Symbolic representation of scenarios in Bologna airport on virtual reality concept

This paper is a part of a big Project named Retina Project, which is focused in reduce the workload of an ATCO. It uses the last technological advances as Virtual Reality concept. The work has consisted in studying the different awareness situations that happens daily in Bologna Airport. It has been analysed one scenario with good visibility where the sun predominates and two other scenarios with poor visibility where the rain and the fog dominate. Due to the study of visibility in the three scenarios computed, the conclusion obtained is that the overlay must be shown with a constant dimension regardless the position of the aircraft to be readable by the ATC and also, the frame and the flight strip should be coloured in a showy colour (like red) for a better control by the ATCO

A comprehensive study of personal and social information use in female brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater

Brood parasites face considerable cognitive challenges when locating and selecting host nests for their young. One aspect of this challenge is determining how to use different sources of information to make decisions regarding the quality of a prospective nest. Here we investigate how female-brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater, use information when prospecting for nests, and then expand upon this to investigate decisions related to foraging. In chapter 1, we demonstrated female could use social information acquired from observing the nest prospecting patterns of conspecifics to influence their own patterns of nest selection. Furthermore, we found a negative relationship between a female’s accuracy at using personal information and her tendency to copy others. In chapter 2, we found the females were able to use social information in a foraging setting as well. The female’s accuracy using personal information remained consistent across nest prospecting and foraging contexts however, the relationship between accuracy and tendency to copy others drastically reversed. A follow up experiment revealed the likely possibility that the differing relationship between personal and social information use depended on the degree of conflict that existed between the two types of information. In chapter 3, we redeveloped and implemented a new RFID tracking technology allowing us to investigate how the cognitive strategies from chapters 1 and 2 translated to a naturalistic, socially complex breeding environment. We found female cowbirds who spent more time prospecting, produced a greater quantity of eggs and demonstrated high accuracy scores during chapter 1 and 2, whereas females who relied on copying others spent significantly less time prospecting and demonstrated lower laying accuracy scores. By demonstrating how individuals’ cognitive strategies relate across context and translate to a socially complex setting, we have demonstrated the importance of examining behaviour in both of these settings and our RFID tracking technology provides researchers with the framework to effectively study this in the future

Evaluation of spectrally efficient indoor optical wireless transmission techniques

Optical wireless communications (OWC) has the potential to become a remedy for the shortage of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. Especially in indoor environments, OWC could enable wireless home networking systems which offload data traffic from existing RF systems. In OWC, data is transmitted by modulating the intensity of light sources, typically incoherent light emitting diodes (LEDs). Thus, OWC systems employ intensity modulation (IM) and direct detection (DD) of the optical carrier. Since off-the-shelf LEDs have a limited modulation capability, the transmission bandwidth of practical OWC systems is restricted. Consequently, the available bandwidth has to be used efficiently. In this thesis, spectrally efficient optical wireless transmission techniques are evaluated. Firstly, multiple transmitter-receiver techniques are investigated. These multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) techniques provide high spectral efficiency, and therefore high data rates. Specifically, the MIMO techniques repetition coding (RC), spatial multiplexing (SMP) and spatial modulation (SM) are analysed for indoor OWC. The performance of these techniques is evaluated analytically and by means of computer simulations. It is shown that inducing power imbalance between the multiple optical transmitters can substantially improve the performance of optical MIMO techniques as the power imbalance improves the differentiability of the multiple channels. In addition, it is found that link blockage and the utilisation of transmitters having different optical wavelengths enhance channel differentiability as well. These methods enable the utilisation of optical MIMO techniques under conditions which typically disallow the application of MIMO schemes due to little differences between the multiple links. Secondly, a novel optical wireless transmitter concept is developed. This concept uses discrete power level stepping to generate intensity modulated optical signals, such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveforms. The transmitter consists of several on-off-switchable LED groups which are individually controlled to emit scaled optical intensities. As a result, the digital-to-analogue conversion of the signals to be sent is done in the optical domain. This method enables the implementation of low-complex and power-efficient optical transmitter front-ends – the major shortcoming of conventional optical OFDM transmitters. Thirdly, a novel approach for wireless data transmission within an aircraft cabin is presented. The data is transferred by 2-dimensional visual code sequences. These sequences are displayed on the in-flight entertainment (IFE) screen and are captured by the built-in camera of a user device which acts as receiver. Transmission experiments within an aircraft cabin mock-up demonstrate the functionality of the implemented system under realistic conditions, such as ambient illumination and geometric configuration. Altogether, this thesis has analysed the potential of spectrally efficient optical wireless transmission techniques. It is shown that OWC systems can greatly benefit from these techniques

