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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Reflections From The Wearable Computing Conference In Toronto, Canada, Nick Rheinberger, Katina Michael, Alexander Hayes Jun 2015

Reflections From The Wearable Computing Conference In Toronto, Canada, Nick Rheinberger, Katina Michael, Alexander Hayes

Alexander Hayes Mr.

Could sports men and women who are monitored using wearable computers actually be playing to a global theatre to ensure the upkeep of their performance benchmarks instead of consciously watching and reacting to what is happening in the game they are playing? What are the social implications of heart rate monitors and GPS units now embedded into player clothing? What were some of the reflections from the IEEE ISTAS13 meeting on Wearable Computers in Every Day Life? What were some of the main messages that you walked away with from that conference? What made the greatest impression on us was …


Impact Of Wind Generator Control Strategies On Flicker Emission In Distribution Networks, Lasantha Meegahapola, Sarath Perera Dec 2013

Impact Of Wind Generator Control Strategies On Flicker Emission In Distribution Networks, Lasantha Meegahapola, Sarath Perera

Dr Lasantha G Meegahapola

Renewable power generators are increasingly being integrated to electricity networks to achieve future renewable energy targets in power generation. In particular, wind power generation has already reported substantial penetration levels in electricity networks. Traditionally, flicker phenomenon is considered to be one of the power quality issues in power distribution networks due to fluctuating consumer loads connected to the network. Large-scale integration of wind power generators may create significant voltage fluctuations in distribution feeders due to stochastic and intermittent nature of the wind resources. This study aims to investigate and characterize the flicker emission under different control strategies for DFIG based …


Capability Curve Based Enhanced Reactive Power Control Strategy For Stability Enhancement And Network Voltage Management, Lasantha Meegahapola, Tim Littler, Sarath Perera Dec 2013

Capability Curve Based Enhanced Reactive Power Control Strategy For Stability Enhancement And Network Voltage Management, Lasantha Meegahapola, Tim Littler, Sarath Perera

Dr Lasantha G Meegahapola

Reactive power has become a vital resource in modern electricity networks due to increased penetration of distributed generation. This paper examines the extended reactive power capability of DFIGs to improve network stability and capability to manage network voltage profile during transient faults and dynamic operating conditions. A coordinated reactive power controller is designed by considering the reactive power capabilities of the rotor-side converter (RSC) and the grid-side converter (GSC) of the DFIG in order to maximise the reactive power support from DFIGs. The study has illustrated that, a significant reactive power contribution can be obtained from partially loaded DFIG wind …


No Limits To Watching?, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael Nov 2013

No Limits To Watching?, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

M. G. Michael

Little by little, the introduction of new body-worn technologies is transforming the way people interact with their environment and one another, and perhaps even with themselves. Social and environmental psychology studies of human-technology interaction pose as many questions as answers. We are learning as we go: 'learning by doing' through interaction and 'learning by being'. Steve Mann calls this practice existential learning; wearers become photoborgs, a type of cyborg (cybernetic organism) whose primary intent is image capture from the domains of the natural and artificial. This approach elides the distinction between the technology and the human; they coalesce into one.


No Limits To Watching?, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael Nov 2013

No Limits To Watching?, Katina Michael, M.G. Michael

Professor Katina Michael

Little by little, the introduction of new body-worn technologies is transforming the way people interact with their environment and one another, and perhaps even with themselves. Social and environmental psychology studies of human-technology interaction pose as many questions as answers. We are learning as we go: 'learning by doing' through interaction and 'learning by being'. Steve Mann calls this practice existential learning; wearers become photoborgs, a type of cyborg (cybernetic organism) whose primary intent is image capture from the domains of the natural and artificial. This approach elides the distinction between the technology and the human; they coalesce into one.


