A noncontact ultrasonic platform for structural inspection

Miniature robotic vehicles are receiving increasing attention for use in nondestructive testing (NDE) due to their attractiveness in terms of cost, safety, and their accessibility to areas where manual inspection is not practical. Conventional ultrasonic inspection requires the provision of a suitable coupling liquid between the probe and the structure under test. This necessitates either an on board reservoir or umbilical providing a constant flow of coupling fluid, neither of which are practical for a fleet of miniature robotic inspection vehicles. Air-coupled ultrasound offers the possibility of couplant-free ultrasonic inspection. This paper describes the sensing methodology, hardware platform and algorithms used to integrate an air-coupled ultrasonic inspection payload into a miniature robotic vehicle platform. The work takes account of the robot's inherent positional uncertainty when constructing an image of the test specimen from aggregated sensor measurements. This paper concludes with the results of an automatic inspection of a aluminium sample

Miniature mobile sensor platforms for condition monitoring of structures

In this paper, a wireless, multisensor inspection system for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of materials is described. The sensor configuration enables two inspection modes-magnetic (flux leakage and eddy current) and noncontact ultrasound. Each is designed to function in a complementary manner, maximizing the potential for detection of both surface and internal defects. Particular emphasis is placed on the generic architecture of a novel, intelligent sensor platform, and its positioning on the structure under test. The sensor units are capable of wireless communication with a remote host computer, which controls manipulation and data interpretation. Results are presented in the form of automatic scans with different NDE sensors in a series of experiments on thin plate structures. To highlight the advantage of utilizing multiple inspection modalities, data fusion approaches are employed to combine data collected by complementary sensor systems. Fusion of data is shown to demonstrate the potential for improved inspection reliability

Design and Analysis of Electromagnetic Interference Filters and Shields

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) is a problem of rising prevalence as electronic devices become increasingly ubiquitous. EMI filters are low pass filters intended to prevent the conducted electric currents and radiated electromagnetic fields of a device from interfering with the proper operation of other devices. Shielding is a method, often complementary to filtering, that typically involves enclosing a device in a conducting box in order to prevent radiated EMI. This dissertation includes three chapters related to the use of filtering and shielding for preventing electromagnetic interference. The first chapter deals with improving the high frequency EMI filtering performance of surface mount capacitors on printed circuit boards (PCBs). At high frequencies, the impedance of a capacitor is dominated by a parasitic inductance, thus leading to poor high frequency filtering performance. Other researchers have introduced the concept of parasitic inductance cancellation and have applied this concept to improving the filtering performance of volumetrically large capacitors at frequencies up to 100 MHz. The work in this chapter applies the concept of parasitic inductance cancellation to much smaller surface mount capacitors at frequencies up to several gigahertz. The second chapter introduces a much more compact design for applying parasitic inductance cancellation to surface mount capacitors that uses inductive coupling between via pairs as well as coplanar traces. This new design is suited for PCBs having three or more layers including solid ground and/or power plane(s). This design is demonstrated to be considerably more effective in filtering high frequency noise due to crosstalk than a comparable conventional shunt capacitor filter configuration. Finally, chapter 3 presents a detailed analysis of the methods that are used to decompose the measure of plane wave shielding effectiveness into measures of absorption and reflection. Textbooks on electromagnetic compatibility commonly decompose shielding effectiveness into what is called the Schelkunoff decomposition in this work with terms called penetration loss, reflection loss, and the internal reflections correction term. In experimentally characterizing the shielding properties of materials, however, other decompositions are commonly used. This chapter analyzes the relationships between these different decompositions and two-port network parameters and shows that other decompositions offer terms that are better figures of merit than the terms of the Schelkunoff decomposition in experimental situations

The 30 GHz communications satellite low noise receiver

A Ka-band low noise front end in proof of concept (POC) model form for ultimate spaceborne communications receiver deployment was developed. The low noise receiver consists of a 27.5 to 30.0 GHz image enhanced mixer integrated with a 3.7 to 6.2 GHz FET low noise IF amplifier and driven by a self contained 23.8 GHz phase locked local oscillator source. The measured level of receiver performance over the 27.3 to 30.0 GHz RF/3.7 to 6.2 GHz IF band includes 5.5 to 6.5 dB (typ) SSB noise figure, 20.5 + or - 1.5 dB conversion gain and +23 dBm minimum third order two tone intermodulation output intercept point

ASDTIC control and standardized interface circuits applied to buck, parallel and buck-boost dc to dc power converters

Versatile standardized pulse modulation nondissipatively regulated control signal processing circuits were applied to three most commonly used dc to dc power converter configurations: (1) the series switching buck-regulator, (2) the pulse modulated parallel inverter, and (3) the buck-boost converter. The unique control concept and the commonality of control functions for all switching regulators have resulted in improved static and dynamic performance and control circuit standardization. New power-circuit technology was also applied to enhance reliability and to achieve optimum weight and efficiency

Digital demodulation with data subcarrier tracking

Digital demodulation with data subcarrier trackin

Filtering and scalability in the ECO distributed event model

Event-based communication is useful in many application domains, ranging from small, centralised applications to large, distributed systems. Many different event models have been developed to address the requirements of different application domains. One such model is the ECO model which was designed to support distributed virtual world applications. Like many other event models, ECO has event filtering capabilities meant to improve scalability by decreasing network traffic in a distributed implementation. Our recent work in event-based systems has included building a fully distributed version of the ECO model, including event filtering capabilities. This paper describes the results of our evaluation of filters as a means of achieving increased scalability in the ECO model. The evaluation is empirical and real data gathered from an actual event-based system is used

Recursive forward dynamics for multiple robot arms moving a common task object

Recursive forward dynamics algorithms are developed for an arbitrary number of robot arms moving a commonly held object. The multiarm forward dynamics problem is to find the angular accelerations at the joints and the contact forces that the arms impart to the task object. The problem also involves finding the acceleration of this object. The multiarm forward dynamics solutions provide a thorough physical and mathematical understanding of the way several arms behave in response to a set of applied joint moments. Such an understanding simplifies and guides the subsequent control design and experimentation process. The forward dynamics algorithms also provide the necessary analytical foundation for conducting analysis and simulation studies. The multiarm algorithms are based on the filtering and smoothing approach recently advanced for single-arm dynamics, and they can be built up modularly from the single-arm algorithms. The algorithms compute recursively the joint-angle accelerations, the contact forces, and the task-object accelerations. Algorithms are also developed to evaluate in closed form the linear transformations from the active joint moments to the joint-angle accelerations, to the task-object accelerations., and to the task-object contact forces. A possible computing architecture is presented as a precursor to a more complete investigation of the computational performance of the dynamics algorithms