Motor output and control input in flapping flight: a compact model of the deforming wing kinematics of manoeuvring hoverflies

Insects are conventionally modelled as controlling flight by varying a few summary kinematic parameters that are defined on a per-wingbeat basis, such as the stroke amplitude, mean stroke angle and mean wing pitch angle. Nevertheless, as insects have tens of flight muscles and vary their kinematics continuously, the true dimension of their control input space is likely to be much higher. Here, we present a compact description of the deforming wing kinematics of 36 manoeuvring Eristalis hoverflies, applying functional principal components analysis to Fourier series fits of the wingtip position and wing twist measured over 26 541 wingbeats. This analysis offers a high degree of data reduction, in addition to insight into the natural kinematic couplings. We used statistical resampling techniques to verify that the principal components (PCs) were repeatable features of the data, and analysed their coefficient vectors to provide insight into the form of these natural couplings. Conceptually, the dominant PCs provide a natural set of control input variables that span the control input subspace utilized by this species, but they can also be thought of as output states of the flight motor. This functional description of the wing kinematics is appropriate to modelling insect flight as a form of limit cycle control

Using UAVs and machine vision in the early detection of combine harvester fires

Fire during the harvest of crops is an ever present hazard. The combination of hot and dry conditions with a highly flammable crop material creates perfect conditions for fire to start and propagate, the result of which can be loss of production, time, equipment and the crop itself. The aim of this project is to create a system that can actively detect fire activity so that the harvester operator has a better chance of containing the fire before it spreads out of control. By using the ability of CCD cameras to detect Near Infrared (NIR) and sophisticated machine vision, a cheap and effective fire detection system can be created that can alert the operator to any developing fire before the grows out of control. An extensive review of available literature regarding combine harvester fires, the use of Near Infrared (NIR) and visual light cameras in fire detection and the use of machine vision to detect fire was conducted. An experimental prototype NIR camera system was constructed with off the shelf components selected on the basis of suitability and cost and a computer program was developed with the purpose of detecting fire in the video feeds. Testing was done in two phases. The first phase was to test the hardware of the system to determine if the cameras was even able to see fire or related phenomena. The second phase of testing was to determine if the machine vision software was able to quickly and accurately identify fire under different circumstances, and its ability to filter out other phenomena that may cause false positives. The hardware of the system was able to detect fire in most circumstances. Inexpensive cameras operating in the NIR and Visual spectrums are more than capable of seeing the light, heat and smoke emissions of the fire under all of the conditions that such a system would likely encounter during normal operations. The emissions that the camera detects is highly dependent on the proximity of the camera to the fire, which has significant implications on the software processing algorithm and its ability to accurately detect a fire. The software algorithm was able to correctly identify a fire during all the software tests. The NIR camera was able to correctly identify fire in all of the testing but was subject to false positives from reflections. The colour program had greater success in bright conditions as the reduced contrast between the fire and its surroundings enabled the colour of the fire to be more easily seen. Detecting fire with machine vision is still a field that is in its infancy, but the results gained from this project are very promising and with further development could yield a system able to reliably detect fire in harvest conditions

Autonomous Pathfinding for Planetary Rover by Implementing A* Algorithm on an Aerial Map Processed Using MATLAB Image Processing Tool