Dynamic Channel Allocation For Mobile Cellular Systems Using A Control Theoretical Approach, Yaya Wei, Chuang Lin, Raad Raad, Fengyuan Ren Oct 2013

Dynamic Channel Allocation For Mobile Cellular Systems Using A Control Theoretical Approach, Yaya Wei, Chuang Lin, Raad Raad, Fengyuan Ren

Dr Raad Raad

The guard channel scheme in wireless mobile networks has attracted and is still drawing research interest owing to easy implementation and flexible control. Dynamic guard channel schemes have already been proposed in the literature to adapt to varying traffic load. This paper presents a novel control-theoretic approach to dynamically reserve guard channels called PI-Guard Channel (PI-GC) controller that maintains the handoff blocking probability (HBP) to a predefined value; while it still improves the channel resource utilization.


Session Based Differentiated Quality Of Service Admission Control For Web Servers, Yaya Wei, Chuang Lin, Fengyuan Ren, Eryk Dutkeiwicz, Raad Raad Oct 2013

Session Based Differentiated Quality Of Service Admission Control For Web Servers, Yaya Wei, Chuang Lin, Fengyuan Ren, Eryk Dutkeiwicz, Raad Raad

Dr Raad Raad

Recent advance-session based admission control (SBAC) has resulted in protecting the server from entering a regime in which latencies are excessive or session throughput collapses due to dropped requests and aborted sessions. The goal of this work is to introduce differentiated QoS to SBAC. We propose a two-threshold SBAC scheme (QSBAC). It can provide high throughput for preferred clients especially in overload situation. Furthermore, to adapt to varying traffic loads, a dynamic QSBAC (DQSBAC) scheme is also proposed. The experimental results show that comparing with SBAC scheme, both QSBAC scheme and DQSBAC scheme can sustain higher session throughput for preferred …


Inertial Sensing For Human Motor Control Symmetry In Injury Rehabilitation, Matthew Field, David Stirling, Montserrat Ros, Zengxi Stephen Pan, Fazel Naghdy Oct 2013

Inertial Sensing For Human Motor Control Symmetry In Injury Rehabilitation, Matthew Field, David Stirling, Montserrat Ros, Zengxi Stephen Pan, Fazel Naghdy

zengxi pan

This paper proposes a series of methods for representing changes in human motion during injury rehabilitation using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) inertial sensors. Tracking the changes over a recovery period requires methods for evaluating the similarity of movement in an impaired state against a non-impaired state. We investigate the use of motion analyses such as the centre of mass (COM) tipping distance, the variance of joint velocity eigenvalues and the cumulative state changes of Gaussian mixture models (GMM) for monitoring the symmetry between the left and right sides of body during rehabilitation exercises. The methods are tested on an injured athlete …


Adaptive Sliding Mode Control Of Tri-Layer Conjugated Polymer Actuators, Xiangjiang Wang, Gursel Alici, Chuc Nguyen Jul 2013

Adaptive Sliding Mode Control Of Tri-Layer Conjugated Polymer Actuators, Xiangjiang Wang, Gursel Alici, Chuc Nguyen

Chuc Huu Nguyen

This paper proposes an adaptive sliding mode control methodology to enhance the positioning ability of conducting polymer actuators typified by tri-layer conjugated polymer actuators. This is motivated by the search for an effective control strategy to command such actuators to a desired configuration in the presence of parametric uncertainties and unmodeled disturbances. After analyzing the stability of the adaptive sliding mode control system, experiments were conducted to demonstrate its satisfactory tracking ability, based on a series of experimental results. Implementation of the control law requires a valid model of the conducting polymer actuator and boundaries of the uncertainties and disturbances. …


Social Implications Of Wearable Computing And Augmediated Reality In Every Day Life (Ieee Symposium On Technology And Society, Istas13), Katina Michael Jun 2013

Social Implications Of Wearable Computing And Augmediated Reality In Every Day Life (Ieee Symposium On Technology And Society, Istas13), Katina Michael

