Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Expanding Horizons With Chameleon: Team Missouri's Innovative Home Automation System, Bryan Glass, Ben Brannon, Katie Grantham, Stuart Werner Baur

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Team Missouri's 2009 Solar Decathlon entry featured a revolutionary home automation system, Chameleon, promoting both convenience and energy savings. This was accomplished using the typical controls of a convenience based automation system, while maintaining user set points, such as a home's ambient temperature, in the most energy efficient manner. Environmental features of the system include controls for home heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, windows, shades, appliances, indoor air quality, as well as indoor and outdoor irrigation. Further analysis and refinement to the prototype system displayed at the competition is also presented in this paper.

Residential Energy Performance Metrics, Christopher Wright, Stuart Werner Baur, Katie Grantham, Robert B. Stone, Scott Erwin Grasman

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Techniques for residential energy monitoring are an emerging field that is currently drawing significant attention. This paper is a description of the current efforts to monitor and compare the performance of three solar powered homes built at Missouri University of Science and Technology. The homes are outfitted with an array of sensors and a data logger system to measure and record electricity production, system energy use, internal home temperature and humidity, hot water production, and exterior ambient conditions the houses are experiencing. Data is being collected to measure the performance of the houses, compare to energy modeling programs, design and …

Acuta Enews June 2010, Vol 39, No. 6

ACUTA Newsletters

In this Issue

Extremely Strong Program Planned for San Francisco Seminar

From the President..........Matt Arthur, Washington Univ. in St. Louis, ACUTA President

Can Wireless Replace the RSTN?.... Gary Audin, Delphi, lnc.

Add Names from Your Campus to Your ACUTA Roster

Multi-Event Discount: Attend More in 2010 and Save More!

ACUTA Resources Are Better than Ever

Hurricane Preparedness Checklist

FYI: Useful lnformation from the Campus...................Student Monitor

Board Report............ George Denbow, Univ. of Texas, ACUTA Secretary/Treasurer

lnfo Links .......... Randy Hoyes, Univ of Northern lowa

Washington Update Newsletter

Welcome New Members

Check lt Out: Press Releases...Job Postings...RFls/RFPs...Special Deals

Polyenvi, Stephen Beard, Josh Engel, Paul Fake, Diego Flores, Alvaro Nunez, Miguel Wong

Electrical Engineering

Poor indoor air quality is a problem that is recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to cause health issues. In order to raise awareness of this problem, this document outlines the construction of a device that economically measures air quality through five metrics: dust, smoke, ozone, humidity, and temperature. The device integrates with a router to provide users access to information about their indoor air quality anywhere over the internet as well as local access to the data via an LCD mounted on the router. By increasing indoor air quality awareness, this device will aid users in making adjustments …

Uav Pirates And Silentrack Integration, Travis Dean, Hushnak Singh, Ashley Wager, Matthew (Matt) Woolridge

Electrical Engineering

The integration of the UAV pirating system with the SilenTrack video tracking system will allow the combined system to automatically identify and track a suspicious air vehicle visually as well as identify and decode the RF control signal. Once a threat has been identified, the system will execute an algorithm to associate each control channel with the corresponding flight control surface. Once the control channels have been decoded the user can use a hand held radio controller to maneuver the drone which is now under their command.

Damage Detection Via Structural Model Updating Using Frequency Response Functions And Genetic Algorithms, Bassam Sabry Fawzy Elsaid

Archived Theses and Dissertations

This thesis covers the development of a model updating technique which relies on the introduction of correction factors to the elemental stiffness matrix of a beam Finite Element Model (FEM). A Genetic Algorithm selects the values of correction factors by minimizing the difference between an experimentally measured Frequency Response Function (FRF) and the FRF calculated from the FEM being updated. The model updating technique was employed as a damage detection algorithm. The first phase of damage detection is to use model updating to eliminate experimental and modeling errors between the FRF of a beam measured experimentally and the FRF of …

Multi-Robot System Control Architecture (Mrsca) For Agricultural Production, Santosh Pitla, Joe D. Luck, Scott A. Shearer

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Presentations and White Papers

