Efficiency and Sustainability of the Distributed Renewable Hybrid Power Systems Based on the Energy Internet, Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts-Volume II

The climate changes that are becoming visible today are a challenge for the global research community. In this context, renewable energy sources, fuel cell systems, and other energy generating sources must be optimally combined and connected to the grid system using advanced energy transaction methods. As this reprint presents the latest solutions in the implementation of fuel cell and renewable energy in mobile and stationary applications, such as hybrid and microgrid power systems based on the Energy Internet, Blockchain technology, and smart contracts, we hope that they will be of interest to readers working in the related fields mentioned above

Self-adaptive structure semi-supervised methods for streamed emblematic gestures

Although many researchers try to improve the level of machine intelligence, there is still a long way to achieve intelligence similar to what humans have. Scientists and engineers are continuously trying to increase the level of smartness of the modern technology, i.e. smartphones and robotics. Humans communicate with each other by using the voice and gestures. Hence, gestures are essential to transfer the information to the partner. To reach a higher level of intelligence, the machine should learn from and react to the human gestures, which mean learning from continuously streamed gestures. This task faces serious challenges since processing streamed data suffers from different problems. Besides the stream data being unlabelled, the stream is long. Furthermore, “concept-drift” and “concept evolution” are the main problems of them. The data of the data streams have several other problems that are worth to be mentioned here, e.g. they are: dynamically changed, presented only once, arrived at high speed, and non-linearly distributed. In addition to the general problems of the data streams, gestures have additional problems. For example, different techniques are required to handle the varieties of gesture types. The available methods solve some of these problems individually, while we present a technique to solve these problems altogether. Unlabelled data may have additional information that describes the labelled data more precisely. Hence, semi-supervised learning is used to handle the labelled and unlabelled data. However, the data size increases continuously, which makes training classifiers so hard. Hence, we integrate the incremental learning technique with semi-supervised learning, which enables the model to update itself on new data without the need of the old data. Additionally, we integrate the incremental class learning within the semi-supervised learning, since there is a high possibility of incoming new concepts in the streamed gestures. Moreover, the system should be able to distinguish among different concepts and also should be able to identify random movements. Hence, we integrate the novelty detection to distinguish between the gestures that belong to the known concepts and those that belong to unknown concepts. The extreme value theory is used for this purpose, which overrides the need of additional labelled data to set the novelty threshold and has several other supportive features. Clustering algorithms are used to distinguish among different new concepts and also to identify random movements. Furthermore, the system should be able to update itself on only the trusty assignments, since updating the classifier on wrongly assigned gesture affects the performance of the system. Hence, we propose confidence measures for the assigned labels. We propose six types of semi-supervised algorithms that depend on different techniques to handle different types of gestures. The proposed classifiers are based on the Parzen window classifier, support vector machine classifier, neural network (extreme learning machine), Polynomial classifier, Mahalanobis classifier, and nearest class mean classifier. All of these classifiers are provided with the mentioned features. Additionally, we submit a wrapper method that uses one of the proposed classifiers or ensemble of them to autonomously issue new labels to the new concepts and update the classifiers on the newly incoming information depending on whether they belong to the known classes or new classes. It can recognise the different novel concepts and also identify random movements. To evaluate the system we acquired gesture data with nine different gesture classes. Each of them represents a different order to the machine e.g. come, go, etc. The data are collected using the Microsoft Kinect sensor. The acquired data contain 2878 gestures achieved by ten volunteers. Different sets of features are computed and used in the evaluation of the system. Additionally, we used real data, synthetic data and public data as support to the evaluation process. All the features, incremental learning, incremental class learning, and novelty detection are evaluated individually. The outputs of the classifiers are compared with the original classifier or with the benchmark classifiers. The results show high performances of the proposed algorithms

Development and Evaluation of AI-based Parkinson's Disease Related Motor Symptom Detection Algorithms

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive, neurodegenerative disorder that is typically characterized by a loss of (motor) function, increased slowness and rigidity. Due to a lack of feasible biomarkers, progression cannot easily be quantified with objective measures. For the same reason, neurologists have to revert to monitoring of (motor) symptoms (i.e. by means of subjective and often inaccurate patient diaries) in order to evaluate a medication's effectiveness. Replacing or supplementing these diaries with an automatic and objective assessment of symptoms and side effects could drastically reduce manual efforts and potentially help in personalizing and improving medication regime. In turn, appearance of symptoms could be reduced and the patient's quality of life increased. The objective of this thesis is two-fold: (1) development and improvement of algorithms for detecting PD related motor symptoms and (2) to develop a software framework for time series analysis

