Design and development of a pole climbing surveillance robot

The cost of installing, monitoring and servicing a fixed camera system can be high and not all areas are in need of constant surveying. The increase in crime in urban areas emphasizes the need for a more effective and efficient surveillance system, as a result could lead to fewer crimes. A temporary surveillance unit which is able to climb to gain an elevated view has great potential for both military and civilian application. This paper highlights how the patent pending climbing robotic system (PC-101) was developed to be used by London’s Metropolitan Police Forensic Department for analysing outdoor crime scenes especially that related to car accidents. When cars are involved in accidents in the Metropolitan area, depending on the scale of the incident, the road generally has to be shut off to traffic if there are serious casualties. Elevated images are required for cases which may be taken to court, which then the images are then used as evidence, therefore regulations on the quality and perspectives of the image have to be met. By climbing a range of existing street furniture such as street lamp post, a temporary platform eliminates the use of larger special vehicle which struggles to get to the crime scene as well as cuts down the duration of the road closure. 98% of London street lamps in the Metropolitan area are constructed out of steel structures which make the use of magnetic wheels for locomotion an ideal solution to the climbing problem. Once remote controlled to the top of the lamp post, the PC-101 makes use of its actuated camera arm/gimbal to take the required shot, which can be seen on the ground control unit. A surveillance tool of this sort can be used for many applications which include crowd/riot control, crime scene investigations, monitoring hostile environments and even the monitoring of nature within urban environment

Remarks on the diachronic reconstruction of intonational patterns in Romance with special attention to Occitan as a bridge language

This paper approaches Romance intonation from a diachronic point of view. The position that is adopted is that this is an area open to investigation. Comparative techniques can be fruitfully employed for investigating the evolution and diversification of the intonational patterns of the Romance languages. The focus of the paper is on Occitan. This is an important bridge language whose study may elucidate how French diverged prosodically from the systems found in Ibero and Italo-Romance. It is argued that, since Occitan was retained contrasts in the position of wordaccent (lexical stress), any prosodic features that French shares with Occitan are logically independent from the lack of contrastive accent in French

Investigating the mobility of unmanned ground vehicles.

Unmanned Vehicles have to be as capable if not more capable than a human in the same situation, especially when used by the military to serve as an extension of the soldiers capability on the battlefield. All unmanned systems types have obstacles and encounter difficulties when trying to complete their missions, but none more so than the Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV). This is because UGV’s have to operate in environments with a large amount of variables which includes a range of different obstacles, and terrain types; making the simple task of driving from A to B very hard. This highlights the fact that a UGV’s capability is predominantly dependant on its mobility and is seen as one of the most important factors in their development, because the more capable of traversing over all types of terrain the vehicle is, then the less likely it will become stuck and need human assistance. This paper investigates current military UGV’s, their mobility capabilities and the future of UGV development

Development of a co-axial tri-rotor UAV

This paper discusses the initial design requirements and development of a Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (SUAV), sometimes referred to as a Miniature Aerial Vehicle (MAV) or Micro Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (?UAV) as the backdrop to an entry for the MoD Grand Challenge Event 2008 (MoD GC 2008). A review of 61 SUAVs has been undertaken together with the development of a methodology for evaluation, review and rating against specific design criteria. This analysis concludes with a list of the top ten systems currently available which have been found to be best suited to the particular requirements of operating in the cluttered urban environment. Finally, we present a novel design of Co-Axial Tri-Rotor UAV (named HALO™) which has been developed by the i-Spy team at Middlesex University as our entry to the MoD GC 200

Reconfigurable unmanned aerial vehicles.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been developing dramatically due to wars and miniaturisation of technology, which has made the UAV industry a very lucrative business. Research organisations have been funded by various research committees or military groups to push UAV developments at a very fast pace. Although these UAVs are high in capability, they are limited to a single use application or mission. This paper will analyse current UAV systems to determine how the use of a novel reconfigurable UAV could benefit the end user

Investigating the use of the coanda effect to create novel unmanned aerial vehicles.

In recent years the demand for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles(UAV's) has increased rapidly across many different industries and they are used for various applications. Such systems have the ability to enter dangerous or inaccessible environments and allow vital information to be collected without human risk. In order to carry out a task, a UAV has to face many different challenges. This has led to the development of novel platforms that move away from traditional aircraft design in order to make them more capable. A good example of this type of craft is one which uses the Coanda Effect to assist propulsion. This effect was discovered in 1930 by Henri-Marie Coanda who found that if a thin film of air is directed over a curved body, then the air follows the curve. When used to propel a UAV, the Coanda Effect also entrains air from above and lowers the air pressure in this region, which in turn generates more lift. Many organizations have attempted to use this phenomenon to aid the lift of various unusual air vehicles

Using acoustic sensor technologies to create a more terrain capable unmanned ground vehicle

Unmanned Ground Vehicle’s (UGV) have to cope with the most complex range of dynamic and variable obstacles and therefore need to be highly intelligent in order to cope with navigating in such a cluttered environment. When traversing over different terrains (whether it is a UGV or a commercial manned vehicle) different drive styles and configuration settings need to be selected in order to travel successfully over each terrain type. These settings are usually selected by a human operator in manned systems on what they assume the ground conditions to be, but how can an autonomous UGV ‘sense’ these changes in terrain or ground conditions? This paper will investigate noncontact acoustic sensor technologies and how they can be used to detect different terrain types by listening to the interaction between the wheel and the terrain. The results can then be used to create a terrain classification list for the system so in future missions it can use the sensor technology to identify the terrain type it is trying to traverse, which creating a more autonomous and terrain capable vehicle. The technology would also benefit commercial driver assistive technologies