Development of open verification ip for I2C controller

Before any IC is fabricated it is desired to check whether the required functionalities are preserved or not. Otherwise this may lead to a huge loss to the company in case of any failure in during the design/coding stage. Verification engineers have to make sure that before fabrication all the properties of the IC can be successfully implicated. So functional verification provides a lot of benefits to the IC designers. Today, testing and verification are alternatively used for the same thing. Testing of a large design using FPGA consumes longer compilation time in case of debugging and committing small mistakes. Simulation based testing is faster and also provides capability to check all the signals buried under the design. But due to the increasing complexity in design and the concurrency behavior of the design it has become very difficult to verify the functionality using traditional testbenches. So new languages called Hardware Verification Languages (HVL) are introduced. System Verilog is an IEEE standard Verification language. The library and package oriented feature provide an efficient way of writing testbenches. The Open Verification Methodology (OVM) Class Library provides the building blocks needed to quickly develop reusable and well-constructed verification components and test environments using SystemVerilog. In this paper we have developed testing environment using system Verilog implementation of OVM for I2C controller core. Our work introduces an automated stimulus generating testing environment for the design and checks the functionality of the I2C bus controller

Development of a Self-Balancing robot utilizing FPGA

The popularity of self-balancing vehicles in modern times is rising as the price of consumer electronics is on a steady decline. Consumers have more access to smarter electronics and mechatronics devices. Self-Balancing vehicles have become an exciting new method of human transport that have the potential to redefine the way we traverse our cities. This document will outline the research, design, construction, implementation and analysis that has been undertaken to develop from the ground up, a scaled down version of a self-balancing vehicle. The two wheeled self-balancing robot discussed in this project will take advantage of National Instruments myRIO-1900 embedded hardware device and will utilize the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) embedded hardware along with PID feedback control loops to achieve stabilization in this inherently unstable system. The final section of this document details the techniques used to achieve this objective and suggests future works for the project that would enable future students to take advantage of this new student engineering asset

A study on virtual reality and developing the experience in a gaming simulation

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters by ResearchVirtual Reality (VR) is an experience where a person is provided with the freedom of viewing and moving in a virtual world [1]. The experience is not constrained to a limited control. Here, it was triggered interactively according to the user’s physical movement [1] [2]. So the user feels as if they are seeing the real world; also, 3D technologies allow the viewer to experience the volume of the object and its prospection in the virtual world [1]. The human brain generates the depth when each eye receives the images in its point of view. For learning for and developing the project using the university’s facilities, some of the core parts of the research have been accomplished, such as designing the VR motion controller and VR HMD (Head Mount Display), using an open source microcontroller. The VR HMD with the VR controller gives an immersive feel and a complete VR system [2]. The motive was to demonstrate a working model to create a VR experience on a mobile platform. Particularly, the VR system uses a micro electro-mechanical system to track motion without a tracking camera. The VR experience has also been developed in a gaming simulation. To produce this, Maya, Unity, Motion Analysis System, MotionBuilder, Arduino and programming have been used. The lessons and codes taken or improvised from [33] [44] [25] and [45] have been studied and implemented

