An overview of local positioning system: technologies, techniques and applications

Positioning system like global position system (GPS) and Local position system (LPS) have become very important in a large number of applications such as monitoring and tracking, etc. Because of the limitations of GPS in indoor environments due to the lack of line of sight (LoS), the use of LPS has become a true necessary to estimate user’s or object position with a good accuracy. In order to choose the best LPS system, a compromise between accuracy, precision, power consumption, coverage and cost should be taken into account. This paper introduces an overview of LPS performance parameters, current technologies, techniques and methods used by LPS. On the other hand, the comparison between LPS technologies and techniques used based on those technologies are also discussed. Furthermore, the LPS’s applications that have been done by previous researches such as human tracking, object tracking, animal tracking and automatic guide vehicle (AGV) tracking will be discussed. We believe this paper would catalyze further investigation by the researcher which is interested on the LPS field

Hysteresis Modelling of Pneumatic Artificial Muscle using General Cubic Equation and Factor Theorem Prediction Method / Mohd Azuwan Mat Dzahir...[et al.]

Due to inherent hysteresis in a pneumatic artificial muscle, the accompanying control of this compliant actuator becomes more complicated. In literature, only a few implementations of the hysteresis modelling in the associated position control system could be found. In addition, the high complexity of the contraction-force and contraction-pressure models when accounting for hysteresis effect, the implementation of such model is limited in its use in the pneumatic muscle position control only. However, implementing a complicated control algorithm does not always indicate the best solution that could be used to control the pneumatic artificial muscles. There are arguments in the field of rehabilitation robotics regarding what was the best control system to the orthotic problem for rehabilitation. It is preferred that the control system should be simplified as much as possible; multiple sensors and impedances are only increase the complexity of the control system. Rather than using a very complicated algorithm for control system of the pneumatic artificial muscle, a simple and noble prediction method using general cubic equation and factor theorem is proposed for the hysteresis modelling at different loads. The methodology used to establish the hysteresis modelling and prediction method of the pneumatic artificial muscle are as follows; first is the characterization of the pneumatic artificial muscle at different loads and pressures; second is to develop a prediction method for generating constraint models of hysteresis data at a different loads using general cubic equation and factor theorem; third is to establish a simple theorem or algorithm to extract the hysteresis models (i.e., contraction and expansion) of a pneumatic artificial muscle at different loads based on the generated constraint models; and the final stage of the research is to obtain the hysteresis models at different loads. The generated hysteresis models and hysteresis data obtained from experimental study were compared to verify the reliability of the proposed hysteresis modelling prediction method. The simulation results shows that the hysteresis modelling was able to generate an apropriate constraint models at a different loads

Torrefaction of oil palm frond petiole: effect of particle sizes, sections and batches

This study aimed to investigate the effect of batches (1, 2 and 3), particle sizes (<250 µm, range of 300 µm to 500 µm), and sections (bottom, middle and top) on combustion performance of the oil palm frond (OPF) petiole after torrefaction at 275 °C. The higher heating value (HHV), mass yield, energy yield, HHV yield and proximate analyses of the untorrefied and torrefied OPF petiole for all cases were determined. The comparison between the untorrefied and torrefied OPF petiole as well as an international benchmark was also performed. In this study, the highest HHV of the torrefied OPF petiole (22.85±0.07MJ/kg) was obtained at the bottom section with the particle size of < 250 µm. Furthermore, the fixed carbon content of the torrefied OPF petiole increased, whereas the volatile matter, moisture content, mass and energy yields decreased for all cases after torrefaction. HHV yield of OPF petiole was recorded up to 141% after torrefaction. The ash content was sufficiently satisfied the international benchmark for most cases, except for top section (300-500µm). The changes in combustion properties of the torrefied OPF petiole for all cases were found to be insignificant whereas significant improvement could be observed when compared to untorrefied OPF petiole. Overall, the study revealed that the appropriate particle size for torrefaction can promote it to be a vital source for energy production from oil palm biomass

Lane Keeping Maneuvers Using Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) and Model Predictive Control (MPC)

