Foresighted People Finding and Following

Mobile service robots are needed in several applications (e.g., transportation systems, autonomous shopping carts, household activities ... etc). In such scenarios the robot aids the user with tasks that require the robot to move freely across the environment in addition to direct interaction at certain times. Therefore, such a robot needs a strategy to quickly find the user whenever needed, in addition to a strategy that enables the robot to reason about the user's intended destination to be able to follow him in a foresighted manner if the user needs its help at that destination. In this dissertation, we tackle each of those problems separately in a divide and conquer manner. We present an approach to learn optimal navigation actions for assistance tasks in which the robot aims at efficiently reaching the final navigation goal of a human where service has to be provided. Always following the human at a close distance might hereby result in inefficient trajectories, since people regularly do not move on the shortest path to their destination (e.g., they may move to grab the phone or make a note). Therefore, a service robot should infer the human's intended navigation goal and compute its own motion based on that prediction. We propose to perform a prediction about the human's future movements and use this information in a reinforcement learning framework to generate foresighted navigation actions for the robot. Since frequent occlusions of the human will occur due to obstacles and the robot's constrained field of view, the estimate about the humans's position and the prediction of the next destination are affected by uncertainty. Our approach deals with such situations by explicitly considering occlusions in the reward function such that the robot automatically considers to execute actions to get the human in its field of view. We show in simulated and real-world experiments that our technique leads to significantly shorter paths compared to an approach in which the robot always tries to closely follow the user and, additionally, can handle occlusions. On the other side, an autonomous robot that directly helps users with certain tasks often first has to quickly find a user, especially when this person moves around frequently. A search method that relies on a greedy approach that do not perform any predictions about the user's most likely location, even when it is provided with background information about the frequently visited destinations of the user, might not be the best option. In this dissertation, we propose to compute the likelihood of the user's observability at each possible location in the environment based on simulations that rely on hidden Markov model based predictions. As the robot needs time to reach the search locations, we take this time into account as well as the visibility constraints. In this way we aim at selecting effective search locations for the robot to find the user as fast as possible. As our experiments in various simulated environments show, our approach leads to significantly shorter search times compared to the greedy approach

A WIRELESS DATALINK FOR A REMOTE CONTROLLED VEHICLE

The objective of the project is to design and build awireless retrieval communication system that effectively transmits pertinent data using packets from aremote control vehicle to home base station. The rationale behind this project is to provide the user with information regarding the vehicle's proximity to other stationary objects, and surrounding temperature. ARF (Radio Frequency) transmitter and receiver will be used to transmit the data. The information gathered would be useful if the vehicle is used to explore unfamiliar' hazardous areas. The sensor's data acquisition for the transmitter is done using C-programming method, therefore the receiver PIC C programming is also completed in accordance to the transmitter data acquisition coding, and so as the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 interface

Lipodysregulation and Type 2 diabetes in TALLYHO/Jng Mice

The prevalence of reported diabetes was 2.9 times higher in overweight than in non-overweight persons as proved by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) data. The majority of individuals with type 2 diabetes develop insulin resistance associated with overall obesity. Several lines of evidence indicate that many of the metabolic derangements associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes originate from dysregulation of lipid metabolism. TALLYHO/Jng (TH) mice are a newly established inbred polygenic model for obesity and type 2 diabetes. These mice are characterized by insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, diabetes (males) obesity, and dyslipidemia including hypertriglyceridemia (HTG). TH male mice rapidly develop HTG at a very young age before the onset of overt diabetes, and this HTG is accompanied by hyperinsulinemia, and preceded glucose intolerance. The goal of this study is to characterize the lipodysregulation in TH mouse. In order to achieve this goal, we measured tissue triglyceride content in non-adipose tissue, and hepatic fatty acid β-oxidation rates in diabetic TH mice. TH male mice exhibit significantly elevated TG content and lipid accumulation in skeletal muscle, liver, and kidney. Attenuated hepatic fatty acid oxidation was also featured in male diabetic TH mice although it was not statistically significant. It is likely speculated that impaired fatty acid oxidation in liver may be in part responsible for the HTG, elevating TG content in peripheral tissue including the skeletal muscle, which may be attributable to the impaired insulin sensitivity and diabetes in male TH mice. Elucidating the mechanism of lipodysregulation in diabetic model of TH mice will provide insights into the causes and mechanisms underlying the metabolic complications of insulin resistance and diabetes and ultimately improved therapeutic strategies for prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes

A WIRELESS DATALINK FOR A REMOTE CONTROLLED VEHICLE

The objective of the project is to design and build awireless retrieval communication system that effectively transmits pertinent data using packets from aremote control vehicle to home base station. The rationale behind this project is to provide the user with information regarding the vehicle's proximity to other stationary objects, and surrounding temperature. ARF (Radio Frequency) transmitter and receiver will be used to transmit the data. The information gathered would be useful if the vehicle is used to explore unfamiliar' hazardous areas. The sensor's data acquisition for the transmitter is done using C-programming method, therefore the receiver PIC C programming is also completed in accordance to the transmitter data acquisition coding, and so as the Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 interface

High Gain Antenna Array Design for 5G & MIMO Antenna Systems using Microstrip Ridge Gap Waveguide

The demand for high data rates and the unavailability of low-frequency bands have driven the need to explore and develop millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency bands. Indeed, the development of mm-wave frequencies has led to smaller radio frequency (RF) components and more compact profiles, creating more design constraints and challenges. Millimeter-wave technologies are the best-suited candidates that meet the requirements of 5G standards; specifically, for indoor communication, which requires higher gain and more directive beams. Gap waveguide technologies can be used to design high-gain antenna arrays and multiple input multiple output antenna systems (MIMO). In this thesis, we are mainly focusing on Microstrip Ridge Gap Waveguide (MRGW) to design the antenna array systems for the 60 GHz band. Therefore, it is necessary to facilitate the design procedures and propose new design techniques. Here, we propose new design techniques for a large antenna array system using MRGW. The work of this thesis can be divided into two parts. Firstly, developing an efficient modeling and design tool for the MRGW to facilitate the design process. Recently, the use of MRGW has increased due to the need for self-packaged and low loss structures for millimeter-wave applications. The MRGW consists of a grounded textured surface, which is representing an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) surface. The AMC surface is loaded with a thin low dielectric constant substrate with a printed strip topped with another air-filled or dielectric-filled substrate in which the wave propagates between the strip and the conducting plate covering such a substrate. Currently, full-wave and optimization tools are usually used to design the MRGW structure, which makes the design slow and computationally expensive. Thus, an efficient modeling and design tool for the MRGW is proposed. Empirical expressions are developed for different MRGW parameters to provide the effective dielectric constant, characteristic impedance, and the dispersion effect. The expressions are verified with the full-wave solution. The results show the potential of the proposed approach in modeling and designing the MRGW structure. Secondly, an efficient procedure to design a large finite planar array and its corporate feeding network is presented. The procedure is verified by an 8 × 8 and 16 ×16 array of magneto-electric (ME) dipoles fed by a network of MRGW. The procedure is based on designing the corporate feeding network by replacing the elements ports with the corresponding effective input impedance of each element that accounts for the mutual coupling between the antenna elements. In addition, the far-field characteristics of the array parameters such as the directivity, gain, and radiation patterns are predicted using pattern multiplication, including the mutual coupling effects. The results are verified with the full-wave numerical solution. The procedure requires limited resources and speed up the design cycle. The use of the MRGW helps in having the feeding network lines to be titer than using the ridge gap technology. Thus, allowing the distance between the radiating elements becomes smaller than one wavelength to avoid grating lobes. In addition, to avoid undesired bends and very tight lines that cause undesired interaction between the lines, unique power dividers are designed. Furthermore, a transition from waveguide WR-15 to the MRGW is proposed to feed two halves of the array antenna perfect out of phase at all frequencies and rotating each half to form a mirrored array that better radiation pattern symmetry and low cross-polarization. Then, this procedure is implemented to design a circularly polarized antenna array with excellent performance. To further enhance the antenna, gain, and reduce the number of elements, a superstrate dielectric lens with the proper parameters is added. Study of a 4 × 4 MIMO system is studied, where each antenna is a sub-array to achieve the high gain requirements. Finally, A low-profile, compact, and high-efficiency monopulse array antenna has been presented. The monopulse is built based on a hybrid coupler that has a wideband response for the reflection and the transmission coefficients. Then the monopulse system is used to present a multiplexing antenna system for short-range in the near filed region wireless communication. The multiplexing system works as a MIMO system that has four independent channels. The performance of the system is evaluated through the simulation, which shows that it can be a promising candidate for the next wireless communication systems