the resolution of the reconstruction method in terms of the aperture and the thickness of the waveguide. The resolution analysis implies that the imaginary part of the cross-correlation imaging function is always positive and thus may have better stability properties. Numerical experiments are included to illustrate the powerful imaging quality and to confirm our resolution results.

physics.class-ph↗

arXiv2014

Reverse Time Migration for Extended Obstacles: Acoustic Waves

We consider the resolution of the single frequency reverse time migration (RTM) method for extended targets without the assumption of the validation of geometric optics approximation. The resolution analysis, which applies in both penetrable and non-penetrable obstacles with sound soft or impedance boundary condition on the boundary of the obstacle, implies that the imaginary part of the cross-correlation imaging functional is always positive and thus may have better stability properties. Numerical experiments are included to illustrate the powerful imaging quality and to confirm our resolution results.

math-ph↗

arXiv2013

Target Detection and Characterization from Electromagnetic Induction Data

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the field of nondestructive testing by eddy currents. We provide a mathematical analysis and a numerical framework for simulating the imaging of arbitrarily shaped small volume conductive inclusions from electromagnetic induction data. We derive, with proof, a small-volume expansion of the eddy current data measured away from the conductive inclusion. The formula involves two polarization tensors: one associated with the magnetic contrast and the second with the conductivity of the inclusion. Based on this new formula, we design a location search algorithm. We include in this paper a discussion on data sampling, noise reduction, and on probability of detection. We provide numerical examples that support our findings.

math.AP↗