Search results for: Deon Greyling
2 Statistical Variability of Soil Parameters within the Copper Belt Region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Authors: Stephan P. Barkhuizen, Deon Greyling, Ryan J. Miller
Abstract:
The accurate determination of the engineering parameters of soil is necessary for the design of geotechnical structures, such as Tailings Storage Facilities. The shear strength and saturated permeability of soil and tailings samples obtained from 14 sites located in the copper belt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been tested at six commercial soil laboratories in South Africa. This study compiles a database of the test results proved by the soil laboratories. The samples have been categorised into clay, silt, and sand, based on the Unified Soil Classification System, with tailings kept separate. The effective friction angle (Φ’) and cohesion (c’) were interpreted from the stress paths, in s’:t space, obtained from triaxial tests. The minimum, lower quartile, median, upper quartile, and maximum values for Φ’,c’, and saturated hydraulic conductivity (k) have been determined for the soil sample. The objective is to provide statistics of the measured values of the engineering properties for the Tailings Storage Facilities (TSFs) borrow material, foundation soils and tailings of this region.
Keywords: Democratic Republic of the Congo, laboratory test work, soil engineering parameter variation, tailings storage facilities.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 131 Real-Time Episodic Memory Construction for Optimal Action Selection in Cognitive Robotics
Authors: Deon de Jager, Yahya Zweiri, Dimitrios Makris
Abstract:
The three most important components in the cognitive architecture for cognitive robotics is memory representation, memory recall, and action-selection performed by the executive. In this paper, action selection, performed by the executive, is defined as a memory quantification and optimization process. The methodology describes the real-time construction of episodic memory through semantic memory optimization. The optimization is performed by set-based particle swarm optimization, using an adaptive entropy memory quantification approach for fitness evaluation. The performance of the approach is experimentally evaluated by simulation, where a UAV is tasked with the collection and delivery of a medical package. The experiments show that the UAV dynamically uses the episodic memory to autonomously control its velocity, while successfully completing its mission.
Keywords: Cognitive robotics, semantic memory, episodic memory, maximum entropy principle, particle swarm optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1643