an open and modular hardware node for wireless sensor and body area networks

Health monitoring is nowadays one of the hottest markets due to the increasing interest in prevention and treatment of physical problems. In this context the development of wearable, wireless, open-source, and nonintrusive sensing solutions is still an open problem. Indeed, most of the existing commercial architectures are closed and provide little flexibility. In this paper, an open hardware architecture for designing a modular wireless sensor node for health monitoring is proposed. By separating the connection and sensing functions in two separate boards, compliant with the IEEE1451 standard, we add plug and play capabilities to analog transducers, while granting at the same time a high level of customization. As an additional contribution of the work, we developed a cosimulation tool which simplifies the physical connection with the hardware devices and provides support for complex systems. Finally, a wireless body area network for fall detection and health monitoring, based on wireless node prototypes realized according to the proposed architecture, is presented as an application scenario

Analysis of LGV usage for the improvement of a customized production

The paper describes an approach for analyzing the use of a Laser-Guided Vehicle (LGV) in the context of the small and medium-sized enterprise. The use of LGVs is an efficient solution to provide more flexibility in the context of Just-In-Time production; however, the investment cost can limit this application. A methodology has been proposed in this work to analyze the technical feasibility of using an LGV in the manufacturing industry of customized products. The test case focuses on the study of a laser-guided system to optimize the handling of molds for customized production. In this scenario, an LGV is proposed to substitute manual carts used for moving molds from the warehouse to the injection machines. The traditional path included an intermediate station for pre-heating the molds in hot-air ovens. The proposed solution includes the study of an induction heating system on the LGV to optimize time and energy consumption

Nonlinear Decentralized Model Predictive Control Strategy for a Formation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Aerial vehicles flying in formation may perform more complex tasks than vehicles flying independently. Formation control, however, is a difficult problem to cope with for these kind of vehicles, since they are highly nonlinear, underactuated and the feasible control actions are constrained. Moreover the computational capabilities which can be mounted on aerial vehicles are usually limited, thus centralized solutions should be avoided. To solve these problems, a Nonlinear Decentralized Model Predictive Control algorithm is presented in this paper, taking into account both physical and actuation constraints. Each vehicle is equipped with sensors providing inertial measurements and communicates with its neighbours using a Wireless Local Area Network. Simulation results applied to a formation of quadrotor vehicles show that the proposed technique is a valid way to solve the control problem for a generic formation, granting at the same time the possibility to deal with constraints

A Model-Based Fault Diagnosis System for a Mini-Quadrotor

This paper addresses the problem of fault detection and isolation (FDI) for a mini-quadrotor. First a model for a four-rotor rotorcraft is presented whose model is obtained via a Lagrange approach. In order to stabilize the quadrotor at low cruise speed, a control strategy based on PD (Proportional-Derivative) controllers is presented. Using a Thau’s observer, a diagnostic system has been developed for the nonlinear model of the quadrotor. Different simulation trials have been performed and the analysis of the results proves that the developed diagnostic system represents an effective solution to FDI problems in mini-flying machines

A Geometric Approach to Fault Detection of Periodic Systems

Using the geometric approach, a solution is given to the problem of detecting faults in linear periodic discretetime systems. The existing conditions are provided in terms of the new geometric notion of outer observable subspace. Making use of this notion, a residual generator is developed, such that the residual is made independent of unknown input disturbance, and its output free response goes asymptotically to zero. When different faults affect the system, a bank of observers solve the problem, generating a residual for each input fault

A Model-Based Fault Diagnosis System for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

This paper addresses the problem of fault detection and isolation for helicopters used as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. First a model for a reduced-scale helicopter is presented, then this model is linearized and used to design unknown input observers for fault diagnosis. The developed system is tested and analyzed. The results prove that it represents an effective solution to fault diagnosis problems in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

An Integrated Simulation Module for Wireless Cyber-Physical System

Wireless Sensors Network (WSN) integration in a Cyber Physical System (CPS) is becoming one of the most important research topics for increasing the adaptability, autonomy, efficiency, functionality, reliability, safety, and usability in the wireless automation systems. Due the complexity of the CPS, simulators and emulators have to be used to replace the real experiments in order to provide necessary feedback and facilities for this regard. Although the simulators are open source, flexible, extensible and full integrated in a mathematical modelling tools, the external connection at a physical level and the direct interaction with the process control via the WSN in the CPSs is very poor. This paper proposes a new simulation module to control a wireless cyber-physical system, by integrating LabVIEW development environment for a visual programming language from National Instruments, and COOJA, a cross level wireless sensor network simulator. The developed software module, called “GILOO” (Graphical Integration of Labview and cOOja) enables to develop and to debug control policies in a simulated or realistic scenario, using the virtual environment or the hardware module, such as the National Instruments Data Acquisition (SCADA), the FPGA platform, the CompactRio, etc. The designed GILOO module has been experimentally tested and preliminary results are shown in this paper. In detail, a smart home mock-up is proposed to verify its correct behavior and to realize the networked control of an indoor LED lighting system

Actuator Fault Detection System for a Mini- Quadrotor

This paper addresses the problem of actuator fault detection for a mini-quadrotor. First a model for a four-rotor vehicle, obtained via a Lagrange approach, is presented. In order to stabilize the quadrotor at low cruise speed, a control strategy based on nested saturation controllers is presented. Using a Thau’s observer, a diagnostic system has been developed for the nonlinear model of the quadrotor. Different simulation trials have been performed and the analysis of the results proves that the developed diagnostic system represents an effective solution to the problem of actuator fault detection in mini-flying machines

Cooperative and Decentralized Navigation of Autonomous Underwater Gliders using Predictive Control

Coordinated fleet of Autonomous Underwater Gliders (AUGs) can provide significant benefit to a number of marine applications including ocean sampling, mapping, surveillance and communication. Traditional techniques for navigating underwater vehicles have been designed for single-vehicle operations and do not scale well to multi-vehicle operations and missions. In this paper a navigation system for a fleet of AUGs is developed based on Networked DecentralizedModel Predictive Control (ND-MPC). The proposed approach coordinates a group of point-mass mobile agents to achieve a desired formation, while avoiding collisions between themselves. In order to obtain collision free paths, the approach integrates the required collision avoidance constraints. The fleet localization is performed by sensor fusion using adaptive extended Kalman filtering. The free collision and convergence properties are verified through simulations results. The proposed approach can be generalized to formation of heterogeneous autonomous agents