Depth Camera and Electromagnetic Field Localization System For IoT Application - High level, lightweight data fusion

This article demonstrates person localization using a hybrid system consisting of an electromagnetic positioning system and a depth camera to authorize access control. The ultimate aim of this system is to distinguish moving people in a defined area by tracking the RF device and the people. It focuses on the application and incorporation of the received data from these two systems. Both systems send data simultaneously which is stored in a Docker container for further analysis. The data is processed in real-time to track the movement of the targets. The centralized database monitoring grants secure access to the information. The motive for using this hybrid system lies in the ever-growing need for accurate position determination for indoor and complex environments. Track and tracing are especially important in access-control applications. The system has a great impact on real-life access-control applications in malls, shops, train stations, and generally everyplace where the access control requires monitoring. The non-blocking feature plus the accuracy can provide ease of use for the users. Moreover, employing a low-frequency tag system does not suffer from the multipath effect and non-line of sight problems that are inevitable for indoor applications. By extending the number of users for a larger area, this system can replace traditional security gates with a pleasant look and comfortable application

Three Vision-Based Behaviors For Selfpositioning A Mobile Robot

. This paper presents the analysis of vision-based homing behaviors that provide selfpositioning of a mobile robot. The control schemes of the homing behaviors are based on a new approach that describes robot moves in terms of regulation by image features, hence avoiding the usual step of three-dimensional reconstruction of the scene with respect to the camera. Homing behaviors are the key elements of the self-positioning navigation approach we developed for our mobile robot, which basic idea is to represent the robot spatial knowledge in a topological map, where nodes consist in self-positioning sites and edges may be any behavior linking two nodes. Key Words. Mobile Robotics, Behavior-based Navigation, Self-Positioning, Vision-Based Control 1. INTRODUCTION One of the problems autonomous mobile robots are confronting is representing and learning spatial knowledge in order to operate in a physical environment. A proposition for the body of this knowledge is the cognitive map (Connel a..

CHESS ::measuring the dynamics of composition and density of earth's upper atmosphere with CubeSats

Earth’s upper atmosphere is a dynamic system that is determined by external and internal forces. Understanding this system allows for insights into the evolution of a habitable world and, therefore, the origin of our Solar System. In addition, it is the environment for many satellites that are key to our modern world. The uppermost part of Earth’s atmosphere, the exosphere and ionosphere, couples the collision-dominated thermosphere with outer space, where other processes determine the trajectories of the particles. Whereas the thermosphere is mostly gravitationally bound to the planet, a fraction of the particles present in the exosphere leaves Earth into interplanetary space. Over geologic times, these loss processes are an important factor in the evolution of an atmosphere and are considered being the main reason why Earth currently has a habitable atmospheric surface composition in contrast to Venus and Mars, which were all very similar once. In the short term, the variability of the Sun’s radiation, including both photons (from XUV to IR) and energetic particles causes considerable variations in the chemical composition, the density, and the spatial extent of the exosphere. The exobase is located at about 300 km altitude and the exosphere extends to tens of thousands of kilometers. Detailed knowledge of the exosphere is not only interesting for our basic understanding but is also important for spacecraft in near-Earth orbits, like the International Space Station. Although density and chemical composition are closely related, our present knowledge depends on separate measurements of the chemical composition, performed in the early 1980s, and the density, mostly performed during the 1990s. To end this long data gap, the community requires new in-orbit composition measurements, and to overcome the time-space degeneracy, it is necessary to measure both the chemical composition and the density of the exosphere with a network of satellites at several locations simultaneously. The constellation of high-performance exospheric science satellites (CHESS) program comprises a constellation of two 3U CubeSats, and more units later, designed to create an inventory of chemical species present in the exosphere, measure the density, and record their variability over both space and time. Each satellite is equipped with a novel time-of-flight mass spectrometer for both density measurements and highly sensitive chemical composition analysis of major to trace amounts of species. The payload is complemented by a new generation of dual-frequency global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers for precise orbit determination. It allows for computing the total density from estimates of atmospheric drag and the dispersive line-of-sight total electron content from the linear combination of dual-frequency carrier phase measurements. This pathfinder mission is the first step towards a permanent observation of the Earth’s exosphere from several vantage points simultaneously. It is designed to provide scale heights of each chemical species, their altitude profiles and exospheric temperatures to determine atmospheric escape parameters. Furthermore, it allows for analyzing the spatial and temporal variability to infer the drivers of the exosphere including the impact of anthropogenic climate change, improve satellite orbital decay models, and test possibilities of capturing earthquake precursors

Microwave barrel reactor use in trimethylolpropane oleate synthesis by Candida antarctica lipase in a biphasic non-solvent process

A novel microwave barrel reactor (MBR) was constructed and used in lipase catalyzed biolubricant synthesis. The MBR is thought as a versatile process tool for biotransformation and green chemistry that overcomes current size limitations in microwave reactors. A lipase mediated biotransformation in the MBR was compared to a state of the art jacketed reactor with external heat exchanger. Oleic acid and trimethylolpropane converted quantitatively (96%) into biolubricants using microwave induction. The heat dissipation in the MBR was analyzed by thermal imaging and inside thermometry. Conversion rates, rate constants and pseudo reaction orders were in line with conventional processing and no microwave effect was detected. The MBR is a versatile new reactor for non solvent, minimal and common solvent processing in the microwave field. While the subject of investigations was biolubricant synthesis in the MBR, the technology described is of wider potential interest in the field of biomass processing and sustainable chemical manufacture