Demonstration Research into Eco-environment Rehabilitation on the Loess Plateau

As part of the 'Action Plan for the Development of Western China,' the project is conducted by the Institute of Soil & Water Conservation under CAS and the Ministry of Water Resources. It focuses on the rehabilitation of the regional eco-environment, such as a large-scale afforestation drive on enclosed hillsides, efforts to turn the reclaimed farmland on steep mountain slopes into woodland and pastureland, the greening of mountainous areas and speeding up the restoration tempo of the original vegetation on the Loess Plateau. An experiment & demonstration zone has been co-established by the CAS Institute and the provincial Government of Shaanxi. Located in a hillygully region sprawling in the heartland of the Plateau,the zone includes nine townships, covering 707 square kilometers in total area. Since its start in 2000, the project has scored remarkable progress:……

An application of network modeling method to scientific research and demonstration platform-Connector load analysis

A new approach referred as“the network modeling method”was developed by the authors to analyze the behaviors of marine structures.In this paper the method is briefly described and applied to predict the loads acting on the connectors between the two modules of the Scientific Research and Demonstration Platform(SRDP),which was deployed in a complicated wave environment near islands and reefs in South China Sea.Based on this method,the response amplitude operators(RAOs)of the connector loads of the SRDP in regular waves,and the time variations of the connector loads of the SRDP in an on-site measured random sea state are predicted and presented.The significant stresses at 20 spots of the local connection structure induced by the connector loads in the sea state are further calculated.The comparisons between the predicted and the on-site measured stresses confirm that the network modeling method is feasible to some extent and especially useful for design of the connectors’arrangement,estimation of the connector loads and the related structural safety of a multi-module floating structure in early design stage.

WARA-PS:a research arena for public safety demonstrations and autonomous collaborative rescue robotics experimentation

A research arena(WARA-PS)for sensing,data fusion,user interaction,planning and control of collaborative autonomous aerial and surface vehicles in public safety applications is presented.The objective is to demonstrate scientific discoveries and to generate new directions for future research on autonomous systems for societal challenges.The enabler is a computational infrastructure with a core system architecture for industrial and academic collaboration.This includes a control and command system together with a framework for planning and executing tasks for unmanned surface vehicles and aerial vehicles.The motivating application for the demonstration is marine search and rescue operations.A state-of-art delegation framework for the mission planning together with three specific applications is also presented.The first one concerns model predictive control for cooperative rendezvous of autonomous unmanned aerial and surface vehicles.The second project is about learning to make safe real-time decisions under uncertainty for autonomous vehicles,and the third one is on robust terrain-aided navigation through sensor fusion and virtual reality tele-operation to support a GPS-free positioning system in marine environments.The research results have been experimentally evaluated and demonstrated to industry and public sector audiences at a marine test facility.It would be most difficult to do experiments on this large scale without the WARA-PS research arena.Furthermore,these demonstrator activities have resulted in effective research dissemination with high public visibility,business impact and new research collaborations between academia and industry.