Coordinating multiple autonomous robots for achieving an assigned collective task presents a complex engineering challenge. In this paper multi robot system control architecture (MRSCA) for the coordination of multiple agricultural robots is developed. The two important aspects of MRSCA; coordination strategy and inter-robot communication were discussed with typical agricultural tasks as examples. Classification of MRS into homogeneous and heterogeneous robots was done to identify appropriate form of cooperative behavior and inter-robot communication. The framework developed, proposes that inter-robot communication is not always required for a MRS. Three types of cooperative behaviors; No-cooperation, modest cooperation and absolute cooperation for a MRS …

Pneumatic Control Of A Variable Orifice Nozzle, Joe D. Luck, Michael P. Sama, Santosh Pitla, Scott A. Shearer

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Presentations and White Papers

A variable-orifice nozzle with droplet optimization was recently developed and introduced for use on agricultural sprayers. The VariTarget (VT) nozzle reacts to changes in the system flow rate via a metering assembly that is controlled by a diaphragm and spring. As the liquid pressure changes, the VT metering assembly attempts to control the flow rate and spray pattern exiting the nozzle. The goal of this study was to replace the spring controlled “reactive” system with a pneumatically controlled metering assembly. The proposed system would allow for the metering assembly to adjust the flow rate and spray pattern exiting the nozzle …

An Evaluation Of The Ability Of Rfid Tags To Withstand Distribution Of Fresh Produce In The Rpc Pooling System, Jay A. Singh, S. P. Singh, K. Desautels, K. Saha, E. Olsen

Industrial Technology and Packaging

This study focused on the ability of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags applied on reusable plastic containers (RPCs) to withstand repeated abuse due to physical distribution and storage environment related hazards. It also studied the effect of the chemical cleaning environments that RPCs are commonly exposed to in the pooling/rental systems commonly used to distribute fresh produce. RPCs are being successfully deployed in the US, Europe and Asia to ship fresh produce from growers to retailers. The increasing demand for traceability and tracking of fresh produce from ‘farm to fork’ requires these containers to be monitored and identified in the …

Laser Clean Room Re-Design: A Manufacturing Facility Re-Layout, Jennifer J. Siu

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Alcon’s Laser Clean Room fosters inefficient production practices, is outdated for its current process, and lacking in clear process/product flow. A facility re-design is applied to bring order, efficiency, and optimize flow in the laser production lines.

Deliverables include a new layout that decreases product travel distances and increases productivity as well as an implementation plan and cost/savings analysis. Major design decisions include downsizing the clean room, sorting to find waste and establishing clear process/product flows. The design was implemented within three weeks and results yield 29% reduction of product travel distance, 10.4 hrs/day saved from eliminated gowning time and …

Cable Time Estimation Database, Joshua L. Okerman

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The use of time standards are the basis for a high efficiency system in the manufacturing environment. This project will investigate the process followed to design and develop a database used to calculate accurate cable assembly time standards used for scheduling at General Atomics. This project will then justify the use of the Cable Time Estimation Database, through an economic analysis compared to the current methods applied.

Assessing Living Arrangements In Residential Halls, Romel Penaflor Auza

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Hundreds of thousands of high school graduates head off to college each fall not knowing the environment they'll be living in for the next four years. The factors that predict success in the academic, social, and personal aspect of these freshmen students' lives revolves around one aspect that is often times overlooked. Freshmen students are subjected to the fast paced lifestyle of college and often times they need to feel “at home”. Their personal space becomes a matter that is important to them in relation to their success in the three aspects of academic success, social integration, and personal health. …

Preference Driven University Course Scheduling System, Heather A. Bellardo

Master's Theses

University course planning and scheduling is the process of determining what courses to offer, how many sections are needed, determining the best term to offer each section, assigning a faculty member to instruct each section, and scheduling each section to a timeslot to avoid conflicts. The result of this task has an impact on every student and faculty member in the department. The process is typically broken down into three major phases: course offering planning, faculty assignment to planned course sections, and course scheduling into timeslots.