Safety has being a concern as a result of the high rate of road accidents and has led to the development of  driver assistance system such as Active braking, Cruise Control, Lane departure warning lane keeping and etc. has become a very active research area. However, this paper presents the performance and robustness analysis of a model predictive control and proportional integral derivative control for lane keeping maneuvers of an autonomous vehicle using computer vision simulation studies. A simulation study was carried out where a vehicle model based on single tracked bicycle model was developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment together with a vision dynamic system. Both PID controller and MPC were simulated to maintain the desired reference trajectory of the vehicle by controlling steering angle. Further performance and robustness analysis were carried out and the simulation results show that the proposed control system for the PID control achieved its objective even though it was less robust in maintaining its performance under various conditions like vehicle load change, different longitudinal speed and different cornering stiffness. While in the case of MPC the optimizer made sure that the predicted future trajectory of the vehicle output tracks the desired reference trajectory and was more robust in maintaining its performance under same conditions as in PID

Development of Edge-Based Lane Detection Algorithm using Image Processing

Image processing is known as the process of converting an image into a digital form so as to obtain an enhanced image and to extract useful information from it. This paper presents a simple step by step analysis of edges-based lane detection. Some of the known and common edge detection techniques such as Sobel, Canny, Prewitt and Roberts were studied and evaluated using image segmentation, morphology, image statistic and Hough Transform. The result indicated some similarities in the process as well as major differences. These differences were observed to be as a result of the high sensitivity of the edge detector in detecting noise such as cast shadows and unmarked lanes. This could be noticed in the case of canny edge detector. Also these data could be considered in the development of a multi-system edge detector, which could be used to analyze various road scenes and runs the appropriate edge detector best suited for the current situation

Multi-Stage Feature Selection Based Intelligent Classifier for Classification of Incipient Stage Fire in Building

In this study, an early fire detection algorithm has been proposed based on low cost array sensing system, utilising off- the shelf gas sensors, dust particles and ambient sensors such as temperature and humidity sensor. The odour or “smellprint” emanated from various fire sources and building construction materials at early stage are measured. For this purpose, odour profile data from five common fire sources and three common building construction materials were used to develop the classification model. Normalised feature extractions of the smell print data were performed before subjected to prediction classifier. These features represent the odour signals in the time domain. The obtained features undergo the proposed multi-stage feature selection technique and lastly, further reduced by Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a dimension reduction technique. The hybrid PCA-PNN based approach has been applied on different datasets from in-house developed system and the portable electronic nose unit. Experimental classification results show that the dimension reduction process performed by PCA has improved the classification accuracy and provided high reliability, regardless of ambient temperature and humidity variation, baseline sensor drift, the different gas concentration level and exposure towards different heating temperature range

Modeling and analyzing of traveling wave gait of modular snake robot

Traveling wave locomotion of snake robot considers one of the efficient locomotion that can be used in narrow spaces and unstructured environment. Few works have been done on studying and analyzing this gait. In this paper, we present the kinematic and dynamic analysis of traveling wave locomotion using the Lagrange Euler equation. The effects of a dynamic model and an elaborate model of the friction between the robot and the supporting plane are presented, were, the supporting and friction forces can be calculated by solving the equilibrium equation. The dynamic model, forward and turning motion of the traveling wave gait are verified using simulation. It was shown from the simulation investigation that joint torque was observed to be high near the robot’s center of mass. It is also noticed that the joint torque increases with the increase of the friction coefficient and reduces with the increase of the initial winding angle

Graphical user interface (GUI) for local positioning system based on labview

Local position system (LPS) becomes more and more diversified and increasingly important in large numbers of applications and contexts such as healthcare, targeted, monitoring, tracking and security. In LPS, three anchors at least with known position are employed with one tag for localization. In this paper, LPS which contains three anchors and one tag is used to get positioning. Tag position represents user location. It estimates by using UWB technology which sending signal based on triangulation method with assist of Labview. By using Labview coding the position of each anchors can be read successful after connection all anchors and tag with PC and router. The positioning of tag in (x, y) direction, successfully update immediately when tag moving which is shown in graph. Therefore, the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for LPS based on Labview is achieved to determine the user positioning with positioning error less than 17cm. We believe this paper would catalyze further investigation by the researcher which deal with both of LPS field and Labview. © 2019, International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology