Implementation of target tracking in Smart Wheelchair Component System

Independent mobility is critical to individuals of any age. While the needs of many individuals with disabilities can be satisfied with power wheelchairs, some members of the disabled community find it difficult or impossible to operate a standard power wheelchair. This population includes, but is not limited to, individuals with low vision, visual field neglect, spasticity, tremors, or cognitive deficits. To meet the needs of this population, our group is involved in developing cost effective modularly designed Smart Wheelchairs. Our objective is to develop an assistive navigation system which will seamlessly integrate into the lifestyle of individual with disabilities and provide safe and independent mobility and navigation without imposing an excessive physical or cognitive load. The Smart Wheelchair Component System (SWCS) can be added to a variety of commercial power wheelchairs with minimal modification to provide navigation assistance. Previous versions of the SWCS used acoustic and infrared rangefinders to identify and avoid obstacles, but these sensors do not lend themselves to many desirable higher-level behaviors. To achieve these higher level behaviors we integrated a Continuously Adapted Mean Shift (CAMSHIFT) target tracking algorithm into the SWCS, along with the Minimal Vector Field Histogram (MVFH) obstacle avoidance algorithm. The target tracking algorithm provides the basis for two distinct operating modes: (1) a "follow-the-leader" mode, and (2) a "move to stationary target" mode.The ability to track a stationary or moving target will make smart wheelchairs more useful as a mobility aid, and is also expected to be useful for wheeled mobility training and evaluation. In addition to wheelchair users, the caregivers, clinicians, and transporters who provide assistance to wheelchair users will also realize beneficial effects of providing safe and independent mobility to wheelchair users which will reduce the level of assistance needed by wheelchair users

Antagonistic Effects of Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria Against Bacterial Diseases of Black Gram

Vigna mungo, the black gram, urad bean, mash kalai, uzhunnu parippu, ulundu paruppu, minapa pappu, Uddu (in Kannada) or black matpe is a bean grown in South Asia. Like its relative, the mung bean, it has been reclassified from the Phaseolus to the Vigna genus. The product sold as black lentil is usually the whole urad bean, whereas the split bean (the interior being white) is called white lentil. It should not be confused with the much smaller true black lentil (Lens culinaris).Black gram originated in South Asia, where it has been in cultivation from ancient times and is one of the most highly prized pulses of India. It is very widely used in Indian cuisine. In India the black gram is one of the important pulses grown in both Kharif and Rabi seasons. This crop is extensively grown in southern part of India, northern part of Bangladesh and Nepal. In Bangladesh and Nepal it is known as mash daal. It is a popular daal (legume) side dish in South Asia, that goes with curry and rice as a platter. Black gram has also been introduced to other tropical areas such as the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius, Myanmar and Africa. It is an erect, suberect or trailing, densely hairy, annual bush. The tap root produces a branched root system with smooth, rounded nodules. The pods are narrow, cylindrical and up to six cm long. The plant grows 30–100 cm with large hairy leaves and 4–6 cm seed pods. While the urad dal was, along with the mung bean, originally placed in Phaseolus, it has since been transferred to Vigna.present study is based on antagonistic effects of plant growth promoting bacteria against bacterial diseases of black gram

Empowering Muslim Women in Indian

Women have become equal partners in many ways at all levels community. The future will see many women going to normal places ruled by people. Various social reformers have tried to raise public conditions legal women and legal cases have played an important role in her development. Due to global cohesion, women have left their traditional activities building a house and raising children in resolving social and business solutions. But the community has become it is even more unsafe for women who do not have to change And talking about Islamic Muslim rights is a way to go back there It is a conflict between his rights and his own law. We are a proud nation claims that he has the highest human rights in the world, which guarantees the protection of equal rights to all our citizens while holding fast the high flag of being a nation. However, under all sharp claims, are wounded by the abuse of discrimination and abuse personal laws that divide the basis for equality in our great nation built up? The most abusive way of oppressing Muslim women based on the past is a damaging practice of Talaq triple or more known as "a quick divorce." Then there are his rights to obtain, care, maintenance, etc. where there is direct discrimination. List has never been to eliminate the point of empowering and protecting its rights

