Index to 1985 NASA Tech Briefs, volume 10, numbers 1-4

Short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of NASA are presented. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This index for 1985 Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief Number. The following areas are covered: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

3D Simulation of the Velodyne HDL-32E Lidar Integrated with an Autonomous Marine Vehicle

A 3D simulator is programmed for modeling the Velodyne HDL-32E LIDAR used on the WAM-V vehicle in the marine environment for obstacle detection. The model takes into account sensor integration, sensor error, and error correction. Theoretical analysis includes consideration of atmospheric refraction, time of flight error, UDP packet and timing, calibration parameter errors, depth spread error, field of view, accuracy, angular resolution, and points per second in the environment. The average distance error shows a variance of a 0.0127 m to 0.8128 m depending on the laser and the distance. Test results produce distance correction equations for each laser beam. For presented example Laser 1, the error between the corrected values and the actual distance values ranges from .02%-1.14%, which is reduced from the uncorrected error ranging from 1.32% to 3.42%. For all 32 Lasers, the real-world uncorrected distance readings have a deviation of -1.02E-05 σ to .171σ, where σ= 0.0221 m when the Red Taylor Buoy is at .518 m. The corrected distance readings deviate from 1.43E-07σ to 0.0931σ. The simulated uncorrected distance readings deviate from -0.411σ to 2.77σ, with σ= 0.0208 m. The corrected distance readings in simulation deviate from the standard by -.218σ to 2.24σ. The field of view is measured to be 41 degrees. Reflectivity and intensity profiles are presented. Physical textures are also generated based on these profiles from buoy obstacles used in the marine competition tasks. By color, the increasing order of intensity for obstacles is black, green, red, and then white. The final product consists of data used for simulation of the Velodyne HDL-32E and reporting the accuracy of simulated physical values relative to the real world testing

Techniques and Emerging Trends for State of the Art Equipment Maintenance Systems - A Bibliometric Analysis

The increasing interconnection of machines in industrial production on one hand, and the improved capabilities to store, retrieve, and analyze large amounts of data on the other, offer promising perspectives for maintaining production machines. Recently, predictive maintenance has gained increasing attention in the context of equipment maintenance systems. As opposed to other approaches, predictive maintenance relies on machine behavior models, which offer several advantages. In this highly interdisciplinary field, there is a lack of a literature review of relevant research fields and realization techniques. To obtain a comprehensive overview on the state of the art, large data sets of relevant literature need to be considered and, best case, be automatically partitioned into relevant research fields. A proper methodology to obtain such an overview is the bibliometric analysis method. In the presented work, we apply a bibliometric analysis to the field of equipment maintenance systems. To be more precise, we analyzed clusters of identified literature with the goal to obtain deeper insight into the related research fields. Moreover, cluster metrics reveal the importance of a single paper and an investigation of the temporal cluster development indicates the evolution of research topics. In this context, we introduce a new measure to compare results from different time periods in an appropriate way. In turn, among others, this simplifies the analysis of topics, with a vast amount of subtopics. Altogether, the obtained results particularly provide a comprehensive overview of established techniques and emerging trends for equipment maintenance systems

Reinforcement Learning

Brains rule the world, and brain-like computation is increasingly used in computers and electronic devices. Brain-like computation is about processing and interpreting data or directly putting forward and performing actions. Learning is a very important aspect. This book is on reinforcement learning which involves performing actions to achieve a goal. The first 11 chapters of this book describe and extend the scope of reinforcement learning. The remaining 11 chapters show that there is already wide usage in numerous fields. Reinforcement learning can tackle control tasks that are too complex for traditional, hand-designed, non-learning controllers. As learning computers can deal with technical complexities, the tasks of human operators remain to specify goals on increasingly higher levels. This book shows that reinforcement learning is a very dynamic area in terms of theory and applications and it shall stimulate and encourage new research in this field

Green Technologies for Production Processes

This book focuses on original research works about Green Technologies for Production Processes, including discrete production processes and process production processes, from various aspects that tackle product, process, and system issues in production. The aim is to report the state-of-the-art on relevant research topics and highlight the barriers, challenges, and opportunities we are facing. This book includes 22 research papers and involves energy-saving and waste reduction in production processes, design and manufacturing of green products, low carbon manufacturing and remanufacturing, management and policy for sustainable production, technologies of mitigating CO2 emissions, and other green technologies