Hand Gesture Recognition Using Artificial Neural Networks

Hand gesture has been part of human communication, where, young children usually communicate by using gesture before they can talk. Adults may have to also gesture if they need to or they are indeed mute or deaf. Thus the idea of teaching a machine to also learn gestures is very appealing due to its unique mode of communications. A reliable hand gesture recognition system will make the remote control become obsolete. However, many of the new techniques proposed are complicated to be implemented in real time, especially as a human machine interface. This thesis focuses on recognizing hand gesture in static posture. Since static hand postures not only can express some concepts, but also can act as special transition states in temporal gestures recognition, thus estimating static hand postures is in fact a big topics in gesture recognition. A database consists of 200 gesture images have been built, where five volunteers had help in the making of the database. The images were captured in a controlled environment and the postures are free from occlusion where the background is uncluttered and the hand is assumed to have been localized. A system was then built to recognize the hand gesture. The captured image will be first preprocessed in order to binarize the palm region, where Sobel edge detection technique has been employed, with later followed by morphological operation. A new feature extraction technique has been developed, based on horizontal and vertical states transition count, and the ratio of hand area with respect to the whole area of image. These set of features have been proven to have high intra class dissimilarity attributes. In order to have a system that can be easily trained, artificial neural networks has been chosen in the classification stage. A multilayer perceptron with back-propagation algorithm has been developed, thus the system is actually in-built to be used as a human machine interface. The gesture recognition system has been built and tested in Matlab, where simulations have shown promising results. The performance of recognition rate in this research is 95% which shows a major improvement in comparison to the available methods

Investigation of TiO2/graphene nanocomposite based photoanode in dye-sensitized solar cell

Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC) which is the third generation photovoltaic solar cell is a promising low cost solar cell. This type of solar cell is robust and do not require clean environment for fabrication. This paper focuses on implementation of graphene in the DSSC photoanode to improve the electron path from photoanode to FTO transparent electrode. In this research, N719 synthetic dye is used as synthesizer and three different types of graphene nanopowder namely 8 nm flakes, multilayer flakes and nanoplatelets were implemented in titanium dioxide as photo-anode. I-V measurement was done under illumination of 1000 W/m2 using solar simulator and the results show that the DSSC with titanium dioxide photoanode doped with graphene multilayer flakes performs the best in term of open circuit voltage (0.782 V), short circuit current density (12.408 mA/cm2) and energy conversion efficiency (4.4%)

Prototype Design of Rainwater Harvesting and Solar Irrigation System for Small-Scale Farm

The current irrigation system at Taman Tanaman Dapur that used by the Faculty of Bioresources and Food Industry (FBIM) is operated manually, and the water source is directly from Syarikat Air Terengganu (SATU). The cost incurred to maintain the current system is expensive therefore, the UniSZA fund for maintenance purpose. By observing these factors, there is an opportunity to improve the irrigation system by utilising the available natural resources in the form of sun and rain, respectively, as a source of energy and water. Thus, the objectives of this project are to design and validate the prototype of rainwater harvesting and solar irrigation system for small scale farm use. By utilising the prototype, it is possible to take advantage of the available natural resources resulting in a technological advancement that optimises the energy usage producing a cost-effective, efficient irrigation system. The prototype design was carried out using a two-dimensional computer-aided design software, AutoCAD. Furthermore, the prototype development was carried out and validated with several readily-available types of equipment in the laboratory as well as equipment that could be obtained by local farmers or individuals. As a result, after going through phases of prototype creations, from the proof of concept, through mock-up testing, and pre-production, it has been well-function as designated.  The value of Gross Irrigation Requirement (GIR) for this study was 308.22 mm/month while the minimum requirement of power production from the solar panel output was 0.552 kWh. More improvement can be made for further development of the prototype by integrating with other technologies such as attach it with moisture sensor and timer for the optimum condition

RTS noise reduction of CMOS image sensors using amplifier-selection pixels

This paper describes a RTS (random telegraph signal) noise reduction technique for an active pixel CMOS image sensor (CIS) with in-pixel selectable dual source-follower amplifiers. In this CMOS image sensor, the lower-noise transistor in each pixel is selected in the readout operation using a table of determining the lower-noise transistors of all the pixels. A prototype image sensor with 65×290 pixels for demonstrating the effectiveness of this technique has been implemented using 0.18µm CMOS image sensor technology with pinned photodiode option. The measured result shows that the maximum noise using the amplifier-selection technique is reduced to 9.6e- from 17.2e- which is the maximum noise of the image array using one of two amplifiers in each pixel without selection

Efficiency performance effect of TiO2 thickness deposited on FTO coated glass photoanode

This paper presents the fabrication and thickness analysis of TiO2 on Fluorine-doped Tin Oxide (FTO) glass for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cell (DSSC). The TiO2 layer was deposited on the cleaned FTO glass using doctor blade technique and the thickness of the TiO2 were controlled by with different layers of adhesive tape. This results showed that the two-layer with thickness 15.09 μm of adhesive tape achieved the highest efficiency of 4.73 %, and followed by three-layer and one-layer at 3.64% at 2.32 % respectively

Graphene doping technique in TiO2 for dye-sensitized solar cells photo-anode

This paper proposed a technique to dope graphene in Titanium dioxide (TiO2). The work focuses on avoiding the contents of carboxyl, hydroxyl or epoxy groups which is up to 55% of the Graphene Oxide (GO) alone in which enhance the conductive performance of the composite. We have characterised the composite on colour difference and voltage-current measurement (I-V Measurement) and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS). The results of a simple eye observation for different thin films indicates a difference in colour shades due to better dispersion in TiO2/Graphene thin film. Then the dispersion of the Graphene sheets can be seen by the uniform colour change with every different ratio. Moreover, the same ratio with different composite weight in I-V measurement resulted is similar to current/voltage readings. Finally, the oxygen atomic level and weight ratio is maintained while better atomic level and weight ratio of graphene sheets and Titania was concluded which shows a higher free electron mobility

Improvement in energy conversion for unmanned aerial vehicle charging pad

An efficient charging station is a necessity for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems. However, if that implementation adds more complexity and onboard weight, then that exercise becomes a burden rather than a benefit since UAV's engineers aim to improve efficiency by reducing the energy consumed by the software and hardware of the complete aeronautical system. This article recommends a fully automatic contact charging station for UAVs, which can charge UAVs and thus resolve flight endurance restrictions of the UAV. The ground station consists of square copper plates that are positively and negatively polarized successively in a chessboard with particular sizes to guarantee electric contact at the landing. The design methodology used with the loading station takes into account the differences in UAV orientation once the platform has landed. In addition, this innovation uses independent charging after touchdown. Thus, this technology relaxes common flight times and help to enhance general mission times. This paper presents a unique charging platform in a “chessboard” configuration, which is devised as an interconnecting interface to facilitate the charging process and overcome inaccuracies with the landing. The solution devised in this research requires few components and presents two power source options (solar & mains power). Additionally, this work presents, to the best of our knowledge, a uniquely innovative recharging landing platform, which incidentally requires no additional software or changes to the UAV’s onboard software settings

高利得前置読み出し回路を用いたCMOSイメージセンサのノイズ低減に関する研究

博士(工学)doctoral創造科学技術大学院静岡大学甲第771号ET