A High Performance Fuzzy Logic Architecture for UAV Decision Making

The majority of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in operation today are not truly autonomous, but are instead reliant on a remote human pilot. A high degree of autonomy can provide many advantages in terms of cost, operational resources and safety. However, one of the challenges involved in achieving autonomy is that of replicating the reasoning and decision making capabilities of a human pilot. One candidate method for providing this decision making capability is fuzzy logic. In this role, the fuzzy system must satisfy real-time constraints, process large quantities of data and relate to large knowledge bases. Consequently, there is a need for a generic, high performance fuzzy computation platform for UAV applications. Based on Lees’ [1] original work, a high performance fuzzy processing architecture, implemented in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), has been developed and is shown to outclass the performance of existing fuzzy processors

Deliberative architecture for smart sensors in the filtering operation of a water purification plant

The increase of applications for industrial smart sensors is booming, mainly due to the use of distributed automation architectures, industrial evolution and recent technological advances, which guide the industry to a greater degree of automation, integration and globalization. In this research work, an architecture for deliberative-type intelligent industrial sensors is proposed, based on the BDI (Belief Desire Intentions) model, adaptable to the measurement of different variables of the filtering process of a water purification plant. An intelligent sensor with functions of signal digitalization, self-calibration, alarm generation, communication with PLC, user interface for parameter adjustment, and analysis with data extrapolation have been arranged. For decision making, the use of fuzzy logic techniques has been considered, which allows imprecise parameters to be appropriately represented, simplifying decision problem solving in the industrial environment, generating stable and fast systems with low processing requirements. The proposed architecture has been modelled, simulated and validated using UML language in conjunction with Petri nets, which facilitate the representation of discrete system events, presenting them clearly and precisely. In the implementation and testing of the prototype, C/C ++ language has been used in an 8-bit microcontroller, experimentally corroborating the operation of the device, which allowed evaluating the behavior of a pseudo-intelligent agent based on the requirements of the water treatment plant, and also through comparisons with similar works developed by other researchers

The DS-Pnet modeling formalism for cyber-physical system development

This work presents the DS-Pnet modeling formalism (Dataflow, Signals and Petri nets), designed for the development of cyber-physical systems, combining the characteristics of Petri nets and dataflows to support the modeling of mixed systems containing both reactive parts and data processing operations. Inheriting the features of the parent IOPT Petri net class, including an external interface composed of input and output signals and events, the addition of dataflow operations brings enhanced modeling capabilities to specify mathematical data transformations and graphically express the dependencies between signals. Data-centric systems, that do not require reactive controllers, are designed using pure dataflow models. Component based model composition enables reusing existing components, create libraries of previously tested components and hierarchically decompose complex systems into smaller sub-systems. A precise execution semantics was defined, considering the relationship between dataflow and Petri net nodes, providing an abstraction to define the interface between reactive controllers and input and output signals, including analog sensors and actuators. The new formalism is supported by the IOPT-Flow Web based tool framework, offering tools to design and edit models, simulate model execution on the Web browser, plus model-checking and software/hardware automatic code generation tools to implement controllers running on embedded devices (C,VHDL and JavaScript). A new communication protocol was created to permit the automatic implementation of distributed cyber-physical systems composed of networks of remote components communicating over the Internet. The editor tool connects directly to remote embedded devices running DS-Pnet models and may import remote components into new models, contributing to simplify the creation of distributed cyber-physical applications, where the communication between distributed components is specified just by drawing arcs. Several application examples were designed to validate the proposed formalism and the associated framework, ranging from hardware solutions, industrial applications to distributed software applications