A multi-modal smart sensing network for marine environmental monitoring

There is an imperative need for long-term, large-scale marine monitoring systems that will allow decisions to be made based on the analysis of collected data to avoid or limit negative impacts on the ecosystem. Modern marine environmental sensing technologies, such as autonomous wireless sensor networks (WSNs), provide the capability to meet the challenges of high spatial and temporal scales. However, the significant amount of data generated from WSNs is a significant challenge for manual analysis. These multitudinous data need to be automatically processed, indexed and catalogued in a smarter way that can be more easily understood, accessed and managed by operators, scientists and policy makers. Moreover, current research works show that WSNs have their own limitations, for example, reliability issues and the fact that they are passive systems and provide context-less data. Thus, it is becoming increasingly clear that in order to adequately monitor marine environments, they need to be characterised from multiple perspectives. Combining multiple technologies and sensing modalities in environmental monitoring programmes can provide not only advantages of reliability and robustness for sensing systems, but also enhanced understanding of environmental processes. In addition, considerable advances can be made if robust sensing technology can be combined with sophisticated methods of data analysis, classification and cataloguing. The aim of this work is to bridge the gap between current aquatic monitoring systems and futuristic ideal large scale multi-modality smart sensing networks for marine environmental monitoring. To illustrate this, a smart sensing system is proposed and two case studies are used to show data processing from in-situ measurements and from camera based visual sensing data automatically using machine learning techniques. Abnormal events detection results from an in-situ sensor and shipping traffic detection results from visual sensor are combined to illustrate the benefit of coupling multiple sensing modalities

Computationally efficient algorithms and implementations of adaptive deep brain stimulation systems for Parkinson's disease

Clinical deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a tool used to mitigate pharmacologically intractable neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD), tremor and dystonia. Present implementations of DBS use continuous, high frequency voltage or current pulses so as to mitigate PD. This results in some limitations, among which there is stimulation induced side effects and shortening of pacemaker battery life. Adaptive DBS (aDBS) can be used to overcome a number of these limitations. Adaptive DBS is intended to deliver stimulation precisely only when needed. This thesis presents work undertaken to investigate, propose and develop novel algorithms and implementations of systems for adapting DBS. This thesis proposes four system implementations that could facilitate DBS adaptation either in the form of closed-loop DBS or spatial adaptation. The first method involved the use of dynamic detection to track changes in local field potentials (LFP) which can be indicative of PD symptoms. The work on dynamic detection included the synthesis of validation dataset using mainly autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models to enable the evaluation of a subset of PD detection algorithms for accuracy and complexity trade-offs. The subset of algorithms consisted of feature extraction (FE), dimensionality reduction (DR) and dynamic pattern classification stages. The combination with the best trade-off in terms of accuracy and complexity consisted of discrete wavelet transform (DWT) for FE, maximum ratio method (MRM) for DR and k-nearest neighbours (k-NN) for classification. The MRM is a novel DR method inspired by Fisher's separability criterion. The best combination achieved accuracy measures: F1-score of 97.9%, choice probability of 99.86% and classification accuracy of 99.29%. Regarding complexity, it had an estimated microchip area of 0.84 mm² for estimates in 90 nm CMOS process. The second implementation developed the first known PD detection and monitoring processor. This was achieved using complementary detection, which presents a hardware-efficient method of implementing a PD detection processor for monitoring PD progression in Parkinsonian patients. Complementary detection is achieved by using a combination of weak classifiers to produce a classifier with a higher consistency and confidence level than the individual classifiers in the configuration. The PD detection processor using the same processing stages as the first implementation was validated on an FPGA platform. By mapping the implemented design on a 45 nm CMOS process, the most optimal implementation achieved a dynamic power per channel of 2.26 μW and an area per channel of 0.2384 mm². It also achieved mean accuracy measures: Mathews correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.6162, an F1-score of 91.38%, and mean classification accuracy of 91.91%. The third implementation proposed a framework for adapting DBS based on a critic-actor control approach. This models the relationship between a trained clinician (critic) and a neuro-modulation system (actor) for modulating DBS. The critic was implemented and validated using machine learning models, and the actor was implemented using a fuzzy controller. Therapy is modulated based on state estimates obtained through the machine learning models. PD suppression was achieved in seven out of nine test cases. The final implementation introduces spatial adaptation for aDBS. Spatial adaptation adjusts to variation in lead position and/or stimulation focus, as poor stimulation focus has been reported to affect therapeutic benefits of DBS. The implementation proposes dynamic current steering systems as a power-efficient implementation for multi-polar multisite current steering, with a particular focus on the output stage of the dynamic current steering system. The output stage uses dynamic current sources in implementing push-pull current sources that are interfaced to 16 electrodes so as to enable current steering. The performance of the output stage was demonstrated using a supply of 3.3 V to drive biphasic current pulses of up to 0.5 mA through its electrodes. The preliminary design of the circuit was implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS technology

Context-aware home monitoring system for Parkinson's disease patients : ambient and wearable sensing for freezing of gait detection

Tesi en modalitat de cotutela: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya i Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. This PhD Thesis has been developed in the framework of, and according to, the rules of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate on Interactive and Cognitive Environments EMJD ICE [FPA no. 2010-0012]Parkinson’s disease (PD). It is characterized by brief episodes of inability to step, or by extremely short steps that typically occur on gait initiation or on turning while walking. The consequences of FOG are aggravated mobility and higher affinity to falls, which have a direct effect on the quality of life of the individual. There does not exist completely effective pharmacological treatment for the FOG phenomena. However, external stimuli, such as lines on the floor or rhythmic sounds, can focus the attention of a person who experiences a FOG episode and help her initiate gait. The optimal effectiveness in such approach, known as cueing, is achieved through timely activation of a cueing device upon the accurate detection of a FOG episode. Therefore, a robust and accurate FOG detection is the main problem that needs to be solved when developing a suitable assistive technology solution for this specific user group. This thesis proposes the use of activity and spatial context of a person as the means to improve the detection of FOG episodes during monitoring at home. The thesis describes design, algorithm implementation and evaluation of a distributed home system for FOG detection based on multiple cameras and a single inertial gait sensor worn at the waist of the patient. Through detailed observation of collected home data of 17 PD patients, we realized that a novel solution for FOG detection could be achieved by using contextual information of the patient’s position, orientation, basic posture and movement on a semantically annotated two-dimensional (2D) map of the indoor environment. We envisioned the future context-aware system as a network of Microsoft Kinect cameras placed in the patient’s home that interacts with a wearable inertial sensor on the patient (smartphone). Since the hardware platform of the system constitutes from the commercial of-the-shelf hardware, the majority of the system development efforts involved the production of software modules (for position tracking, orientation tracking, activity recognition) that run on top of the middle-ware operating system in the home gateway server. The main component of the system that had to be developed is the Kinect application for tracking the position and height of multiple people, based on the input in the form of 3D point cloud data. Besides position tracking, this software module also provides mapping and semantic annotation of FOG specific zones on the scene in front of the Kinect. One instance of vision tracking application is supposed to run for every Kinect sensor in the system, yielding potentially high number of simultaneous tracks. At any moment, the system has to track one specific person - the patient. To enable tracking of the patient between different non-overlapped cameras in the distributed system, a new re-identification approach based on appearance model learning with one-class Support Vector Machine (SVM) was developed. Evaluation of the re-identification method was conducted on a 16 people dataset in a laboratory environment. Since the patient orientation in the indoor space was recognized as an important part of the context, the system necessitated the ability to estimate the orientation of the person, expressed in the frame of the 2D scene on which the patient is tracked by the camera. We devised method to fuse position tracking information from the vision system and inertial data from the smartphone in order to obtain patient’s 2D pose estimation on the scene map. Additionally, a method for the estimation of the position of the smartphone on the waist of the patient was proposed. Position and orientation estimation accuracy were evaluated on a 12 people dataset. Finally, having available positional, orientation and height information, a new seven-class activity classification was realized using a hierarchical classifier that combines height-based posture classifier with translational and rotational SVM movement classifiers. Each of the SVM movement classifiers and the joint hierarchical classifier were evaluated in the laboratory experiment with 8 healthy persons. The final context-based FOG detection algorithm uses activity information and spatial context information in order to confirm or disprove FOG detected by the current state-of-the-art FOG detection algorithm (which uses only wearable sensor data). A dataset with home data of 3 PD patients was produced using two Kinect cameras and a smartphone in synchronized recording. The new context-based FOG detection algorithm and the wearable-only FOG detection algorithm were both evaluated with the home dataset and their results were compared. The context-based algorithm very positively influences the reduction of false positive detections, which is expressed through achieved higher specificity. In some cases, context-based algorithm also eliminates true positive detections, reducing sensitivity to the lesser extent. The final