Assessment and validation of miniaturized technology for the remote tracking of critically endangered Galápagos pink land iguana (Conolophus marthae)

Abstract Background: Gathering ecological data for species of conservation concern inhabiting remote regions can be daunting and, sometimes, logistically infeasible. We built a custom-made GPS tracking device that allows to remotely and accurately collect animal position, environmental, and ecological data, including animal temperature and UVB radiation. We designed the device to track the critically endangered Galápagos pink land iguana, Conolophus marthae. Here we illustrate some technical solutions adopted to respond to challenges associated with such task and present some preliminary results from controlled trial experiments and field implementation. Results: Our tests show that estimates of temperature and UVB radiation are affected by the design of our device, in particular by its casing. The introduced bias, though, is systematic and can be corrected using linear and quadratic regressions on collected values. Our data show that GPS accuracy loss, although introduced by vegetation and orientation of the devices when attached to the animals, is acceptable, leading to an average error gap of less than 15 m in more than 50% of the cases. Conclusions: We address some technical challenges related to the design, construction, and operation of a custommade GPS tracking device to collect data on animals in the wild. Systematic bias introduced by the technological implementation of the device exists. Understanding the nature of the bias is crucial to provide correction models. Although designed to track land iguanas, our device could be used in other circumstances and is particularly useful to track organisms inhabiting locations that are difficult to reach or for which classic telemetry approaches are unattainable

A Feature Extractor IC for Acoustic Emission Non-destructive Testing

In this paper, we present the design and the implementation of a digital Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) for Acoustic Emission (AE) non-destructive testing. The AE non-destructive testing method is a diagnostic method used to detect faults in mechanically loaded structures and components. If a structure is subjected to mechanical load or stress, the presence of structural discontinuities releases energy in the form of acoustic emissions through the constituting material. The analysis of these acoustic emissions can be used to determine the presence of faults in several structures. The proposed circuit has been designed for IoT (Internet of Things) applications, and it can be used to simplify the existing procedures adopted for structural integrity verifications of pressurized metal tanks that, in some countries, they are based on periodic checks. The proposed ASIC is provided of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) capabilities for the extraction of the main four parameters used in the AE analysis that are the energy of the signal, the duration of the event, the number of the crossing of a certain threshold and finally the maximum value reached by the AE signal. The circuit is provided of an SPI interface capable of sending and receiving data to/from wireless transceivers to share information on the web. The DSP circuit has been coded in VHDL and synthesized in 90 nm technology using Synopsys. The circuit has been characterized in terms of area, speed, and power consumption. Experimental results show that the proposed circuit presents very low power consumption properties and low area requirements

A Feature Extractor IC for Acoustic Emission Non-destructive Testing

In this paper, we present the design and the implementation of a digital Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) for Acoustic Emission (AE) non-destructive testing. The AE non-destructive testing method is a diagnostic method used to detect faults in mechanically loaded structures and components. If a structure is subjected to mechanical load or stress, the presence of structural discontinuities releases energy in the form of acoustic emissions through the constituting material. The analysis of these acoustic emissions can be used to determine the presence of faults in several structures. The proposed circuit has been designed for IoT (Internet of Things) applications, and it can be used to simplify the existing procedures adopted for structural integrity verifications of pressurized metal tanks that, in some countries, they are based on periodic checks. The proposed ASIC is provided of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) capabilities for the extraction of the main four parameters used in the AE analysis that are the energy of the signal, the duration of the event, the number of the crossing of a certain threshold and finally the maximum value reached by the AE signal. The circuit is provided of an SPI interface capable of sending and receiving data to/from wireless transceivers to share information on the web. The DSP circuit has been coded in VHDL and synthesized in 90 nm technology using Synopsys. The circuit has been characterized in terms of area, speed, and power consumption. Experimental results show that the proposed circuit presents very low power consumption properties and low area requirements

The greenBag, the New Solution in Waste Separation

The greenBag is an innovative households’ Used Cooking Oil (UCO) disposal solution aiming to allow the collection of this feedstock interesting European but also Chinese and US market. The possibility to collect UCO produced by households represents the possibilities to increase the amount of biodiesel, respecting the ILUC directive, of the 60%. So far, there are no concrete solutions able to properly respond to this need, due to their huge prizes and due to the low performances, they provide. greenBag is a solution coming from an intensive research activity completed by an infield validation. It has been designed to reply to all the requirements coming from families and from the waste management companies, the two actors involved in UCO disposal. Indeed, two different types of users in general, and in particular the UCO collection, characterize waste collection solutions: families - that want simple solutions, easy to use and able to reward them; waste collection companies – that want cheap solutions, able to trace waste disposals and able to assure them a high quality of wastes. The currently available market solutions are all focused on waste companies and the current innovative ideas designed by Universities and Startups focus their attention only on one of the two involved actors. greenBag is currently the sole solution that aims to satisfy both actors, exploiting the disposal traceability not only to know how many waste people produces but also to quantify their efforts and making them aware about the overall disposal process

an automatic aw som vhdl ip core generator

In this paper, the authors present a MATLAB IP generator for hardware accelerators of All-Winner Self-Organizing Maps (AW-SOM). AW-SOM is a modified version of Kohonen's Self Organizing Maps (SOM) algorithm, which is one of the most used Machine Learning algorithms for data clustering, and vector quantization. The architecture of the AW-SOM method is meant for hardware implementations, and its main feature is a processing speed almost independent to the number of neurons since each of them is processed in a parallel way; the parallelization can be easily exploited by hardware custom hardware designs. The IP generator is built-in MATLAB and provides the user with the possibility to design a custom and efficient hardware accelerator. Several settings can be set such as the number of features and the number of neurons. The target language is the VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL). The generated IP cores can be used for the training of the model and a built-in function of the software can also check the clustering performances using its inference capabilities. The accelerators produced by the software have been also characterized in terms of max frequency, hardware resources, and power consumption. The authors performed the hardware implementations on a XILINX Virtex 7 xc7vx690t FPGA

