Digital Commons Network^™

Development And Test Of An Open Source Autonomous Sailing Robot With Accessibility, Generality And Extendability, U Vautier, J Wan, M Dai, C Viel, R Hone

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

This paper introduces the design of an open source autonomous sailing robot with emphasis on its accessibility, generality and extendability. To meet such requirements, a generic control box connecting an Arduino board and a Raspberry Pi computer was tailor-made so as to host the robot operating system (ROS) and to interact with versatile sensors and actuators. The goal of such a project is to create an accessible, generic and expendable platform of autonomous sailboats for wider education and research publicity and engagement. Autonomous sailing test for the developed sailboat was also conducted to validate its design.

Comparative Study Of Stirrup-Confined Circular Concrete-Filled Steel Tubular Stub Columns Under Axial Loading, Fa Xing Ding, Jiang Zhu, Shan Shan Cheng, Xuemei Liu

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd This paper presents a comparative study of circular concrete-filled steel tubular stub columns with three different stirrup confinement types: bidirectional stirrups, loop stirrups and orthogonal stirrups. Axial compression tests have been carried out aiming at investigating the effects of the stirrup form and volume-stirrup ratio on the mechanical behavior of the stirrup-confined circular CFT stub columns, and ABAQUS was used to carry out the 3D numerical modelling. Radial stress of the core concrete and the composite action among the steel tube, stirrups and the core concrete have been investigated. It is found that the confinement provided …

Assessing The Size Of A Twin-Cylinder Wave Energy Converter Designed For Real Sea-States, Dali Xu, Raphael Stuhlmeier, Michael Stiassnie

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Finite-Time Observer Based Guidance And Control Of Underactuated Surface Vehicles With Unknown Sideslip Angles And Disturbances, Ning Wang, Zhuo Sun, Jianchuan Yin, Shun Feng Su, Sanjay Sharma

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Pseudo-Static Tests Of Terminal Stirrup-Confined Concrete-Filled Rectangular Steel Tubular Columns, Fa Xing Ding, Liang Luo, Liping Wang, Shanshan Cheng, Zhi Wu Yu

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd This paper mainly presents a pseudo-static test program on 12 terminal stirrup-confined square concrete-filled steel tube (SCFT) columns and 14 rectangular SCFT columns under constant axial pressure. The effects of various factors on the hysteretic behavior of specimens are investigated. These factors include with or without stirrups, height of terminal stirrup region, equivalent stirrup ratio, stirrup form, loading direction, height-length ratio (L/B), length-width ratio (B/D), axial compression ratio (n) and sliding support. The failure mode, strain ratio, hysteretic curve, skeleton curve, ultimate bearing capacity, ductility, stiffness degradation, energy dissipation, as well as the residual deformation of …

Towards Bayesian-Based Trust Management For Insider Attacks In Healthcare Software-Defined Networks, W Meng, K-Kr Choo, S Furnell, Av Vasilakos, Cw Probst

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

The medical industry is increasingly digitalized and Internet-connected (e.g., Internet of Medical Things), and when deployed in an Internet of Medical Things environment, software-defined networks (SDNs) allow the decoupling of network control from the data plane. There is no debate among security experts that the security of Internet-enabled medical devices is crucial, and an ongoing threat vector is insider attacks. In this paper, we focus on the identification of insider attacks in healthcare SDNs. Specifically, we survey stakeholders from 12 healthcare organizations (i.e., two hospitals and two clinics in Hong Kong, two hospitals and two clinics in Singapore, and two …

Wec Design Based On Refined Mean Annual Energy Production For The Israeli Mediterranean Coast, Raphael Stuhlmeier, Dali Xu

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

The Extended Ramp Model: A Biomimetic Model Of Behaviour Arbitration For Lightweight Cognitive Architectures, Se Gaudl, Jj Bryson

