Engineering Commons^™

Trunk Velocity-Dependent Light Touch Reduces Postural Sway During Standing, Anirudh Saini, Devin Michael Burns, Darian Emmett, Yun Seong Song

Psychological Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Light Touch (LT) has been shown to reduce postural sway in a wide range of populations. While LT is believed to provide additional sensory information for balance modulation, the nature of this information and its specific effect on balance are yet unclear. In order to better understand LT and to potentially harness its advantages for a practical balance aid, we investigated the effect of LT as provided by a haptic robot. Postural sway during standing balance was reduced when the LT force (~ 1 N) applied to the high back area was dependent on the trunk velocity. Additional information on …

Notes On The Economics Of Residential Hybrid Energy System, Mahelet G. Fikru, Gregory M. Gelles, Ana M. Ichim, Joseph D. Smith

Economics Faculty Research & Creative Works

Despite advances in small-scale hybrid renewable energy technologies, there are limited economic frameworks that model the different decisions made by a residential hybrid system owner. We present a comprehensive review of studies that examine the techno-economic feasibility of small-scale hybrid energy systems, and we find that the most common approach is to compare the annualized life-time costs to the expected energy output and choose the system with the lowest cost per output. While practical, this type of benefit—cost analysis misses out on other production and consumption decisions that are simultaneously made when adopting a hybrid energy system. In this paper, …

The Behavior Of Suas Under Explosive Loading Conditions And Implications For Safe Operating Procedures, Ashok Em Sudhakar

Doctoral Dissertations

"Drones are increasingly being used for tasks previously unimagined and the beneficial uses are evolving. The United States Congress has envisioned the possible uses of drones for both combating and conveying explosive threats and other harmful and destructive activities. Congress' intent is reflected in new laws (2018) and policies (2019).

All civilian available Small Unmanned Aerial Systems sUASs (Drones), weighing less than 55 pounds, in the current market are not designed for operations in explosive environments. This first of a kind research focuses on further understanding of sUASs response to explosive loading and the public policy implications. This research measured …

Military Applications Of Geological Engineering, Stephen H. Tupper

Doctoral Dissertations

"This work examines the premise that military engineering and geological engineering are intellectually paired and overlapped in practice to a significant extent. Geological engineering is an established, albeit young, academic discipline that enjoys wide industry and civil demand and is supported by many professional organizations. In contrast, military engineering is an ancient, empirically derived training or "OJT" program with practice-based trade-associations that has narrow government-only utility. The premise is formed by decades-long observation of U. S. Army military engineer officers completing a Master of Science degree in geological engineering as a complement to their practice-based training in military engineering at …

A Systems And Cost Analysis Of Human Rated Mars Entry, Descent, And Landing Vehicles, Paul Daniel Friz

Doctoral Dissertations

"Cost is one of the biggest obstacles to sending humans to Mars. However, spacecraft costs are typically not taken into consideration until after the preliminary vehicle and mission concepts have been designed. Once costs have been estimated, managers and project teams often lack confidence that the final cost of the mission will match the preliminary estimates. The present work provides a robust methodology for using cost as a valid metric early in the design phase of future human Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) vehicles. This is done in three parts. First, state of the art parametric costing methods are …

Less Is More: Beating The Market With Recurrent Reinforcement Learning, Louis Kurt Bernhard Steinmeister

Masters Theses

"Multiple recurrent reinforcement learners were implemented to make trading decisions based on real and freely available macro-economic data. The learning algorithm and different reinforcement functions (the Differential Sharpe Ratio, Differential Downside Deviation Ratio and Returns) were revised and the performances were compared while transaction costs were taken into account. (This is important for practical implementations even though many publications ignore this consideration.) It was assumed that the traders make long-short decisions in the S&P500 with complementary 3-month treasury bill investments. Leveraged positions in the S&P500 were disallowed. Notably, the Differential Sharpe Ratio and the Differential Downside Deviation Ratio are risk …