Conceptual design and center-point force dynamic simulation of a new horizontal axis semi-exposed wind turbine

Renewable energy sources are fast growing. Nowadays much effort has been made by inventors to devise new and more efficient configurations of wind turbines. This paper describes mechanical design and resultant-force dynamic simulation of innovative horizontal axis semi-exposed wind turbine structure

New Intelligent Transmission Concept for Hybrid Mobile Robot Speed Control

This paper presents a new concept of a mobile robot speed control by using two degree of freedom gear transmission. The developed intelligent speed controller utilizes a gear box which comprises of epicyclic gear train with two inputs, one coupled with the engine shaft and another with the shaft of a variable speed dc motor. The net output speed is a combination of the two input speeds and is governed by the transmission ratio of the planetary gear train. This new approach eliminates the use of a torque converter which is otherwise an indispensable part of all available automatic transmissions, thereby reducing the power loss that occurs in the box during the fluid coupling. By gradually varying the speed of the dc motor a stepless transmission has been achieved. The other advantages of the developed controller are pulling over and reversing the vehicle, implemented by intelligent mixing of the dc motor and engine speeds. This approach eliminates traditional braking system in entire vehicle design. The use of two power sources, IC engine and battery driven DC motor, utilizes the modern idea of hybrid vehicles. The new mobile robot speed controller is capable of driving the vehicle even in extreme case of IC engine failure, for example, due to gas depletion.Comment: www.ars-journal.co

Conceptual design and center-point force dynamic simulation of a new horizontal axis semi-exposed wind turbine

Renewable energy sources are fast growing. Nowadays much effort has been made by inventors to devise new and more efficient configurations of wind turbines. This paper describes mechanical design and resultant-force dynamic simulation of innovative horizontal axis semi-exposed wind turbine structure

An effective vision technique for microchip lead inspection

A new effective method for the microchip lead inspection for the chip manufacturing industry has been developed in this work. In contrast to the gray scale pattern matching technique this approach employs selected parameters of binary blobs to perform fault detection and measurements. This leads to a significant reduction of image processing time. A special combination of gray level filtering techniques with gray morphological operations enhances the borders of the lead images. Newly developed threshold calibration technique significantly improves the measurement accuracy. A unique statistical analysis has been developed to identify all possible lead defects in the chips. This method is rotationally and scale invariant and able to detect defective leads for the chips with different specifications. The minimum required information about the microchip is the number of leads

Higher-order derivative compensators for controlling the systems with higher dynamics

The PID controller is a popular choice for the control of industrial processes. The PDN controller introduced in this paper is a better alternative to PID. The paper presents the design and computer simulation of the PDN controller. The PDN controller is a simpler and more effective choice when dealing with higher-order dynamic systems. The gain components of the controller are introduced to improve transient characteristics of the higher-order industrial systems or processes by directly modifying the components of their characteristic equations. As a result the system under control becomes stable and able to respond faster to the inputs as compared to PID-based systems. The tunable command feed-forward steady-state gain (K S) of the PDN controller helps to track the constant or time-varying input commands much faster and more precisely than the integral component of the PID controller. The paper discusses the steady-state performance, stability problems and the gain tuning strategies to improve the transient responses of the feedback system. The quality of the PDN performance is demonstrated by solving the set point input (step) and tracking a time-varying input (ramp) problems. The paper also presents the detailed higher-order derivative compensators tuning procedures for the general case of unknown order, stable/unstable plant and particular case of unknown order but stable plant

An effective method of upgrading industrial robot for contour tracking

One of the major problems in industry is a manual contour tracking approach for industrial robots such as in welding, sealing and painting applications. It is very tedious and time consuming job. A simpler cost effective solution at reasonable process quality is proposed to solve this problem. This solution implies designing: of smart arrangement of sensors, control algorithms, intelligent programming and parameters optimization. Normal industrial robot is being transformed into the autonomous contour tracking robot with more added values similar, for example, to the coordinate measuring machine. This new concept has been developed and tested on real industrial robot

Camera-based 3D tracking system

Camera-based systems are frequently used to track moving objects which are in the field of their view. This paper describes design and development of a camera-based visual system that can constantly track moving object without necessity of calibrating camera in real world coordinates. This reduces the complexity of the system and processing time due to the unnecessary conversions and calibrations. The system consists of a two-motor pan-tilt camera driving mechanism, PCI image acquisition board, and PWM-based DC-motor driver board. It uses image processing techniques to identify and locate the object in 3D scene and motion control algorithms to direct the camera towards the object. Thus the objective of the project is to develop a vision system and control algorithms which can be locked on the moving object within the field of its view. The developed software and related interface hardware monitor and control the motors in such a way that the moving object should always be located right at the center of the camera image plane. The system, in general, simulates 3D motion of the human eye when it always tends to focus on the moving object within the range of its view. It actually imitates the tracking ability of human eye

An optimal power sharing strategy in driving complex hybrid vehicles

Abstract not available