Motor control of a hub motor for electric skateboard propulsion : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Engineering at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Redacted for copyright reasons: Appendix A - Journal Article Published in IEEE International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC 2012). Rowe, A. & Sen Gupta, G. (2012). Instrumentation and control of a high power BLDC motor for small vehicle applications.An electric powered skateboard was designed and built for testing and development of an innovative hub motor propulsion system and motor controller. The electric skateboard prototype is able to reach speeds of over 50km/h and achieve a range of over 35km on a single battery charge. The prototype weighs 8.6kg and can easily be carried by the user. This mode of transport has potential uses in recreational use, motor sports (racing), short commutes, and most notably, in ‘the last mile’ of public transport – getting to and from a train station, bus stop, etc. to the user’s final destination. Typical electric powered skateboards use external motors(s) requiring a power transmission assembly to drive the wheels. The hub motor design places the motor(s) inside the skateboard wheels and drives the wheels directly. This removes the need for power transmission assemblies therefore reductions in size, weight, cost, audible noise, and maintenance are realised. The hub motor built for this prototype has proven to be a highly feasible option over typical drive systems and further improvements to the design are discussed in this report. Advances in the processor capability of low cost microcontrollers has allowed for advanced motor control techniques to be implemented on low cost consumer level motor controllers which, until recent times, have been using the basic ‘Six-Step Control’ technique to drive Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors. The custom built motor controllers allow for firmware to be flashed to the microcontroller. Firmware was written for the basic motor control technique, Six-Step Control and for the advanced motor control technique, ‘Field Oriented Control’ (FOC). This allowed for the two control techniques to be tested and compared using identical hardware for each. Six-Step Control drives a three phase motor by controlling the inverter output to six discrete states. The states are stepped through sequentially. This results in a square wave AC waveform. Theory shows that this is not optimal as the magnetic flux produced in the stator is not always perpendicular to the magnet poles but rather aligned to the nearest 60°. FOC addresses this by controlling the magnetic flux to always be perpendicular to the magnet poles in order to maximise torque. The inverter is essentially controlled to produce a continuously variable voltage vector output in terms of both magnitude and direction (vector control). Bench testing of the control techniques was performed using two motors coupled together with one motor driving and the other motor running as a generator. The generator motor was shown to provide a highly consistent and repeatable load on the driving motor under test and therefore comparisons could be made between the performance of the motor while controlled under Six-Step Control and FOC. This test indicated that FOC was able to drive the motor more efficiently than Six-Step Control, however the FOC implementation requires further development to achieve greater efficiency under high load demands. Furthermore, on-road testing was performed using the motor controllers in the electric skateboard prototype to compare the performance of the two control techniques in a real world application. The results from this test were inconclusive due to large variation in the results between repeated tests

Gloxinia—an open-source sensing platform to monitor the dynamic responses of plants

The study of the dynamic responses of plants to short-term environmental changes is becoming increasingly important in basic plant science, phenotyping, breeding, crop management, and modelling. These short-term variations are crucial in plant adaptation to new environments and, consequently, in plant fitness and productivity. Scalable, versatile, accurate, and low-cost data-logging solutions are necessary to advance these fields and complement existing sensing platforms such as high-throughput phenotyping. However, current data logging and sensing platforms do not meet the requirements to monitor these responses. Therefore, a new modular data logging platform was designed, named Gloxinia. Different sensor boards are interconnected depending upon the needs, with the potential to scale to hundreds of sensors in a distributed sensor system. To demonstrate the architecture, two sensor boards were designed—one for single-ended measurements and one for lock-in amplifier based measurements, named Sylvatica and Planalta, respectively. To evaluate the performance of the system in small setups, a small-scale trial was conducted in a growth chamber. Expected plant dynamics were successfully captured, indicating proper operation of the system. Though a large scale trial was not performed, we expect the system to scale very well to larger setups. Additionally, the platform is open-source, enabling other users to easily build upon our work and perform application-specific optimisations

RRS Discovery Cruise 360, 19 Jan-02 Feb 2011. Trials of the Autosub LR AUV, HyBIS, PELAGRA, Ellsworth Camera and MYRTLE-X Lander systems

There were five main objectives for the trials cruise: The first tests of the Autosub Long Range AUV, testing of the HyBIS video guided grab system, testing of the MYRTLE-X Lander systems, testing of a deep camera system for the Lake Ellsworth probe and test deployments of the PELAGRA neutrally buoyant sediment capture drifters.The working area was about 300 miles south west of the Canary Islands, in international waters, over benthic plains of 4000 m depth, with some tests of the video systems over a isolated sea mount rising to 1200 m depth. Most of the objectives of the cruise where met, with successful diving and control of the Autosub LR, tests of the HyBIS and Ellsworth camera systems, and 3 deployments and recoveries of two PELAGRA floats. Several wire tests of MYRTLE-X systems were carried out, predominantly successful, but concerns over the release system prevented a deployment of the lander