Voltage characteristic as a parameter for surge arrester diagnosing

An alternative method for field MOV surge arresters diagnosing was observed, the controlled characteristic was the surge voltage of a gap arrester. The condenser that was connected in series with gap arrester was applied as voltage measurement sensor. Electrical aging of active elements (MOV), surge arrester insulation degradation and other types of electric faults causes to voltage increase at capacitor. The voltage value can be measured directly or the energy stored in capacitor can be transformed to electromagnetic signal and, then, registered remotely by specific radio transceiver. The capacitor connected in series with the surge arrester can also be used for leakage current limitation during all the life period of surge arrester. Shunted with a spark gap and presented as the low-current gap arrester with pre-sated discharge voltage glass (porcelain) pin-cap insulator can be the simplest, but reliable sensor. Taking into consideration modern technologies the surge arrester statement continuous monitoring system can be designed. It also allows locating the place of damaged arrester that is particularly true for remote maintenance of equipped with surge protection devices electrical

Advances in Spatially Faithful (3D) Telepresence

Benefits of AR technologies have been well proven in collaborative industrial applications, for example in remote maintenance and consultancy. Benefits may also be high in telepresence applications, where virtual and mixed reality (nowadays often referred as extended reality, XR) technologies are used for sharing information or objects over network. Since the 90’s, technical enablers for advanced telepresence solutions have developed considerably. At the same time, the importance of remote technologies has grown immensely due to general disruption of work, demands for reducing travelling and CO2, and the need for preventing pandemics. An advanced 3D telepresence solution benefits from using XR technologies. Particularly interesting are solutions based on HMD or glasses type of near-eye-displays (NED). However, as AR/VR glasses supporting natural occlusions and accommodation are still missing from the market, a good alternative is to use screen displays in new ways, better supporting e.g. virtual meeting geometries and other important cues for 3D perception. In this article, researchers Seppo Valli, Mika Hakkarainen, and Pekka Siltanen from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland describe the status, challenges, and opportunities in both glasses and screen based 3D telepresence. The writers also specify an affordable screen based solution with improved immersiveness, naturalness, and efficiency, enhanced by applying XR technologies.

Digital Transformation of the Service Sector

The article is devoted to the problems of digital transformation of companies in the service sector. The article describes the concepts of "digitization", "digitalization", "digital transformation", "automation". The analysis of the main sectors of the public services sector, the processes of transformation into a new business model of their development is carried out. Specific examples show the role of digital technologies implemented by individual companies, the leaders of their industry: "Internet of Things" (IoT); virtual diagnostics of the service; mobile applications and portals; artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI / ML); remote maintenance; UX design; virtual reality; cloud technologies; online services and others. The authors proceed from understanding the difference between automation and digitalization, the strategic goal of which is to create a new digital business model that creates new value. The result of digital transformation is the reconfiguration of processes that change the business logic of the company and the process of creating value. The article concludes that the rapid development of new technologies leads to the fact that companies face not only a dilemma when choosing the most suitable technologies for investment, but also the problem of staffing and finding an adequate organizational structure to create and maintain a new business model of the company.

Exploring Effects of Information Filtering With a VR Interface for Multi-Robot Supervision

Supervising and controlling remote robot systems currently requires many specialised operators to have knowledge of the internal state of the system in addition to the environment. For applications such as remote maintenance of future nuclear fusion reactors, the number of robots (and hence supervisors) required to maintain or decommission a facility is too large to be financially feasible. To address this issue, this work explores the idea of intelligently filtering information so that a single user can supervise multiple robots safely. We gathered feedback from participants using five methods for teleoperating a semi-autonomous multi-robot system via Virtual Reality (VR). We present a novel 3D interaction method to filter the displayed information to allow the user to read information from the environment without being overwhelmed. The novelty of the interface design is the link between Semantic and Spatial filtering and the hierarchical information contained within the multi robot system. We conducted a user study including a cohort of expert robot teleoperators comparing these methods; highlighting the significant effects of 3D interface design on the performance and perceived workload of a user teleoperating many robot agents in complex environments. The results from this experiment and subjective user feedback will inform future investigations that build upon this initial work.

