Wide band frequency tracker performance and design of an all angle laser Doppler optical homodyne receiver, ground wind and wind tunnel measurements program, volume 2 Final report

Analysis and measurement of characteristics of wide band frequency trackers and design and fabrication of all angle laser Doppler velocimete

PyZebrascope: An Open-Source Platform for Brain-Wide Neural Activity Imaging in Zebrafish

Understanding how neurons interact across the brain to control animal behaviors is one of the central goals in neuroscience. Recent developments in fluorescent microscopy and genetically-encoded calcium indicators led to the establishment of whole-brain imaging methods in zebrafish, which record neural activity across a brain-wide volume with single-cell resolution. Pioneering studies of whole-brain imaging used custom light-sheet microscopes, and their operation relied on commercially developed and maintained software not available globally. Hence it has been challenging to disseminate and develop the technology in the research community. Here, we present PyZebrascope, an open-source Python platform designed for neural activity imaging in zebrafish using light-sheet microscopy. PyZebrascope has intuitive user interfaces and supports essential features for whole-brain imaging, such as two orthogonal excitation beams and eye damage prevention. Its camera module can handle image data throughput of up to 800 MB/s from camera acquisition to file writing while maintaining stable CPU and memory usage. Its modular architecture allows the inclusion of advanced algorithms for microscope control and image processing. As a proof of concept, we implemented a novel automatic algorithm for maximizing the image resolution in the brain by precisely aligning the excitation beams to the image focal plane. PyZebrascope enables whole-brain neural activity imaging in fish behaving in a virtual reality environment. Thus, PyZebrascope will help disseminate and develop light-sheet microscopy techniques in the neuroscience community and advance our understanding of whole-brain neural dynamics during animal behaviors.Peer Reviewe

FPGA ACCELERATION OF A CORTICAL AND A MATCHED FILTER-BASED ALGORITHM

Digital image processing is a widely used and diverse field. It is used in a broad array of areas such as tracking and detection, object avoidance, computer vision, and numerous other applications. For many image processing tasks, the computations can become time consuming. Therefore, a means for accelerating the computations would be beneficial. Using that as motivation, this thesis examines the acceleration of two distinctly different image processing applications. The first image processing application examined is a recent neocortex inspired cognitive model geared towards pattern recognition as seen in the visual cortex. For this model, both software and reconfigurable logic based FPGA implementations of the model are examined on a Cray XD1. Results indicate that hardware-acceleration can provide average throughput gains of 75 times over software-only implementations of the networks examined when utilizing the full resources of the Cray XD1. The second image processing application examined is matched filter-based position detection. This approach is at the heart of the automatic alignment algorithm currently being tested in the National Ignition Faculty presently under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. To reduce the processing time of the match filtering, a reconfigurable logic architecture was developed. Results show that the reconfigurable logic architecture provides a speedup of approximately 253 times over an optimized software implementation

Integrated sensing, dynamics and control of a moble gantry crane

This thesis investigates the dynamics and control of a Rubber Tyred Gantry (RTG) crane which is commonly used in container handling operations. Both theoretical and experimental work has been undertaken to ensure the balance of this research. The concept of a Global Sensing System (GSS) is outlined, this being a closed loop automatic sensing system capable of guiding the lifting gear (spreader) to the location of the target container by using feedback signals from the crane's degrees of freedom. To acquire the crucial data for the coordinates and orientation of the swinging spreader a novel visual sensing system (VSS) is proposed. In addition algorithms used in the VSS for seeking the central coordinates of the clustered pixels from the digitised images are also developed. In order to investigate the feasibility of different control strategies in practice, a scaleddown, 1/8 full size, experimental crane rig has been constructed with a new level of functionality in that the spreader in this rig is equipped with multiple cables to emulate the characteristics of a full-size RTG crane. A Crane Application Programming Interface (CAPI) is proposed to reduce the complexity and difficulty in integrating the control software and hardware. It provides a relatively user-friendly environment in which the end-user can focus on implementing the more fundamental issues of control strategies, rather than spending significant amounts of time in low-level devicedependent programming. A control strategy using Feedback Linearization Control (FLC) is investigated. This can handle significant non-linearity in the dynamics of the RTG crane. Simulation results are provided, and so by means of the CAPI this controller is available for direct control of the experimental crane rig. The final part of the thesis is an integration of the analyses of the different subjects, and shows the feasibility of real-time implementation

NETRA: Interactive Display for Estimating Refractive Errors and Focal Range

We introduce an interactive, portable, and inexpensive solution for estimating refractive errors in the human eye. While expensive optical devices for automatic estimation of refractive correction exist, our goal is to greatly simplify the mechanism by putting the human subject in the loop. Our solution is based on a high-resolution programmable display and combines inexpensive optical elements, interactive GUI, and computational reconstruction. The key idea is to interface a lenticular view-dependent display with the human eye in close range - a few millimeters apart. Via this platform, we create a new range of interactivity that is extremely sensitive to parameters of the human eye, like refractive errors, focal range, focusing speed, lens opacity, etc. We propose several simple optical setups, verify their accuracy, precision, and validate them in a user study.Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Research Fellowship

NASA SBIR abstracts of 1991 phase 1 projects

The objectives of 301 projects placed under contract by the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are described. These projects were selected competitively from among proposals submitted to NASA in response to the 1991 SBIR Program Solicitation. The basic document consists of edited, non-proprietary abstracts of the winning proposals submitted by small businesses. The abstracts are presented under the 15 technical topics within which Phase 1 proposals were solicited. Each project was assigned a sequential identifying number from 001 to 301, in order of its appearance in the body of the report. Appendixes to provide additional information about the SBIR program and permit cross-reference of the 1991 Phase 1 projects by company name, location by state, principal investigator, NASA Field Center responsible for management of each project, and NASA contract number are included

Orbital assembly and maintenance study

The requirements, conceptual design, tradeoffs, procedures, and techniques for orbital assembly of the support structure of the microwave power transmission system and the radio astronomy telescope are described. Thermal and stress analyses, packaging, alignment, and subsystems requirements are included along with manned vs. automated and transportation tradeoffs. Technical and operational concepts for the manned and automated maintenance of satellites were investigated and further developed results are presented