Autonomous Air Refueling Path Planning for UAVs with ArrayFire

John MelonakosCase Studies Leave a Comment

Researchers from the Aeronautics and Space Technologies Institute of the Turkish Air Force Academy credit ArrayFire in a paper published in the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems. The paper is titled “Sigmoid Limiting Functions and Potential Field Based Autonomous Air Refueling Path Planning for UAVs” and showcases ArrayFire in a real-time application of UAV path planning. Summary This paper builds on previous approaches for autonomous air-refueling (AAR) path planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Deficiencies from previous approaches, like smooth maneuvers in the tanker approach and the boundary functions of the potential zones, have been handled. Furthermore, special pattern parameters are added to the approach which makes it suitable for different kind of UAVs that has variable flight speed and turn …

ArrayFire v3.8.2 Release

Umar ArshadAnnouncements, ArrayFire 2 Comments

We are pleased to announce another patch release of the ArrayFire library. This release like all patch releases concentrates on bug fixes and minor performance improvements. You can access the new version here: installers and source code. CUDA Version Updates We have also improved the compatibility of the ArrayFire library to the latest CUDA toolkits and improved the build process and added additional build configurations so that you can customize the library for your specific application. Better Linux Experience We have updated the Debian and Ubuntu installers to reduce the binary size and reduced the setup process for the users. You can now download the ArrayFire library using the following commands on a Debian/Ubuntu system. apt-key adv –fetch-key https://repo.arrayfire.com/GPG-PUB-KEY-ARRAYFIRE-2020.PUB echo …

Classification of Topological Discrepancies in 3D Printing with ArrayFire

John MelonakosCase Studies Leave a Comment

Researchers from the Palo Alto Research Center in California credit ArrayFire in a paper published in the Journal of Computer-Aided Design. The paper is titled “A Classification of Topological Discrepancies in Additive Manufacturing” and showcases a novel approach for classification of local shape deviations in topological terms than can be used to improve 3D printing processes. The OpenCL version of ArrayFire on an NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPU was used for FFT-based convolutions and superlevel set operations. A design’s manufacturability via an additive manufacturing (AM) process is largely determined by the AM machine’s ability to print the shape within ‘acceptable limits’. The notion of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing has been used successfully to define and check these limits for conventionally manufactured …

Call for ArrayFire User Stories

John MelonakosAnnouncements, Case Studies Leave a Comment

There’s a sweet ArrayFire T-Shirt for anyone that submits a write-up of your success with the ArrayFire library. We’ve been working on a new website for our community, and we’d love to hear what you’re doing with the library. Also, your stories are important to the ArrayFire open source project in that we share them with project funders to motivate their continued investment in our community and library development. Please take some time to help us by sharing your success. We recognize that most people are not constantly focused on performance improvement. Most of you have ArrayFire in your toolbelt to accelerate code when your application demands excellent performance. If you have found it helpful in a project, please consider …

Checkpoint and Restore Emacs into Immortality

Gallagher PryorComputing Topics, Education, Open Source 1 Comment

TL;DR. An Emacs death is horrible to endure. Checkpoint Emacs’ state at regular intervals to bring it back to life with CRIU. Yup, CRIU can handle Emacs, now! The steps, nowadays, are simple and this post quickly outlines the constraints and the commands to make it work. This post is short and to the point. The build choices, configurations, etc. have been stripped again and again to make things as simple as possible. Also, these instructions are given for a recent Ubuntu in order to be more canonical 😄 Make a Place for bins at ~/.bin Grab an Emacs without DBUS Grab CRIU Configure Emacs Your immortal Emacs will be in daemon mode and will talk with emacsclients over a …

Improved Interpretation of Pneumonia Malformation in Chest X-Rays with ArrayFire

John MelonakosCase Studies Leave a Comment

Researchers from the University of Calcutta in India credit ArrayFire in a paper published in the Applied Soft Computing Journal. The paper is titled “Chest X-ray enhancement to interpret pneumonia malformation based on fuzzy soft set and Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence” and showcases an algorithm that is qualitatively and quantitatively improved in both accuracy and execution time over other common methods used in X-ray enhancement. Research Summary The details of the algorithm development are described in the paper. Figure 1 below shows the basic structure of the algorithm: the separate processing of the original image and its complement, the use of fussy soft sets, the use of Dempster-Shafer theory, and the ultimate creation of the enhanced image. The results of …

Learn Pipes via Old Serial Terminals with Your Kid

Gallagher PryorEducation Leave a Comment

TL;DR. A lab for STEM middle school students using vintage serial terminals to illustrate that: computers communicate by sending numbers, numbers arrive one by one in order (serial), numbers travel over wires (pipes). These notes include links to materials and instructions that take you and a student through (1) connecting a serial terminal to a computer, (2) configuration, (3) playing with pipes by sending messages, and (4) logging into a serial Linux console to see how pipes scale! This is the latest in our series of education-with-old-hardware posts beginning with “Build a 486 Bootloader with Your Kid“. Required Materials A serial terminal like one of: A Wyse terminal (link to eBay). This is the best because it uses standard serial. …

Fast Atom Rearrangement in Optical Tweezer Traps

Woojun LeeArrayFire, Case Studies Leave a Comment

“With ArrayFire, we got the best performance of the software for our needs, breaking the limit of a challenging experiment in atomic physics. We also simply saved a lot of time so that we can further develop our research.” -Woojun Lee, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) A quantum computer is very different than a conventional computer. It utilizes the quantum mechanical properties of matter. It is thought to have the potential to far outperform conventional computers in certain types of computations. One way to realize a quantum computer is to trap many single atoms in a vacuum chamber and control them with modulated lights. As the number of atoms gets larger, controlling them also requires more and more computational …

Build a 486 Bootloader with Your Kid

Gallagher PryorEducation 1 Comment

TL;DR. A lab at an elementary school level to illustrate to children that: computers must be instructed, instruction is stored on media, the most basic instruction is a series of numbers. These notes include links to materials and instructions that take you and a student through (1) starting linux on a vintage 486 computer, (2) assembling a boot-loader, (3) writing it to a floppy, and (4) starting a computer to show a message. Intro I built a bootloader with my children and share our work in this post. It is a lab, at an elementary school level, that you can repeat for yourself and share with the rising generation. The intent of this activity is to drive home the idea …

High-energy Laser-pulse Self-compression in Short Gas-filled Fibers

Tucker YazdaniArrayFire, Case Studies Leave a Comment

Researchers in physics and physical chemistry from the University of Southampton credit ArrayFire in a scientific report for its help in drastically reducing computation time of linear algebra, vectored mathematical operations, and fast Fourier transforms (FFT). The report examines high-energy laser pulse self-compression in short gas-filled fibers. Research Abstract From the article in Physical Review, the following abstract summarizes the research: We examine the spatio-temporal compression of energetic femtosecond laser pules within short gas-filled fibers. The study is undertaken using an advanced nonlinear pulse propagation model based on a multimode generalized nonlinear Schr ̈odinger equation that has been modified to include plasma effects. Plasma defocusing and linear propagation effects are shown to be the dominant processes within a highly dynamical …