Design and Development of an Automated Multi Axis Solar Tracker Using PLC

Design of a two dimensional automated solar tracking system is discussed in this paper. The objectives of the proposed work are to design an automated tracking technique using Light Dependent Resistance (LDR), and solar panel power output to position the solar panel to absorb maximum energy. For positioning the solar panel two stepper motors are used, each for positioning in a plane. These stepper motors were driven by a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). The controller is designed using wonderware software considering the inputs from LDR Sensor and solar panel output to drive the stepper motor connected to solar panels. Then the whole program is implemented with the help of PLC. The system was tested on a real time and results showed the proposed technique had improved the efficiency of solar panel by an amount of 25%

A bibliometric analysis of publication output in selected South American countries [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]

Research output provides an insight into the development of the scientific capability of a country. Budget allocation for research and development (R&D) is directly proportional to the research output of a country. Bibliometric analysis of South American countries has not been done in many studies. The purpose of this paper was to analyse research outputs from South American countries on various metrics. An analysis was done for a period of 11 years from 2010 to 2020. The analysis revealed that Brazil with highest percentage of research spend has lowest Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI). This contrasts with Uruguay, whose FWCI is high despite comparatively lower spend on R&D and lower publication output. Although Argentina has the highest percentage of researchers per million population (1202), it has the least papers per researchers (0.3 per year) among the countries studied. A huge disparity in terms of percentage of research spent, research output, papers per researcher, and output with national and international co-authorship was observed

Estimation of Flow Rate Through Analysis of Pipe Vibration

In this paper, implementation of soft sensing technique for measurement of fluid flow rate is reported. The objective of the paper is to design an estimator to physically measure the flow in pipe by analysing the vibration on the walls of the pipe. Commonly used head type flow meter causes obstruction to the flow and measurement would depend on the placement of these sensors. In the proposed technique vibration sensor is bonded on the pipe of liquid flow. It is observed that vibration in the pipe varies with the control action of stem. Single axis accelerometer is used to acquire vibration signal from pipe, signal is passed from the sensor to the system for processing. Basic techniques like filtering, amplification, and Fourier transform are used to process the signal. The obtained transform is trained using neural network algorithm to estimate the fluid flow rate. Artificial neural network is designed using back propagation with artificial bee colony algorithm. Designed estimator after being incorporated in practical setup is subjected to test and the result obtained shows successful estimation of flow rate with the root mean square percentage error of 0.667

Design of Mobile Application for Assisting Color Blind People to Identify Information on Sign Boards

Color blindness is a condition where a person cannot distinguish colors that are of similar contrast. This paper reports an attempt to develop a mobile phone application that can run on any Android or Windows smart phone. The developed application/software tool is able to assist color blind people by converting an image with low contrast to an image with high contrast. The objective of the proposed work was to develop a program on the LabVIEW platform to i) acquire the image whose information should be processed, ii) develop an algorithm to display a high-contrast crisp image of the actual dull image, and iii) identify the colors and characters present in the dull image for messaging to the user's phone. The work was implemented on the LabVIEW platform making use of various image processing tools to identify the color and text from the sign board that otherwise cannot be identified by color blind persons. The implementation was tested with several inputs to validate the performance of the proposed method. It was able to produce accurate results for more than 97.3% of the test inputs

Abstracts of National Conference on Biological, Biochemical, Biomedical, Bioenergy, and Environmental Biotechnology

This book contains the abstracts of the papers presented at the National Conference on Biological, Biochemical, Biomedical, Bioenergy, and Environmental Biotechnology (NCB4EBT-2021) Organized by the Department of Biotechnology, National Institute of Technology Warangal, India held on 29–30 January 2021. This conference is the first of its kind organized by NIT-W which covered an array of interesting topics in biotechnology. This makes it a bit special as it brings together researchers from different disciplines of biotechnology, which in turn will also open new research and cooperation fields for them. Conference Title: National Conference on Biological, Biochemical, Biomedical, Bioenergy, and Environmental BiotechnologyConference Acronym: NCB4EBT-2021Conference Date: 29–30 January 2021Conference Location: Online (Virtual Mode)Conference Organizer: Department of Biotechnology, National Institute of Technology Warangal, Indi