Design of autonomous sustainable unmanned aerial vehicle - A novel approach to its dynamic wireless power transfer

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Electric UAVs are presently being used widely in civilian duties such as security, surveillance, and disaster relief. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has increased dramatically over the past years in different areas/fields such as marines, mountains, wild environments. Nowadays, there are many electric UAVs development with fast computational speed and autonomous flying has been a reality by fusing many sensors such as camera tracking sensor, obstacle avoiding sensor, radar sensor, etc. But there is one main problem still not able to overcome which is power requirement for continuous autonomous operation. When the operation needs more power, but batteries can only give for 20 to 30 mins of flight time. These types of system are not reliable for long term civilian operation because we need to recharge or replace batteries by landing the craft every time when we want to continue the operation. The large batteries also take more loads on the UAV which is also not a reliable system. To eliminate these obstacles, there should a recharging wireless power station in ground which can transmit power to these small UAVs wirelessly for long term operation. There will be camera attached in the drone to detect and hover above the Wireless Power Transfer device which got receiving and transmitting station can be use with deep learning and sensor fusion techniques for more reliable flight operations. This thesis explores the use of dynamic wireless power to transfer energy using novel rotating WPT charging technique to the UAV with improved range, endurance, and average speed by giving extra hours in the air. The hypothesis that was created has a broad application beyond UAVs. The drone autonomous charging was mostly done by detecting a rotating WPT receiver connected to main power outlet that served as a recharging platform using deep neural vision capabilities. It was the purpose of the thesis to provide an alternative to traditional self-charging systems that relies purely on static WPT method and requires little distance between the vehicle and receiver. When the UAV camera detect the WPT receiving station, it will try to align and hover using onboard sensors for best power transfer efficiency. Since this strategy relied on traditional automatic drone landing technique, but the target is rotating all the time which needs smart approaches like deep learning and sensor fusion. The simulation environment was created and tested using robot operating system on a Linux operating system using a model of the custom-made drone. Experiments on the charging of the drone confirmed that the intelligent dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) method worked successfully while flying on air

Political transition and emergent forest-conservation issues in Myanmar.

Political and economic transitions have had substantial impacts on forest conservation. Where transitions are underway or anticipated, historical precedent and methods for systematically assessing future trends should be used to anticipate likely threats to forest conservation and design appropriate and prescient policy measures to counteract them. Myanmar is transitioning from an authoritarian, centralized state with a highly regulated economy to a more decentralized and economically liberal democracy and is working to end a long-running civil war. With these transitions in mind, we used a horizon-scanning approach to assess the 40 emerging issues most affecting Myanmar's forests, including internal conflict, land-tenure insecurity, large-scale agricultural development, demise of state timber enterprises, shortfalls in government revenue and capacity, and opening of new deforestation frontiers with new roads, mines, and hydroelectric dams. Averting these threats will require, for example, overhauling governance models, building capacity, improving infrastructure- and energy-project planning, and reforming land-tenure and environmental-protection laws. Although challenges to conservation in Myanmar are daunting, the political transition offers an opportunity for conservationists and researchers to help shape a future that enhances Myanmar's social, economic, and environmental potential while learning and applying lessons from other countries. Our approach and results are relevant to other countries undergoing similar transitions

Political transition and emergent forest-conservation issues in Myanmar.

Political and economic transitions have had substantial impacts on forest conservation. Where transitions are underway or anticipated, historical precedent and methods for systematically assessing future trends should be used to anticipate likely threats to forest conservation and design appropriate and prescient policy measures to counteract them. Myanmar is transitioning from an authoritarian, centralized state with a highly regulated economy to a more decentralized and economically liberal democracy and is working to end a long-running civil war. With these transitions in mind, we used a horizon-scanning approach to assess the 40 emerging issues most affecting Myanmar's forests, including internal conflict, land-tenure insecurity, large-scale agricultural development, demise of state timber enterprises, shortfalls in government revenue and capacity, and opening of new deforestation frontiers with new roads, mines, and hydroelectric dams. Averting these threats will require, for example, overhauling governance models, building capacity, improving infrastructure- and energy-project planning, and reforming land-tenure and environmental-protection laws. Although challenges to conservation in Myanmar are daunting, the political transition offers an opportunity for conservationists and researchers to help shape a future that enhances Myanmar's social, economic, and environmental potential while learning and applying lessons from other countries. Our approach and results are relevant to other countries undergoing similar transitions

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Microcontroller-based password-protected system for security-demanded applications

Security systems are vital components in safely ensuring of one's environment. These systems are important features of modern homes, offices and the buildings. Security depends on access control systems or methods. Nowadays, many types of access control system have been developed for home and industrial applications. Some of these are voice recognition system, identity card system, code system and biometric system. Level of security and installation cost differ from one system others. Each system has its own advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, microcontroller-based password-protected system which is very simple to implement and the most cost effective one is presented

