Engineering Commons^™

Haptic Shape-Based Management Of Robot Teams In Cordon And Patrol, Samuel Jacob Mcdonald

Theses and Dissertations

There are many current and future scenarios that require teams of air, ground or humanoid robots to gather information in complex and often dangerous environments, where it would be unreasonable or impossible for humans to be physically present [1-6]. The current state of the art involves a single robot being monitored by one or many human operators [7], but a single operator managing a team of autonomous robots is preferred as long as effective and time-efficient management of the team is maintained [8-9]. This is limited by the operator's ability to command actions of multiple robots, be aware of robot …

Scenario Analysis For Techno-Economic Model Development Of U.S. Offshore Wind Support Structures, Rick Damiani, Andrew Ning, Ben Maples, Aaron Smith, Katherine Dykes

Faculty Publications

Challenging bathymetry and soil conditions of future U.S. offshore wind power plants might promote the use of multimember, fixed-bottom structures (or “jackets”) in place of monopiles. Support structures affect costs associated with the balance of system (BOS) and operation and maintenance. Understanding the link between these costs and the main environmental design drivers is crucial in the quest for a lower levelized cost of energy (LCOE), and it is the main rationale for this work. Actual cost and engineering data are still scarce; hence, we evaluated a simplified engineering approach to tie key site and turbine parameters (e.g., water depth, …

A New Open Source Platform For Lowering The Barrier For Environmental Web App Development, Nathan R. Swain, Scott D. Christensen, Alan D. Snow, Herman Dolder, Gonzola Espinoza-Dávalos, Erfan Goharian, Norman L. Jones, E. James Nelson, Daniel P. Ames, Steven J. Burian

Faculty Publications

The interactive nature of web applications or “web apps” makes them a well-suited medium for conveying complex scientific concepts to lay audiences and creating decision support tools that harness cutting edge modeling techniques and promote the work of environmental scientists and engineers. Despite this potential, the technical expertise required to develop web apps represents a formidable barrier—even for scientists and engineers who are skilled programmers. This paper describes four hurdles that contribute to this barrier and introduces an approach to overcoming these hurdles. We present an open source implementation of this approach, a development and hosting environment for environmental web …

Open-Loop Electrowetting Actuation With Micro-Stepping, Qi Ni, Daniel E. Capecci, Nathan B. Crane

Faculty Publications

Microfluidic-driven mechanical actuation opens new possibilities for positioning and manipulating delicate small components. However, existing microfluidic actuation methods are not well-suited to positioning with high resolution. This paper reports a method for precise, open-loop control of droplet position in finite steps by varying the duty cycle of the input signal in electrowetting actuation. When wetted to a solid object, both the droplet and the solid can be actuated. Unlike conventional electrowetting actuation methods, positioning resolution in our proposed method can be much smaller than the size of the underlying electrodes without requiring closed loop feedback control system. Using a leaky …

Performance Of Dynamically Simulated Reference Patterns For Cross Correlation Ebsd, Brian Jackson, Jordan Christensen, Saransh Singh, Marc De Graef, David T. Fullwood, Eric Richards Homer, Robert Wagoner

Faculty Publications

High-resolution (or \cross-correlation") electron backscatter diffraction analysis (HR-EBSD) utilizes cross-correlation techniques to determine relative orientation and distortion of an experimental electron backscatter diffraction pattern (EBSP) with respect to a reference pattern. The integrity of absolute strain and tetragonality measurements of a standard Si/SiGe material have previously been analyzed using reference patterns produced by kinematical simulation. While the results were promising, the noise levels were significantly higher for kinematically produced patterns, compared to real patterns taken from the Si region of the sample. This paper applies HR-EBSD techniques to analyze lattice distortion in a Si/SiGe sample, using recently developed dynamically simulated …

Application Of Voltammetry For Electroanalytical Measurement Of Concentrations In Lacl3-Mgcl2 Mixtures In Eutectic Licl-Kcl, Zhonghang Wang, Devin Rappleye, C S. Yang, Michael Simpson

