Search results for: monitoring tool
1335 Design and Motion Control of a Two-Wheel Inverted Pendulum Robot
Authors: Shiuh-Jer Huang, Su-Shean Chen, Sheam-Chyun Lin
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Two-wheel inverted pendulum robot (TWIPR) is designed with two-hub DC motors for human riding and motion control evaluation. In order to measure the tilt angle and angular velocity of the inverted pendulum robot, accelerometer and gyroscope sensors are chosen. The mobile robot’s moving position and velocity were estimated based on DC motor built in hall sensors. The control kernel of this electric mobile robot is designed with embedded Arduino Nano microprocessor. A handle bar was designed to work as steering mechanism. The intelligent model-free fuzzy sliding mode control (FSMC) was employed as the main control algorithm for this mobile robot motion monitoring with different control purpose adjustment. The intelligent controllers were designed for balance control, and moving speed control purposes of this robot under different operation conditions and the control performance were evaluated based on experimental results.
Keywords: Balance control, speed control, intelligent controller and two wheel inverted pendulum.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 11751334 New Exact Three-Wave Solutions for the (2+1)-Dimensional Asymmetric Nizhnik-Novikov-Veselov System
Authors: Fadi Awawdeh, O. Alsayyed
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New exact three-wave solutions including periodic two-solitary solutions and doubly periodic solitary solutions for the (2+1)-dimensional asymmetric Nizhnik-Novikov- Veselov (ANNV) system are obtained using Hirota's bilinear form and generalized three-wave type of ansatz approach. It is shown that the generalized three-wave method, with the help of symbolic computation, provides an e¤ective and powerful mathematical tool for solving high dimensional nonlinear evolution equations in mathematical physics.
Keywords: Soliton Solution, Hirota Bilinear Method, ANNV System.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15111333 Determination of Water Pollution and Water Quality with Decision Trees
Authors: Çiğdem Bakır, Mecit Yüzkat
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With the increasing emphasis on water quality worldwide, the search for and expanding the market for new and intelligent monitoring systems has increased. The current method is the laboratory process, where samples are taken from bodies of water, and tests are carried out in laboratories. This method is time-consuming, a waste of manpower and uneconomical. To solve this problem, we used machine learning methods to detect water pollution in our study. We created decision trees with the Orange3 software used in the study and tried to determine all the factors that cause water pollution. An automatic prediction model based on water quality was developed by taking many model inputs such as water temperature, pH, transparency, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, and ammonia nitrogen with machine learning methods. The proposed approach consists of three stages: Preprocessing of the data used, feature detection and classification. We tried to determine the success of our study with different accuracy metrics and the results were presented comparatively. In addition, we achieved approximately 98% success with the decision tree.
Keywords: Decision tree, water quality, water pollution, machine learning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2601332 A Development of Personalized Edutainment Contents through Storytelling
Authors: Min Kyeong Cha, Ju Yeon Mun, Seong Baeg Kim
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Recently, ‘play of learning’ becomes important and is emphasized as a useful learning tool. Therefore, interest in edutainment contents is growing. Storytelling is considered first as a method that improves the transmission of information and learner's interest when planning edutainment contents. In this study, we designed edutainment contents in the form of an adventure game that applies the storytelling method. This content provides questions and items constituted dynamically and reorganized learning contents through analysis of test results. It allows learners to solve various questions through effective iterative learning. As a result, the learners can reach mastery learning.
