Circuit design and development of contactless sensor system for finger tracking in piano playing

Piano technique is one of the main part of piano playing. Some researches had attempted to unveil the technique of virtuoso pianists using technologies. These researches employ different types of sensors in order to capture motion data of piano playing. However, one area in this research had been under-represented, which is finger position and pressure measurement applied by the musician while playing the musical instrument. Research that embark on this area faced a common problem, the sensors used in these research are directly in contact with the pianist, which causes a change of piano playing experience. Since piano playing consists of very delicate interaction between the pianist and the piano, such change of experience may affect the pianist’s performance. These sensors are considered to be intrusive to the piano playing experience. Concluding the challenges faced by current technologies, a nonintrusive sensor is proposed and the circuit design of the sensor is discussed in this pape

Design and development of high sensitivity sensor for finger tracking in piano playing

The art of planning the movement of hands in order to produce the desired sound of the piano is one of the important part of piano technique. Various researches have attempted to unveil the technique of virtuoso pianists using technologies. These researches employ different types of sensors in order to capture motion data in piano playing. However, one area in these researches have been under-represented, which is the finger position of a musician while playing the musical instrument. In piano technique, it is very important to study the finger position that could land on any position along the surface of one single key. Researches that embark on this area face a common problem, the sensors used in these researches are short in range and directly in contact with the pianist, which causes a change of piano playing experience. To avoid obstruction to the pianist, the finger tracking sensor should be placed away from the keyboard and track human finger across a set of wooden piano keys with 13 cm thickness. However, current technologies of capacitive finger tracking emphasizes either on near proximity sensing or remote gesture recognition, where both of them do not focus on accurate remote positional tracking that is required in this application. The range limitation of the current sensors is mainly affected by circuit design and size of electrodes. Concluding the challenges, a high sensitivity finger tracking sensor is proposed. A series of researches and comparing are carried out to select a high sensitivity capacitive sensing method with low noise. Upon selecting the sensing method, circuit modifications and components parameters tuning are applied. This includes minimizing stray capacitance and filtering noise. In addition to this, the sizes and arrangements of electrodes are optimized where electrodes are coupled with wooden keys to increase sensitivity of the sensor. The final signals from the sensor are digitalized and trained using artificial neural network to obtain positional data. This prototype sensor is developed to track different position of the fingers on five keys of the piano. To validate the design, 500 sets of independent input data with known output position were used to test the network. The output shows that the average error between the test set and the desired target is 7 mm, which translate to 83.79% accuracy. The error and accuracy from the output is reasonably good for all data set. To summarise, this research presents the design and development of a high sensitivity finger tracking sensor through sensor hardware design and signal processing. The outcome from this work could be applied to researches that require detection of minute capacitance induced by human finger

Mechanical and tribological study of DLC coatings deposited by filtered cathodic vacuum arc

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coating is a well know material for its high hardness, good wear resistance and low friction when sliding against most engineering materials. On the other hand, DLC has weakness like high residual stress, low toughness, bad thermal stability and poor oxidation resistance. Weaknesses like high residual stress and low toughness limits the thickness of the coatings. This indicates that the working life of DLC coating is short. With their desirable properties, DLC coating is used as protective coating for cutting tools and mechanical components. Therefore, multilayer architecture coating is introduced to improve the adhesion, reduce the residual stress, increase wear resistance, and working life of DLC coatings. This study consists of monolayer DLC coatings deposited by filtered cathodic vacuum arc under different substrate bias voltage and multilayer DLC coatings with different sublayer thickness under alternating substrate bias voltage. Their mechanical properties like hardness, Young’s modulus, fracture toughness, residual stress and tribological properties like friction coefficient, wear rate and bonding structure evolution have been examined. The Id/Ig ratio of the monolayer DLC coatings increased from 0.63 to 1.22 due to the increase of substrate bias voltage from −102 V to −1200 V. This indicated an increase of graphite-like (sp2) content in the coating, and caused the drop in hardness from 35.73 GPa to 24.49 GPa and Young’s modulus from 340.33 GPa to 281.02 GPa. Residual stress also decreased from 4.84 GPa to 1.02 GPa due to annealing effect from the high substrate bias voltage. As the hardness and Young’s modulus decreased, the fracture toughness decreased from 1.7 MPa.m1/2 to 0.8 MPa.m1/2, coating wear rate and friction coefficient increased. With the structure of soft and hard sublayers, the residual stress of the multilayer coatings were kept around 2 GPa but have a reduced hardness and Young’s modulus around 25 GPa and 280 GPa respectively. It also slightly increased the fracture toughness to 1.8 MPa.m1/2, decreased coating wear rate and friction coefficient As the Id/Ig ratio of the multilayer coatings with different sublayer thickness varies from 0.77 to 1.05, indicating the difference in graphite-like (sp2) content in the coatings was not as large as monolayer coating. Therefore, from the above mentioned, i can said that they have similar properties. In overall, multilayer DLC coating has a better performance as a protective coating than monolayer DLC coating when the requirement of hardness and Young’s modulus are not very high. As multilayer DLC coating has lower residual stress, coating wear rate and friction coefficient therefore the working time of the protective coating will be longer and cost saving.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering

