Frugal Leafy Green Shredding & Washing Machines

The goal of this project is to create specialized frugal appliances to assist women in rural Cameroon by reducing the amount of time it takes to prepare food. Specifically, the project focuses on two tasks: slicing eru leaves and washing bitter leaves. After researching the market and collecting information from women in South Cameroon, two appliances were designed: an eru leaf shredder and a bitter leaf washer. The shredder is a manual shredding device that uses a rotating blade and shaft subsystem to slice leaves, reducing labor time by 62% and increasing safety with features such as a hopper and an ergonomic crank handle. The washer is a manual washing device that features a rotating agitator that reduces the amount of time taken to wash bitter leaves by 50% and reduces the amount of water usage by 75%. Both devices are held in a portable housing unit that allows them to be easily moved and stored

Generic framework for the personal omni-remote controller using M2MI

A Generic Framework for the Personal Omni-Remote Controller Using M2MI is a master’s thesis outlining a generic framework for the wireless omni-remote controller that controls neighboring appliances by using Many-to-Many Invocation (M2MI). M2MI is an object-oriented abstraction of broadcast communication. First, this paper introduces the history of remote controllers and analyzes omni-remote controller projects made by other researchers in this area, such as the Pebbles PDA project at Carnegie Mellon University and HP’s COOLTOWN project. Second, this paper depicts a generic framework of the personal omni-remote controller system including architecture, type hierarchy, and service discovery. In this framework, a module approach and a decentralized dual-mode service discovery scheme are introduced. When users request a certain type of service, their omni-remote controller application will first discover the available appliances in the vicinity and then bring up the corresponding control module for the target appliance. Thus, users can control the appliance through the User Interface of the control module. To join the omni-remote controller system, servers and clients need to follow the type hierarchy convention of the system. Finally, several implementations are given to show the control of different appliances with different capabilities. These appliances include thermostats, TVs with parental control, and washing machines

Emergency Meal Kitchen Services

The Emergency Meal Kitchen Services (EMKS) unit is a portable and compact kitchen unit that can provide three days\u27 worth of food and water for at least 500 people, in any disaster location. We constructed models in terms of design criteria relating to weight, transportability, and food preparation capabilities. To study uncontrollable excitations during transportation as a helicopter sling load, we created models of pendulums to study the effect of initial angles on the swinging motion. To reduce these oscillations, we proposed a control mechanism that acts on the pendulum\u27s pivot point to dampen out the oscillations with the help of a phase delay. Utilizing this mechanism will reduce the swinging, thus making the EMKS easier and safer to transport by a helicopter sling load

Mor-Flo Industries, Inc. and Polaris Water Heaters/Arlington Place v. Industrial Commission of Utah : Amicus Brief

BRIEF OF STATE INDUSTRIES, INC., AMICUS CURIAE

Establishing a Need for a Protocol for the Interoperability of Heterogeneous IoT Home Devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the field of connecting devices consumers use every day to the internet. As the world relies on more and more internet-driven technological devices to control functions within the home, issues with compatibility of those devices are surfacing. This research was created to establish the need for standardization of IoT devices within the home

Environmental Control for Persons with Disabilities

This project researched available environmental control units (ECUs) designed to electronically aid persons with disabilities in their daily lives. Working from literature, interviews, and hands-on experience with the technologies, we use a simple environmental control technology (X-10) to develop reconfigurable laboratory modules that can be used in ME3506 (Rehabilitation Engineering) to demonstrate different aspects of environmental control to WPI students and create tutorials to introduce other people, specifically health care professionals such as physical therapists, to environmental control technologies for use by persons with disabilities

Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware

The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future

Development of boundary conditions for building drainage system components through novel numerical, laboratory and photogrammetric methods

Improvements in public health through better sanitary plumbing systems has been mainly due to the prevention afforded by barrier technologies to the ingress of foul air, which can contain toxic gases and pathogens, notwithstanding the nuisance of malodour. The main defence against this ingress is the ‘trap seal’ which comes in two forms; the ‘water trap seal’ and the ‘waterless trap seal’. Whilst these devices form effective barriers, they are vulnerable to, or can produce, transient air pressure fluctuations in the system which can lead to seal loss. Greater understanding of the characteristics of these devices is essential for the development of better protection strategies. The development of novel analytical techniques is central to this research as it increases computer model resolution at these important system extremities. Current methods employ a laboratory only approach, whereby a single loss co-efficient is developed. These laboratory derived boundary conditions are inherently static and in the case of the waterless trap seal, ignore structure flexibility. This research has produced new methodologies to evaluate performance and generate dynamic boundary conditions suitable for inclusion in an existing 1-D Method of Characteristics based model, AIRNET, which solves for pressure and velocity via the St. Venant equations of continuity and momentum in a finite difference scheme. The first novel technique developed uses photographic image and pressure data, transformed via photogrammetric and Fourier analysis to produce mathematical representations of the opening and closing of a waterless trap under transient pressures. The second novel technique developed focusses on the dynamic response of a water trap seal. Current boundary conditions use a steady state friction factor, ignoring separation losses. Analysis via ANSYS CFX allowed a frequency dependent dynamic representation of velocity change in the water trap seal to be developed, integrating unsteady friction and separation losses for the first time. Incorporation of these new boundary conditions in AIRNET confirms that frequency dependent whole system responses are possible and more realistic, reflecting both laboratory and on-site observations

Systematic literature review of hand gestures used in human computer interaction interfaces

Gestures, widely accepted as a humans' natural mode of interaction with their surroundings, have been considered for use in human-computer based interfaces since the early 1980s. They have been explored and implemented, with a range of success and maturity levels, in a variety of fields, facilitated by a multitude of technologies. Underpinning gesture theory however focuses on gestures performed simultaneously with speech, and majority of gesture based interfaces are supported by other modes of interaction. This article reports the results of a systematic review undertaken to identify characteristics of touchless/in-air hand gestures used in interaction interfaces. 148 articles were reviewed reporting on gesture-based interaction interfaces, identified through searching engineering and science databases (Engineering Village, Pro Quest, Science Direct, Scopus and Web of Science). The goal of the review was to map the field of gesture-based interfaces, investigate the patterns in gesture use, and identify common combinations of gestures for different combinations of applications and technologies. From the review, the community seems disparate with little evidence of building upon prior work and a fundamental framework of gesture-based interaction is not evident. However, the findings can help inform future developments and provide valuable information about the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches. It was further found that the nature and appropriateness of gestures used was not a primary factor in gesture elicitation when designing gesture based systems, and that ease of technology implementation often took precedence