Keywords: Storytelling, edutainment, mastery learning, computer operating principle.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18451331 Functionally Graded MEMS Piezoelectric Energy Harvester with Magnetic Tip Mass
Authors: M. Derayatifar, M. Packirisamy, R.B. Bhat
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Role of piezoelectric energy harvesters has gained interest in supplying power for micro devices such as health monitoring sensors. In this study, in order to enhance the piezoelectric energy harvesting in capturing energy from broader range of excitation and to improve the mechanical and electrical responses, bimorph piezoelectric energy harvester beam with magnetic mass attached at the end is presented. In view of overcoming the brittleness of piezo-ceramics, functionally graded piezoelectric layers comprising of both piezo-ceramic and piezo-polymer is employed. The nonlinear equations of motions are derived using energy method and then solved analytically using perturbation scheme. The frequency responses of the forced vibration case are obtained for the near resonance case. The nonlinear dynamic responses of the MEMS scaled functionally graded piezoelectric energy harvester in this paper may be utilized in different design scenarios to increase the efficiency of the harvester.
Keywords: Energy harvesting, functionally graded piezoelectric material, magnetic force, MEMS piezoelectric, perturbation method.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9101330 Development of NOx Emission Model for a Tangentially Fired Acid Incinerator
Authors: Elangeshwaran Pathmanathan, Rosdiazli Ibrahim, Vijanth Sagayan Asirvadam
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This paper aims to develop a NOx emission model of an acid gas incinerator using Nelder-Mead least squares support vector regression (LS-SVR). Malaysia DOE is actively imposing the Clean Air Regulation to mandate the installation of analytical instrumentation known as Continuous Emission Monitoring System (CEMS) to report emission level online to DOE . As a hardware based analyzer, CEMS is expensive, maintenance intensive and often unreliable. Therefore, software predictive technique is often preferred and considered as a feasible alternative to replace the CEMS for regulatory compliance. The LS-SVR model is built based on the emissions from an acid gas incinerator that operates in a LNG Complex. Simulated Annealing (SA) is first used to determine the initial hyperparameters which are then further optimized based on the performance of the model using Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm. The LS-SVR model is shown to outperform a benchmark model based on backpropagation neural networks (BPNN) in both training and testing data.Keywords: artificial neural networks, industrial pollution, predictive algorithms, support vector machines
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19751329 Efficient Tools for Managing Uncertainties in Design and Operation of Engineering Structures
Authors: J. Menčík
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Actual load, material characteristics and other quantities often differ from the design values. This can cause worse function, shorter life or failure of a civil engineering structure, a machine, vehicle or another appliance. The paper shows main causes of the uncertainties and deviations and presents a systematic approach and efficient tools for their elimination or mitigation of consequences. Emphasis is put on the design stage, which is most important for reliability ensuring. Principles of robust design and important tools are explained, including FMEA, sensitivity analysis and probabilistic simulation methods. The lifetime prediction of long-life objects can be improved by long-term monitoring of the load response and damage accumulation in operation. The condition evaluation of engineering structures, such as bridges, is often based on visual inspection and verbal description. Here, methods based on fuzzy logic can reduce the subjective influences.Keywords: Design, fuzzy methods, Monte Carlo, reliability, robust design, sensitivity analysis, simulation, uncertainties.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18151328 A Self Configuring System for Object Recognition in Color Images
Authors: Michela Lecca
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System MEMORI automatically detects and recognizes rotated and/or rescaled versions of the objects of a database within digital color images with cluttered background. This task is accomplished by means of a region grouping algorithm guided by heuristic rules, whose parameters concern some geometrical properties and the recognition score of the database objects. This paper focuses on the strategies implemented in MEMORI for the estimation of the heuristic rule parameters. This estimation, being automatic, makes the system a highly user-friendly tool.
Keywords: Automatic object recognition, clustering, content based image retrieval system, image segmentation, region adjacency graph, region grouping.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14081327 Can EEG Test Helps in Identifying Brain Tumor?
Authors: M. Sharanreddy, P. K. Kulkarni
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Brain tumor is inherently serious and life-threatening disease. Brain tumor builds the intracranial pressure in the brain, by shifting the brain or pushing against the skull, and also damaging nerves and healthy brain tissues. This intracranial pressure affects and interferes with normal brain functionality, which results in generation of abnormal electrical activities from brain. With recent development in the medical engineering and instruments, EEG instruments are able to record the brain electric activities with high accuracy, which establishes EEG as a primary tool for diagnosing the brain abnormalities. Research scholars and general physicians, often face difficulty in understanding EEG patterns. This paper presents the EEG patterns associated with brain tumor by combing medicine theory and neurologist experience. Paper also explains the pros-cons of the EEG based brain tumor identification.