An analytical model for performance evaluation of multimedia applications over EDCA in an IEEE 802.11e WLAN

We extend the modeling heuristic of (Harsha et al. 2006. In IEEE IWQoS '06, pp 178-187) to evaluate the performance of an IEEE 802.11e infrastructure network carrying packet telephone calls, streaming video sessions and TCP controlled file downloads, using Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA). We identify the time boundaries of activities on the channel (called channel slot boundaries) and derive a Markov Renewal Process of the contending nodes on these epochs. This is achieved by the use of attempt probabilities of the contending nodes as those obtained from the saturation fixed point analysis of (Ramaiyan et al. 2005. In Proceedings ACM Sigmetrics, '05. Journal version accepted for publication in IEEE TON). Regenerative analysis on this MRP yields the desired steady state performance measures. We then use the MRP model to develop an effective bandwidth approach for obtaining a bound on the size of the buffer required at the video queue of the AP, such that the streaming video packet loss probability is kept to less than 1%. The results obtained match well with simulations using the network simulator, ns-2. We find that, with the default IEEE 802.11e EDCA parameters for access categories AC 1, AC 2 and AC 3, the voice call capacity decreases if even one streaming video session and one TCP file download are initiated by some wireless station. Subsequently, reducing the voice calls increases the video downlink stream throughput by 0.38 Mbps and file download capacity by 0.14 Mbps, for every voice call (for the 11 Mbps PHY). We find that a buffer size of 75KB is sufficient to ensure that the video packet loss probability at the QAP is within 1%

A stochastic control approach for scheduling multimedia transmissions over a polled multiaccess fading channel

We develop scheduling strategies for carrying multimedia traffic over a polled multiple access wireless network with fading. We consider a slotted system with three classes of traffic (voice, streaming media and file transfers). A Markov model is used for the fading and also for modeling voice packet arrivals and streaming arrivals. The performance objectives are a loss probability for voice, mean network delay for streaming media, and time average throughput for file transfers. A central scheduler (e.g., the access point in a single cell IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN)) is assumed to be able to keep track of all the available state information and make the scheduling decision in each slot (e.g., as would be the case for PCF mode operation of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN). The problem is modeled as a constrained Markov decision problem. By using constraint relaxations (a linear relaxation and Whittle type relaxations) an index based policy is obtained. For the file transfers the decision problem turns out to be one with partial state information. Numerical comparisons are provided with the performance obtained from some simple policies

Cloud Computing Systems Exploration over Workload Prediction Factor in Distributed Applications

This paper highlights the different techniques of workload prediction in cloud computing. Cloud computing resources have a special kind of arrangement in which resources are made available on demand to the customers. Today, most of the organizations are using cloud computing that results in reduction of the operational cost. Cloud computing also reduces the overhead of any organization due to implementation of many hardware and software platforms. These services are being provided by cloud provider on the basis of pay per use. There are lots of cloud service providers in the modern era. In this competitive era, every cloud provider works to provide better services to the customer. To fulfill the customer?s requirements, dynamic provisioning can serve the purpose in cloud system where resources can be released and allocated on later stage as per needs. That?s why resource scaling becomes a great challenge for the cloud providers. There are many approaches to scale the number of instances of any resource. Two main approaches namely: proactive and reactive are used in cloud systems. Reactive approach reacts at later stage while proactive approach predicts resources in advance. Cloud provider needs to predict the number of resources in advance that an application is intended to use. Historical data and patterns can be used for the workload prediction. The benefit of the proactive approach lies in advance number of instances of a resource available for the future use. This results in improved performance for the cloud systems

