Design and Fabrication of a Mutual Control Electronic Circuit for Solar and Electrical Water Heating

This research is a temperature controller that will be implemented to ensure that the water temperature of the solar water heating unit is maintained at the desirable level at all times of use. This control circuit is designed to control the On/Off action of the immersed electrical heater according to specific temperature range. A temperature sensor will sense the water temperature constantly and send signal to a micro-controller unit. The micro-controller will process the data according to a written program and control the actions of electrical heater. At the same time, temperature reading will be displayed through LCD and real-time data can be viewed from a computer via serial port. During times of sufficient sunlight, solar energy will be the main source used for heating water; otherwise, there will be an automatic switching to the electrical operated immersion heater. This controller will give reliability to users of solar water heating systems

Auto indoor hydroponics plant growth chamber

The objective of this project is to build an auto indoor hydroponics plant growing chamber that has an auto monitoring and controlling system. A ESP32 based hydroponics electrical system is built with the attachment of hardware components such as temperature and humidity sensor, light intensity sensor, water level sensor, and water flow rate sensor. The software development of the system is through Arduino IoT Cloud platform, which has an overall suitability in terms of features, cost, and user intuitiveness for starters. Results have shown that ESP32 can ensure stable power supply. After testing and validation, all of the electrical components are stored in a power enclosure box to prevent contact with liquid. In short, the developed auto indoor hydroponics plant growth chamber has effectively demonstrated the ability in easing the plant cultivation procedure for agricultural community

Design and performance of a power generating manual treadmill

Treadmills are one of the most popular training equipment in the gym and at home. The working principle of treadmills is by moving the belt with the human knee bending, which creates mechanical energy to turn the belt. A gear or pulley and belt system connects to the generator along the axel line of the rolling bars. The power generated by the DC generator is stored in a battery pack and could be used to charge phones or other equipment. It has been found that treadmills can provide an efficiency of 95% when the DC motor is used and 92% when the AC motor is used. The main objective of this study is to design and fabricate a powder-generating manual treadmill and to analyze the performance of the system under different operation conditions

Lateral control with neural network head roll prediction model for motion sickness incidence minimisation in autonomous vehicle

Generally, the passengers of an autonomous vehicle suffer substantial motion sickness (MS) compared to the driver. This particularly occurs during cornering as the passengers are inclined to tilt their heads in the direction of lateral acceleration whereas the driver tends to tilt their head in the opposite direction. Therefore, it is crucial for the passengers to reduce the head roll angle towards the direction of lateral acceleration to decrease the susceptibility to MS. This study proposed a lateral control approach based on the head roll angle which was estimated by head roll prediction models to reduce the severity of MS in an autonomous vehicle. The prediction models were developed via the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique. A Proportional-Integral (PI) controller was implemented to produce a corrective wheel angle based on the predicted head roll angle responses of the driver and passenger. The corrective angle caused a decrease in the lateral acceleration. The decrement in lateral acceleration then reduced the passenger’s head roll angle towards the direction of lateral acceleration. The findings indicated that the suggested control approach was capable to decrease the MS Incidence (MSI) index by 5.97% over a single lap and 14.48% over 10 laps

Newly Developed Nonlinear Vehicle Model for an Active Anti-roll Bar System

This paper presents the development of a newly developed nonlinear vehicle model is used in the validation process of the vehicle model. The parameters chosen in a newly developed vehicle model is developed based on CARSIM vehicle model by using non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm version II (NSGA-II) optimization method. The ride comfort and handling performances have been one of the main objective to fulfil the expectation of customers in the vehicle development. Full nonlinear vehicle model which consists of ride, handling and Magic tyre subsystems has been derived and developed in MATLAB/Simulink. Then, optimum values of the full nonlinear vehicle parameters are investigated by using NSGA-II. The two objective functions are established based on RMS error between simulation and benchmark system. A stiffer suspension provides good stability and handling during manoeuvres while softer suspension gives better ride quality. The final results indicated that the newly developed nonlinear vehicle model is behaving accurately with input ride and manoeuvre. The outputs trend are successfully replicated