Keywords: Brain tumor, Electroencephalogram (EEG).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 102941326 Automatic Extraction of Arbitrarily Shaped Buildings from VHR Satellite Imagery
Authors: Evans Belly, Imdad Rizvi, M. M. Kadam
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Satellite imagery is one of the emerging technologies which are extensively utilized in various applications such as detection/extraction of man-made structures, monitoring of sensitive areas, creating graphic maps etc. The main approach here is the automated detection of buildings from very high resolution (VHR) optical satellite images. Initially, the shadow, the building and the non-building regions (roads, vegetation etc.) are investigated wherein building extraction is mainly focused. Once all the landscape is collected a trimming process is done so as to eliminate the landscapes that may occur due to non-building objects. Finally the label method is used to extract the building regions. The label method may be altered for efficient building extraction. The images used for the analysis are the ones which are extracted from the sensors having resolution less than 1 meter (VHR). This method provides an efficient way to produce good results. The additional overhead of mid processing is eliminated without compromising the quality of the output to ease the processing steps required and time consumed.Keywords: Building detection, shadow detection, landscape generation, label, partitioning, very high resolution satellite imagery.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8371325 Enhancement of Cement Mortar Mechanical Properties with Replacement of Seashell Powder
Authors: Abdoullah Namdar, Fadzil Mat Yahaya
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Many synthetic additives have been using for improve cement mortar and concrete characteristics, but natural additive is a friendly environment option. The quantity of (2% and 4%) seashell powder has been replaced in cement mortar, and compared with plain cement mortar in early age of 7 days. The strain gauges have been installed on beams and cube, for monitoring fluctuation of flexural and compressive strength. Main objective of this paper is to study effect of linear static force on flexural and compressive strength of modified cement mortar. The results have been indicated that the replacement of appropriate proportion of seashell powder enhances cement mortar mechanical properties. The replacement of 2% seashell causes improvement of deflection, time to failure and maximum load to failure on concrete beam and cube, the same occurs for compressive modulus elasticity. Increase replacement of seashell to 4% reduces all flexural strength, compressive strength and strain of cement mortar.
Keywords: Compressive strength, flexural strength, compressive modulus elasticity, time to failure, deflection.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 34501324 The Suitability of GPS Receivers Update Rates for Navigation Applications
Authors: Ahmad Abbas Al-Ameen Salih, Nur Liyana Afiqah Che Ahmad Zaini, Amzari Zhahir
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Navigation is the processes of monitoring and controlling the movement of an object from one place to another. Currently, Global Positioning System (GPS) is the main navigation system used all over the world for navigation applications. GPS receiver receives signals from at least three satellites to locate and display itself. Displayed positioning information is updated continuously. Update rate is the number of times per second that a display is illuminated. The speed of update is governed by receiver update rate. A higher update rate decreases display lag time and improves distance measurements and tracking especially when moving on a curvy route. The majority of GPS receivers used nowadays are updated every second continuously. This period is considered reasonable for some applications while it is long relatively for high speed applications. In this paper, the suitability and feasibility of GPS receiver with different update rates will be evaluated for various applications according to the level of speed and update rate needed for particular applications.Keywords: Navigation, Global Positioning System (GPS), GPS receiver, Update rate, Refresh rate, Satellite navigation, High speed GPS receiver.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 77141323 Using Metacognitive Strategies in Reading Comprehension by EFL Students
Authors: Simin Sadeghi-Saeb
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Metacognitive strategies consistently play important roles in reading comprehension. The metacognitive strategies involve the active monitoring and consequent regulation and orchestration of the cognitive processes in relation to the cognitive objects or data on which they bear. In this paper, the effect of instruction in using metacognitive strategies on reading academic materials, type of metacognitive strategies were mostly used by college university students before and after the instruction and the level they use those strategies before and after the instruction were studied. For these aims, 50 female college students were chosen. Then, they were divided randomly into two groups, experimental and control groups. At first session, students in both groups took the standard TOFEL exam. After the pre-test had been administered, the instruction began. After treatment, a post-test was taken. It is useful to state that after pre-test and post-test the same questionnaire was handed to the students of experimental group. The results of this research show that the instruction of metacognitive strategies has positive effect on the students' scores in reading comprehension tests. Furthermore, it showed that before and after the instruction, the students' usage of metacognitive strategies changed. Also, it demonstrated that the instruction affected the students' level of metacognitive strategies' usage.
