Industry and academe - which one holds the cutting edge?

An Electrical Manufacturing Lecture was presented to a joint meeting of IET (the Institution of Engineering and Technology, successor to the IEE), and the Engineers Australia Electrical Branch. It was the ninth in the annual Electrical Manufacturing series initiated by the IEE in Queensland. It was held in the Hawken Auditorium, Engineering House, 447 Upper Edward Street, Brisbane on Wednesday 19 September 2007 at 6.15 p.m

Machine vision applications in agriculture

Keynote paper. [Abstract]: With the trend of computers towards convergence with multimedia entertainment, tools for vision processing are becoming commonplace. This has led to the pursuit of a host of unusual applications in the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture, in addition to work on vision guidance. These range from the identification of animal species, through the location of macadamia nuts as they are harvested and visual tracking for behaviour analysis of small marsupials to the measurement of the volume of dingo teeth

Bovine intelligence for training horses

A rail-mounted model of a small cow is to be used in the training of horses for camp-drafting contests. The paper concerns the addition of sensors and a strategy to enable the machine to respond to the proximity of the horse in a manner that will represent the behaviour of a live calf

Viewpoint

Though many writers are happy to put a date on the day a Japanese (or was it a Finn?) coined this rather ungainly word, mechatronics has been around in spirit for many decades. My first brush with industry nearly half a century ago involved designing autopilots. Their early computing circuits used analogue magnetic amplifiers rather than the digital microcomputer we would expect today. But a machine that trundled through the sky, obeying commands computed from a multitude of sensor signals that enabled it to make a perfect automatic landing must surely be worthy of being called a robot. By the early 1970s, we could buy 'budget' single-board computers for a thousand British pounds. Although these had a mere sixteen kilobytes of memory, their potential for mechatronics was immense. One of my Cambridge researchers took on the task of revolutionizing the phototypesetter. The method is now commonly found in the laser printer. A spinning mirror scans a laser beam across the photosensitive film, letter shapes are held in computer memory and the entire mechanical design is greatly simplified. I consider this trade-off between mechanics, electronics and computing power to be the guiding principle of mechatronics. The research team were soon knitting similar computers into a variety of real-time applications, including an 'acoustic telescope' to build the signals from 14 microphones into an image of the sound source. Hydrofoils were simulated, violins were analysed for their 'Stradivarius-like qualities' and music was synthesized. A display for a colour television, novel in those days, depended on a minimum of electronics and a wealth of software. But computing power soon came in ever smaller packages. In 1979, planning started for holding the Euromicro conference in London. The chairman wanted an added showpiece and his mind was on 'The Amazing Micromouse Maze Contest' that had just been announced by IEEE Spectrum. I put my hand up to organize the contest. Then I started to follow the news from the USA. Blows were nearly exchanged when the 'dumb wall followers' sprinted through the maze from the entrance at one corner to the exit at the other, much faster than their brainier rivals. How could the rules be massaged to give brains the edge? The solution was to give the mouse-builders more specific information that could be designed into the logic of their machines. Our maze was specified as sixteen squares by sixteen, with the target at the centre, not on the edge. In that way, paths could circle the centre to form 'moats' that no mere wall-follower could cross. A preliminary run was held in Portsmouth in July, with results that literally gave me nightmares. Of the six mice that competed, only one could make any attempt to follow a passageway, let alone find the centre. At the conference in September, fifteen mice competed. The winner was a clanking contraption, cobbled together around a brilliant maze-solving algorithm that has remained relevant to this day. The contest went from strength to strength, being held in Paris, Tampere, Madrid and Copenhagen, but for these first few years something struck me as strange. Not one of the winners was trained as an engineer. Great machines came from mathematicians, computer maintenance staff, programmers for manufacturing industry, but formally qualified engineers were notable by their absence. So what is it that defines a mechatronic engineer? What is the special aptitude that singled out these champions? What had they learned from their endeavours that was not to be found in a formal engineering course? They were able to put together a concept in which strategy, computing hardware, sensors, electronics and motors were blended together in harmony, not as a cobbled assembly of diverse technologies. So what of the next generation of mechatronic engineers? How do we give them skill and ability with the essentials, without deluging them with the entire contents of the textbooks of at least three diverse disciplines? We must distil the 'good bits' from the diverse range of specializations that make up engineering as a whole. The Micromouse experience suggests that hands-on experimentation is an essential ingredient. While learning, software must be ‘crafted’ by the student, rather than being ladled into the project as a bought-in commodity. The student must be prepared to deal with hydraulics or electro-mechanics, treating them as two sides of the same coin. Mechatronics is special. It is no more a mere mixture of electronics, mechanics and computing than a Chateau Latour is a mixture of yeast and grape-juice