This thesis looks at each of these phases for the Industrial and Manufacturing department …

An Analysis Of Extreme Price Shocks And Illiquidity Among Systematic Trend Followers, Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We construct an agent-based model to study the interplay between extreme price shocks and illiquidity in the presence of systematic traders known as trend followers. The agent-based approach is particularly attractive in modeling commodity markets because the approach allows for the explicit modeling of production, capacities, and storage constraints. Our study begins by using the price stream from a market simulation involving human participants and studies the behavior of various trend-following strategies, assuming initially that their participation will not impact the market. We notice an incremental deterioration in strategy performance as and when strategies deviate further and further from the …

Anytime Planning For Decentralized Pomdps Using Expectation Maximization, Akshat Kumar, Shlomo Zilberstein

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Decentralized POMDPs provide an expressive framework for multi-agent sequential decision making. While finite-horizon DECPOMDPs have enjoyed signifcant success, progress remains slow for the infinite-horizon case mainly due to the inherent complexity of optimizing stochastic controllers representing agent policies. We present a promising new class of algorithms for the infinite-horizon case, which recasts the optimization problem as inference in a mixture of DBNs. An attractive feature of this approach is the straightforward adoption of existing inference techniques in DBNs for solving DEC-POMDPs and supporting richer representations such as factored or continuous states and actions. We also derive the Expectation Maximization (EM) …

The Floating Contract Between Risk-Averse Supply Chain Partners In A Volatile Commodity Price Environment, Mojisola Kike Otegbeye

Dissertations

In this dissertation, two separate but closely related decision making problems in environments of volatile commodity prices are addressed. In the first problem, a risk-averse commodity user's purchasing policy and his risk-neutral supplier's pricing decision, where the user can purchase his needs through contract with his supplier as well as directly from the spot market, are analyzed. The commodity user is assumed to be the supplier's sole client, and the supplier can always expand capacity, at a cost to the user, to accommodate the user's demand in excess of initially reserved capacity.

In the more generalized second problem, both parties …

An Active Study Of A Roller Coaster Project In Asia., Robert Leamon Bridges

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A roller coaster manufacturer became aware that improperly heat treated track couplings were sent to a construction site for assembly. Concerns were that suspect couplings might not meet the engineering specifications and could be vulnerable to sudden failure. A testing company in Oak Ridge, TN that specializes in in-situ and laboratory mechanical testing was contacted by the manufacturer for help in this endeavor. The construction company elected to enlist a local testing firm to perform field tests on the components instead of the company in Oak Ridge. The test methods used are incapable of providing quantitative results that could be …

A Safeguards Design Strategy For Domestic Nuclear Materials Processing Facilities., Jonathan Long

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The outdated and oversized nuclear manufacturing complex within the United States requires its transformation into a smaller, safe, and secure enterprise. Health and safety risks, environmental concerns, and the end of the Cold War have all contributed to this necessity. The events of September 11, 2001, emphasized the protection requirements for nuclear materials within the U.S. as well as abroad.

Current Nuclear Safeguards regulations contain minimal prescriptive requirements relating to the design of new production facilities. Project management and engineering design guides require that design documents contain specific and measureable statements relating to systems requirements. The systems engineering process evaluates …

Acuta Enews May 2010, Vol 39, No. 5

ACUTA Newsletters

ln This lssue

Report from Annual Conference in San Antonio

From ACUTA Headquarters: Expanded ACUTA Benefits Jeri A. Semer, CAE, Executive Dir.

Hurricane Preparedness Checklist

Tech Talk: A Different Way of Measuring Value of Unified Communications....... Kevin Tonzillo, Dux PR

See the Conference on Your Desktop

DC Update ................Dove Ostrom, Washington State Univ. (retired)

ACUTA Alert: Write Your Senators to Urge Passage of IRS/Cell Phone Legislation

Dues lnvoices Mailed May 1

Washington Update Newsletter

lnfo Links ............ Randy Hayes, Univ. of Northern lowa

Another Great Conference, More Terrific Prizes!

Board Report ......... George Denbow, Univ. of Texas, Austin

New Members …

'Transfer Effect Study Of A Virtual Borescope In Training Aircraft Maintenance Technicians', Melissa Dorlette Paul

All Theses

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has acknowledged training as an important tactic to improve the trustworthiness of inspection. This study was conducted to test the transfer of the skills learned with a simulator into the real world. For this purpose, data from seventeen students in the AMT program of Greenville Technical College was analyzed. Objective data was taken to assess the group's performance on the simulator after each session of training. The comparison between two groups was made using objective data, collected while the subjects went through a test on a real engine and using the real borescope, and subjective …