FES rehabilitation platform with real-time control and performance feedback.

Osteoporosis after spinal cord injury is associated with low-trauma fractures, and consequently with increased risk of morbidity and mortality. The loss of bone mass density (BMD) due to paraplegia can be reduced through cyclical electrically-induced muscle contractions. Here we propose an FES control system based on posture switching, that induces transient loading of the lower limbs during a set of standing postures. This aims to produce an increased, evenly distributed BMD, whilst minimising FES-induced muscle fatigue. Here we describe the design and assessment of the FES exercising platform, comprising a controllable multi-channel electrical stimulator and an instrumented standing frame. The platform supports standing and postural shifting, provides real-time human-in-the-loop FES control with on-line feedback to the user. The platforms is used to investigate the effect of regular exercise on the distribution of BMD in people with paraplegia

The effect of time on gait recognition performance

Many studies have shown that it is possible to recognize people by the way they walk. However, there are a number of covariate factors that affect recognition performance. The time between capturing the gallery and the probe has been reported to affect recognition the most. To date, no study has shown the isolated effect of time, irrespective of other covariates. Here we present the first principled study that examines the effect of elapsed time on gait recognition. Using empirical evidence we show for the first time that elapsed time does not affect recognition significantly in the short to medium term. By controlling the clothing worn by the subjects and the environment, a Correct Classification Rate (CCR) of 95% has been achieved over 9 months, on a dataset of 2280 gait samples. Our results show that gait can be used as a reliable biometric over time and at a distance. We have created a new multimodal temporal database to enable the research community to investigate various gait and face covariates. We have also investigated the effect of different type of clothes, variations in speed and footwear on the recognition performance. We have demonstrated that clothing drastically affects performance regardless of elapsed time and significantly more than any of the other covariates that we have considered here. The research then suggests a move towards developing appearance invariant recognition algorithms. Thi

Performance analysis of time slicing in DVB-H

TV is the biggest media and the last one missing from mobile phones. Digital Video Broadcasting for Handhelds (DVB-H) is the latest development from the DVB Project targeting handheld, battery powered devices such as mobile telephones, PDAs(Personal Digital Assistants), etc. Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) is the technology that is usually used in computer and telecommunication systems. Time slicing is one of the characteristics that makes it possible to broadcast high resolution TV programes and fast IP data services to battery powered handheld terminals. This paper discusses the characteristics and advantages of Time slicing algorithm in DVB-H and presents the performance analysis of time slicing in DVB-H through both theoretical analysis and software simulation

LiveCap: Real-time Human Performance Capture from Monocular Video

We present the first real-time human performance capture approach that reconstructs dense, space-time coherent deforming geometry of entire humans in general everyday clothing from just a single RGB video. We propose a novel two-stage analysis-by-synthesis optimization whose formulation and implementation are designed for high performance. In the first stage, a skinned template model is jointly fitted to background subtracted input video, 2D and 3D skeleton joint positions found using a deep neural network, and a set of sparse facial landmark detections. In the second stage, dense non-rigid 3D deformations of skin and even loose apparel are captured based on a novel real-time capable algorithm for non-rigid tracking using dense photometric and silhouette constraints. Our novel energy formulation leverages automatically identified material regions on the template to model the differing non-rigid deformation behavior of skin and apparel. The two resulting non-linear optimization problems per-frame are solved with specially-tailored data-parallel Gauss-Newton solvers. In order to achieve real-time performance of over 25Hz, we design a pipelined parallel architecture using the CPU and two commodity GPUs. Our method is the first real-time monocular approach for full-body performance capture. Our method yields comparable accuracy with off-line performance capture techniques, while being orders of magnitude faster

Performance Enhancement of Multiuser Time Reversal UWB Communication System

UWB communication is a recent research area for indoor propagation channels. Time Reversal (TR) communication in UWB has shown promising results for improving the system performance. In multiuser environment, the system performance is significantly degraded due to the interference among different users. TR reduces the interference caused by multiusers due to its spatial focusing property. The performance of a multiuser TR communication system is further improved if the TR filter is modified. In this paper, multiuser TR in UWB communication is investigated using simple TR filter and a modified TR filter with circular shift operation. The concept of circular shift in TR is analytically studied. Thereafter, the channel impulse responses (CIR) of a typical indoor laboratory environment are measured. The measured CIRs are used to analyze the received signal peak power and signal to interference ratio (SIR) with and without performing the circular shift operation in a multiuser environment

Performance analysis of continuous-time solvers for quantum impurity models

Impurity solvers play an essential role in the numerical investigation of strongly correlated electrons systems within the "dynamical mean field" approximation. Recently, a new class of continuous-time solvers has been developed, based on a diagrammatic expansion of the partition function in either the interactions or the impurity-bath hybridization. We investigate the performance of these two complementary approaches and compare them to the well-established Hirsch-Fye method. The results show that the continuous-time methods, and in particular the version which expands in the hybridization, provide substantial gains in computational efficiency

Embedded Network Test-Bed for Validating Real-Time Control Algorithms to Ensure Optimal Time Domain Performance

The paper presents a Stateflow based network test-bed to validate real-time optimal control algorithms. Genetic Algorithm (GA) based time domain performance index minimization is attempted for tuning of PI controller to handle a balanced lag and delay type First Order Plus Time Delay (FOPTD) process over network. The tuning performance is validated on a real-time communication network with artificially simulated stochastic delay, packet loss and out-of order packets characterizing the network.Comment: 6 pages, 12 figure