Vision applications in agriculture

From early beginnings in work on the visual guidance of tractors, the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture has built up a portfolio of projects in which machine vision plays a prominent part. This presentation traces the history of this research, including some highly unusual topics

The facts about carbon and climate: a presentation of data for the reader's evaluation

There is abundant factual data at repositories such as the U.S. Department of Energy Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, which includes raw atmospheric measurement data from sites at numerous latitudes. Other reliable sites contain estimates of global industrial emissions and seasonal energy consumption. Further spectral data is available of the energy radiated into space. To perform a comparison of such disparate data, non-controversial conversions must be performed such as division by the area of the Earth. The thrust of the paper is from the point of view of data analysis, correlation and statistical variation. No expertise in climatology or atmospheric physics is presumed beyond an assumption of the 'lapse rate', the rate at which convection maintains a decreasing temperature with increasing altitude. The paper poses questions and avoids the contentious issues of interpreting the data or predicting futures. Any deductions or personal opinions are clearly declared and the conclusions are left to the reader

Automation and the farmer

A current problem in Australia is the shortage of human assistance for farmers. Automation and technological innovation are discussed as answers to this, delegating tasks to ‘robot’ systems. By way of example, projects are examined that have been conducted over the years at the NCEA, including vision guidance of tractors, quality assessment of produce, discrimination between plants and weeds and determination of cattle condition using machine vision. Strategies are explored for extending the current trends that use machine intelligence to reduce the need for human intervention, including the concept of smaller but more intelligent autonomous devices. Concepts of teleoperation are also explored, in which assistance can be provided by operatives remote from the process. With present advances in communication bandwidth, techniques that are common for monitoring remote trough water levels can be extended to perform real-time dynamic control tasks that range from selective picking to stock drafting

Controlled damping of a 48-metre wide spray rig

A method is investigated for damping the oscillation of a very wide agricultural spray rig. The present mechanical dampers couple the rolling disturbance of the vehicle into the tilt of the spray booms and an alternative technique is desirable. A method whereby the booms are driven in a manner analogous to a tightrope walker's balancing pole is shown to be effective

The use of machine vision for assessment of fodder quality

At present fodder is assessed subjectively. The evaluation depends greatly on a personal opinion and there can be large variations in assessments. The project has investigated the use of machine vision in several ways, to provide measures of fodder quality that will be ojective and independent of the assessor. Growers will be able to quote a quality measure that buyers can trust. The research includes the possibility of discerning colour differences that are beyond the capability of the human eye, while still using equipment that is of relatively modest cost

Teaching control fundamentals for mechatronics and robotics - the use of JavaScript for simulation and animation

An opinion is expressed on the relevance to Mechatronics and Robotics students of control theory in the form in which it is at present taught. A scheme is proposed which will guide the student first through analysing a 'real' problem and simulating it, then through attempting to design a controller and finally to learning and applying those mathematical tools which are necessary to achieve success. The student is encouraged to look at the whole gamut of nonlinear and discrete time controllers, not just those which fit the theory as taught. Software platforms are discussed, with an emphasis on JavaScript, which will allow easy generation, modification and testing of algorithms by the student