Shared Situational Awareness with V2X Communication and Set-membership Estimation

The ability to perceive and comprehend a traffic situation and to estimate the state of the vehicles and road-users in the surrounding of the ego-vehicle is known as situational awareness. Situational awareness for a heavy-duty autonomous vehicle is a critical part of the automation platform and depends on the ego-vehicle's field-of-view. But when it comes to the urban scenario, the field-of-view of the ego-vehicle is likely to be affected by occlusion and blind spots caused by infrastructure, moving vehicles, and parked vehicles. This paper proposes a framework to improve situational awareness using set-membership estimation and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication. This framework provides safety guarantees and can adapt to dynamically changing scenarios, and is integrated into an existing complex autonomous platform. A detailed description of the framework implementation and real-time results are illustrated in this paper

Data-Driven Reachability Analysis of Pedestrians Using Behavior Modes

In this paper, we present a data-driven approach for safely predicting the future state sets of pedestrians. Previous approaches to predicting the future state sets of pedestrians either do not provide safety guarantees or are overly conservative. Moreover, an additional challenge is the selection or identification of a model that sufficiently captures the motion of pedestrians. To address these issues, this paper introduces the idea of splitting previously collected, historical pedestrian trajectories into different behavior modes for performing data-driven reachability analysis. Through this proposed approach, we are able to use data-driven reachability analysis to capture the future state sets of pedestrians, while being less conservative and still maintaining safety guarantees. Furthermore, this approach is modular and can support different approaches for behavior splitting. To illustrate the efficacy of the approach, we implement our method with a basic behavior-splitting module and evaluate the implementation on an open-source data set of real pedestrian trajectories. In this evaluation, we find that the modal reachable sets are less conservative and more descriptive of the future state sets of the pedestrian

Performance and Improvement Investigation of Accelerated Temperature Change Test.

This thesis is focused on Accelerated Temperature Change Test (ATCT). This test is performed in order to deteriorate and age a product in a faster than natural way. The ATCTs are primarily controlled with four parameters: the temperature range (∆T), ramp rate (RR), dwell time (DT) and number of cycles in test ( . A comprehensive investigation was carried out to analyze the performance and functionality of the cabinet, used for performing ATCT. This was achieved by performing repeated measurements in the empty cabinet with different combinations of temperature range (∆T) and dwell time (DT). The test parameters are normally adjusted according to values given in the standards common in automotive environmental testing and also according to the thermal properties and size of the tested components. In this investigation, four different standards for accelerated testing were taken into consider. They are TB1900, ISO 16750-4:2010 (International Organization for Standardization), IEC 60068-2-14 (International Electrotechnical Commission) and The GMW3172: User Guide. From each standard, each parameter definitions are illustrated. Practical tests were executed on three different types of components and with different test conditions. A suitable experimental-setup was prepared to record the temperature measurements on/in the DUT (Device Under Test). This experimental-setup was designed using thermocouples (Type - K) and DEWESoft. The results from the test were used to analyze the deviation between the standards and practical testing. This comparison helps in understanding the required improvements in the test parameters values i.e. the cabinet parameter settings or the test conditions. The values assigned for each parameter before the test are called Cabinet Parameter Settings (CPS). The temperature readings from the DUT are recorded and plotted after ATCT. Based on these ATCT measurements, optimal values of the test parameter are estimated. These are called Estimated Parameter Values (EPV). A significant deviation is observed between CPS and EPV. From these EPV, an acceleration factor (AF) for each test is calculated using two different life prediction models i.e. (i) Coffin-Manson and (ii) Norris Landzberg. And using this AF, an evaluation of the “number of cycles in the field (Nf)” with certain “number of cycles in the test (Nt)” is made. This evaluation helps in understanding the effect of parameter values during the test on the acceleration conditions. A simple aluminum box (one of the test component) is replicated into a simple structure, to implement in COMSOL Multiphysics Simulations. When the simulation results show good agreement with practical results, then simulations are recommended to be used to find the proper test conditions and test parameter values. Further, the simulations are used to find the sensitive point in/on the component. These simulations take some reasonable efforts. Index Terms— Acceleration factor, Dwell time, Fatigue failure, Accelerated temperature change test, Stress level, Temperature range, Coefficient of Thermal Expansion

Performance and Improvement Investigation of Accelerated Temperature Change Test.