Faculty Publications

For electroanalytical measurement of molten chloride salts, various voltammetry methods have been used on mixtures of MgCl₂ and LaCl₃ in eutectic LiCl-KCl. These salt mixtures are of primary interest to spent nuclear fuel electrorefining systems. MgCl₂ is used as a surrogate for PuCl₃, while LaCl₃ represents rare earth fission product salts. Cyclic voltammetry scans with these salt mixtures exhibited extra peaks, presumably due to underpotential deposition of La(III) ions onto Mg. Quantitatively, the current contribution from each peak was best determined using normal pulse voltammetry and fit to the Cottrell equation. This yielded linear …

Robust Bi-Directional Continuous Electrowetting Based On Metal-Semiconductor (M-S) Diodes, Qi Ni, Daniel E. Capecci, Millicent Schlafly, Nathan B. Crane

Faculty Publications

We demonstrate bi-directional continuous electrowetting by embedding metal-semiconductor diodes in the electrowetting substrate. Unlike conventional electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD), bi-directional continuous electrowetting uses a single electrode pair to actuate a droplet through long distances. As long as the voltage potential is maintained between two end electrodes, the droplet moves toward the electrode with the higher potential. However, previously reported material systems had limited success in repeated actuation. In this work, diodes based on Schottky barriers were fabricated by forming metal-semiconductor junctions between titanium and high resistivity n-type silicon. The performance enhancements were evaluated using current-voltage measurements of interface pairs. When …

Packing Sheet Materials Into Cylinders And Prisms Using Origami-Based Approaches, Jared Thomas Bruton

Theses and Dissertations

Packing sheet materials into cylinders and prisms using Origami-based approaches (Soft Origami or traditional Origami) is of interest in fields where sheet materials need folded into cylinders or prisms. Fully-dense packing has application in fields where a sheet material is to be folded with minimal gaps into a cylinder or prism. Partially-dense packing is applicable to fields where gaps are required between packed surfaces or where hollow volumes are to be filled, such as in fluid filter design. Soft Origami is explored as a method for folding soft-sheet materials into fully-dense cylinders. Two fold patterns, the "flasher'' and the "inverted-cone …

Position And Stiffness Control Of Inflatable Robotic Links Using Rotary Pneumatic Actuation, Charles Mansel Best

Theses and Dissertations

Inflatable robots with pneumatic actuation are naturally lightweight and compliant. Both of these characteristics make a robot of this type better suited for human environments where unintentional impacts will occur. The dynamics of an inflatable robot are complex and dynamic models that explicitly allow variable stiffness control have not been well developed. In this thesis, a dynamic model was developed for an antagonistic, pneumatically actuated joint with inflatable links.The antagonistic nature of the joint allows for the control of two states, primarily joint position and stiffness. First a model was developed to describe the position states. The model was used …

Comparing Efficacy Of Different Dynamic Models For Control Of Underdamped, Antagonistic, Pneumatically Actuated Soft Robots, Morgan Thomas Gillespie

Theses and Dissertations

Research in soft robot hardware has led to the development of platforms that allow for safer performance when working in uncertain or dynamic environments. The potential of these platforms is limited by the lack of proper dynamic models to describe or controllers to operate them. A common difficulty associated with these soft robots is a representation for torque, the common electromechanical relation seen in motors does not apply. In this thesis, several different torque models are presented and used to construct linear state-space models. The control limitations on soft robots are induced by natural compliance inherent to the hardware. This …

Fundamental Principles Of Tremor Propagation In The Upper Limb, Andrew Doran Davidson

Theses and Dissertations

Although tremor is the most common movement disorder, there exist few effective tremor-suppressing devices, in part because the characteristics of tremor throughout the upper limb are unknown. To clarify, optimally suppressing tremor requires a knowledge of the mechanical origin, propagation, and distribution of tremor throughout the upper limb. Here we present the first systematic investigation of how tremor propagates between the shoulder, elbow, forearm, and wrist. We simulated tremor propagation using a linear, time-invariant, lumped-parameter musculoskeletal model relating joint torques and the resulting joint displacements. The model focused on the seven main degrees of freedom (DOF) from the shoulder to …

