The potential of fractional order distributed MPC applied to steam/water loop in large scale ships

The steam/water loop is a crucial part of a steam power plant. However, satisfying control performance is difficult to obtain due to the frequent disturbance and load fluctuation. A fractional order model predictive control was studied in this paper to improve the control performance of the steam/water loop. Firstly, the dynamic of the steam/water loop was introduced in large-scale ships. Then, the model predictive control with an extended prediction self adaptive controller framework was designed for the steam/water loop with a distributed scheme. Instead of an integer cost function, a fractional order cost function was applied in the model predictive control optimization step. The superiority of the fractional order model predictive control was validated with reference tracking and load fluctuation experiments

Wearable Devices in Health Monitoring from the Environmental towards Multiple Domains: A Survey

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the environmental, behavioral, physiological, and psychological domains that impact adversely human health, well-being, and quality of life (QoL) in general. The environmental domain has significant interaction with the others. With respect to proactive and personalized medicine and the Internet of medical things (IoMT), wearables are most important for continuous health monitoring. In this work, we analyze wearables in healthcare from a perspective of innovation by categorizing them according to the four domains. Furthermore, we consider the mode of wearability, costs, and prolonged monitoring. We identify features and investigate the wearable devices in the terms of sampling rate, resolution, data usage (propagation), and data transmission. We also investigate applications of wearable devices. Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Library delivered wearables that we require to monitor at least one environmental parameter, e.g., a pollutant. According to the number of domains, from which the wearables record data, we identify groups: G1, environmental parameters only; G2, environmental and behavioral parameters; G3, environmental, behavioral, and physiological parameters; and G4 parameters from all domains. In total, we included 53 devices of which 35, 9, 9, and 0 belong to G1, G2, G3, and G4, respectively. Furthermore, 32, 11, 7, and 5 wearables are applied in general health and well-being monitoring, specific diagnostics, disease management, and non-medical. We further propose customized and quantified output for future wearables from both, the perspectives of users, as well as physicians. Our study shows a shift of wearable devices towards disease management and particular applications. It also indicates the significant role of wearables in proactive healthcare, having capability of creating big data and linking to external healthcare systems for real-time monitoring and care delivery at the point of perception

Autonomous Cars – What Lies Behind the Lack of Readiness

Autonomous systems are already available for public and private transport. The necessary hardware and software products have been created, and novel designs for (semi-) autonomous vehicles are launched every year, but their use is limited, and the penetration is not increasing rapidly. While this might be owing to their high price, their perception is also not universally positive. Many are afraid of not only using, but being around them. After introducing the relevant literature on trust in autonomous vehicles and the factors affecting it, the current article presents the data of an international quantitative research of 666 people. It highlights the biggest perceived threats and their prevalence, and also tries to uncover why more than half of the respondents are afraid of autonomous vehicles. In line with the data presented in the article, the topic is gendered – male respondents were more open towards autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, those who are not ready for autonomous vehicles have a generally higher level of fear of potential negative consequences, such as hacker attacks, system malfunctions, or lack of control. On the other hand, those in favour of automated vehicles believe that they have a positive effect on the occurrence of accidents, owing to their heightened reaction speed provided by the sensory system and the computing capacity which is far superior to that of humans, as well as on the society, on carbon emission, and, as a result, on our natural environment. Consequently, autonomous vehicles could form an important element of the transport systems of future smart cities

Task delegation from AI to humans: A principal-agent perspective

Increasingly intelligent AI artifacts in human-AI systems perform tasks more autonomously as entities that guide human actions, even changing the direction of task delegation between humans and AI. It has been shown that human-AI systems achieve better results when the AI artifact takes the leading role and delegates tasks to a human rather than the other way around. This study presents phenomena, conflicts, and challenges that arise in this process, explored through the theoretical lens of principal-agent theory (PAT). The findings are derived from a systematic literature review and an exploratory interview study and are placed in the context of existing constructs of PAT. Furthermore, this article paper identifies new causes of tensions that arise specifically in AI-to-human delegation and calls for special mechanisms beyond the classical solutions of PAT. The paper thus contributes to the understanding of autonomous AI and its implications for human-AI delegation

Securing Smart Grids to Address Environmental Issues in Regional Planning

This chapter examines regional planning and development in relation to sustainability and highlights sustainability challenges in various regional planning case studies. Creating smart cities addresses the problems that arise from rapid urbanisation and growth of the urban population. This chapter provides an overview of smart cities and discusses several global smart city efforts. It introduces the idea of smart energy highlighting the smart grid components and how it tackles environmental challenges in regional planning. Additionally, it analyses several threats to the smart grid that may hinder its efficient operation and makes suggestions on how to deal with them so that sustainable energy may be delivered to smart cities