The Evaluation of Expanded Uncertainty of DC Voltages in the Presence of Electromagnetic Interferences using the LabVIEW Environment

The paper presents a possible application of integrated LabVIEW environment to the final evaluation of measurement results in direct measurement. The possibilities of presenting and visualizing the uncertainty of measurement results in a convenient and user-friendly form are also discussed. The topics discussed in the paper were presented using a developed application in LabVIEW. The paper discusses the topic of measurement of direct voltages in the presence of strong electromagnetic interferences. These problems are frequently omitted or hardly emphasized. It presents a suitable measuring system, a virtual measuring instrument created in the LabVIEW environment, and the results of tests carried out for an example NI PCI-6221 data acquisition board. The described approach can be applied also in other measurement situations.

Development of a Didactic Educational Tool for Learning Fuzzy Control Systems

This paper presents the development of a virtual didactic tool for students of mechatronic engineering taking an intelligent system course. The objective of the tool is for students to learn the structures for fuzzy control systems. This tool makes it easier for students to understand the behavior of the membership functions of input and output variables, the evaluation of the set of fuzzy rules, and the method of defuzzification, giving the students the possibility of applying a fuzzy controller in industrial processes using a data acquisition board. The proposed tool was developed with the virtual instrumentation software LabVIEW. It has the advantage that students can manipulate the internal structure of the fuzzy logic control system in a unique window where students can analyze the behavior of internal signals by looking at the response graphs. The fuzzy controller can be easily translated to a real application by using LabVIEW compatible hardware. To have feedback from students on the use of the tool and to understand if this tool allows an improvement in their academic performance, a 2-hour workshop on the proposed application was given to a group of 93 students. At the end of the workshop, a knowledge assessment and a perception survey were applied to the participants. The academic performance achieved by students who were given the workshop using the proposed teaching tool was compared with the academic performance of students who witnessed the workshop using Matlab tools. The statistical analysis of the results obtained for the knowledge assessment shows that the students that had taken the workshop using the proposed teaching tool had better compression of the topic compared to the students that had taken the workshop using the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox provided by Matlab MathWorks. The students that had taken the workshop using the proposed teaching tool obtained a mean grade of 89.63/100, while students that had taken the workshop using Matlab’s tools obtained a mean grade of 69.85/100. Also, the students’ perception of the proposed tool was that it allowed the design of fuzzy control systems in a simple and intuitive way.

A Comprehensive Design of Six-Axis Force/Moment Sensor

Strain gage type six-axis force/moment (F/M) sensors have been largely studied and implemented in industrial applications by using an external data acquisition board (DAQ). The use of external DAQs will ill-affect accuracy and crosstalk due to the possibility of voltage drop through the wire length. The most recent research incorporated DAQ within a relatively small F/M sensor, but only for sensors of the capacitance and optical types. This research establishes the integration of a high-efficiency DAQ on six-axis F/M sensor with a revolutionary arrangement of 32 strain gages. The updated structural design was optimized using the sequential quadratic programming method and validated using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). A new, integrated DAQ system was designed, tested, and compared to commercial DAQ systems. The proposed six-axis F/M sensor was examined with the calibrated jig. The results show that the measurement error and crosstalk have been significantly reduced to 1.15% and 0.68%, respectively, the best published combination at this moment.

Calling songs of Neotropical katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) from Panama

Understanding the ecology and evolution of animal communication systems requires detailed data on signal structure and variation across species. Here, we describe the male acoustic signals of 50 species of Neotropical katydids (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) from Panama, with the goal of providing data and recordings for future research on katydid communication, evolution, ecology, and conservation. Male katydids were recorded individually using an ultrasound-sensitive microphone and high-sampling rate data acquisition board to capture both audible and ultrasonic components of calls. Calls varied enormously in duration, temporal patterning, peak frequency, and bandwidth both across and within subfamilies. We confirm previous studies showing that katydid species within the subfamily Pseudophyllinae produced short calls (<250 ms) at long intervals and we confirm that this is true for species in the subfamily Phaneropterinae as well. Species in the Conocephalinae, on the other hand, typically produced highly repetitive calls over longer periods of time. However, there were exceptions to this pattern, with a few species in the Conocephalinae producing very short calls at long intervals, and some species in the Phaneropterinae producing relatively long calls (1–6 s) or calling frequently. Our results also confirm previous studies showing a relationship between katydid size and the peak frequency of the call, with smaller katydids producing higher frequency calls, but the slope of this relationship differed with subfamily. We discuss the value of documenting the diversity in katydid calls for both basic studies on the ecology, evolution, and behavior of these species as well as the potential conservation benefits for bioacoustics monitoring programs.

