Development of integrated programs for Aerospace-vehicle Design (IPAD): Product program management systems

The Integrated Programs for Aerospace Vehicle Design (IPAD) is a computing system to support company-wide design information processing. This document presents a brief description of the management system used to direct and control a product-oriented program. This document, together with the reference design process (CR 2981) and the manufacture interactions with the design process (CR 2982), comprises the reference information that forms the basis for specifying IPAD system requirements

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace vehicle Design (IPAD) Volume 7: IPAD benefits and impact

The potential benefits, impact and spinoff of IPAD technology are described. The benefits are projected from a flowtime and labor cost analysis of the design process and a study of the flowtime and labor cost savings being experienced with existing integrated systems. Benefits in terms of designer productivity, company effectiveness, and IPAD as a national resource are developed. A description is given of the potential impact of information handling as an IPAD technology, upon task and organization structure and people who use IPAD. Spinoff of IPAD technology to nonaerospace industries is discussed. The results of a personal survey made of aerospace, nonaerospace, government and university sources are given

Ambiguities of South Africa's quest for democracy: inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University

Inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes UniversityRhodes University Libraries (Digitisation

The development and evaluation of computer vision algorithms for the control of an autonomous horticultural vehicle

Economic and environmental pressures have led to a demand for reduced chemical use in crop production. In response to this, precision agriculture techniques have been developed that aim to increase the efficiency of farming operations by more targeted application of chemical treatment. The concept of plant scale husbandry (PSH) has emerged as the logical extreme of precision techniques, where crop and weed plants are treated on an individual basis. To investigate the feasibility of PSH, an autonomous horticultural vehicle has been developed at the Silsoe Research Institute. This thesis describes the development of computer vision algorithms for the experimental vehicle which aim to aid navigation in the field and also allow differential treatment of crop and weed. The algorithm, based upon an extended Kalman filter, exploits the semi-structured nature of the field environment in which the vehicle operates, namely the grid pattern formed by the crop planting. By tracking this grid pattern in the images captured by the vehicles camera as it traverses the field, it is possible to extract information to aid vehicle navigation, such as bearing and offset from the grid of plants. The grid structure can also act as a cue for crop/weed discrimination on the basis of plant position on the ground plane. In addition to tracking the grid pattern, the Kalman filter also estimates the mean distances between the rows of lines and plants in the grid, to cater for variations in the planting procedure. Experiments are described which test the localisation accuracy of the algorithms in offline trials with data captured from the vehicle's camera, and on-line in both a simplified testbed environment and the field. It is found that the algorithms allow safe navigation along the rows of crop. Further experiments demonstrate the crop/weed discrimination performance of the algorithm, both off-line and on-line in a crop treatment experiment performed in the field where all of the crop plants are correctly targeted and no weeds are mistakenly treated

Painleve equations and applications

The theme running throughout this thesis is the Painlevé equations, in their differential, discrete and ultra-discrete versions. The differential Painlevé equations have the Painlevé property. If all solutions of a differential equation are meromorphic functions then it necessarily has the Painlevé property. Any ODE with the Painlevé property is necessarily a reduction of an integrable PDE. Nevanlinna theory studies the value distribution and characterizes the growth of meromorphic functions, by using certain averaged properties on a disc of variable radius. We shall be interested in its well-known use as a tool for detecting integrability in difference equations—a difference equation may be integrable if it has sufficiently many finite-order solutions in the sense of Nevanlinna theory. This does not provide a sufficient test for integrability; additionally it must satisfy the well-known singularity confinement test. [Continues.

Development of Integrated Programs for Aerospace-vehicle design (IPAD): Integrated information processing requirements

The engineering-specified requirements for integrated information processing by means of the Integrated Programs for Aerospace-Vehicle Design (IPAD) system are presented. A data model is described and is based on the design process of a typical aerospace vehicle. General data management requirements are specified for data storage, retrieval, generation, communication, and maintenance. Information management requirements are specified for a two-component data model. In the general portion, data sets are managed as entities, and in the specific portion, data elements and the relationships between elements are managed by the system, allowing user access to individual elements for the purpose of query. Computer program management requirements are specified for support of a computer program library, control of computer programs, and installation of computer programs into IPAD

Feasibility study of an Integrated Program for Aerospace vehicle Design (IPAD). Volume 2: The design process

The extent to which IPAD is to support the design process is identified. Case studies of representative aerospace products were developed as models to characterize the design process and to provide design requirements for the IPAD computing system