An Innovative Project of a Bionic Robot for Social Applications in Felinotherapy

The paper describes an innovative design of a bionic robot for applications in felinotherapy supporting hospital and home psychotherapeutic treatment of bedridden children and adults. The project was engineered by biomimicrating a biological cat, reaching its robotic model. Particular attention in this process was devoted to capturing the essence of feline motorics behavior and the possibility of mapping them in a mechatronic model. The geometry, kinematics and kinetics of this model were analyzed, creating assumptions for its practical implementation in the real mechanism of cat skeleton movement. The used software used the topology of elements in Autodesk Fusion 360 Simulation workspace by performing the critical elements of the mechatronic model in print using SLS technology. The work was also supported by a graphical simulation in the PyBullet environment.

Educational Robotics and Tangible Devices for Promoting Computational Thinking

Recently, efforts have been made to add programming activities to the curriculum that promote computational thinking and foster 21st-century digital skills. One of the programming modalities is the use of Tangible Programming Languages (TPL), used in activities with 4+ year old children. In this review, we analyze solutions proposed for TPL in different contexts crossing them with non-TPL solutions, like Graphical Programming Languages (GPL). We start to characterize features of language interaction, their use, and what learning activities are associated with them. Then, in a diagram, we show a relation between the complexity of the languages with factors such as target age and output device types. We provide an analysis considering the type of input (e.g., TPL versus GPL) and output devices (e.g., physical robot versus graphical simulation) and evaluate their contribution to further insights about the general trends with respect to educational robotic systems. Finally, we discuss the opportunities to extend and improve TPLs based on the different solutions identified.

Graphic modeling in Distributed Autonomous and Asynchronous Automata (DA3)

Automated verification of distributed systems becomes very important in distributed computing. The graphical insight into the system in the early and late stages of the project is essential. In the design phase, the visual input helps to articulate the collaborative distributed components clearly. The formal verification gives evidence of correctness or malfunction, but in the latter case, graphical simulation of counterexample helps for better understanding design errors. For these purposes, we invented Distributed Autonomous and Asynchronous Automata (DA3), which have the same semantics as the formal verification base—Integrated Model of Distributed Systems (IMDS). The IMDS model reflects the natural characteristics of distributed systems: unicasting, locality, autonomy, and asynchrony. Distributed automata have all of these features because they share the same semantics as IMDS. In formalism, the unified system definition has two views: the server view of the cooperating distributed nodes and the agent view of the migrating agents performing distributed computations. The automata have two formally equivalent forms that reflect two views: Server DA3 for observing servers exchanging messages, and Agent DA3 for tracking agents, which visit individual servers in their progress of distributed calculations. We present the DA3 formulation based on the IMDS formalism and their application to design and verify distributed systems in the Dedan environment. DA3 formalism is compared with other concepts of distributed automata known from the literature.

CAPUTO TYPE FRACTIONAL OPERATOR APPLIED TO HEPATITIS B SYSTEM

In our research work, we develop the analysis of a noninteger-order model for hepatitis B (HBV) under singular type Caputo fractional-order derivative. We investigated our proposed system for an approximate or semi-analytical solution using Laplace transform along with decomposition techniques by Adomian polynomial of nonlinear terms and some perturbation techniques of Homotopy (HPM). The obtained solutions have been compared with each other against some real data by simulation via MATLAB. The graphical simulation in fractional form shows a better general result as compared to integer-order simulation.

On periodic solutions of a discrete Nicholson’s dual system with density-dependent mortality and harvesting terms

In this study, we discuss the existence of positive periodic solutions of a class of discrete density-dependent mortal Nicholson’s dual system with harvesting terms. By means of the continuation coincidence degree theorem, a set of sufficient conditions, which ensure that there exists at least one positive periodic solution, are established. A numerical example with graphical simulation of the model is provided to examine the validity of the main results.

A New Family of Continuous Probability Distributions

In this paper, a new parametric compound G family of continuous probability distributions called the Poisson generalized exponential G (PGEG) family is derived and studied. Relevant mathematical properties are derived. Some new bivariate G families using the theorems of “Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern copula”, “the modified Farlie-Gumbel-Morgenstern copula”, “the Clayton copula”, and “the Renyi’s entropy copula” are presented. Many special members are derived, and a special attention is devoted to the exponential and the one parameter Pareto type II model. The maximum likelihood method is used to estimate the model parameters. A graphical simulation is performed to assess the finite sample behavior of the estimators of the maximum likelihood method. Two real-life data applications are proposed to illustrate the importance of the new family.

The possibilities of comparing for multitemporal imagery of various resolution under the northern river deltas dynamics investigation

With the warming of the climate and the resumption of the Northern Sea Route, studies of the dynamics of the northern deltas, that close the exit to the ocean, have intensified. The best way to detect changes is to compare images, obtained at the end of the last century from the Landsat/ETM satellite (resolution R = 30 m) and modern Sentinel-2/MSI images (R = 10 m). To identify the effect of differences in the resolution of the compared images on the accuracy of determining changes in the coastline, a graphical simulation of reproducing changes (areas of coastal erosion or sediment accumulation) at the pixel level was performed. Reproduction of changes had been simulated for coastlines, that coincide in the direction of the pixel grid lines and deviate from them at angles of 15°, 30°, 45°, when the coastline is shifted from 10 to 40 m. It has been revealed that it is possible to determine the displacement of the coastline starting from the value of 20 m from multitemporal images with a resolution of 30 and 10 m. For coastlines directed along the pixel grid lines, it is possible to downplay (or exaggerate) the washout (or accumulation) band by 1/2 RL + 1/2 LS = 20 m. Coastlines that are tilted to the pixel grid may show false changes, especially if the shoreline position is unchanged or the offset is small (10 m). The kind of the distortion strongly depends on the position of the real coastline within the large Landsat pixels. The greatest distortions are characteristic of coastlines that occupy a peripheral position in the cells of the pixel grid. The simulation results should be used when preparing palettes to determine changes from combined multi-temporal images.

The Three-parameters Marshall-Olkin Generalized Weibull Model with Properties and Different Applications to Real Data Sets

A new three-parameter life parametric model called the Marshall-Olkin generalized Weibull is defined and studied. Relevant properties are mathematically derived and analyzed. The new density exhibits various important symmetric and asymmetric shapes with different useful kurtosis. The new failure rate can be “constant”, “upside down-constant (reversed U-HRF-constant)”, “increasing then constant”, “monotonically increasing”, “J-HRF” and “monotonically decreasing”. The method of maximum likelihood is employed to estimate the unknown parameters. A graphical simulation is performed to assess the performance of the maximum likelihood estimation. We checked and proved empirically the importance, applicability and flexibility of the new Weibull model in modeling various symmetric and asymmetric types of data. The new distribution has a high ability to model different symmetric and asymmetric types of data.