Associate Professor Katina Michael

It was in July 2012 that Steve Mann and I corresponded on the possibility of hosting a conference on wearable computing in Toronto, Canada. Steve had just returned home from a family holiday to France and publicly blogged about an unfortunate incident that had happened to him while away. On 17th July 2012 he posted: “Physical assault by McDonald’s for wearing Digital Eye Glass”. We both knew the timing was right for such an event that was not just a technical engineering or applied orientation on the theme of smart worlds, but an event that would grapple with the dichotomies …


Integrated Seat And Suspension Control For A Quarter Car With Driver Model, Haiping Du, Weihua Li, Nong Zhang Feb 2013

Integrated Seat And Suspension Control For A Quarter Car With Driver Model, Haiping Du, Weihua Li, Nong Zhang

Professor Weihua Li

In this paper, an integrated vehicle seat and sus pension control strategy for a quarter car with driver model is proposed to improve suspension performance on driver ride comfort. An integrated seat and suspension model that includes a quarter-car suspension, a seat suspension, and a 4-degree-of freedom (DOM) driver body model is presented first. This in1 tegrated model provides a platform to evaluate ride comfort 1performance in terms of driver head acceleration responses under typical road disturbances and to develop an integrated control of seat and car suspensions. Based on the integrated model, an H∞ state feedback controller is designed …


Vibration Control Of Vehicle Seat Integrating With Chassis Suspension And Driver Body Model, Haiping Du, Weihua Li, Nong Zhang Jan 2013

Vibration Control Of Vehicle Seat Integrating With Chassis Suspension And Driver Body Model, Haiping Du, Weihua Li, Nong Zhang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Vehicle seat suspension is one of very important components to provide ride comfort, in particular, commercial vehicles, to reduce driver fatigue due to long hours driving. This paper presents a study on active control of seat suspension to reduce vertical vibration transmitted from uneven road profile to driver body. The control problem will be firstly studied by proposing an integrated seat suspension model which includes vehicle chassis suspension, seat suspension, and driver body model. This is a new concept in the field of study because most of the current active and semi-active seat suspension studies only consider seat suspension or …


Capability Curve Based Enhanced Reactive Power Control Strategy For Stability Enhancement And Network Voltage Management, Lasantha Meegahapola, Tim Littler, Sarath Perera Jan 2013

Capability Curve Based Enhanced Reactive Power Control Strategy For Stability Enhancement And Network Voltage Management, Lasantha Meegahapola, Tim Littler, Sarath Perera

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Reactive power has become a vital resource in modern electricity networks due to increased penetration of distributed generation. This paper examines the extended reactive power capability of DFIGs to improve network stability and capability to manage network voltage profile during transient faults and dynamic operating conditions. A coordinated reactive power controller is designed by considering the reactive power capabilities of the rotor-side converter (RSC) and the grid-side converter (GSC) of the DFIG in order to maximise the reactive power support from DFIGs. The study has illustrated that, a significant reactive power contribution can be obtained from partially loaded DFIG wind …


Inertial Sensing For Human Motor Control Symmetry In Injury Rehabilitation, Matthew Field, David Stirling, Montserrat Ros, Zengxi Stephen Pan, Fazel Naghdy Jan 2013

Inertial Sensing For Human Motor Control Symmetry In Injury Rehabilitation, Matthew Field, David Stirling, Montserrat Ros, Zengxi Stephen Pan, Fazel Naghdy

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper proposes a series of methods for representing changes in human motion during injury rehabilitation using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) inertial sensors. Tracking the changes over a recovery period requires methods for evaluating the similarity of movement in an impaired state against a non-impaired state. We investigate the use of motion analyses such as the centre of mass (COM) tipping distance, the variance of joint velocity eigenvalues and the cumulative state changes of Gaussian mixture models (GMM) for monitoring the symmetry between the left and right sides of body during rehabilitation exercises. The methods are tested on an injured athlete …


Towards Improved Steel Alloy Designs For Control Of Weld Heat Affected Zone Properties, F J. Barbaro, Z Zhu, L Kuzmikova, H Li, J M. Gray Jan 2013