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Rapid Game Jams With Fluidic Games: A User Study & Design Methodology, Se Gaudl, Mj Nelson, S Colton, R Saunders, Ej Powley, Ferrer B Pérez, P Ivey, M Cook

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Posh-Sharp: A Lightweight Toolkit For Creating Cognitive Agents, Se Gaudl

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

Agent design is an intricate process requiring skills from different disciplines. Thus experts in one domain are not necessarily experts in the others. Supporting the design of agents is important and needs to address varying skill and expertise as well as varying handling the design of complex agents. In this paper, a new agent design toolkit –POSH-SHARP– for intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and cognitive embodied agents is presented. It was designed to address the need for a robust agent development framework in highly restrictive environments such as the web or smartphones while being useful to both novice and expert users. …

Emotions Predict Policy Support: Why It Matters How People Feel About Climate Change, Susie Wang, Zoe Leviston

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Current research shows that emotions can motivate climate engagement and action, but precisely how has received scant attention. We propose that strong emotional responses to climate change result from perceiving one's “objects of care” as threatened by climate change, which motivates caring about climate change itself, and in turn predicts behaviour. In two studies, we find that climate scientists (N = 44) experience greater emotional intensity about climate change than do students (N = 94) and the general population (N = 205), and that patterns of emotional responses explain differences in support for climate change policy. Scientists tied their emotional …

Guidelines And Considerations For The Use Of System Suitability And Quality Control Samples In Mass Spectrometry Assays Applied In Untargeted Clinical Metabolomic Studies, David Broadhurst, Royston Goodacre, Stacey N. Reinke, Julia Kuligowski, Ian Wilson, Matthew Lewis, Warwick Dunn

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Background

Quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are two quality management processes that are integral to the success of metabolomics including their application for the acquisition of high quality data in any high-throughput analytical chemistry laboratory. QA defines all the planned and systematic activities implemented before samples are collected, to provide confidence that a subsequent analytical process will fulfil predetermined requirements for quality. QC can be defined as the operational techniques and activities used to measure and report these quality requirements after data acquisition.

Aim of review

This tutorial review will guide the reader through the use of system …

Evaluation Of Heavy- And Medium-Duty On-Road Vehicle Emissions In California's South Coast Air Basin, Molly J. Haugen, Gary A. Bishop, Arvind Thiruvengadam, Daniel K. Carder

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

Emission measurements were collected from heavy-duty (HDVs) and medium-duty vehicles (MDVs) at the Peralta weigh station long-term measurement site near Anaheim, CA in 2017. Two Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test units sampled elevated and ground-level exhaust vehicles totaling 2,315 measurements. HDVs (1844 measurements) exhibited historical reductions in fuel specific oxides of nitrogen (NO_x) from the 2008 measurements (55%) with increased use of exhaust gas recirculation and selective catalytic reduction systems. However, as these technologies have aged, the in-use benefits have declined. Infrared %opacity measurements of tailpipe soot decreased 14% since 2012 with increased diesel particulate filter (DPF) use, DPF …

Theoretical And Empirical Differences Between Diagonal And Full Bekk For Risk Management, David E. Allen, Michael Mcaleer

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The purpose of the paper is to explore the relative biases in the estimation of the Full BEKK model as compared with the Diagonal BEKK model, which is used as a theoretical and empirical benchmark. Chang and McAleer et al., 2017 show that univariate GARCH is not a special case of multivariate GARCH, specifically, the Full BEKK model, and demonstrate that Full BEKK, which, in practice, is estimated almost exclusively, has no underlying stochastic process, regularity conditions, or asymptotic properties. Diagonal BEKK (DBEKK) does not suffer from these limitations, and hence provides a suitable benchmark. We use simulated financial returns …

The Story Of Ever Diminishing Vehicle Tailpipe Emissions As Observed In The Chicago, Il Area, Gary A. Bishop, Molly J. Haugen

