Creating a Plan to Convert Streetlights in Southeast Michigan to Energy Efficient LED's by 2025

Street lighting plays an important role in the human landscape, providing public safety and place-making benefits. However, it is also the largest energy expense for many municipalities and accounts for significant environmental impacts. By converting their street lighting to LED bulbs, communities throughout Southeast Michigan have a great opportunity to save money, reduce their environmental impacts, and realize safety and aesthetic benefits for residents. However, municipalities’ participation in street lighting conversion projects has thus far been limited due to lack of information and communication about available community lighting options. This report, prepared on behalf of the Southeast Michigan Regional Energy Office (SEMREO), explores the following perspectives of the proposed LED streetlight conversion projects: technical feasibility, street lighting policy, environmental impact analysis, social and community analysis, and financial analysis of available funding mechanisms. For the technology analysis section, we performed a literature review of available street lighting technologies, with a focus on highlighting the energy and cost benefits of LED conversion project implementation. With their high efficacy and long lifetimes relative to conventional bulbs, LEDs were proven the best option for streetlight upgrades in Southeast Michigan. We also performed a policy analysis, examining policy incentives and disincentives for LED street lighting conversion projects in the state of Michigan, including utility incentives, legislative activities, and federal policy drivers. For our environmental analysis, we quantified the emissions reductions attributed to the demand reduction from the LED conversion project, and determined its potential as a cost-effective emissions reduction mechanism. In addition, we met with community members and identified the needs and preferences of the Eastpointe community, a SEMREO member, and found that participants were interested in the possibilities of solar-powered streetlights. Finally, we evaluated financing options and discussed financial barriers for undergoing such projects. This comprehensive analysis includes a simple streetlight This comprehensive analysis includes a simple streetlight conversion plan for communities in Southeast Michigan region and several recommendations for municipalities participating in SEMREO’s Street Lighting Consortium. First, we found this conversion plan to be economically favorable, saving municipalities an average of 55% of energy savings and 32% of annual expenses savings, with an average simple payback period of 3.7 years. For our recommendations, we emphasize that upgrading streetlights to LEDs creates significant economic, environmental and social benefits: communities should continue being Consortium members, take advantages of economies of scale, and remain active in public consultation processes. Additionally, we recommend that the Consortium continue to advocate for energy efficiency-friendly policies, such as stricter energy optimization standards and inclusion of LED conversion projects in the State Carbon Implementation Plan (SCIP), and that the Consortium style itself as an advocacy and resource organization with dues-based membership. Finally, it is recommended that SEMREO members increase their outreach opportunities with the public to gain more support for streetlight conversions. An integrated approach such as the one laid out in this report could accelerate LED implementation process, assess the benefits, and help to increase participation in future programs. Our results could also be applied to municipalities in Michigan outside of SEMREO’s target region, but further large-scale data analysis would be needed to support this project at a state-level scale.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117633/1/Final Report - Creating_A_Plan__to_Convert_Streetlights_SE_MI.pd

Coupling vibration characteristics of a translating flexible robot manipulator with harmonic driving motions

Translating robot manipulators (TRMs) especially flexible translating robot manipulators (FTRMs) have been actively used in takeout robots, beam-type substrate transport robots and manufacturing machines and it remains that the end-effector on robot arms should have a good operating accuracy. Due to the coupling effect, such as motor parameters and mechanism inertias, the motions of the driving stage exhibits certain disturbances especially in high speeds. Considering the influence of the motion disturbances, this paper models the motions of the driving stage as harmonic driving motions and in this case the FTRM is similar to a parametrically excited system. The multiple scales method is applied to obtain the stability conditions for the motion disturbances. Based on the established coupling dynamic model, the influences of the motion disturbances on the vibration behaviors and the stability are investigated. Moreover, considering the actual motion characteristics of the driving stage with varied accelerations and velocities, the effect mechanism between the motion characteristics and motion disturbances are subsequently studied. According to this effect mechanism, the influence of the motion disturbances can be suppressed through motion optimizing, which is meaningful for motion optimizations and vibration controls of the FTRM. An ADAMS physical prototype is constructed to verify the dynamic model and theoretical analysis results, and the results have a good agreement

