Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview

The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network—the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio

Evolution of Control Programs for a Swarm of Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly becoming a critical military asset. In the future, advances in miniaturization are going to drive the development of insect size UAVs. New approaches to controlling these swarms are required. The goal of this research is to develop a controller to direct a swarm of UAVs in accomplishing a given mission. While previous efforts have largely been limited to a two-dimensional model, a three-dimensional model has been developed for this project. Models of UAV capabilities including sensors, actuators and communications are presented. Genetic programming uses the principles of Darwinian evolution to generate computer programs to solve problems. A genetic programming approach is used to evolve control programs for UAV swarms. Evolved controllers are compared with a hand-crafted solution using quantitative and qualitative methods. Visualization and statistical methods are used to analyze solutions. Results indicate that genetic programming is capable of producing effective solutions to multi-objective control problems