Human curiosity to discover new things and exploring unknown regions, have continually to development of robots, which became a powerful tools for accessing dangerous environments or exploring regions too distant for human. Previous robot technology functioned under continues human supervision, limiting the robot to confined area and pre-programmed task. However,as exploration moved to regions where communication is ineffective or unviable, robots were used to carry out complex tasks without human supervision. To empower such capacities, robots are being upgraded by advances extending from new sensor improvement to automated mission planning software, circulated automated control, and more proficient power systems. With the advancement of autonomy science robotics technology developed and the robots became more and more capable of operating multi task, under minimal human supervision. In this project work we aim at designing an ONS (Offline Navigation System) system for the planetary rover which will use aerial map taken from satellite and pre-process into a grid map which is then will be used by the rover to travel from one place to another place and completing its mission. The aerial map is processed using Matlab image processing tool to convert into a grid map and search for shortest route is implemented using A* algorithm. The shortest route result is then converted into microcontroller signal to move the rover. With this system the rovers will have the ability to predict the best possible path even if the communication to the satellite is broken

A robot swarm assisting a human fire-fighter

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire-fighters. The large dimensions, together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The GUARDIANS robot swarm is designed to assist fire-fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting fire-fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms that provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus, the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire-fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire-fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm-based information to human beings

AURORA:autonomous real-time on-board video analytics

In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a small light weight, low-cost and power-efficient payload system for the use in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The primary application of the payload system is that of performing real-time autonomous objects detection and tracking in the videos taken from a UAV camera. The implemented objects detection and tracking algorithms utilise Recursive Density Estimation (RDE) and Evolving Local Means (ELM) clustering to perform detection and tracking moving objects. Furthermore, experiments are presented which demonstrate that the introduced system is able to detect by on-board processing any moving objects from a UAV and start tracking them in real-time while at the same time sending important data only to a control station located on the ground

A novel monitoring system for the training of elite swimmers

Swimming performance is primarily judged on the overall time taken for a swimmer to complete a specified distance performing a stroke that complies with current regulations defined by the Fédération Internationale de Natation (FINA), the International governing body of swimming. There are three contributing factors to this overall time; the start, free swimming and turns. The contribution of each of these factors is event dependent; for example, in a 50m event there are no turns, however, the start can be a significant contributor. To improve overall performance each of these components should be optimised in terms of skill and execution. This thesis details the research undertaken towards improving performance-related feedback in swimming. The research included collaboration with British Swimming, the national governing body for swimming in the U.K., to drive the requirements and direction of research. An evaluation of current methods of swimming analysis identified a capability gap in real-time, quantitative feedback. A number of components were developed to produce an integrated system for comprehensive swim performance analysis in all phases of the swim, i.e. starts, free swimming and turns. These components were developed to satisfy two types of stakeholder requirements. Firstly, the measurement requirements, i.e. what does the end user want to measure? Secondly, the process requirements, i.e. how would these measurements be achieved? The components developed in this research worked towards new technologies to facilitate a wider range of measurement parameters using automated methods as well as the application of technologies to facilitate the automation of current techniques. The development of the system is presented in detail and the application of these technologies is presented in case studies for starts, free swimming and turns. It was found that developed components were able to provide useful data indicating levels of performance in all aspects of swimming, i.e. starts, free swimming and turns. For the starts, an integrated solution of vision, force plate technology and a wireless iii node enabled greater insight into overall performance and quantitative measurements of performance to be captured. Force profiles could easily identify differences in swimmer ability or changes in technique. The analysis of free swimming was predominantly supported by the wireless sensor technology, whereby signal analysis was capable of automatically determining factors such as lap times variations within strokes. The turning phase was also characterised in acceleration space, allowing the phases of the turn to be individually assessed and their contribution to total turn time established. Each of the component technologies were not used in isolation but were supported by other synchronous data capture. In all cases a vision component was used to increase understanding of data outputs and provide a medium that coaches and athletes were comfortable with interpreting. The integrated, component based system has been developed and tested to prove its ability to produce useful, quantitative feedback information for swimmers. The individual components were found to be capable of providing greater insight into swimming performance, that has not been previously possible using the current state of the art techniques. Future work should look towards the fine-tuning of the prototype system into a useable solution for end users. This relies on the refinement of components and the development of an appropriate user interface to enable ease of data collection, analysis, presentation and interpretation