Wireless, miniaturized, semi-implantable electrocorticography microsystem validated in vivo

This paper reports on the design, development, and test of a multi-channel wireless micro-electrocorticography (µECoG) system. The system consists of a semi-implantable, ultra-compact recording unit and an external unit, interfaced through a 2.4 GHz radio frequency data telemetry link with 2 Mbps (partially used) data transfer rate. Encased in a 3D-printed 2.9 cm × 2.9 cm × 2.5 cm cubic package, the semi-implantable recording unit consists of a microelectrode array, a vertically-stacked PCB platform containing off-the-shelf components, and commercially-available small-size 3.7-V, 50 mAh lithium-ion batteries. Two versions of microelectrode array were developed for the recording unit: a rigid 4 × 2 microelectrode array, and a flexible 12 × 6 microelectrode array, 36 of which routed to bonding pads for actual recording. The external unit comprises a transceiver board, a data acquisition board, and a host computer, on which reconstruction of the received signals is performed. After development, assembly, and integration, the system was tested and validated in vivo on anesthetized rats. The system successfully recorded both spontaneous and evoked activities from the brain of the subject.

Developing a Stand for Evaluating Technical Condition of Volumetric Hydraulic Drives with a Hydraulic Loading Device

Introduction. The article deals with the development of a device for evaluating technical condition on of volumetric hydraulic drives made in Russia and abroad at repair and service centres. Materials and Methods. The study uses the statements of theoretical mechanics and hydrodynamics, the basic principles of mechanisms and machines production. For technical condition evaluating of volumetric hydraulic drives, the method of hydraulic loading of hydraulic motor was applied. Reliability of results was confirmed during experimental settings of the hydraulic loading device stand. Results. A stand design with the hydraulic loading device was developed and put into practice for new technical condition evaluating of volumetric hydraulic drives, made in Russia and abroad, at repair and service centres. A property of the stand is the use of the hydraulic loading method when the torque (braking) moment on the shaft of the tested hydraulic rotor is created using a hydraulic machine. The stand consists of data processing and measurement units. The data processing unit is based on a multifunctional data acquisition board connected with a personal computer. The structure of the data measurement unit includes a frequency converter connected to an electric motor, a drive shaft for connecting the shaft of the tested hydraulic pump; hydraulic system having a hydraulic tank; suction, control, drain, and discharge lines and reversible flow chokes installed in discharge lines and connected with the hydraulic pump and hydraulic rotor; loading device with the reversible hydraulic pump, drive shaft joined with the shaft of the tested hydraulic motor. Additionally, reversible throttle flow meters are connected via special ports and electric lines to the data acquisition board. The developed stand allows evaluating the technical condition of most widespread models of volumetric hydraulic drives used in modern agricultural and road construction equipment. The stand is characterized by good energy efficiency, simplicity of design, low costs, good technical characteristics that make it competitive. Discussion and Conclusion. The new stand design with the hydraulic loading device allows implementating of the dynamic testing methodology and guarantees high accuracy of evaluating the technical condition of the most widespread Russian and foreign volumetric hydraulic drives at repair and service centres. Further improvement of the evaluating the technical condition of volumetric hydraulic drives is related to the development of specialized software for processing and analysing test results in real-time.

Development of a distributed hybrid seismic–electrical data acquisition system based on the Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology

The ambiguity of geophysical inversions, which is based on a single geophysical method, is a long-standing problem in geophysical exploration. Therefore, multi-method geophysical prospecting has become a popular topic. In multi-method geophysical prospecting, the joint inversion of seismic and electric data has been extensively researched for decades. However, the methods used for hybrid seismic–electric data acquisition that form the base for multi-method geophysical prospecting techniques have not yet been explored in detail. In this work, we developed a distributed, high-precision, hybrid seismic–electrical data acquisition system using advanced Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology. The system was equipped with a hybrid data acquisition board, a high-performance embedded motherboard based on field-programmable gate array, an advanced RISC machine, and host software. The data acquisition board used an ADS1278 24 bit analog-to-digital converter and FPGA-based digital filtering techniques to perform high-precision data acquisition. The equivalent input noise of the data acquisition board was only 0.5 µV with a sampling rate of 1000 samples per second and front-end gain of 40 dB. The multiple data acquisition stations of our system were synchronized using oven-controlled crystal oscillators and global positioning system technologies. Consequently, the clock frequency error of the system was less than 10−9 Hz at 1 Hz after calibration, and the synchronization accuracy of the data acquisition stations was ±200 ns. The use of sophisticated NB-IoT technologies allowed the long-distance wireless communication between the control center and the data acquisition stations. In validation experiments, it was found that our system was operationally stable and reliable, produced highly accurate data, and it was functionally flexible and convenient. Furthermore, using this system, it is also possible to monitor the real-time quality of data acquisition processes. We believe that the results obtained in this study will drive the advancement of prospective integrated seismic–electrical technologies and promote the use of IoT technologies in geophysical instrumentation.

Data Processing for Ship Screw Propellers Measurements

A data acquisition system was developed for measuring standardised ship propeller’s parameters. The hardware consists of two linear and one rotary encoder, all sending the data to a counter/timer data acquisition board. The software is first aligning the different coordinates systems of the propeller and of the three encoders . Data processing is initially performed for compensating the effects of different encoders’ resolutions. There are then computed the blade profile’s length and the coordinates of the points belonging to the blades’ reference lines, together with the local pitch variations on each radius and blade, the mean pitch per blade and the mean pitch of the propeller. A discussion is made about choosing the most appropriate number of points where the local pitch is computed, thus providing useful data for estimating the best way for propeller’s overhauling.