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

The University of Denver has collected on-road fuel specific vehicle emissions measurements in the Chicago area since 1989. This nearly 30 year record illustrates the large reductions in light-duty vehicle tailpipe emissions and the remarkable improvements in emissions control durability to maintain low emissions over increasing periods of time. Since 1989 fuel specific carbon monoxide (CO) emissions have been reduced by an order of magnitude and hydrocarbon (HC) emissions by more than a factor of 20. Nitric oxide (NO) emissions have only been collected since 1997 but have seen reductions of 79%. This has increased the skewness of the emissions …

Revisit Lynwood, Ca: On-Road Remote Sensing Of Automobile Emissions In The Lynwood, Ca: 2018, Gary A. Bishop

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of Emissions Benefits Of Federal Reformulated Gasoline Versus Conventional Gasoline, Gary A. Bishop, S. Kent Hoekman, Amber Broch

Fuel Efficiency Automobile Test Publications

No abstract provided.

Bayesian Operational Modal Analysis Of Offshore Rock Lighthouses For Shm, Jmw Brownjohn, Sk Au, X Wang, Z Zhu, A Raby, A Antonini

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

During 2016 and 2017 a program of field vibration measurements was made on a set of Victorian era granite lighthouse towers around the British Isles. The field tests were designed for structural identification to enable condition assessment and identification of extreme wave loads through long term monitoring. The primary test method was forced vibration, and ambient vibration measurements was used as a backup. The best operational modal analysis (OMA) results were obtained using Bayesian OMA, which provide a clear picture of the directionality of the mode shapes which appeared at very close frequencies due to the symmetry of the towers. …

A Distributed Service Delivery Platform For Automotive Environments: Enhancing Communication Capabilities Of An M2m Service Platform For Automotive Application, Markus Glaab

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The automotive domain is changing. On the way to more convenient, safe, and efficient vehicles, the role of electronic controllers and particularly software has increased significantly for many years, and vehicles have become software-intensive systems. Furthermore, vehicles are connected to the Internet to enable Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and enhanced In-Vehicle Infotainment functionalities. This widens the automotive software and system landscape beyond the physical vehicle boundaries to presently include as well external backend servers in the cloud. Moreover, the connectivity facilitates new kinds of distributed functionalities, making the vehicle a part of an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) and thus an …

Automated Identification Of Digital Evidence Across Heterogeneous Data Resources, Hussam J Mohammed

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Digital forensics has become an increasingly important tool in the fight against cyber and computer-assisted crime. However, with an increasing range of technologies at people’s disposal, investigators find themselves having to process and analyse many systems with large volumes of data (e.g., PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones) within a single case. Unfortunately, current digital forensic tools operate in an isolated manner, investigating systems and applications individually. The heterogeneity and volume of evidence place time constraints and a significant burden on investigators. Examples of heterogeneity include applications such as messaging (e.g., iMessenger, Viber, Snapchat, and WhatsApp), web browsers (e.g., Firefox and …

Laser Light Interaction And Their Influence On Dna And Cell Under In Vitro Conditions, Ruwaidah Abdulameer Mussttaf

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Laser photobiomodulation (PBM) or low-level laser therapy (LLLT) is a form of phototherapy recognized worldwide for its expansive use in medicine. PBM/LLLT has the ability to enhance enzymatic activity and mitochondrial transmembrane potential that increase the availability of energy and the signal transduction, which promotes cell proliferation. This study primarily investigates the appropriateness of a range of treatment parameters, including light wavelength, irradiance (doses) and exposure time of PBM/LLLT in proliferation of cultured human monocytic leukaemia cell line THP-1(Tamm-Horsfall Protein 1), as well as DNA under in vitro conditions. A secondary objective was to exploit the beneficial effect of PBM/LLLT …

An Enhanced Teaching Interface For A Robot Using Dmp And Gmr, Chunxu Li, Chenguang Yang, Zhaojie Ju, Andy S.K. Annamalai

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Development Of Writing Task Recombination Technology Based On Dmp Segmentation Via Verbal Command For Baxter Robot, C Li, Chenguang Yang, Andy Annamalai, Qingsong Xu, S Li

