Ultrasonic tapered phased arrays for three-dimensional imaging

Ph.D.Paul J. Benkese

Typhoon locating and reconstruction from the infra-red satellite cloud image

Abstract—Typhoon inflicts terrible damage due to thunderstorms, violent winds, torrential rain, flooding and extreme high tides. Improving the early typhoon forecast capability is important for the disaster prevention. In recent years, many scholars have made efforts in typhoon center location, typhoon intensity estimation and moving path prediction from the satellite images. Moreover, it may be useful to transfer the useful information of typhoon to the audience in a low bandwidth environment. In this paper, we proposed a novel approach that partitions the satellite cloud image into slices to extract typhoon features. Then we used morphology operations and statistical image classification methods to locate the center and the contour of the typhoon. In addition, we applied the vector quantization method to encode typhoon satellite images owing to its fast image reconstruction capability in different resolutions and regions of interest. The infrared satellite images of 71 typhoons from mature period to decaying period occurred between 1995 and 2006 are tested in this paper. We used the proposed method to recognize, locate and reconstruct typhoon images from these collected satellite cloud images. Experimental results show that the main body of a typhoon image can be segmented effectively from the infrared satellite cloud image with complex background and reconstructed in regions of interest and resolution required. Index Terms—Typhoon center location, typhoon image reconstruction, typhoon recognition I

A Context Aware Smart Classroom Architecture for Smart Campuses

The Smart campus is a concept of an education institute using technologies, such as information systems, internet of things (IoT), and context-aware computing, to support learning, teaching, and administrative activities. Classrooms are important building blocks of a school campus. Therefore, a feasible architecture for building and running smart classrooms is essential for a smart campus. However, most studies related to the smart classroom are focused on studying or addressing particular technical or educational issues, such as networking, AI applications, lecture quality, and user responses to technology. In this study, an architecture for building and running context-aware smart classrooms is proposed. The proposed architecture consists of three parts including a prototype of a context-aware smart classroom, a model for technology integration, and supporting measures for the operation of smart classrooms in this architecture. The classroom prototype was designed based on our study results and a smart classroom project in Ming Chuan University (MCU). The integration model was a layered model uses Raspberry Pi in the bottom layer of the model to integrate underlying technologies and provide application interfaces to the higher layer applications for the ease of building context-aware smart classroom applications. As a result, application interfaces were implemented using Raspberry Pi based on the proposed technology integration model, and a context-aware energy-saving smart classroom application was implemented based on the proposed classroom prototype and the implemented web application interface. The result shows that, in terms of technology, the proposed architecture is feasible for building context-aware smart classrooms in smart campuses