Engineering Commons^™

A Method For The Measurement Of The Latency Tolerance Range Of Western Musicians, Jorge Medina Victoria

PhDs

This thesis presents a new systematic method to measure the ability of western musicians to cope with latency. The core of the method is a listening test and the development of a measure. The viability of the method is statistically tested with an empirical observation of 31 test subjects performing on 17 different musical instruments.

The primary goal of the investigation is the development of a systematic, reliable and replicable method that can be applied to different western music instruments, in order to provide data for analysis on latency issues while performing music in non-collaborative performances. In addition, a measure …

Policies Required To Encourage Biomethane As A Transport Fuel, Daniel Goulding

PhDs

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the transport industry is a major environmental issue which the world currently faces. In Ireland, the transport sector accounted for 19% of its total GHG emissions in 2015 which is projected to increase to 29% by 2030. The European Union Renewable Energy Directive (2009/28/EC) mandates Ireland to achieve a 10% share of renewable energy sources in transport (RES-T) by 2020. The Irish Government proposes to achieve the RES-T through biofuels (9%) and electric vehicles (1%). However, in 2016 the RES-T of Ireland stood at 5.0% and requires significant renewable energy penetration to reach the 2020 …

Fall Detection Using Channel State Information From Wifi Devices, D.M Sameera Palipana

PhDs

Falls among the independently living elderly population are a major public health worry, leading to injuries, loss of confidence to live independently and even to death. Each year, one in three people aged 65 and older falls and one in five of them suffers fatal or non fatal injuries. Therefore, detecting a fall early and alerting caregivers can potentially save lives and increase the standard of living. Existing solutions, e.g. push-button, wearables, cameras, radar, pressure and vibration sensors, have limited public adoption either due to the requirement for wearing the device at all times or installing specialized and expensive infrastructure. …

Wireless Sensors For Health Monitoring Of Marine Structures And Machinery, Francisco David Rojas Calvente

PhDs

Remote structural and machinery health monitoring (SMHM) of marine structures such as ships, oil and gas rigs, freight container terminals, and marine energy platforms can ensure their reliability. However, the wired sensors currently used in these applications are difficult and expensive to install and maintain. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can potentially replace them but there are significant capability gaps that currently prevent their long-term deployment in the harsh marine environment and the structurally-complex, compartmentalised, all-metal scenarios with high volume occupancy of piping, ducting and operational machinery represented by marine structures. These gaps are in sensing, processing and communication hardware and …

Efficient Control Message Dissemination In Dense Wireless Lighting Networks, Conrad Dandelski

PhDs

Modern lighting systems using LED light sources lead to dense lighting installations. The control of such systems using wireless Machine-to-Machine (M2M) where standard LED light sources are replaced by wirelessly controllable LED light sources create new problems which are investigated in this thesis. Current approaches for control message transmission is such networks are based on broadcasting messages among luminaires. However, adequate communication performance - in particular, sufficiently low latency and synchronicity - is difficult to ensure in such networks, in particular, if the network is part of a wireless building management system and carries not only low-latency broadcast messages but …

Affective Computing For Emotion Detection Using Vision And Wearable Sensors, Alphonsus Keary

PhDs

The research explores the opportunities, challenges, limitations, and presents advancements in computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions (Picard, 1997). The field is referred to as Affective Computing (AC) and is expected to play a major role in the engineering and development of computationally and cognitively intelligent systems, processors and applications in the future. Today the field of AC is bolstered by the emergence of multiple sources of affective data and is fuelled on by developments under various Internet of Things (IoTs) projects and the fusion potential of multiple sensory affective data streams. The core focus of …

Aerodynamic Design And Analysis Of A Large-Scale Stall-Regulated H-Type Vertical Axis Wind Turbine For An Offshire Floating Installation, Brian Peter Hand

PhDs

Wind energy has witnessed a consistent expansion over the past decade, especially with the move to offshore installation. There is an increasing need to further exploit superior offshore wind resources, which is pushing multi-megawatt wind turbines into deeper water locations where the current popular horizontal axis wind turbine configuration is not entirely suitable. In particular, there has been a renewed interest in the vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) configuration due to its inherent design attributes for an offshore floating application and also its potential to provide a significant reduction in the system cost of energy. However, challenges still remain as …

An Optimal Milk Production Model Selection And Configuration System For Dairy Cows, Fan Zhang

PhDs

Milk production forecasting in the dairy industry has been an independent research topic since the early 20th century. The accurate prediction of milk yield can benefit both the processor (creameries) and the producer (dairy farmer) through developing short-term production schedules, planning long-term road maps, facilitating trade and investment in the dairy industry, improving business operations, optimising the existing infrastructure of the dairy industry, and reducing operating costs. Additionally, due to the innate characteristics of the milk production process, the accurate prediction of milk yield has been a challenging issue in the dairy industry. With the abolishment of EU milk quotas …