Keywords: EFL students, English reading comprehension, instruction, metacognitive strategies.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15831322 Alternative Approach toward Waste Treatment: Biodrying for Solid Waste in Malaysia
Authors: Nurul' Ain Ab Jalil, Hassan Basri
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This paper reviews the objectives, methods and results of previous studies on biodrying of solid waste in several countries. Biodrying of solid waste is a novel technology in developing countries such as in Malaysia where high moisture content in organic waste makes the segregation process for recycling purposes complicated and diminishes the calorific value for the use of fuel source. In addition, the high moisture content also encourages the breeding of vectors and disease-bearing animals. From the laboratory results, the average moisture content of organic waste, paper, plastics and metals are 58.17%, 37.93%, 29.79% and 1.03% respectively for UKM campus. Biodrying of solid waste is a simple method of waste treatment as well as a cost-efficient technology to dry the solid waste. The process depends on temperature monitoring and air flow control along with the natural biodegradable process of organic waste. This review shows that the biodrying of solid waste method has high potential in treatment and recycling of solid waste, be useful for biodrying study and implementation in Malaysia.
Keywords: Biodrying of solid waste, Organic waste, Fuel source.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19781321 Investigating the Possible use of Session Initiation Protocol for Extending Mobility Service to the Biomedical Engineers
Authors: Anwar Sadat
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Today, the Internet based communication has widen the opportunity of event monitoring system in the medical field. There is always a need of analyzing and designing secure and reliable mobile communication between the hospital and biomedical engineers mobile units. This study has been carried out to find possible solution using SIP-based event notification for alerting the technical staff about the Biomedical Device (BMD) status and Patients treatment session. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) can be used to create a medical event notification system. SIP can work on a variety of devices. Its adoption as the protocol of choice for third generation wireless networks allows for a robust and scalable environment. One of the advantages of SIP is that it supports personal mobility through the separation of user addressing and device addressing. The solution for Telemed alert notification system is based on SIP - Specific Event Notification. The aim of this project is to extend mobility service to the hospital technicians who are using Telemedicine system.Keywords: Biomedical, Mobility Service, Notify, Proxy Server, SIP, Subscribe, Telemedicine.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18001320 ADABeV: Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behavior in Video-surveillance
Authors: Nour Charara, Iman Jarkass, Maria Sokhn, Elena Mugellini, Omar Abou Khaled
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Intelligent Video-Surveillance (IVS) systems are being more and more popular in security applications. The analysis and recognition of abnormal behaviours in a video sequence has gradually drawn the attention in the field of IVS, since it allows filtering out a large number of useless information, which guarantees the high efficiency in the security protection, and save a lot of human and material resources. We present in this paper ADABeV, an intelligent video-surveillance framework for event recognition in crowded scene to detect the abnormal human behaviour. This framework is attended to be able to achieve real-time alarming, reducing the lags in traditional monitoring systems. This architecture proposal addresses four main challenges: behaviour understanding in crowded scenes, hard lighting conditions, multiple input kinds of sensors and contextual-based adaptability to recognize the active context of the scene.Keywords: Behavior recognition, Crowded scene, Data fusion, Pattern recognition, Video-surveillance
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 36341319 Identifying Corruption in Legislation using Risk Analysis Methods
Authors: Chvalkovska, J., Jansky, P., Mejstrik, M.
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The objective of this article is to discuss the potential of economic analysis as a tool for identification and evaluation of corruption in legislative acts. We propose that corruption be perceived as a risk variable within the legislative process. Therefore we find it appropriate to employ risk analysis methods, used in various fields of economics, for the evaluation of corruption in legislation. Furthermore we propose the incorporation of these methods into the so called corruption impact assessment (CIA), the general framework for detection of corruption in legislative acts. The applications of the risk analysis methods are demonstrated on examples of implementation of proposed CIA in the Czech Republic. Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 24661318 Parameters Extraction for Pseudomorphic HEMTs Using Genetic Algorithms
Authors: Mazhar B. Tayel, Amr H. Yassin
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A proposed small-signal model parameters for a pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (PHEMT) is presented. Both extrinsic and intrinsic circuit elements of a smallsignal model are determined using genetic algorithm (GA) as a stochastic global search and optimization tool. The parameters extraction of the small-signal model is performed on 200-μm gate width AlGaAs/InGaAs PHEMT. The equivalent circuit elements for a proposed 18 elements model are determined directly from the measured S- parameters. The GA is used to extract the parameters of the proposed small-signal model from 0.5 up to 18 GHz.
Keywords: PHEMT, Genetic Algorithms, small signal modeling, optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22621317 Automatically-generated Concept Maps as a Learning Tool
Authors: Xia Lin
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Concept maps can be generated manually or automatically. It is important to recognize differences of the two types of concept maps. The automatically generated concept maps are dynamic, interactive, and full of associations between the terms on the maps and the underlying documents. Through a specific concept mapping system, Visual Concept Explorer (VCE), this paper discusses how automatically generated concept maps are different from manually generated concept maps and how different applications and learning opportunities might be created with the automatically generated concept maps. The paper presents several examples of learning strategies that take advantages of the automatically generated concept maps for concept learning and exploration.Keywords: Concept maps, Dynamic concept representation, learning strategies, visual interface, Visual Concept Explorer.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15131316 Measurement of UHF Signal Strength Propagating from Road Surface with Vehicle Obstruction
Authors: C. Thongsopa, P. Sukphongchirakul, A. Intarapanich, P. Jarataku
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Radio wave propagation on the road surface is a major problem on wireless sensor network for traffic monitoring. In this paper, we compare receiving signal strength on two scenarios 1) an empty road and 2) a road with a vehicle. We investigate the effect of antenna polarization and antenna height to the receiving signal strength. The transmitting antenna is installed on the road surface. The receiving signal is measured 360 degrees around the transmitting antenna with the radius of 2.5 meters. Measurement results show the receiving signal fluctuation around the transmitting antenna in both scenarios. Receiving signal with vertical polarization antenna results in higher signal strength than horizontal polarization antenna. The optimum antenna elevation is 1 meter for both horizon and vertical polarizations with the vehicle on the road. In the empty road, the receiving signal level is unvarying with the elevation when the elevation is greater than 1.5 meters.Keywords: Wave propagation, wireless sensor network.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17551315 Social Media as a Tool for Political Communication: A Case Study of India
Authors: Srikanth Bade
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This paper discusses how the usage of social media has altered certain discourses and communicated with the political institutions for major actions in Indian scenario. The advent of new technology in the form of social media has engrossed the general public to discuss in the open forum. How they promulgated their ideas into action is captured in this study. Moreover, these discourses happening in the social media is analyzed from certain philosophical traditions by adopting a framework. Hence, this paper analyses the role of social media in political communication and change the political discourse. Also, this paper tries to address the issue that whether the deliberation made through social media had indeed communicated the issue of political matters to the decision making authorities.Keywords: Collective action and social capital, political communication, political discourse, social media.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14641314 Image Distortion Correction Method of 2-MHz Side Scan Sonar for Underwater Structure Inspection
Authors: Youngseok Kim, Chul Park, Jonghwa Yi, Sangsik Choi
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The 2-MHz Side Scan SONAR (SSS) attached to the boat for inspection of underwater structures is affected by shaking. It is difficult to determine the exact scale of damage of structure. In this study, a motion sensor is attached to the inside of the 2-MHz SSS to get roll, pitch, and yaw direction data, and developed the image stabilization tool to correct the sonar image. We checked that reliable data can be obtained with an average error rate of 1.99% between the measured value and the actual distance through experiment. It is possible to get the accurate sonar data to inspect damage in underwater structure.
Keywords: Image stabilization, motion sensor, safety inspection, sonar image, underwater structure.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 10601313 Low Power Consuming Electromagnetic Actuators for Pulsed Pilot Stages
Authors: M. Honarpardaz, Z. Zhang, J. Derkx, A. Trangärd, J. Larsson
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Pilot stages are one of the most common positioners and regulators in industry. In this paper, we present two novel concepts for pilot stages with low power consumption to regulate a pneumatic device. Pilot 1, first concept, is designed based on a conventional frame core electro-magnetic actuator and a leaf spring to control the air flow and pilot 2 has an axisymmetric actuator and spring made of non-oriented electrical steel. Concepts are simulated in a system modeling tool to study their dynamic behavior. Both concepts are prototyped and tested. Experimental results are comprehensively analyzed and compared. The most promising concept that consumes less than 8 mW is highlighted and presented.Keywords: Electro-magnetic actuator, multidisciplinary system, low power consumption, pilot stage.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9671312 System Security Impact on the Dynamic Characteristics of Measurement Sensors in Smart Grids
Authors: Yiyang Su, Jörg Neumann, Jan Wetzlich, Florian Thiel
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Smart grid is a term used to describe the next generation power grid. New challenges such as integration of renewable and decentralized energy sources, the requirement for continuous grid estimation and optimization, as well as the use of two-way flows of energy have been brought to the power gird. In order to achieve efficient, reliable, sustainable, as well as secure delivery of electric power more and more information and communication technologies are used for the monitoring and the control of power grids. Consequently, the need for cybersecurity is dramatically increased and has converged into several standards which will be presented here. These standards for the smart grid must be designed to satisfy both performance and reliability requirements. An in depth investigation of the effect of retrospectively embedded security in existing grids on it’s dynamic behavior is required. Therefore, a retrofitting plan for existing meters is offered, and it’s performance in a test low voltage microgrid is investigated. As a result of this, integration of security measures into measurement architectures of smart grids at the design phase is strongly recommended.Keywords: Cyber security, performance, protocols, security standards, smart grid.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8841311 Study and Design of Patient Flow at the Medicine Department of a University Hospital
Authors: P. Prudtikul, S. Pathomsiri
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Most, if not all, public hospitals in Thailand have encountered a common problem regarding the increasing demand for medical services. The increasing number of patients causes so much strain on the hospital-s services, over-crowded, overloaded working hours, staff fatigue, medical error and long waiting time. This research studied the characteristics of operational processes of the medical care services at the medicine department in a large public university hospital. The research focuses on details regarding methods, procedures, processes, resources, and time management in overall processes. The simulation model is used as a tool to analyze the impact of various improvement strategies.
