Intelligent Design for Real Time Networked Multi-Agent Systems

Past decade has witnessed an unprecedented growth in reasearch for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) both in military and nonmilitary fronts. They have become ubiquitous in almost every military operations which includes domestic and overseas missions. With rapidly advancing technology, open source nature of the flight controllers, and significantly lesser costs than before, companies around the world are delving into UAV market as one of the upcoming lucrative investments. Companies like Amazon Inc., Dominos Pizza Inc. have had some successful test runs which again solidifies the research opportunities. Delivery services and recreational uses seems to have increased in the past 3-4 years which has let the Federal Aviation Administration to update their rules and regulations. Mapping, Surveying and search/rescue mission are some of the applications of UAVs that are most appealing. Making these applications airborne cuts the time and cost at considerable and affordable levels. Using UAVs for operations has advantages in both response time and need of manpower compared to piloted aricrafts. Obtaining prior information of a person/people in distress can become a deciding factor for a successful mission. It can help in making critical decision as which location or type of helicopter / vehicle to be used for extraction, equipment to bring and how many crew members that are needed. The idea here is to make this system of UAVs automated to coordinate with each other without human intervention (other than high level commands like takeoff and land). Researchers and Military experts have recognized the use of drones for search and rescue missions to be of utmost importance. Year 2016 saw a first of its kind UAV search and rescue symposium held in Nevada. The objective was to give a platform for UAV enthusiasts and researchers and share their experiences and concerns while using UAVs as first responders. The biggest drawback of using an aerial vehicle for inspection/search/rescue mission is its airborne time. The batteries used are big and heavy which increases the weight and decreases the flight time. One can go about solving this issue by using a swarm of UAVs which would inspect/search a given area in less amount of time. This has advantage in both response time and need for lesser man power.The main challenges for Multiple Drone Control (MDC) includes 1) Address the periodic sampling frequency issue of information of assets so as to maintain stability; 2) Optimize the communication channel while providing minimum Quality of Service (QoS); 3) Optimal control strategy which includes non-linearity in state space model; 4) Optimal control in presence of uncertainties; 5) Admitting new agents for dynamic agents in the Networked Multi-Agent System (MAS) Scenario.This dissertation aims at building a hardware and a software platform for communication of multiple UAVs upon which additional control algorithms can be implementated. It starts with building a DJI S1000 octacopter from the ground up. The components used are specified in the following sections. The idea here is to make a drone that can autonomously travel to specified location with safety features like geofencing and land on emergency situations. The user has to provide the necessary commands like GPS locations and takeoff/land commands via a Radio Controller (RC) remote. At any point of the flight, the UAV should be able to receive new commands from the ground control stations (GCS). After successful implementation, the UAV would not be restricted to the range of RC remote. It would be able to travel greater distances given the GPS signal remains operational in the field. This is possible at a global scale with limitation of only the batteries and flight time

An innovative concept of use of redox-active electrolyte in asymmetric capacitor based on MWCNTs/MnO(2) and Fe(2)O(3) thin films

In present investigation, we have prepared a nanocomposites of highly porous MnO2 spongy balls and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in thin film form and tested in novel redox-active electrolyte (K3[Fe(CN)6] doped aqueous Na2SO4) for supercapacitor application. Briefly, MWCNTs were deposited on stainless steel substrate by "dip and dry" method followed by electrodeposition of MnO2 spongy balls. Further, the supercapacitive properties of these hybrid thin films were evaluated in hybrid electrolyte ((K3[Fe(CN)6 doped aqueous Na2SO4). Thus, this is the first proof-of-design where redox-active electrolyte is applied to MWCNTs/MnO2 hybrid thin films. Impressively, the MWCNTs/MnO2 hybrid film showed a significant improvement in electrochemical performance with maximum specific capacitance of 1012 Fg-1 at 2 mA cm-2 current density in redox-active electrolyte, which is 1.5-fold higher than that of conventional electrolyte (Na2SO4). Further, asymmetric capacitor based on MWCNTs/MnO2 hybrid film as positive and Fe2O3 thin film as negative electrode was fabricated and tested in redox-active electrolytes. Strikingly, MWCNTs/MnO2//Fe2O3 asymmetric cell showed an excellent supercapacitive performance with maximum specific capacitance of 226 Fg-1 and specific energy of 54.39 Wh kg-1 at specific power of 667 Wkg-1. Strikingly, actual practical demonstration shows lightning of 567 red LEDs suggesting "ready-to sell" product for industries.Nilesh R. Chodankar, Deepak P. Dubal, Abhishek C. Lokhande, Amar M. Patil, Jin H. Kim, Chandrakant D. Lokhand

Multi-Sensor Image Registration for Remote Sensing under Scale Invariant Feature Transformation

Image registration deals with establishing correspondence between pictures of an equivalent scene or object. A picture registration rule ought to handle the variations introduced by the imaging system capturing the scene. Scale Invariant Feature remodel (SIFT) is a picture registration rule supported native options in a picture. Compared to the previous registration algorithms, SIFT is a lot of sturdy to variations caused by changes in size, illumination, rotation, and viewpoint of the pictures. As a result of its performance, the rule is wide studied, modified, and with success applied in several image and video primarily based applications, within the domains akin to drugs, industry and defense. This paper is associate outcome of in depth study on the state-of-art image registration algorithms supported SIFT. However, directly applying SIFT to remote sensing image registration usually ends up in a really variety of feature points or key points, however, a tiny low number of matching points with a high warning rate. We tend to argue that this is often because of the actual fact that spatial data is not thought about throughout the SIFT-based matching method. This paper proposes a way to enhance SIFT-based matching by taking advantage of neighborhood data. The planned methodology generates a lot of correct matching points because the relative structure in numerous remote sensing pictures area unit virtually static

Evaluation of knowledge, attitude and practice of pharmacovigilance among interns and nursing students in a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: Even though the role of spontaneous reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) is well established in pharmacovigilance, it is not followed in the practice and a large number of ADRs goes unreported. In our institute, almost all of the ADR reported to the department of pharmacology are through either the faculty members or the residents and very few by the nurses and interns.Methods: The current survey was thus conducted to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of nursing students and interns. It is expected that the results should help us to designs specific activities to improve ADR reporting. The study was a questionnaire based survey to assess the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) of the interns (n=74) and nursing students (n=108) regarding ADR reporting and pharmacovigilance in this tertiary care centre.Results: More interns gave correct responses to knowledge based and attitude based questions of pharmacovigilance compared to the nursing students. On the other hand, more nursing students came across ADRs in the patients compared to interns. Even though 93.24% interns responded to have got training on “how to report ADRs”, only 6.76% ever reported ADR to pharmacovigilance centre.Conclusions: Proper training on pharmacovigilance, with easy way for reporting ADRs would be a useful step in improving pharmacovigilance status in nursing students and interns