This thesis is focused on Accelerated Temperature Change Test (ATCT). This test is performed in order to deteriorate and age a product in a faster than natural way. The ATCTs are primarily controlled with four parameters: the temperature range (∆T), ramp rate (RR), dwell time (DT) and number of cycles in test ( . A comprehensive investigation was carried out to analyze the performance and functionality of the cabinet, used for performing ATCT. This was achieved by performing repeated measurements in the empty cabinet with different combinations of temperature range (∆T) and dwell time (DT). The test parameters are normally adjusted according to values given in the standards common in automotive environmental testing and also according to the thermal properties and size of the tested components. In this investigation, four different standards for accelerated testing were taken into consider. They are TB1900, ISO 16750-4:2010 (International Organization for Standardization), IEC 60068-2-14 (International Electrotechnical Commission) and The GMW3172: User Guide. From each standard, each parameter definitions are illustrated. Practical tests were executed on three different types of components and with different test conditions. A suitable experimental-setup was prepared to record the temperature measurements on/in the DUT (Device Under Test). This experimental-setup was designed using thermocouples (Type - K) and DEWESoft. The results from the test were used to analyze the deviation between the standards and practical testing. This comparison helps in understanding the required improvements in the test parameters values i.e. the cabinet parameter settings or the test conditions. The values assigned for each parameter before the test are called Cabinet Parameter Settings (CPS). The temperature readings from the DUT are recorded and plotted after ATCT. Based on these ATCT measurements, optimal values of the test parameter are estimated. These are called Estimated Parameter Values (EPV). A significant deviation is observed between CPS and EPV. From these EPV, an acceleration factor (AF) for each test is calculated using two different life prediction models i.e. (i) Coffin-Manson and (ii) Norris Landzberg. And using this AF, an evaluation of the “number of cycles in the field (Nf)” with certain “number of cycles in the test (Nt)” is made. This evaluation helps in understanding the effect of parameter values during the test on the acceleration conditions. A simple aluminum box (one of the test component) is replicated into a simple structure, to implement in COMSOL Multiphysics Simulations. When the simulation results show good agreement with practical results, then simulations are recommended to be used to find the proper test conditions and test parameter values. Further, the simulations are used to find the sensitive point in/on the component. These simulations take some reasonable efforts. Index Terms— Acceleration factor, Dwell time, Fatigue failure, Accelerated temperature change test, Stress level, Temperature range, Coefficient of Thermal Expansion

Brain Affective System Inspired Control Architecture: An Application to Nonlinear System

This paper presents a bio-inspired intelligent controller to enhance the performance of a nonlinear system. The controller is designed by capturing the emotional intelligence of mammalian brain mediated by the limbic system in which certain parts are responsible for generating emotions and these can be combined together as brain affective system inspired control architecture (BASIC). This controller has been used to cope with nonlinearities present in control applications. In this paper brain inspired control architecture is proposed while incorporating the sensory cortex explicitly in the architecture and the computational equations of various modules are suitably developed. The performance of the proposed controller is analyzed on a typical nonlinear system, namely, Permanent magnet synchronous motor for speed control, harmonics in stator phase currents and ripples produced in electromagnetic torque at different operating conditions. Its performance is compared with the existing control techniques in offline simulations as well as in real-time Hardware-in-loop environment. The results establish the computational efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the proposed controller

Preliminary Study on Red Wine Aroma: The Volatile Profiles of Six Grape Cultivars in Different Vinification Phases

Consumers' appreciation of wines is mainly driven by their aroma, which is the most important organoleptic characteristic and key attribute. The volatile bouquet derives from the grape berries and from the processing phases of vinification. In the present study, the volatile emission of six grapevine cultivars has been analysed through four phases of vinification: the headspaces of crushed grapes, fermented must, new wine (2 months old), and wine (7 months old) have been sampled and analysed. This showed the evolution of the volatile compounds based on the chemical and mechanical processes involved in the specific vinification phase. Chemometric tools (hierarchical cluster and principal component analyses) have revealed that samples gather in statistical groups based on the vinification phase they belong to, though they maintain an aroma composition that is typical of the grape berry of origin