A Visual Return-To-Home System For Gps-Denied Flight, Benjamin Paul Lewis

Theses and Dissertations

Unmanned aerial vehicle technology is rapidly maturing. In recent years, the sight of hobbyist aircraft has become more common. Corporations and governments are also interested in using drone aircraft for applications such as package delivery, surveillance and communications. These autonomous UAV technologies demand robust systems that perform under any circumstances. Many UAV applications rely on GPS to obtain information about their location and velocity. However, the GPS system has known vulnerabilities, including environmental signal degradation, terrestrial or solar weather, or malicious attacks such as GPS spoofing. These conditions occur with enough frequency to cause concern. Without a GPS signal, the …

Comparison Of Sfm Computer Vision Point Clouds Of A Landslide Derived From Multiple Small Uav Platforms And Sensors To A Tls Based Model, Samantha Ruggles, Joseph Clark, Kevin W. Franke, Derek Wolfe, Brandon Reimschiissel, Ronald Abraham Martin, Trent Okeson, John Hedengren

Faculty Publications

Structure from motion (SfM) computer vision is a remote sensing method that is gaining popularity due to its simplicity and ability to accurately characterize site geometry in three dimensions (3D). While many researchers have demonstrated the potential for SfM to be used with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to model in three dimensions various geologic features such as landslides, little is understood how the selection of the UAV platform can affect the resolution and accuracy of the model. This study evaluates the resolution and accuracy of 3D point cloud models of a large landslide that occurred in 2013 near Page, Arizona …

Fire-Spotting Modelling And Parametrisation For Wild-Land Fires, Inderpreet Kaur, Gianni Pagnini

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

This article describes a mathematical formulation for simulating the effects of firebrands on the propagation of the wild-land fires. Among the different approaches available in literature, this formulation is defined in a way to provide a versatile approach for application to operational wildfire models. Most of the operational wildfire models like WRF-SFIRE and ForeFire model only the evolution of the fire-line according to the definition of the rate of spread, fuel characterisation and the average fire properties and concurrent atmospheric conditions. But this information is not enough to simulate the effects of turbulence and fire-spotting. The formulation presented here can …

A Generator Of Landuse Application For Complex And Heterogeneous Agricultural Practices, Odile Leccia-Phelpin, Jean-Marie Lescot, Françoise Vernier

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Non-point source pollution from agriculture has become a major concern for water managers and institutional stakeholders. To reduce diffuse pollution, agricultural conservation measures are widely used with efficiency. On non-monitored territories environmental modelling enables the assessment of their long term impacts on water and soils and to evaluate land-use change scenarios. We developed an innovative Generator of Landuse (GenLU) application in order to build up multi-year spatial crop successions from identified crop rotations with their related management schedule s. GenLU can be used solely for generating landuse or coupled with the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model so as …

Water Supply System Classification For Water Quality Improvement, Bruno Melo Brentan, Gustavo Meirelles Lima, Edevar Luvizotto Junior, Joaquín Izquierdo, Rafael Pérez-García

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Universal access to drinkable water is a constitutional right guaranteed in Brazil. However, not all cities in this country are able to supply the population with the expected quality. Important actions should be taken to improve the supply of drinkable water. To define a strategic plan for this purpose, classification tools can facilitate the design of plans, by grouping cities with similar quality conditions. During the last decades, neural network approaches have been used in environmental models, allowing more accurate representation of some complex systems. This work proposes the use of self-organizing maps (SOM’s) coupled with the k-means algorithm …

Optimal Land Use?! – A Review On Optimization Techniques Used In Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, Andrea Kaim, Anna Cord, Martin Volk

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agriculture, forest management, conservation planning and other related disciplines have specific land use demands, and thus different perspectives on how land should be used in an “optimal way”. One way to solve arising land use conflicts is employing the ecosystem services concept together with methods from the field of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). Especially optimization techniques provide the possibility to include socio-economic and ecological aspects as well as the protection of biodiversity. In this study, we give an overview of these methods, focusing especially on their application in agricultural areas. We explore their abilities for the identification of ecosystem service …

Data-Driven Wildfire Behaviour Modelling: Application Of Firefly To Field-Scale Grassland Controlled Burns, M. C. Rochoux, C. Zhang, D. Lucor, S. Ricci, A. Trouve

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Assessing epistemic uncertainties is now considered as a milestone for improving numerical predictions of a dynamically evolving system. The objective of this project is to demonstrate the benefits of data assimilation combined with sensor observations of the fire front position to both quantify and reduce the uncertainties in wildfire behaviour forecasting capability. The challenges found on the route to modelling wildfire behaviour are two-fold. There is the modelling challenge associated with providing accurate representations of the multi-scale multi-physics processes governing wildfire dynamics. There is also the data challenge associated with providing accurate estimates of the environmental conditions (biomass moisture, near-surface …