Удаленное сопровождение и модернизация программно-технических комплексов для испытаний авиационных двигателей

The introductory part of the article provides information that JSC "Element" is one of the leading enterprises of Ukraine in the scientific and technical direction "Electronic systems for measuring, monitoring parameters and aircraft engine control". As a result of cooperation between the team of Element JSC and a number of divisions of Motor Sich JSC, software and hardware complexes (SHC) were developed to automate the technological processes of bench tests of aircraft engines. For 15 years, about 20 such SHCs have been supplied to Motor Sich JSC and other enterprises. An important task of Element JSC was to provide support for its hardware and software complexes, to promptly resolve issues related to their performance and modernization as new requirements and technological processes emerge. The SHC Polygon became the main tool in solving these problems. The description of the SHC Polygon is given, which is a functionally standard SHC, but with a reduced composition of measuring modules. The SHC polygon consists of two hierarchical levels: lower and upper. The upper level of the PTK Polygon is a device for communication with the object, the main tasks of which are the transformation of parameters coming from the sensors and the primary processing of information, control of technological operations, and emergency protection of the engine. The upper level is two workstations that display information and provide interaction between the operator and the system. The Polygon SHC includes a software product (SP) operating in the environment of the QNX 4.25 real-time operating system. The main feature of the SHC Polygon is the ability to launch the SP of any of the developed SHC, adapted to work with the existing set of measuring modules. A list of the most frequently performed works in the course of post-warranty maintenance of the hardware and software complex, including the introduction of new technological operations and algorithms, is given. It is noted that the SHC Polygon turned out to be a successful solution for remote support of aircraft engine tests at the stands of Motor Sich JSC. It allows you to solve most of the problems identified in the operation of the equipment of test stands and hardware and software systems, and also provides modernization and refinement of algorithms without specialists visiting the site. The possibility of remote maintenance of the SHC is especially important in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and quarantine restrictions in Ukraine.

LIBRARY ONLINE SERVICES DURING COVID-19: THE EXPERIENCE OF LIBRARIES IN CROATIA AND UKRAINE

The purpose of the article is to identify activities in providing online services during forced quarantine on the example of public libraries’ activities in Croatia and university libraries in Ukraine. The study aimed to identify, analyse, and characterise online services offered by libraries to establish remote customer service during the forced quarantine. The results of the study are presented in three sections. The first analyses the work of Croatian public libraries; the second, presents the experience of Ukrainian libraries; in the third, there is the case of the Scientific Library of Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts is displayed. The scientific novelty of the article is to identify practices for providing online services by libraries in Croatia and Ukraine during the COVID‑19 pandemic. The study shows that Croatian public librarians, as well as Ukrainian librarians, have demonstrated they can quickly adapt and use digital technologies on behalf of their supporters. Libraries went from developing imaginative practices to create online spaces in a matter of weeks. The result was a massive amount of produced content like workshops for children and adults; streamings of online events, organisation of virtual exhibitions, and collecting verified reference sources for research and learning. Another one of the impacts of this crisis was the accelerated development of digital library services, including online membership registration and the acquisition of e-books by public libraries. Public response was more significant than ever, including following, commenting, and sharing digital content created or shared by public libraries. The study found that the challenges of the COVID‑19 pandemic have intensified the digitisation of Ukrainian libraries and led to changes in activities. University libraries quickly adapted to remote work, offering their users a variety of remote services. The authors hope that the considered practices will contribute to disseminating better experience of libraries during quarantine in general and online services in remote maintenance in particular.

Embedded e-maintenance for an FPGA-based reconfigurable system

In recent years with the use of Internet Technologies e-Maintenance systems for remote connectivity, performance monitoring and diagnostics were introduced. As reconfigurable system based on FPGAs are becoming more and more popular due to their low time-to-market and reprogrammable feature, new possibilities for e-Maintenance are opened allowing remote repair of the system by sending new firmware via Internet for reconfiguration of FPGA. Up until recently programming of FPGA has been a complicated hardware design process. However, as FPGAs were evolving, their reconfiguration time was significantly reduced and partial reconfiguration became available, application programming into FPGA can be simplified as presented in [1]. This method is based on temporal partitioning of FPGA and periodically reloading it with segments of application for different tasks. This allows utilization of smaller and thus much cheaper FPGA and also simplifies the programming. With the help of e-Maintenance the whole system can be dynamically reconfigured. Remote programmer can perform partial reconfiguration, close the physical location in FPGA for reconfiguration and upgrade different segments. In this project a research of remote maintenance and reconfigurable systems is conducted and e-Maintenance system is developed for an FPGA-based platform.