Analysis of a Realistic Mobility Model for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In order to conduct the simulation of the Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), the movements of the mobile nodes should be predicted very close to real world movements. In practice, ad hoc routing protocols make routing decisions based on individual node mobility. Therefore the movement pattern of users plays an important role in performance analysis of mobile and wireless networks and the realistic mobility model is investigated. In this paper, the realistic mobility model for a university campus was modelled by using Manhattan Mobility model to perform realistic simulations and then the traffic data was compared for the performance evaluation of three wellknown ad hoc routing protocols

Performance evaluation of routing Protocols in Realistic Scenario for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANT s) are collections of autonomous mobile nodes with links that are made or broken in an arbitrary way. They have no fixed infrastructure and may have constrained resources. The next generation of IT applications is expected to rely heavily on such networks. However, before they can be successfully deployed, several routing problems must be addressed. These are mainly due to the ad hoc nature of these networks. This paper presents a comprehensive investigation on the performance of common MANET routing protocols in realistic network scenario. The routing protocols used in this research work include AODV, DSR and DSDV. This paper evaluates the performance of these protocols under simulation scenario based on a realistic mobility model. The evaluation is conducted using Network Simulator (ns2) from Berkeley. As mobility is also an important metric for evaluating ad hoc networks, mobility of nodes is varied to examine the performance of these protocols under realistic scenarios. This simulation experiment shows the performance of each protocol under specific conditions both quantitatively and qualitatively

Design and Simulation of Down Conversion Mixer for Front-end Portion of Satellite Receiver

In this paper, design and simulation of receiver analogue front-end portion (downconversion mixer) of satellite ground station is presented. The receiver chain is designed to down convert and band pass filtering required for the front-end portion. In this design, the Radio Frequency (RF) and Local Oscillator (LO) frequencies are filtered at 20GHz and 19.5GHz which offers an Intermediate Frequency (IF) of 500MHz. The output IF value can meet the requirements of ultra-wide band receiver analogue front-end portion. The conversion gain for the proposed mixer design is evaluated. The simulation results show input signals and output signal of the mixer

ASEAN-INDIA CONNECTIVITY: A MYANMAR PERSPECTIVE

Since the 1990s, Asian economies have been moving towards deeper regional integration to enjoy growth together and to share prosperity. Although size of the economy and level of development in the region are quite diverse, it does not matter to such integration. This integration will not only expand the production possibility frontiers but also promote the flow of ideas and cultural exchanges within the region. Southeast Asia and India have become two of the fastest growing and most dynamic regions in the world. As Asia becomes the engine of growth for the global economy, the ASEAN and India must capitalize on their partnership through enhanced connectivity to reap the benefits most. In this scenario, Myanmar is the only land bridge between ASEAN and India so that the country has a great potential to be an important player in shaping future economic, political and security environment in this region. The connectivity projects will enhance the strategic importance of Myanmar as a regional logistics and trading hub and will be definitely beneficial for Myanmar as well as India and ASEAN, and for the entire region, Asia. To realize the positive outcomes, Myanmar needs to respond to the opportunities offered by its geographical and natural advantages and to capture the competitive advantages brought about by regional and global market chain

Detection of Blast Resistance genes on Cultivated Rice in Myanmar using SSR and InDel Markers

The present study was conducted to detect the presence of blast resistance genes in cultivated rice in Myanmar. Thirteen blast resistance genes _Pib, Pik, Pik-h, Pik-m, Pik-s, Pi7, Pish, Pita, Pita-2, Piz-t, Pi(5)t and Piz-5_were screened on 57 released varieties by using 13 linked markers; 12 Simple Sequence Repeats and one Insertion Deletion, through polymerase chain reaction based methods. The genetic frequencies of these 13 major blast resistance genes ranged from 43.86% (Pik-m) to 7.02% (Piz-t) whereas Pita resistance gene amplicon was not observed on all tested varieties. The Pik-m gene was detected as the most prevalent one amongst the genotypes followed by Pi7 which distributed in frequency of 42.11%, Pik , Pita-2 and Pi5(t) (22.81%), Pik-s (21.05%) , Pib and Pik-h (19.30%), Pik (17.54%), Piz-5 (14.04%) and Pish (12.28%). The genotypic variation between the released varieties was detected. Among 57 released varieties, two varieties — Manawthuka and Mote Soe Ma Kyway Pyay line MMK 03-23-3 — possessed seven blast resistance genes the other 12 varieties carried single genes, five varieties five resistance genes, 13 varieties four resistance genes, six varieties three resistance genes and 15 varieties two resistance genes. In the rest four varieties resistance genes could not be amplified by tested markers. This study provided the information of resistant varieties that will be beneficial in pre-breeding program for developing of rice blast resistance varieties