comparison of the two algorithms on the basis of their sensitivity and specificity, shows the improvement in the overall FOG detection achieved with the new context-aware home system.Esta tesis propone el uso de la actividad y el contexto espacial de una persona como medio para mejorar la detección de episodios de FOG (Freezing of gait) durante el seguimiento en el domicilio. La tesis describe el diseño, implementación de algoritmos y evaluación de un sistema doméstico distribuido para detección de FOG basado en varias cámaras y un único sensor de marcha inercial en la cintura del paciente. Mediante de la observación detallada de los datos caseros recopilados de 17 pacientes con EP, nos dimos cuenta de que se puede lograr una solución novedosa para la detección de FOG mediante el uso de información contextual de la posición del paciente, orientación, postura básica y movimiento anotada semánticamente en un mapa bidimensional (2D) del entorno interior. Imaginamos el futuro sistema de consciencia del contexto como una red de cámaras Microsoft Kinect colocadas en el hogar del paciente, que interactúa con un sensor de inercia portátil en el paciente (teléfono inteligente). Al constituirse la plataforma del sistema a partir de hardware comercial disponible, los esfuerzos de desarrollo consistieron en la producción de módulos de software (para el seguimiento de la posición, orientación seguimiento, reconocimiento de actividad) que se ejecutan en la parte superior del sistema operativo del servidor de puerta de enlace de casa. El componente principal del sistema que tuvo que desarrollarse es la aplicación Kinect para seguimiento de la posición y la altura de varias personas, según la entrada en forma de punto 3D de datos en la nube. Además del seguimiento de posición, este módulo de software también proporciona mapeo y semántica. anotación de zonas específicas de FOG en la escena frente al Kinect. Se supone que una instancia de la aplicación de seguimiento de visión se ejecuta para cada sensor Kinect en el sistema, produciendo un número potencialmente alto de pistas simultáneas. En cualquier momento, el sistema tiene que rastrear a una persona específica - el paciente. Para habilitar el seguimiento del paciente entre diferentes cámaras no superpuestas en el sistema distribuido, se desarrolló un nuevo enfoque de re-identificación basado en el aprendizaje de modelos de apariencia con one-class Suport Vector Machine (SVM). La evaluación del método de re-identificación se realizó con un conjunto de datos de 16 personas en un entorno de laboratorio. Dado que la orientación del paciente en el espacio interior fue reconocida como una parte importante del contexto, el sistema necesitaba la capacidad de estimar la orientación de la persona, expresada en el marco de la escena 2D en la que la cámara sigue al paciente. Diseñamos un método para fusionar la información de seguimiento de posición del sistema de visión y los datos de inercia del smartphone para obtener la estimación de postura 2D del paciente en el mapa de la escena. Además, se propuso un método para la estimación de la posición del Smartphone en la cintura del paciente. La precisión de la estimación de la posición y la orientación se evaluó en un conjunto de datos de 12 personas. Finalmente, al tener disponible información de posición, orientación y altura, se realizó una nueva clasificación de actividad de seven-class utilizando un clasificador jerárquico que combina un clasificador de postura basado en la altura con clasificadores de movimiento SVM traslacional y rotacional. Cada uno de los clasificadores de movimiento SVM y el clasificador jerárquico conjunto se evaluaron en el experimento de laboratorio con 8 personas sanas. El último algoritmo de detección de FOG basado en el contexto utiliza información de actividad e información de texto espacial para confirmar o refutar el FOG detectado por el algoritmo de detección de FOG actual. El algoritmo basado en el contexto influye muy positivamente en la reducción de las detecciones de falsos positivos, que se expresa a través de una mayor especificida

Mantenimiento Predictivo: Historia, una guía de implementación y enfoques actuales

Debido al aumento del número de sensores utilizados en las plantas de producción, la posibilidad de obtener datos de estas ha incrementado considerablemente. Esto conlleva la posibilidad de detectar fallos antes de que estos ocurran y futuras paradas que afecten a las plantas de producción. Las tecnologías de mantenimiento predictivo permiten predecir eventos futuros, convirtiéndolas en herramientas para afrontar los retos que surjan en los mercados competitivos. Esta tesis está dividida en cinco partes. La primera, describe el mantenimiento a lo largo de la historia, mientras que la segunda está enfocada en el mantenimiento predictivo. El tercer punto es una guía de implementación de un programa de mantenimiento predictivo para cualquier organización interesada en el tema. Finalmente, las dos últimas partes hacen referencia a los enfoques más comunes en inteligencia artificial donde se explican técnicas importantes como “Artificial Neural Networks” y “Machine Learning”, describiendo algunos ejemplos donde fueron usadas para realizar mantenimiento predictivo.Departamento de Organización de Empresas y Comercialización e Investigación de MercadosHochschule Albstadt-SigmaringenGrado en Ingeniería en Organización Industria