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

On Lowering The Error Floor Of Short-To-Medium Block Length Irregular Low Density Parity Check Codes, Umar-Faruk Abdu-Aguye

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Gallager proposed and developed low density parity check (LDPC) codes in the early 1960s. LDPC codes were rediscovered in the early 1990s and shown to be capacity approaching over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Subsequently, density evolution (DE) optimized symbol node degree distributions were used to significantly improve the decoding performance of short to medium length irregular LDPC codes. Currently, the short to medium length LDPC codes with the lowest error floor are DE optimized irregular LDPC codes constructed using progressive edge growth (PEG) algorithm modifications which are designed to increase the approximate cycle extrinsic message degrees (ACE) …

Continuous Identity Verification In Cloud Computing Services, Burhan Mollan Salih Al-Bayati

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Cloud computing has become a hugely popular new paradigm for hosting and delivering services over the internet for individuals and organisations with low cost. However, security is a sensitive issue in cloud computing, as it its services remain accessible to anyone after initial authenticated login and for significant periods. This has led to an increase in the number of attacks on sensitive cus-tomer information. This research identified biometric approaches as a possible solution for security to be maintained beyond the point of entry. Specifically, behaviour profiling has been proposed and applied across various other applications in the area of Transparent …

A Developmental Model Of Trust In Humanoid Robots, Massimiliano Patacchiola

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Trust between humans and artificial systems has recently received increased attention due to the widespread use of autonomous systems in our society. In this context trust plays a dual role. On the one hand it is necessary to build robots that are perceived as trustworthy by humans. On the other hand we need to give to those robots the ability to discriminate between reliable and unreliable informants. This thesis focused on the second problem, presenting an interdisciplinary investigation of trust, in particular a computational model based on neuroscientific and psychological assumptions. First of all, the use of Bayesian networks for …

Contributions To Converters In Single Phase Distributed Photovoltaic Systems, Ali Hussein Abduljabbar Al-Omari

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

This thesis contributes to improve the photovoltaic Distributed Generation (DG) systems by proposing three novel methods to the system. On DC conversion side, a new integrated magnetic structure for interleaved converter and a new method to calculate the eddy current and hysteresis losses in the magnetic core were proposed. On inversion side, A new synchronisation method for grid tie inverters was suggested. The technique is using the Recursive Discrete Fourier Transform (RDFT) to find fundamental in grid waveform. On the DC converter side, the benefits of the new structure is to produce magnetic flux that alternate in the core across …

Stochastic Evolutionary-Based Optimization For Rapid Diagnosis And Energy-Saving In Pilot- And Full-Scale Carrousel Oxidation Ditches, L. Li, L. Lei, M. S. Zheng, A. G.L. Borthwick, J. R. Ni

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Spatiotemporal Variations In Vegetation Cover On The Loess Plateau, China, Between 1982 And 2013: Possible Causes And Potential Impacts, Dongxian Kong, Chiyuan Miao, Alistair G.L. Borthwick, Xiaohui Lei, Hu Li

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

No abstract provided.

Approximate Solutions For Ideal Dam‐Break Sediment‐Laden Flows On Uniform Slopes, Yufang Ni, Zhixian Cao, Alistair Borthwick, Qingquan Liu

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

AbstractShallow water hydro‐sediment‐morphodynamic (SHSM) models have been applied increasingly widely in hydraulic engineering and geomorphological studies over the past few decades. Analytical and approximate solutions are usually sought to verify such models and therefore confirm their credibility. Dam‐break flows are often evoked because such flows normally feature shock waves and contact discontinuities that warrant refined numerical schemes to solve. While analytical and approximate solutions to clear‐water dam‐break flows have been available for some time, such solutions are rare for sediment transport in dam‐break flows. Here we aim to derive approximate solutions for ideal dam‐break sediment‐laden flows resulting from the sudden …