Atlas: A Tool To Model Spatial-Temporal Dynamics Of Processes Influencing Ecosystem Services, Hugo Thierry, Aude Vialatte, Claude Monteil, Annie Ouin

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Biodiversity provides various benefits to humankind throughout what is defined as ecosystem services. Within a specific ecosystem, a wide range of ecosystem services can be identified. During the past decades, human intervention has aimed to increase some services such as food production through agricultural intensification, at the expense of other services such as water regulation. Mapping, evaluating and quantifying each of these ecosystem services provided by biodiversity to crop production could help to increase the multi-functionality of agricultural landscapes. In this context, we developed a spatially-explicit model called ATLAS (AgriculTural LandscApe Simulator). ATLA …

Understanding The Relationships Between Sanitation And Health In Nicaragua And Honduras, Through Data Mining Tools, Ginevra Marina Lazerini, Josep Nualart, Sergio Ruiz-Cayuela, Maialen Urbina, Miquel Sànchez Marrè, Karina Gibert

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The aim of this work is to analyze water and sanitation supply data from Nicaragua and Honduras by using different data mining tools. The data has been provided by SIASAR (Rural Water and Sanitation Information System), which is a water and sanitation management and information platform created through the joint effort of different Central American Governments and the World Bank. In the study data from a survey performed in all the rural communities in Nicaragua and in a sample of the rural communities in Honduras from 2012 to 2015 is analyzed. Database contains 10206 communities described by 23 numerical variables …

Resilience Of Punta S’Aliga Barrier Beach To Storm Impacts, Andrea Sulis

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Beach and dune provide natural defense against erosion and flooding, and associated mitigation measures are classical coastal engineering problems studied by many researchers. Winter storms cause severe erosion leading to dune breaching and then flooding of the hinterland areas. Resiliency of a barrier beach depends on the ability of the dune (resistor) to recover in height and extent following storms. Whereas erosion of the beach and dune occurs over hours and days, it can be years to decades before the beach and dune are able to recover to their pre-storm state. In the last two decades, numerical modelling methods have …

The Economics Of Agricultural Water Productivity In The Blue Nile, Imeshi Weerasinghe, James Booker, Wim Bastiaanssen, Lisa-Marie Rebelo, Ann Van Griensven

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Agricultural Water Productivity (AWP) is often simplified as the ‘crop per drop’, described as the output in terms of yield or biomass per unit of water input. This purely physical measure of Water Productivity (WP) using only a single factor input (water) does not consider: (1) the level of other inputs used in conjunction with water, (2) the opportunity cost of water as an input, (3) the value of the output and (4) the costs of production for different crops. This study presents a justification and methodology for incorporating these factors into WP indicators. The application of these extensions to …

E3.Pt – An E3 Portabledyme Model For Portugal, Anett Großmann, Frank Hohmann

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

E3 models are environmentally extended economic models. They are extensively used for impact assessment of energy, climate and resource policies at national and international level. E3 models have proven to be suitable tools for quantifying effects on the economy, environment and energy system. Usually, the structure and documentation of such models are only accessible by the model builders. They are facing the allegation to be a "black box" meaning that only their creators are able to operate and fully understand the model system. Decision makers are often only engaged at the end of the model building process to discuss the …

A Markov Decision Process Model To Compare Ecosystem Services Provided By Agricultural Landscapes, Sabrina Gaba, Nathalie Peyrard, Régis Sabbadin, Julia Radoszyckic

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

One current challenge in managing agricultural landscapes, is to reach a trade-off between provision of food and biodiversity conservation. Two extreme land-use strategies, land sharing and land sparing, are often discussed. The design of decision rules for allocating crops and lands for biodiversity conservation (e.g. grasslands) can be formalized as an optimization problem. However the target to optimize, representing the trade-off between ecosystem services (ES) can be complex to model since ES are usually not defined on comparable scales and may rely on different sides of biodiversity. Here, we will investigate how landscape composition and structure affect the magnitude of …