In-package wireless communication with TSV-based antenna

Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been shown to be the most viable alternative to an interconnect bus for the scalability of the system [1]. On-chip antennas, implementing wireless interconnects, are introduced for improved scalability of NoCs in [2]. On-chip wireless links offer improved network performance due to long distance communication, additional bandwidth, and broadcasting capabilities of antennas. The most prominent on-chip antenna designs are the planar logperiodic and meander which have a surface-propagation of the EM waves of the antenna. The main detriment of these antennas, and surface-propagation in general, is the poor signal attenuation (i.e. path loss) even at small distances of 5mm. This work challenges the on-chip antenna design conventions, and pushes toward a Through-Silicon Via (TSV)- based antenna design called TSV_A that establishes wireless communication through the silicon substrate medium with only a 3 dB loss over a 30mm on-chip distance

Vibration observation for a translational flexible-link manipulator based on improved Luenberger observer

The residual vibration is a very universal problem in flexible manipulators which are widely used in robot technology. This paper focuses on the soft measurement of the vibration signals for a translational flexible-link manipulator (TFLM) system. A vibration observer based on the improved Luenberger observer, which only requires the practical measurement values of the boundary positions, is designed to obtain the vibration signals of the TFLM. The main contribution of the vibration observer is its ability to simplify system structure and get the vibration signals of any point of the TFLM which is unrealistic by infinite sensors in practice. Furthermore, the improved part of the Luenberger observer is the added feedback coefficients for the tip vibration signals which can correct the observed mode and reduce the observation error markedly. And according to the stable conditions of observer, the added feedback coefficients are designed by Lyapunov technique and multiple population genetic algorithms (MPGA). Finally, the efficiency of the designed vibration observer is verified by combined-simulation

Tip position control of single flexible manipulators based on LQR with the Mamdani model

Flexible manipulators have been actively used in various fields, such as aerospace, industry and medical treatment. It remains that the tip of the flexible manipulator should accurately trail the target trajectory without vibration. This paper proposes a novel method of the tip position control of a single flexible manipulator based on LQR with the Mamdani model. Firstly, using the assumed mode method and the Lagrange equations, the dynamic model of the single flexible manipulator is established. Then, the state equations are derived by the dynamic model. Based on the Mamdani model, the fuzzy algorithm is added to the traditional LQR control, and the self-adaptive adjustment of the LQR control variable R is conducted, which improves the adaptability of the control system. Finally, numerical simulations and experiments are presented. The results demonstrate that the novel control method presented in this paper can rapidly achieve the location in the position control and effectively suppress the elastic vibration of the single flexible manipulator, which has more considerable effect compared with the traditional LQR control method

Design and fabrication of two-port three-beam switched beam antenna array for 60 GHz communication

This article presents a novel, low-cost, beam-switchable $2 \times 10$2x10 antenna array system operating at 60 GHz. This antenna system is constructed of two rows of Chebyshev-tapered microstrip antenna arrays. Each row is a 10 element series-fed array which are fed by a $90 \circ$90 circle coupler. The designed antenna array has only two input ports, but it is capable of generating three switchable beams. This antenna system can spatially scan $90 \circ$90 circle with at least -5 dB normalised gain using only one SPDT switch and a single transceiver. The maximum gain realised by the system was measured as 16.4 dBi and the bandwidth (BW) was >1 GHz. The features of the proposed antenna system make it applicable to do mmWave research such as beamforming algorithms and channel sounding, and to use in handsets for 5G communication

A 4 by 10 series 60 GHz microstrip array antenna fed by Butler matrix for 5G applications

This paper presents a low-cost, beam-steerable 4 x 10 antenna array system operating at 60 GHz. The proposed antenna system is fed by a 4 x 10 Butler Matrix network designed using microstrip line (ML) structure. Chebyshev tapered microstrip antenna arrays with 10 series-fed elements are connected to four output ports of the feed network. Four steerable beams with maximum 16.5 dBi system gain and 1GHz bandwidth(BW) satisfy the requirements of millimeter wave propagation study and handset application for 5G communication

Vibration observation for a translational flexible-link manipulator based on improved Luenberger observer

The residual vibration is a very universal problem in flexible manipulators which are widely used in robot technology. This paper focuses on the soft measurement of the vibration signals for a translational flexible-link manipulator (TFLM) system. A vibration observer based on the improved Luenberger observer, which only requires the practical measurement values of the boundary positions, is designed to obtain the vibration signals of the TFLM. The main contribution of the vibration observer is its ability to simplify system structure and get the vibration signals of any point of the TFLM which is unrealistic by infinite sensors in practice. Furthermore, the improved part of the Luenberger observer is the added feedback coefficients for the tip vibration signals which can correct the observed mode and reduce the observation error markedly. And according to the stable conditions of observer, the added feedback coefficients are designed by Lyapunov technique and multiple population genetic algorithms (MPGA). Finally, the efficiency of the designed vibration observer is verified by combined-simulation