Assinaturas baseadas no espaço de escalas de curvatura aplicadas ao monitoramento não invasivo de cargas elétricas residenciais

Non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) systems have gained extensive interest due to their potential role regarding power savings for residential customers. These systems, which are mostly based on stages of detection and classification of transients on aggregated signals, rely heavily on load signatures. In the literature, the image-based representations of voltagecurrent (V-I) trajectories are claimed as the most effective individual steady-state signatures for appliance classification. However, these representations inherit some drawbacks from their generation process and they are thus incapable of inheriting all the information encompassed by V-I trajectories. This work then proposes two steady-state appliance signatures derived from the curvature scale space of V-I trajectories. These signatures aim to improve the image representations of V-I trajectories by encompassing structural elements related to the general shape of such trajectories as well as some characteristics neglected during their generation. A group of load signatures formed from the proposed signatures was evaluated on direct load classification and load disaggregation scenarios for four publicly available datasets. The results achieved by the proposed representations surpassed the sole employment of a reference image-based V-I signature for all the test scenarios executed. Also, some of the evaluated signatures outperformed all known proposals that are exclusively based on steady-state signatures for load classification on a given benchmark dataset as well as on two other public datasets.Agência 1Os sistemas de monitoramento não invasivo de cargas elétricas (MNICE) têm recebido extensivo interesse em função de seu potencial em prover informações que podem resultar em economia no consumo de energia elétrica residencial. Esses sistemas são baseados na análise de sinais agregados de consumo de energia elétrica e, em sua grande parte, também em etapas de detecção e de classificação de transientes em tais sinais, o que os torna fortemente dependentes de assinaturas de cargas elétricas residenciais. Na literatura, as trajetórias tensão-corrente (V-I) são assumidas como as representações mais completas para cargas elétricas residenciais, de tal modo que suas representações em imagem são supostas como as assinaturas de estado estacionário mais efetivas para cargas elétricas residenciais. No entanto, essas assinaturas herdam limitações de seus processos de obtenção que as tornam incapazes de incorporar toda a informação contida nas trajetórias que representam. Este trabalho de tese então propõe duas novas assinaturas de estado estacionário para cargas elétricas residenciais, as quais são pretendidas como melhorias para as assinaturas em imagem citadas. As assinaturas propostas são derivadas do espaço de escalas de curvatura de trajetórias tensão-corrente e assim são capazes de realçar a representação de elementos estruturais quanto à forma geral de tais trajetórias. Elas também são capazes de incorporar certas características negligenciadas pelas representações em imagem de tais trajetórias. Um conjunto de assinaturas derivado das assinaturas propostas foi avaliado em cenários com dados submedidos e também com dados de consumo agregado provenientes de quatro bases de dados públicas. Os resultados obtidos pelas assinaturas avaliadas superaram o desempenho obtido pelo emprego isolado de uma representação em imagem da trajetória V-I adotada como referência. Ademais, alguns dos resultados obtidos também suplantaram trabalhos de estado da arte em três bases de dados, dentre elas uma base de dados que é tida como de referência para testes de classificação de cargas elétricas residenciais

Image Processing for Ice Parameter Identification in Ice Management

Various types of remotely sensed data and imaging technology will aid the development of sea-ice observation to, for instance, support estimation of ice forces critical to Dynamic Positioning (DP) operations in Arctic waters. The use of cameras as sensors for offshore operations in ice-covered regions will be explored for measurements of ice statistics and ice properties, as part of a sea-ice monitoring system. This thesis focuses on the algorithms for image processing supporting an ice management system to provide useful ice information to dynamic ice estimators and for decision support. The ice information includes ice concentration, ice types, ice floe position and floe size distribution, and other important factors in the analysis of ice-structure interaction in an ice field. The Otsu thresholding and k-means clustering methods are employed to identify the ice from the water and to calculate ice concentration. Both methods are effective for model-ice images. However, the k-means method is more effective than the Otsu method for the sea-ice images with a large amounts of brash ice and slush. The derivative edge detection and morphology edge detection methods are used to try to find the boundaries of the ice floes. Because of the inability of both methods to separate connected ice floes in the images, the watershed transform and the gradient vector flow (GVF) snake algorithm are applied. In the watershed-based method, the grayscale sea-ice image is first converted into a binary image and the watershed algorithm is carried out to segment the image. A chain code is then used to check the concavities of floe boundaries. The segmented neighboring regions that have no concave corners between them are merged, and over-segmentation lines are removed automatically. This method is applicable to separate the seemingly connected floes whose junctions are invisible or lost in the images. In the GVF snake-based method, the seeds for each ice floe are first obtained by calculating the distance transform of the binarized image. Based on these seeds, the snake contours with proper locations and radii are initialized, and the GVF snakes are then evolved automatically to detect floe boundaries and separate the connected floes. Because some holes and smaller ice pieces may be contained inside larger floes, all the segmented ice floes are arranged in order of increasing size after segmentation. The morphological cleaning is then performed to the arranged ice floes in sequence to enhance their shapes, resulting in individual ice floes identification. This method is applicable to identify non-ridged ice floes, especially in the marginal ice zone and managed ice resulting from offshore operations in sea-ice. For ice engineering, both model-scale and full-scale ice will be discussed. In the model-scale, the ice floes in the model-ice images are modeled as square shapes with predefined side lengths. To adopt the GVF snake-based method for model-ice images, three criteria are proposed to check whether it is necessary to reinitialize the contours and segment a second time based on the size and shape of model-ice floe. In the full-scale, sea-ice images are shown to be more difficult than the model-ice images analyzed. In addition to non-uniform illumination, shadows and impurities, which are common issues in both sea-ice and model-ice image processing, various types of ice (e.g., slush, brash, etc.), irregular floe sizes and shapes, and geometric distortion are challenges in seaice image processing. For sea-ice image processing, the “light ice” and “dark ice” are first obtained by using the Otsu thresholding and k-means clustering methods. Then, the “light ice” and “dark ice” are segmented and enhanced by using the GVF snake-based method. Based on the identification result, different types of sea-ice are distinguished, and the image is divided into four layers: ice floes, brash pieces, slush, and water. This then makes it possible to present a color map of the ice floes and brash pieces based on sizes. It also makes it possible to present the corresponding ice floe size distribution histogram