Towards Improved Steel Alloy Designs For Control Of Weld Heat Affected Zone Properties, F J. Barbaro, Z Zhu, L Kuzmikova, H Li, J M. Gray

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper reviews the current technology related to control of weld HAZ properties in high strength steels. The debate related to appropriate balance of Ti and N is addressed and it appears that a stoichiometric ratio provides optimum fracture toughness. The results are significant because despite the well established difficulties in controlling Ti/N ratio, this data now provides guidance in terms of alloy design to achieve optimum fracture toughness in the HAZ of welds. The enhanced resistance to grain coarsening behaviour of high Nb steels has now provided another incremental improvement in the weldability of steels for critical applications such …


Fuzzy Control Of A Conjugated Polymer Actuator, Mohammadreza Sabetghadam, Mehmet Itik, Gursel Alici Jan 2013

Fuzzy Control Of A Conjugated Polymer Actuator, Mohammadreza Sabetghadam, Mehmet Itik, Gursel Alici

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Polypyrrole actuators may represent time varying and nonlinear dynamics as the solvent evaporation continuously affects their performance. Linear models can be used to design controllers for polypyrrole actuators to some extent but their performance may not be sufficient in order to comply with the requirements for applications where high precision is necessary. This paper proposes a Fuzzy Logic controller to improve the tracking performance of a trilayer polypyyrole conducting polymer actuator. As the fuzzy controller does not require a model for the system, the nonlinearities and uncertainties can be handled effectively. Experimental results show that fuzzy control improves the tracking …


Novel Modulation And Control Strategy For Five-Level Anpc Converter With Unbalanced Dc Voltage Applied To A Single-Phase Grid Connected Pv System, Hamid R. Teymour, Danny Sutanto, Kashem M. Muttaqi, Phil Ciufo Jan 2013

Novel Modulation And Control Strategy For Five-Level Anpc Converter With Unbalanced Dc Voltage Applied To A Single-Phase Grid Connected Pv System, Hamid R. Teymour, Danny Sutanto, Kashem M. Muttaqi, Phil Ciufo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper proposes a new control strategy and a novel modulation technique for a grid-connected photo-voltaic (PV) system using a single-phase five-level flying capacitor (FC) based active-neutral-point-clamped (ANPC) converter. The proposed modulator can control the FC voltage to follow the requested reference value and simultaneously generate the required ac output voltage regardless of the values of the dc capacitor voltages of the converter. By implementing this method, smaller values of dc-link and flying capacitors can be used even in applications that could experience ripple or transient in the capacitors voltage. In the grid-connected single-phase five-level ANPC, where the capacitors can …


Point Of Common Coupling (Pcc) Voltage Control Of A Grid-Connected Solar Photovoltaic (Pv) System, Brian K. Perera, Philip Ciufo, Sarath Perera Jan 2013

Point Of Common Coupling (Pcc) Voltage Control Of A Grid-Connected Solar Photovoltaic (Pv) System, Brian K. Perera, Philip Ciufo, Sarath Perera

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In future low voltage grids, with multiple inverter interfaced sources connected, voltage regulation may become a necessary task. The potential exists for inverter interfaced sources to be deployed to regulate the voltage at the point of common coupling (PCC) of each inverter interfaced sources. The PCC voltage regulation is attainable with inverter interfaced sources by dynamically controlling the amount of reactive power injected to the power distribution grid by individual systems. In the current research, a closed-loop controller is proposed to regulate the PCC voltage of a solar photovoltaic (PV) system that is connected to a single-phase power distribution feeder …


A Maximum Principle For Optimal Control Of Stochastic Evolution Equations, Kai Du, Qingxin Meng Jan 2013

A Maximum Principle For Optimal Control Of Stochastic Evolution Equations, Kai Du, Qingxin Meng

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

A general maximum principle is proved for optimal controls of abstract semilinear stochastic evolution equations. The control variable and linear unbounded operators act in both drift and diffusion terms, and the control set need not be convex. Read More: http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/120882433