This work demonstrates universal dynamic perching capabilities for quadrotors of various sizes and on surfaces with different orientations. By employing a non-dimensionalization framework and deep reinforcement learning, we systematically assessed how robot size and surface orientation affect landing capabilities. We hypothesized that maintaining geometric proportions across different robot scales ensures consistent perching behavior, which was validated in both simulation and experimental tests. Additionally, we investigated the effects of joint stiffness and damping in the landing gear on perching behaviors and performance. While joint stiffness had minimal impact, joint damping ratios influenced landing success under vertical approaching conditions. The study also identified a critical velocity threshold necessary for successful perching, determined by the robot's maneuverability and leg geometry. Overall, this research advances robotic perching capabilities, offering insights into the role of mechanical design and scaling effects, and lays the groundwork for future drone autonomy and operational efficiency in unstructured environments.

Phoebus is an infrastructure for improving end-to-end throughput in high-bandwidth, long-distance networks by using a "session layer" protocol and "gateways" in the network. Phoebus has the ability to dynamically allocate network resources and to use segmentspecific transport protocols between gateways, as well as to apply other performance-improving techniques on behalf of the user.

Abstract Scientific applications are evolving rapidly and rely heavily on the network for data movement, communication, control and result collection. This reliance on the network has increased the breadth of consumers of network status information while the increasing complexity of networks has expanded the diversity of the producers of this information. To enable this wide variety of producers and consumers to effectively interoperate, relevant standards are paramount. In this paper, we present a general model used to represent both network measurements collected from performance tools as well as describing the physical and logical characteristics of the underlying network. This system is currently being standardized in the Open Grid Forum to enable other uses within the wider grid and distributed computing community (Open Grid Forum, http://www.ogf.org/ ). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A non-trivial challenge in high performance, cluster computing is the communication overhead introduced by the cluster interconnect. A common strategy for addressing this challenge is the use of communication-computation overlapping. In this paper, we introduce Gravel, a portable communication library designed to inter-operate with MPI for improving communication-computation overlapping. Selected MPI calls are semi-automatically replaced by Gravel calls only in key locations in an application where performance is critical. Gravel separates the data transfers from the handshake messages, enabling application developers to utilize Remote Data Memory Access (RDMA) directly, whether the data exchange scheme of their application is pure one-sided, or a more traditional two-sided. The Gravel API is much simpler than existing low level libraries and details (i.e., pointers) are hidden from the application layer so Gravel is usable in FORTRAN applications. This paper presents an overview of Gravel.

Phoebus is a project whose goal is to allow legacy applications to utilize high bandwidth connections over Internet2's Hybrid Packet Optical Infrastructure (HOPI) backbone. Phoebus works by breaking a single end-to-end TCP connection into a series of transport layer connections. The end connections (from Internet2 edge nodes to the end hosts) still use TCP. However, the connection over the Internet2 backbone is handled by server software running on the edge nodes. These servers can then choose the best transport protocol and protocol settings for sending the data across Internet2. Using this service, end users are no longer required to modify a variety of TCP settings in order to achieve good performance over long distances. The end users only need to be concerned about ensuring adequate speed across the path between themselves and the Internet2 edge nodes. In many cases, the default TCP settings will prove adequate for achieving acceptable speeds.