Chi-Thinking: Chiasmus and Cognition

The treatise proposes chiasmus is a dominant instrument that conducts processes and products of human thought. The proposition grows out of work in cognitive semantics and cognitive rhetoric. These disciplines establish that conceptualization traces to embodied image schematic knowledge. The Introduction sets out how this knowledge gathers from perceptions, experiences, and memories of the body's commonplace engagements in space. With these ideas as suppositional foundation, the treatise contends that chiastic instrumentation is a function of a corporeal mind steeped in elementary, nonverbal spatial forms or gestalts. It shows that chiasmus is a space shape that lends itself to cognition via its simple, but unique architecture and critically that architecture's particular meaning affordances. We profile some chiastic meanings over others based on local conditions. Chiastic iconicity ('lending') devolves from LINE CROSSING in 2-D and PATH CROSSING in 3-D space and from other image schemas (e.g., BALANCE, PART-TO-WHOLE) that naturally syndicate with CROSSING. Profiling and iconicity are cognitive activities. The spatio-physical and the visual aspects of cross diagonalization are discussed under the Chapter Two heading 'X-ness.' Prior to this technical discussion, Chapter One surveys the exceptional versatility and universality of chiasmus across verbal spectra, from radio and television advertisements to the literary arts. The purposes of this opening section are to establish that chiasticity merits more that its customary status as mere rhetorical figure or dispensable stylistic device and to give a foretaste of the complexity, yet automaticity of chi-thinking. The treatise's first half describes the complexity, diversity, and structural inheritance of chiasmus. The second half treats individual chiasma, everything from the most mundane instantiations to the sublime and virtuosic. Chapter Three details the cognitive dimensions of the macro chiasm, which are appreciable in the micro. It builds on the argument that chiasmus secures two cognitive essentials: association and dissociation. Chapter Four, advantaged by Kenneth Burke's "psychology of form," elects chiasmus an instrument of inordinate form and then explores the issue of Betweenity, i.e., how chiasma, like crisscrosses, direct notice to an intermediate region. The study ends on the premise that chiasmus executes form-meaning pairings with which humans are highly fluent

Gabriele Münter's America travels (1898-1900) and art of dailiness

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 433-457).This study explores the fashioning of Gabriele Münter as a German modernist with a focus on the eclipse of her struggles in coming to representation, the rich complexity of her processes, and the importance of dailiness for her work. Drawing on feminist readings of autobiography and on the relationships elaborated by Henri Lefebvre and Georg Simmel between modernity and the everyday, the daily is described here as an expansive site encompassing subjugating repetition and familiarity as well as discourses of worldliness and possibilities for subversion. The discussion centers on Münter's travels in the United States as an emblem of the stretch of her dailiness and its instructive vantage on issues of authenticity and documentation governing her output. Miinter's pocket calendars, sketchbooks, photographs, photograph album, and retrospective writings about America are considered as a project of forging Heimat and visuality. With its associations of effortlessness, the use of "cakewalking" in the title evokes the erasure of Miinter's daily processes in their messiness. The cakewalk was a form for African Americans to parody their masters in the antebellum period and was taken up by whites at the time of Münter' s visit; she herself designed a postcard of a young relative performing the dance. Though the daily enabled Münter to come into representation, by its slightness and imbrication in mass culture, it would go underground in service of authenticity. The argument is grounded in the American context through readings of period guidebook literature, discourses of shopping and fldnerie, and Kodak advertising; theatrical productions and tourist sites Münter visited; and relationships between her work and contemporary Arkansas photographers such as Harry Miller.(cont) The 19th-century German popular literary figuration of America as adventure elaborated by Charles Sealsfield, Karl May, and others shapes the interpretation, as do Wilhelmine discourses of empire lodged in Die Gartenlaube, the Vilkerschauen, and the shifting meanings of Kultur. The conclusion develops the relevance of the lens of dailiness for Münter by turning to four of her paintings - Man in an Armchair, Interior, Return from Shopping, and Boating - with an interwoven treatment of her writings, photographs, sketchbooks, and ephemera.by Ann Vollmann Bible.Ph.D