56,188 research outputs found
Transfer Learning-Based Crack Detection by Autonomous UAVs
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have recently shown great performance
collecting visual data through autonomous exploration and mapping in building
inspection. Yet, the number of studies is limited considering the post
processing of the data and its integration with autonomous UAVs. These will
enable huge steps onward into full automation of building inspection. In this
regard, this work presents a decision making tool for revisiting tasks in
visual building inspection by autonomous UAVs. The tool is an implementation of
fine-tuning a pretrained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for surface crack
detection. It offers an optional mechanism for task planning of revisiting
pinpoint locations during inspection. It is integrated to a quadrotor UAV
system that can autonomously navigate in GPS-denied environments. The UAV is
equipped with onboard sensors and computers for autonomous localization,
mapping and motion planning. The integrated system is tested through
simulations and real-world experiments. The results show that the system
achieves crack detection and autonomous navigation in GPS-denied environments
for building inspection
The assessment of usability of electronic shopping: A heuristic evaluation
Today there are thousands of electronic shops accessible via the Web. Some provide user-friendly features whilst others seem not to consider usability factors at all. Yet, it is critical that the electronic shopping interface is user-friendly so as to help users to obtain their desired results. This study applied heuristic evaluation to examine the usability of current electronic shopping. In particular, it focused on four UK-based supermarkets offering electronic services: including ASDA, Iceland, Sainsbury, and Tesco. The evaluation consists of two stages: a free-flow inspection and a task-based inspection. The results indicate that the most significant and common usability problems have been found to lie within the areas of ‘User Control and Freedom’ and ‘Help and Documentation’. The findings of this study are applied to develop a set of usability guidelines to support the future design of effective interfaces for electronic shopping
Industrial implementation of intelligent system techniques for nuclear power plant condition monitoring
As the nuclear power plants within the UK age, there is an increased requirement for condition monitoring to ensure that the plants are still be able to operate safely. This paper describes the novel application of Intelligent Systems (IS) techniques to provide decision support to the condition monitoring of Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) reactor cores within the UK. The resulting system, BETA (British Energy Trace Analysis) is deployed within the UK’s nuclear operator and provides automated decision support for the analysis of refuelling data, a lead indicator of the health of AGR (Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor) nuclear power plant cores. The key contribution of this work is the improvement of existing manual, labour-intensive analysis through the application of IS techniques to provide decision support to NPP reactor core condition monitoring. This enables an existing source of condition monitoring data to be analysed in a rapid and repeatable manner, providing additional information relating to core health on a more regular basis than routine inspection data allows. The application of IS techniques addresses two issues with the existing manual interpretation of the data, namely the limited availability of expertise and the variability of assessment between different experts. Decision support is provided by four applications of intelligent systems techniques. Two instances of a rule-based expert system are deployed, the first to automatically identify key features within the refuelling data and the second to classify specific types of anomaly. Clustering techniques are applied to support the definition of benchmark behaviour, which is used to detect the presence of anomalies within the refuelling data. Finally data mining techniques are used to track the evolution of the normal benchmark behaviour over time. This results in a system that not only provides support for analysing new refuelling events but also provides the platform to allow future events to be analysed. The BETA system has been deployed within the nuclear operator in the UK and is used at both the engineering offices and on station to support the analysis of refuelling events from two AGR stations, with a view to expanding it to the rest of the fleet in the near future
Rapid Assessment of Vietnam\u27s Labor Inspection System
[Excerpt] In July 2010, a team from the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) visited Vietnam to conduct an assessment of the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids & Social Affairs’ (MOLISA) labor inspection system. This effort was requested by the SIIR project (funded by USAID) as part of its aim of identifying MOLISA’s needs and providing assistance, per MOLISA’s request. The Assessment focuses on: 1) assessing facts related to the labor inspection system; and 2) providing initial recommendations for improving the system.
Part I discusses MOLISA’s history, legal and regulatory framework, structure and organization, Department of Labor Inspections (including workforce, forms and data collection, and IPZ). Part II discusses issues and presents recommendations related to data collection, labor inspector training, inspectorate staffing levels, educational outreach, research and networking, systems of continuous improvement, and coordination with international and private buyers
Large-Scale Detection of Non-Technical Losses in Imbalanced Data Sets
Non-technical losses (NTL) such as electricity theft cause significant harm
to our economies, as in some countries they may range up to 40% of the total
electricity distributed. Detecting NTLs requires costly on-site inspections.
Accurate prediction of NTLs for customers using machine learning is therefore
crucial. To date, related research largely ignore that the two classes of
regular and non-regular customers are highly imbalanced, that NTL proportions
may change and mostly consider small data sets, often not allowing to deploy
the results in production. In this paper, we present a comprehensive approach
to assess three NTL detection models for different NTL proportions in large
real world data sets of 100Ks of customers: Boolean rules, fuzzy logic and
Support Vector Machine. This work has resulted in appreciable results that are
about to be deployed in a leading industry solution. We believe that the
considerations and observations made in this contribution are necessary for
future smart meter research in order to report their effectiveness on
imbalanced and large real world data sets.Comment: Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE Conference on Innovative Smart Grid
Technologies (ISGT 2016
Pre-posterior analysis of inspections incorporating degradation of concrete structures
The framework of pre-posterior decision analysis has a large potential as a decision support tool in structural
engineering. It seems ideally suited to tackle problems related to determining the value of Structural Health
Monitoring and is commonly applied in inspection and maintenance planning. However, the application of this
methodology for integrated life-cycle cost decision making related to monitoring of time-dependent and
spatial degradation phenomena in concrete structures, needs further investigation. In this work, the timedependent
and spatial degradation phenomena will be coupled to the pre-posterior decision making approach
and applied on concrete beams under bending, subjected to corrosion of the reinforcement. A framework is
set up to determine the value of information of inspections enabling adequate decision-making. The
methodology incorporates Bayesian updating based on the uncertain inspection outcomes. The framework
will be illustrated by application on a simply supported reinforced concrete beam
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