Sensor System for Rescue Robots

A majority of rescue worker fatalities are a result of on-scene responses. Existing technologies help assist the first responders in scenarios of no light, and there even exist robots that can navigate radioactive areas. However, none are able to be both quickly deployable and enter hard to reach or unsafe areas in an emergency event such as an earthquake or storm that damages a structure. In this project we created a sensor platform system to augment existing robotic solutions so that rescue workers can search for people in danger while avoiding preventable injury or death and saving time and resources. Our results showed that we were able to map out a 2D map of the room with updates for robot motion on a display while also showing a live thermal image in front of the system. The system is also capable of taking a digital picture from a triggering event and then displaying it on the computer screen. We discovered that data transfer plays a huge role in making different programs like Arduino and Processing interact with each other. Consequently, this needs to be accounted for when improving our project. In particular our project is wired right now but should deliver data wirelessly to be of any practical use. Furthermore, we dipped our feet into SLAM technologies and if our project were to become autonomous, more research into the algorithms would make this autonomy feasible

Real-time information extraction of an electric vehicle

In this paper is presented the development of a project to extract, in real-time, information’s related with an Electric Vehicle (EV). This project was elaborated to extract data from an EV battery charging device developed at the University of Minho, and from an EV prototype, the VEECO (Veículo Eléctrico ECOlógico – Ecologic Electric Vehicle), developed in a cooperation project of ISEL (Lisbon Superior Institute of Engineering) and the Portuguese company VE. The main goal of this project consists in collecting and transmitting the extracted data to inform the EV driver about the performance and the real behavior of the EV. Thereby, it is created an open interface to manage, in real-time, the main data related with the EV, as the batteries SoC (State-of-Charge), the EV speed, and internal temperatures (like the temperatures of the batteries, motor and power electronics inverter), as well as to control the start and stop of the batteries charging process, and to optimize the charging program (to define the best algorithm to preserve the batteries lifespan). This interface also controls the discharging process of the batteries, in order to make possible to deliver back to the electrical power grid part of the stored energy in the batteries, which is defined by the concept Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G). In the paper are presented and described the two main parts of this work: the real-time information extraction system and the charging device.FEDER Funds - Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors (COMPETE)Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - PTDC/EEA-EEL/104569/2008, MITPT/EDAM-SMS/0030/2008

Knowledge Management for Public Administrations: Technical Realizations of an Enterprise Attention Management System

The improvement of governments’ efficiency has gained great importance and validity especially in the current times of economic downturn. E-Government constitutes the most contemporary techno-managerial proposition in the track of possible interventions. The paper addresses, more specifically, empowerments necessitated by Public Administration (PA) organizations. Anchored on the needs of three real-life cases, the paper describes the conception and the realization of an IT artefact together with its methodological appeals aiming at improving information access and delivery and thus PAs’ decision making capacity. Our proposition constitutes a novel approach for managing users’ attention in knowledge intensive organizations which goes beyond informing a user about changes in relevant information towards proactively supporting the user to react on changes. The approach is based on an expressive attention model, which is realized by combining ECA (Event-Condition-Action) rules with ontologies. The technical realizations described in the paper constitute the underlying infrastructure of an Enterprise Attention Management System

Project SPACE: Solar Panel Automated Cleaning Environment

The goal of Project SPACE is to create an automated solar panel cleaner that will address the adverse impact of soiling on commercial photovoltaic cells. Specifically, we hoped to create a device that increases the maximum power output of a soiled panel by 10% (recovering the amount of power lost) while still costing under $500 and operating for up to 7.0 years. A successful design should operate without the use of water. This will help solar panel arrays achieve a production output closer to their maximum potential and save companies on costs associated energy generation. The current apparatus utilizes a brush cleaning system that cleans on set cleaning cycles. The device uses the combination of a gear train (with 48 pitch Delrin gears) and a 12V DC motor to spin both a 5.00 foot long, 0.25 inch diameter vacuum brush shaft and drive two sets of two wheels. The power source for the drive train is a 12V deep cycle lead-acid battery. Our light weight design eliminates water usage during cleaning and reduces the potential dangers stemming from manual labor. Our design’s retail price was estimated to be around$700 with a payback period of less than 3.5 years. To date, we have created a device that improves the efficiency of soiled solar panels by 3.5% after two runs over the solar panel. We hope that our final design will continue to expand the growth of solar energy globally