FPGA Implementation of Log-polar Mapping

Log-polar or spatially-variant image representation is an important component of active vision system in tracking process for many robotic applications due to its data compression ability, faster sampling rates and hence, direct to faster image processing speed in machine vision system. In this paper, we try to implement log-polar mapping techniques on Xilinx FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) board for unwarping the omnidirectional images into panoramic images to present a wide angle of view by preserving fine output image quality in a higher data compression manner. Simulations are also run on MATLAB to find out the optimum mapping criterion. Some significant advantages of this new approach are: lighter processing system, lesser space utilization, cost saving, faster processing speed and faster reset time (boot time) compared to a laptop computer that uses MATLAB for doing the unwarping process

Process Modeling: A Systems Engineering Tool for Analyzing Complex Systems

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sys.20012This paper presents a method for performing architectural analyses of complex systems-ofsystems using process modeling. A process is a series of actions undertaken by a system-ofsystems to produce one or more end results, typically products and services. The method applies to systems-of systems whose effectiveness and performance depend strongly on process timelines, such as distributed information systems, logistics systems, and manufacturing and distribution systems. A fundamental tool in this method is the development of a unified modeling language (UML) related view of the system-of-system processes of interest and the subsequent conversion of the UML related view into an end-to-end system-of-systems executable object-oriented simulation model. This method is illustrated by applying process modeling and simulation to analysis of a military systems-of-systems, an expeditionary warfare system envisioned for the 2015à ¢ 2020 time frame. Expeditionary warfare is the operation of an armed force in an area far from a supportable home base and supported by temporarily established means. The U.S. military has conducted expeditionary warfare in the past by building up forces, equipment, and supplies at a beachhead before moving on to an objective. There is current interest in the U.S. military to shift from the concept of establishing a beachhead and then movement to an objective to a concept of sea-based launching and supporting forces and sea-to-objective maneuver for fighting forces. A fundamental tool in this analysis is an end-to-end object-oriented simulation model emulating the full implementation of these force architectures and design factors as well as accounting for the impact of varying levels of operational intensity, attrition of personnel and transport vehicles, weather, mining sea lanes, transport vehicle operating and availability constraints, landing spot constraints, and transit and communications delays. This paper focuses on the framework of the simulation model and its most significant findings as applied to expeditionary warfare concepts as an example of the application of process modeling to architectural analyses of complex systems-of-systems

Dual-colour HER2/chromosome 17 chromogenic in situ hybridisation assay enables accurate assessment of HER2 genomic status in gastric cancer and has potential utility in HER2 testing of biopsy samples

10.1136/jclinpath-2011-200009Journal of Clinical Pathology6410880-883JCPA

Dual-colour HER2/chromosome 17 chromogenic in situ hybridisation enables accurate assessment of HER2 genomic status in ovarian tumours

10.1136/jclinpath-2011-200082Journal of Clinical Pathology64121097-1101JCPA

Effectiveness of a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease integrated care pathway in a regional health system : a propensity score matched cohort study

Objective: The chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) integrated care pathway (ICP) programme was designed and implemented to ensure that the care for patients with COPD is comprehensive and integrated across different care settings from primary care to acute hospital and home. We evaluated the effectiveness of the ICP programme for patients with COPD. Design, setting and participants: A retrospective propensity score matched cohort study was conducted comparing differences between programme enrolees and propensity-matched non-enrolees in a Regional Health System in Singapore. Data on patients diagnosed with COPD who enrolled in the programme (n=95) and patients who did not enrol (n=6330) were extracted from the COPD registry and hospital administrative databases. Enrolees and non-enrolees were propensity score matched. Outcome measures: The risk of COPD hospitalisations and COPD hospital bed days savings were compared between the groups using a difference-in-difference strategy and generalised estimating equation approach. Adherence with recommended care elements for the COPD-ICP group was measured quarterly at baseline and during a 2-year follow-up period. Results: Compared with non-enrolees, COPD hospitalisation risk for ICP programme enrolees was significantly lower in year 2 (incidence rate ratio (IRR): 0.73; 95% CI 0.54 to 1.00). Similarly, COPD hospital bed days was significantly lower for enrolees in year 2 (IRR: 0.78; 95% CI 0.64 to 0.95). ICP programme patients had sustained improvements in compliance with all recommended care elements for patients with COPD. The overall all-or-none care bundle compliance rate had improved from 28% to 54%. Conclusion: The study concluded that the COPD-ICP programme was associated with reductions in COPD hospitalisation risk and COPD health utilisation in a 2-year follow-up period.MOH (Min. of Health, S’pore)Published versio