New method for estimating fractal dimension in 3d space and its application to complex surfaces

The concept of “surface modeling” generally describes the process of representing a physical or artificial surface by a geometric model, namely a mathematical expression. Among the existing techniques applied for the characterization of a surface, terrain modeling relates to the representation of the natural surface of the Earth. Cartographic terrain or relief models as threedimensional representations of a part of the Earth's surface convey an immediate and direct impression of a landscape and are much easier to understand than two-dimensional models. This paper addresses a major problem in complex surface modeling and evaluation consisting in the characterization of their topography and comparison among different textures, which can be relevant in different areas of research. A new algorithm is presented that allows calculating the fractal dimension of images of complex surfaces. The method is used to characterize different surfaces and compare their characteristics. The proposed new mathematical method computes the fractal dimension of the 3D space with the average space component of Hurst exponent H, while the estimated fractal dimension is used to evaluate, compare and characterize complex surfaces that are relevant in different areas of research. Various surfaces with both methods were analyzed and the results were compared. The study confirms that with known coordinates of a surface, it is possible to describe its complex structure. The estimated fractal dimension is proved to be an ideal tool for measuring the complexity of the various surfaces considered

the greenbag the new solution in waste separation

The greenBag is an innovative households' Used Cooking Oil (UCO) disposal solution aiming to allow the collection of this feedstock interesting European but also Chinese and US market. The possibility to collect UCO produced by households represents the possibilities to increase the amount of biodiesel, respecting the ILUC directive, of the 60%. So far, there are no concrete solutions able to properly respond to this need, due to their huge prizes and due to the low performances, they provide. greenBag is a solution coming from an intensive research activity completed by an infield validation. It has been designed to reply to all the requirements coming from families and from the waste management companies, the two actors involved in UCO disposal. Indeed, two different types of users in general, and in particular the UCO collection, characterize waste collection solutions: families - that want simple solutions, easy to use and able to reward them; waste collection companies – that want cheap solutions, able to trace waste disposals and able to assure them a high quality of wastes. The currently available market solutions are all focused on waste companies and the current innovative ideas designed by Universities and Startups focus their attention only on one of the two involved actors. greenBag is currently the sole solution that aims to satisfy both actors, exploiting the disposal traceability not only to know how many waste people produces but also to quantify their efforts and making them aware about the overall disposal process

New Method for Estimating Fractal Dimension in 3D Space and Its Application to Complex Surfaces

The concept of “surface modeling” generally describes the process of representing a physical or artificial surface by a geometric model, namely a mathematical expression. Among the existing techniques applied for the characterization of a surface, terrain modeling relates to the representation of the natural surface of the Earth. Cartographic terrain or relief models as three-dimensional representations of a part of the Earth's surface convey an immediate and direct impression of a landscape and are much easier to understand than two-dimensional models. This paper addresses a major problem in complex surface modeling and evaluation consisting in the characterization of their topography and comparison among different textures, which can be relevant in different areas of research. A new algorithm is presented that allows calculating the fractal dimension of images of complex surfaces. The method is used to characterize different surfaces and compare their characteristics. The proposed new mathematical method computes the fractal dimension of the 3D space with the average space component of Hurst exponent H, while the estimated fractal dimension is used to evaluate, compare and characterize complex surfaces that are relevant in different areas of research. Various surfaces with both methods were analyzed and the results were compared. The study confirms that with known coordinates of a surface, it is possible to describe its complex structure. The estimated fractal dimension is proved to be an ideal tool for measuring the complexity of the various surfaces considered

Advanced Energy Harvesting Technologies

Energy harvesting is the conversion of unused or wasted energy in the ambient environment into useful electrical energy. It can be used to power small electronic systems such as wireless sensors and is beginning to enable the widespread and maintenance-free deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This Special Issue is a collection of the latest developments in both fundamental research and system-level integration. This Special Issue features two review papers, covering two of the hottest research topics in the area of energy harvesting: 3D-printed energy harvesting and triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). These papers provide a comprehensive survey of their respective research area, highlight the advantages of the technologies and point out challenges in future development. They are must-read papers for those who are active in these areas. This Special Issue also includes ten research papers covering a wide range of energy-harvesting techniques, including electromagnetic and piezoelectric wideband vibration, wind, current-carrying conductors, thermoelectric and solar energy harvesting, etc. Not only are the foundations of these novel energy-harvesting techniques investigated, but the numerical models, power-conditioning circuitry and real-world applications of these novel energy harvesting techniques are also presented

Vibration Energy Harvesting for Wireless Sensors

Kinetic energy harvesters are a viable means of supplying low-power autonomous electronic systems for the remote sensing of operations. In this Special Issue, through twelve diverse contributions, some of the contemporary challenges, solutions and insights around the outlined issues are captured describing a variety of energy harvesting sources, as well as the need to create numerical and experimental evidence based around them. The breadth and interdisciplinarity of the sector are clearly observed, providing the basis for the development of new sensors, methods of measurement, and importantly, for their potential applications in a wide range of technical sectors