Keywords: Patient flow, medicine department, simulation, outpatient department.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 32811310 Effect of Na2O Content on Durability of Geopolymer Mortars in Sulphuric Acid
Authors: Suresh Thokchom, Partha Ghosh, Somnath Ghosh
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This paper presents the findings of an experimental investigation to study the effect of alkali content in geopolymer mortar specimens exposed to sulphuric acid. Geopolymer mortar specimens were manufactured from Class F fly ash by activation with a mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate solution containing 5% to 8% Na2O. Durability of specimens were assessed by immersing them in 10% sulphuric acid solution and periodically monitoring surface deterioration and depth of dealkalization, changes in weight and residual compressive strength over a period of 24 weeks. Microstructural changes in the specimens were studied with Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and EDAX. Alkali content in the activator solution significantly affects the durability of fly ash based geopolymer mortars in sulphuric acid. Specimens manufactured with higher alkali content performed better than those manufactured with lower alkali content. After 24 weeks in sulphuric acid, specimen with 8% alkali still recorded a residual strength as high as 55%.Keywords: Alkali content, acid attack, compressive strength, geopolymer
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 26361309 Automatic Segmentation of the Clean Speech Signal
Authors: M. A. Ben Messaoud, A. Bouzid, N. Ellouze
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Speech Segmentation is the measure of the change point detection for partitioning an input speech signal into regions each of which accords to only one speaker. In this paper, we apply two features based on multi-scale product (MP) of the clean speech, namely the spectral centroid of MP, and the zero crossings rate of MP. We focus on multi-scale product analysis as an important tool for segmentation extraction. The MP is based on making the product of the speech wavelet transform coefficients (WTC). We have estimated our method on the Keele database. The results show the effectiveness of our method. It indicates that the two features can find word boundaries, and extracted the segments of the clean speech.
Keywords: Speech segmentation, Multi-scale product, Spectral centroid, Zero crossings rate.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 25081308 Towards Assessment of Indicators Influence on Innovativeness of Countries' Economies: Selected Soft Computing Approaches
Authors: Marta Czyżewska, Krzysztof Pancerz, Jarosław Szkoła
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The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of several indicators determining innovativeness of countries' economies by applying selected soft computing methods. Such methods enable us to identify correlations between indicators for period 2006-2010. The main attention in the paper is focused on selecting proper computer tools for solving this problem. As a tool supporting identification, the X-means clustering algorithm, the Apriori rules generation algorithm as well as Self-Organizing Feature Maps (SOMs) have been selected. The paper has rather a rudimentary character. We briefly describe usefulness of the selected approaches and indicate some challenges for further research.
Keywords: Assessment of indicators, innovativeness, soft computing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13871307 iPAD as a Communication Tool for Disabled Seniors: A Case Study
Authors: Vojtěch Gybas, Libor Klubal, Kateřina Kostolányová
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This case study responds to the current trends in ICT. Mobile Touch iPads can provide very good assistance to disabled seniors. The intuitive tablet environment, the possibility of the formation environment and its portability, has a very positive effect on the use of particular communication. For comparison, using a conventional PC/notebook, word processor, keyboard and computer mouse compared to the iPad and selected applications. The results of this case study show that the use of mobile touch devices iPad for seniors with mental retardation is a great benefit. These devices do not require high demands on graphomotorics like a standard PC devices.
Keywords: ICT, iPad, handicapped seniors, communication, computer, notebook, applications, text editor.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 10701306 Unconventional Calculus Spreadsheet Functions
Authors: Chahid K. Ghaddar
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The spreadsheet engine is exploited via a non-conventional mechanism to enable novel worksheet solver functions for computational calculus. The solver functions bypass inherent restrictions on built-in math and user defined functions by taking variable formulas as a new type of argument while retaining purity and recursion properties. The enabling mechanism permits integration of numerical algorithms into worksheet functions for solving virtually any computational problem that can be modelled by formulas and variables. Several examples are presented for computing integrals, derivatives, and systems of deferential-algebraic equations. Incorporation of the worksheet solver functions with the ubiquitous spreadsheet extend the utility of the latter as a powerful tool for computational mathematics.Keywords: Calculus functions, nonlinear systems, differential algebraic equations, solvers, spreadsheet.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2459