Design of a Distributed Ground Support System for Small Satellites

On February 23, 1999 South Africa\u27s first satellite SUNSAT was launched. The satellite was designed and built entirely at the University of Stellenbosch, a project spanning 8 years. Up to 1999 the bulk of the development work was done on the satellite itself, with time constraints limiting the work done on the ground support system. This led to a situation where the ground station was developed in the two months prior to the launch and shortly afterwards. The system was developed with the specific purpose of supporting only SUNSAT. The final product was a ground support system consisting of a single OSCAR class ground station located at the University of Stellenbosch. The system was very effective in supporting SUNSAT, but the implementation made expansion and reuse of the system very difficult. The station requires a high degree of human operation and automating the system would require big changes in the software used. This article looks at the design of a new generation of ground support system, for use at the University of Stellenbosch\u27s satellite program on future missions. Distributed architectures are used to enable components of the system to be physically located where resources are best utilised. The design also allows for increasing levels of automation to be introduced

Glorie van vergange se dae

Article and photographs showing the restoration of the Old Raadsaal in Pretoria, South Africa.1 pdf file containing digitized article originally published in De Kat, July 1990pm2014-

Correlating Facial Expressions and Subjective Player Experiences in Competitive Hearthstone

In this study, we used recordings of players’ facial expressions that are captured during competitive Hearthstone games to analyse the correlation between in-game player affective responses and subjective post-game self-reports. With this, we aimed to examine whether eye gaze, head pose and emotions gathered as objective data from face recordings would be associated with subjective experiences of players which were collected in the form of a post-game survey. Data was collected during a live offline Hearthstone competition, which involved a total of 17 players and 31 matches played. Correlation analyses between in-game and post-game variables show that players’ facial expressions and eye gaze measurements are associated with both players’ attention to the opponent and their mood influenced by the opponent. In future research, these results may be used to implement predictive player models