Spacelab software development and integration concepts study report, volume 1

The proposed software guidelines to be followed by the European Space Research Organization in the development of software for the Spacelab being developed for use as a payload for the space shuttle are documented. Concepts, techniques, and tools needed to assure the success of a programming project are defined as they relate to operation of the data management subsystem, support of experiments and space applications, use with ground support equipment, and for integration testing

Development of a BIM-enabled software tool for facility management using interactive floor plans, graph-based data management and granular information retrieval

Since its very conception Building Information Modeling incorporates the notion of using digital models—rich in geometric and semantic information—throughout the whole life cycle of a building. The creation of these models is a process tied to much effort, split by disciplines ,executed by different parties and brought together under difficult collaboration. However, in reality the effective utilization of the BIM process ends with the conclusion of the construction project. The subsequent Operation & Management phase makes little to no use of the information contained in these files, although it would be valuable resource to boost productivity. Especially the Facility Management phase, suffers from great inefficiency caused by challenges of data management and outside advances in digitization. Research suggests thatBIM is able to provide benefits for processes in FM and O&M related tasks and increase their overall efficiency, but previous attempts to introduce BIM software have remained fruitless.We argue that current solutions have failed to meet expectations and requirements by FM community, which generally lack expertise in working with CAD-like software. Instead this thesis presents a concept which puts interactive, two-dimensional floor plans at the center of a possible BIM-enabled Facility Management (FM) software tool. These floor plans are directly derived from BIM models and maintain linkage to all relevant semantic data, which is stored in a graph database. Users are able to navigate rooms, equipment and themselves on the floor plans. Further information about rooms can be accessed through 360◦photospheres—enabling remote exploration and conception—and room specific 3D model. The latter is generated beforehand and follows the underlying concept that FM seldomly requires a holistic view of the whole building but instead a cross section of many different domain models, tied by a specific location. Based on the mentioned features and concepts a prototypical web application is developed in order to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solution

Telematics and the Political Process

Recent advances in communications technology are revolutionizing the speed with which information of all kinds reaches the home and workplace. These advances, which include developments in the computer industry, interactive communication systems, laser and fiber optic based communication, and geostationary space platforms, are also affecting the extent and content of the information which is now accessible, with trends suggesting even greater impacts in the near future. Given the premise in a democratic society that the availability of information is critical to a responsible citizenry, such trends would seem to spell good times ahead for mass politics. A closer inspection of recent trends suggests reasons for concern, however. Patterns of the control of and sources of information; the content, quality and extent of information, and access to and use of information which is becoming available through the new technology show evidence of little change from the previous state of affairs. In addition, what change does exist demonstrates as much potential for adding to social, economic, and political inequities which already exist as for helping to reduce these inequities, leading to a society of the information rich and the information poor. The solution as to whether technological change in communications is a positive or negative addition to democratic politics depends ultimately on our willingness to learn from past mistakes and see this technology as a resource which needs to be carefully integrated into the larger social, economic, and political environment

A constant force bicycle transmission

A prototype design for a human powered automatic transmission intended for use on an ordinary touring bicycle is presented. The transmission is intended to automatically adjust the gearing of the bicycle to maintain an optimum pedal force, regardless of the current riding conditions. Therefore, the transmission eliminates the need for the cyclist to manually adjust the bicycle gearing. The entire transmission is a self-contained unit designed to bolt onto the rear wheel of an otherwise unmodified 27-inch bicycle. The transmission combines a unique adaptation of a commercially popular continuously variable traction drive with a totally mechanical integral feedback controller. The features of the traction drive unique to its application to a bicycle are outlined in detail, along with an analysis of the important traction drive design parameters. The control system is also uniquely adapted to the requirements of bicycling. A detailed classical analysis of the controller is presented to verify its desirable performance characteristics. In addition, a numerical simulation of the transmission is included to accurately predict its performance under typical operating conditions. A knowledge of typical pedal force profiles for normal touring cycling is prerequisite for the design of the constant force bicycle transmission. This data has not been previously published. An instrumentation package was developed especially to determine this data. A description of the system and a summary of the results are presented. These results are reduced to a set of design criteria for the constant force transmission

Muscle activation mapping of skeletal hand motion: an evolutionary approach.

Creating controlled dynamic character animation consists of mathe- matical modelling of muscles and solving the activation dynamics that form the key to coordination. But biomechanical simulation and control is com- putationally expensive involving complex di erential equations and is not suitable for real-time platforms like games. Performing such computations at every time-step reduces frame rate. Modern games use generic soft- ware packages called physics engines to perform a wide variety of in-game physical e ects. The physics engines are optimized for gaming platforms. Therefore, a physics engine compatible model of anatomical muscles and an alternative control architecture is essential to create biomechanical charac- ters in games. This thesis presents a system that generates muscle activations from captured motion by borrowing principles from biomechanics and neural con- trol. A generic physics engine compliant muscle model primitive is also de- veloped. The muscle model primitive forms the motion actuator and is an integral part of the physical model used in the simulation. This thesis investigates a stochastic solution to create a controller that mimics the neural control system employed in the human body. The control system uses evolutionary neural networks that evolve its weights using genetic algorithms. Examples and guidance often act as templates in muscle training during all stages of human life. Similarly, the neural con- troller attempts to learn muscle coordination through input motion samples. The thesis also explores the objective functions developed that aids in the genetic evolution of the neural network. Character interaction with the game world is still a pre-animated behaviour in most current games. Physically-based procedural hand ani- mation is a step towards autonomous interaction of game characters with the game world. The neural controller and the muscle primitive developed are used to animate a dynamic model of a human hand within a real-time physics engine environment

An Asynchronous Simulation Framework for Multi-User Interactive Collaboration: Application to Robot-Assisted Surgery

The field of surgery is continually evolving as there is always room for improvement in the post-operative health of the patient as well as the comfort of the Operating Room (OR) team. While the success of surgery is contingent upon the skills of the surgeon and the OR team, the use of specialized robots has shown to improve surgery-related outcomes in some cases. These outcomes are currently measured using a wide variety of metrics that include patient pain and recovery, surgeon’s comfort, duration of the operation and the cost of the procedure. There is a need for additional research to better understand the optimal criteria for benchmarking surgical performance. Presently, surgeons are trained to perform robot-assisted surgeries using interactive simulators. However, in the absence of well-defined performance standards, these simulators focus primarily on the simulation of the operative scene and not the complexities associated with multiple inputs to a real-world surgical procedure. Because interactive simulators are typically designed for specific robots that perform a small number of tasks controlled by a single user, they are inflexible in terms of their portability to different robots and the inclusion of multiple operators (e.g., nurses, medical assistants). Additionally, while most simulators provide high-quality visuals, simplification techniques are often employed to avoid stability issues for physics computation, contact dynamics and multi-manual interaction. This study addresses the limitations of existing simulators by outlining various specifications required to develop techniques that mimic real-world interactions and collaboration. Moreover, this study focuses on the inclusion of distributed control, shared task allocation and assistive feedback -- through machine learning, secondary and tertiary operators -- alongside the primary human operator