THE AMAZING THERAPEUTIC PROPERTIES OF DHATURA-A SHORT REVIEW

Plants have always played a major role in the treatment of human traumas and diseases worldwide. Dhatura is a widespread annual plant from the Solanaceae family. The species of Dhatura can be found throughout the world. The plant grows in sandy flats, plains, areas up to 2, 500 feet above sea level. Dhatura is one of the widely well known folklore medicinal herb. Dhatura is a plant with both poisonous and medicinal properties and has been proven to have great pharmacological potential with a great utility and usage as folklore medicine. In Ayurvedic text it is established as a poisonous plant but having good therapeutic properties after Shodhan process. After Shodhan process its poisonous properties are diminished but therapeutic properties get improved. So in most of the Ayurvedic preparations we use the Shudha Dhatura, Shudha vatsanabha, Shudha Bhanga etc. There are so many generic preparations available in old text to treat various diseases like sanity, gastric ulcer, fever, rhinitis, Bronchial asthma, seizures etc., having Dhatura as a main constituent. The phytochemical investigations showed the presence of saponins, tannins, steroids, alkaloids, flavonoids, phenols and glycosides. Atropine and scopolamine are competitive antagonists of muscarinic cholinergic receptors and are central nervous system depressants. This paper presents an exclusive review work on the traditional uses, Ayurvedic purification process, phytochemical, pharmacological actions of Dhatura

CLINICAL EVALUATION OF VIRECHANA THERAPY IN AMAVATA WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

Amavata is a disease of chronic joint and body pain, accompanied by a swelling of some or all of the synovial joints. These symptoms are typically accompanied by stiffness of joints, loss of appetite, indigestion, lack of enthusiasm, feeling of heaviness and fever. Among Shodhna therapy described in Ayurveda, Virechana is mostly used in the disorders originated from vitiated Pitta. Along with this, it is also useful in the disorders in which Pitta is associated with Vata or Kapha dosha. It has direct effect on the Agni Adhishthan and also works on Kapha and Vata Adhishsthan. Thus, it rectify not only Pitta but Vata and Kapha Dosha also.A clinical study of 20 registered cases of Amavata revealed that Virechana karma is a very effective treatment of Amavata. This study proved the significance of Virecana karma on classical symptom of Amavata i.e., Angamarda, Aruchi, Trishna, Jwara, Shoth, etc. It reflects that Virechana karma is a potent Shroto-vishodhna, a good anti-inflammatory and pain relieving in patients of R.A.Statistically significant results were found in Morning stiffness (83.02%, P<0.001), Swelling (81.67% , P<0.001), Trishna (56%, P<0.001), Aruchi (80.00%, P<0.001), Gaurava (85.37% P<0.001) and Apaka (81.39%). This study reveals that Virechana therapy is a very effective Panchakarma procedure with potent Sroto Shodhana effect to produce good anti- inflammatory and pain reducing feature in patients of R.A

Design and Evaluation of a Distributed, Shared Control, Navigation Assistance System for Power Wheelchairs

A significant number of individuals with disabilities are denied powered mobility because they lack the visual, motor, or cognitive skills required to operate a powered wheelchair safely. The Drive-Safe System (DSS) is an add-on, distributed, shared control navigation assistance system for powered wheelchairs, intended to provide safe and independent mobility to these individuals. The DSS is a human-machine system in which the user and machine share navigation control. The user is responsible for high-level control of the system, such as choosing the destination, path planning, and some navigation actions, while the DSS overrides unsafe maneuvers through autonomous collision avoidance, automatic wall following, and door crossing. This dissertation reports the design and development of the DSS, followed by results from rigorous engineering and clinical evaluations. The engineering tested technical aspects of the DSS such as sensor coverage, maximum safe speed, maximum detection distance, and power consumption. Clinical evaluations included testing the DSS with Orientation & Mobility (O&M) specialists, ambulatory and non-ambulatory visually impaired individuals, and able-bodied controls. We compared the performance of the DSS with conventional navigation aids such as canes that are commonly used in conjunction with wheelchairs based on measures such as time for task completion and number of collisions. Additionally, we collected data with the NASA-TLX to gain insight into users' subjective experience with the DSS. Results indicate that the DSS was able to provide a uniform and reliable sensor coverage field around the wheelchair and could successfully detect obstacles as small as 3 inches in height to overhanging obstacles at a height of 55 inches. The DSS significantly reduced the number of collisions compared to using a cane. Users rated the DSS favorably despite the fact they took longer to navigate the same obstacle course than they would using a cane. Visually impaired participants reported experiencing less physical demand, and had to exert less effort in order to achieve better performance when using the DSS, compared to using a cane. These findings suggest that the DSS can be a viable solution for powered mobility in populations with visual impairment