Multi fingered robot hand in industrial robot application using tele-operation

This research focuses on the working and development of wireless robotic hand system. In this research previously developed models have been studied. After analysis of those models, a better approach has been presented in this research. The objective of this research is to design and develop a tele-operated robotic hand system. The robotic hand is intended for providing solutions to industrial problems like robot reprogramming, industrial automation and safety of the workers working in hostile environments. The robotic hand system works in the master slave configuration where Bluetooth is being used as the communication channel for the tele-operation. The master is a glove, embedded with sensors to detect the movement of every joint present in the hand, which a human operator can wear. This joint movement is transferred to the slave robotic hand which will mimic the movement of human operator. The robotic hand is a multi fingered dexterous and anthropomorphic hand. All the fingers are capable of performing flexion, extension, abduction, adduction and hence circumduction. A new combination of pneumatic muscles and springs has been used for the actuation purpose. As a result, this combination reduces the size of the robotic hand by decreasing the number of pneumatic muscles used. The pneumatic muscles are controlled by the opening and closing of solenoid valves. A novel technique has been used in the robotic hand for tendon routing, which gives the ability of independence to all finger joints. The heart of all the control mechanism of the system is mbed microcontroller. The designed system was tested at different module levels. The results show the successful establishment of communication between master and slave at a rate of 10 packets per second, which was sufficient for smooth motion of the system. The amount of torque produced at all the joints in the robotic hand has been presented in this research. The posture tests have been performed in which two fingers were actuated which followed the master. This system has achieved motion of fingers without any tendon coupling problem. The system is able to replace the human industrial workers performing dexterous tasks

A computationally efficient framework for large-scale distributed fingerprint matching

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Science, School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. May 2017.Biometric features have been widely implemented to be utilized for forensic and civil applications. Amongst many different kinds of biometric characteristics, the fingerprint is globally accepted and remains the mostly used biometric characteristic by commercial and industrial societies due to its easy acquisition, uniqueness, stability and reliability. There are currently various effective solutions available, however the fingerprint identification is still not considered a fully solved problem mainly due to accuracy and computational time requirements. Although many of the fingerprint recognition systems based on minutiae provide good accuracy, the systems with very large databases require fast and real time comparison of fingerprints, they often either fail to meet the high performance speed requirements or compromise the accuracy. For fingerprint matching that involves databases containing millions of fingerprints, real time identification can only be obtained through the implementation of optimal algorithms that may utilize the given hardware as robustly and efficiently as possible. There are currently no known distributed database and computing framework available that deal with real time solution for fingerprint recognition problem involving databases containing as many as sixty million fingerprints, the size which is close to the size of the South African population. This research proposal intends to serve two main purposes: 1) exploit and scale the best known minutiae matching algorithm for a minimum of sixty million fingerprints; and 2) design a framework for distributed database to deal with large fingerprint databases based on the results obtained in the former item.GR201

Evaluation Of Treatment Outcome, Health-Related Quality Of Life And Cost Of Treatment In Smear Positive Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients

Despite the effective therapy, tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the major causes of adult morbidity and mortality. Available data show that the burden of TB is slowly increasing in Malaysia. Therefore, this study was conducted with an objective to evaluate the management of new smear positive pulmonary TB (PTB) patients. This management included clinical, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and economic standpoints at the chest clinic of Hospital Pulau Pinang (HPP), Malaysia. In the first part of this prospective follow-up study, all new smear positive PTB patients who were registered at the chest clinic of HPP, between March 2010 and February 2011, were evaluated for the outcome of their TB treatment. In the second part, new smear positive PTB patients and their family caregivers were invited to self-complete the Short-Form 36 version 2 (SF-36v2) HRQoL questionnaire, while the third part is an incidence-based economic study. The total cost of TB treatment was estimated from the perspective of both provider and patient using appropriate methods

On the estimation of three parameters lognormal distribution based on fuzzy life time data

Countless statistical tools are available to extract information from data. Life time modeling is considered as one of the most prominent fields of statistics, which is evident from the developments made in this field in the last few decades. Almost every statistic for life time analysis is based on precise life time observations, however, life time is not a precise measurement but more or less fuzzy. Therefore, in addition to classical statistical tools, fuzzy number approaches to describe life time data are more suitable. In order to incorporate fuzziness of the observations, fuzzy estimators for the three parameter lognormal distribution were suggested. The proposed estimators cover stochastic variation as well as fuzziness of the observations

Fungal-Derived Nanoparticles as Novel Antimicrobial and Anticancer Agents

In order to control microbial resistance against commonly used antibiotics, it is indispensable to develop novel and efficient antimicrobial agents. For this purpose, metallic nanoparticles (mainly inorganic) with their antimicrobial activites represent an effective solution for this global problem. However, synthesis of nanoparticles involves the use of expensive, poisonous and dangerous chemicals responsible for different biological and environmental hazards. This fact increases the necessity of developing environment-friendly procedure by means of green synthesis (using plants) and extra-biological methods (using microbes such as bacteria and fungi). More recently, metallic nanoparticles, derived from fungal sources, have demonstrated their potential not only as a new-generation antimicrobial agents but also as anticancer agents. Therefore, this chapter is aimed to explore the various nanoparticles producing fungi with ultimate objective of elucidating the possible (i) mechanism of biosynthesis of metallic NPs by various fungi and (ii) mode of action of these mycosynthesized NPs on bacterial cell. This chapter would certainly increase our knowledge about interaction of nanoparticles with bacterial cell for their use in health biotechnology

The Mediatization of Politics in Pakistan: A Structural Analysis

Last two decades of twentieth century saw a development in media due to growing influence of privately-owned television channels. This TV era was so influential that society and politics in Western democracies became dependent on the media and its logic. This process was theorized as mediatization of politics and/or society. Though initially a western phenomenon, soon it started to diffuse in the developing world. Using mediatization as a key concept, this article presents a theoretical framework to analyze the media development in Pakistan. The unprecedented influence media exerted in political discourse of recent years reveals that Pakistani politics is going to be mediatized. As majority of studies on Pakistani media are of descriptive nature and only narrate the history of Pakistani media, this study tries to establish a structural framework in which media, its development, and transformation from an observer to an active player in political stage can be studied further