Sectorization Of Intermittent Water Supply Networks Based On Graph Theory And Clustering Techniques, Amilkar E. Ilaya-Ayza, David Ayala-Cabrera, Joaquín Izquierdo, Enrique Campbell, Rafael Pérez-García

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Intermittent water supply is the form of access to water in many countries around the world. It is very common that design, operation, maintenance and, in general, decision-making in these systems are performed using tools originally developed for systems with continuous supply, which are not adequate. However, these tools can be reasonably applied to network sectorization of intermittent supply networks. We propose a sectorization methodology for networks that do not have the possibility of working with continuous supply. In addition, to ensure sufficient pressure, sector design must guarantee equity in the supply. Furthermore, it is not enough to establish sector …

A Mathematical Model For Ghg From Sb-Mbr: Calibration By An Innovative Protocol, Giorgio Mannina, Alida Cosenza

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

A mathematical model to quantify greenhouse gases (GHG) (carbon dioxide, CO₂ and nitrous oxide, N₂O) for a membrane bioreactor (MBR) is presented. The model has been applied to a pilot plant with a pre-denitrification MBR scheme. The pilot plant was cyclically filled with real saline wastewater according to the fill-draw-batch operation. The model was calibrated by adopting a specific protocol based on extensive field dataset. Standardised Regression Coefficient (SRC) method was adopted to select the most influential model factors to be calibrated. Results related to SRC method show that among the important model factors a key role …

A Framework For Decision-Making In Cases Of Invasive Species, Peter A. Khaiter, Marina G. Erechtchoukova, Sina Roushan

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Invasion of nonindigenous species is one of the most pressing global challenges, causing substantial environmental, economic and social harm. Invasion of alien species alters the composition, structure and functioning of invaded ecosystems as well as the services they generated before the invasion. Decisions about the management of invasive cases are inherently difficult because of the multifactorial and multiattribute scope of the problem. In particular, the resilience limits of invaded ecosystems to fully recover original, pre-invaded states remain unclear. To facilitate management efforts, decision-makers and environmental practitioners require a framework integrating relevant knowledge and acting as a supporting expert system. The …

Cool Farm Tool (Cft) Water: Novel Tool For Water Resource Assessment On Field Scale, Benjamin Kayatz, Gabriele Baroni, Benjamin Kuster, Stefan Lüdtke, Daniella Malin, Richard Heathcote, Carl Von Tonder, Martin Wattenbach

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

At the global scale over 70 % of all fresh water used is consumed by the agricultural sector. For this reason a sustainable water management at the basin level often requires the assessment of water that is used for crop production. In this context, the characterization of green and blue water footprint showed to be a useful and efficient approach to support analysis and decisions.

However determining the water footprint is cumbersome and often linked to additional data acquisition efforts. Furthermore the water footprint is often not revealing the basin impact of crop production. To overcome these limitations we developed …

Small Farms Dams Modelling In Highly Anthropized Basins: Case Of The Garonne Catchment In The South-West Of France, François Moussu, Pierre Le Moigne, Pierre Le Cointe, Camille Truche, Olivier Therond, Eric Martin, Florence Habets

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

One of the aims of the REGARD project is to evaluate the influence of human activities in the modelling of water resources in the South-West of France, at the scale of the Garonne Watershed (~55 000 km²). Since 2009 the French government introduced a new regulation of agricultural water withdrawals, to avoid regular crisis due to water resources issues.Our approach consists in accounting for small farm dams in the Safran-Isba-Modcou (SIM) model and to evaluate their impact on river discharges. Several scenarios with different volume capacities, filling catchment sizes and filling periods were tested to assess how the …

Bayesian Estimation Of Source Term Of Atmospheric Radiation Release With Interval Prior, O. Tichý, V. Šmídl, R. Hofman

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Detection of release of an atmospheric pollutant is a problem of interest in environmental sciences. We are concerned with estimation of unknown source term of the release. Formally, the problem is formulated as a linear model where measurements are explained using source-receptor- sensitivity matrix obtained from atmospheric transport model and source term vector which has to be estimated. Specifically, we estimate the release of radioactivity from measurements of gamma dose rate (GDR). The problem of isolation of activity of individual nuclides is poorly conditioned. We propose a probabilistic model with the prior information on intervals of nuclide ratios. The model …