Empirical Study on Characteristics of Angled Spoke-Based Wheels on Granular Media

In this study, the optimal shape of angled spoke-based wheels (ASWs) was designed to maximize the driving speed of a mobile robot with ASWs on granular media. As a lightweight search and rescue mobile robot, it is required to have a high driving speed to reach the disaster site quickly. When granular media behave as fluids, slippage occurs, and the mobile robot slows down compared with when the media behave similarly to a solid ground. There are no exact criteria to explain the behavior of granular media. Therefore, the Taguchi method and L9(34) orthogonal array were employed to empirically optimize the shape of the ASW. The design variables evaluated were the motor RPM, width–height proportion of the foot, radius of curvature, and toe angle of the foot. The size of the ocher balls was adopted as the user condition. An orthogonal array and signal–to–noise (S/N) ratio were used to analyze the validity of the design variables. The optimal design variables of the ASW were a motor RPM of 6000, width–height proportion of 3:7, radius of curvature of 1.0×h, and toe angle of 15deg. Verification experiments were performed to evaluate the improved driving speed of the ASW. The angular velocity of the ASW increases by 2.79% for φ1 (mm) and 10.50% for φ6 (mm). Therefore, an optimized ASW design is expected to improve the driving speed of a mobile robot with ASWs.

Challenge Accepted? Individual Performance Gains for Motor Imagery Practice with Humanoid Robotic EEG Neurofeedback

Optimizing neurofeedback (NF) and brain–computer interface (BCI) implementations constitutes a challenge across many fields and has so far been addressed by, among others, advancing signal processing methods or predicting the user’s control ability from neurophysiological or psychological measures. In comparison, how context factors influence NF/BCI performance is largely unexplored. We here investigate whether a competitive multi-user condition leads to better NF/BCI performance than a single-user condition. We implemented a foot motor imagery (MI) NF with mobile electroencephalography (EEG). Twenty-five healthy, young participants steered a humanoid robot in a single-user condition and in a competitive multi-user race condition using a second humanoid robot and a pseudo competitor. NF was based on 8–30 Hz relative event-related desynchronization (ERD) over sensorimotor areas. There was no significant difference between the ERD during the competitive multi-user condition and the single-user condition but considerable inter-individual differences regarding which condition yielded a stronger ERD. Notably, the stronger condition could be predicted from the participants’ MI-induced ERD obtained before the NF blocks. Our findings may contribute to enhance the performance of NF/BCI implementations and highlight the necessity of individualizing context factors.

Penerapan Metode Certainty Factor Untuk Mediagnosa Penyakit Depresi Pada Manusia Menggunakan PHP Dan Mysql

The purpose were design and develop software engineering web based expert system to diagnose depression on human to get solution and information easily and rapidly. This research used Certainty Factor of analyzed method base of user answer for question in this expert system. Output were showed as user condition related depression and were completed with disease explanation and medical solution which showed in website with PHP programming of MySQL database. The conclution in this research were PHP programming and MySQL database evidently could be implemented in expert system engineering to diagnose depression. Certainty Factor method evidently could commit searching depression symtomp easily and rapidly. Online system could support user to get information about kind of disease, symptom, and medical solution for depression.

Weight-Bearing Estimation for Cane Users by Using Onboard Sensors

Mobility is a fundamental requirement for a healthy, active lifestyle. Gait analysis is widely acknowledged as a clinically useful tool for identifying problems with mobility, as identifying abnormalities within the gait profile is essential to correct them via training, drugs, or surgical intervention. However, continuous gait analysis is difficult to achieve due to technical limitations, namely the need for specific hardware and constraints on time and test environment to acquire reliable data. Wearables may provide a solution if users carry them most of the time they are walking. We propose to add sensors to walking canes to assess user’s mobility. Canes are frequently used by people who cannot completely support their own weight due to pain or balance issues. Furthermore, in absence of neurological disorders, the load on the cane is correlated with the user condition. Sensorized canes already exist, but often rely on expensive sensors and major device modifications are required. Thus, the number of potential users is severely limited. In this work, we propose an affordable module for load monitoring so that it can be widely used as a screening tool. The main advantages of our module are: (i) it can be deployed in any standard cane with minimal changes that do not affect ergonomics; (ii) it can be used every day, anywhere for long-term monitoring. We have validated our prototype with 10 different elderly volunteers that required a cane to walk, either for balance or partial weight bearing. Volunteers were asked to complete a 10 m test and, then, to move freely for an extra minute. The load peaks on the cane, corresponding to maximum support instants during the gait cycle, were measured while they moved. For validation, we calculated their gait speed using a chronometer during the 10 m test, as it is reportedly related to their condition. The correlation between speed (condition) and load results proves that our module provides meaningful information for screening. In conclusion, our module monitors support in a continuous, unsupervised, nonintrusive way during users’ daily routines, plus only mechanical adjustment (cane height) is needed to change from one user to another.

Comparative study of diabetes foot diagnosis using ABPI

User friendly product has been developed to analyze the user condition accurately and provide a digital output with low cost product to the end user for diagnosing diabetes foot. Detecting the level of peripheral neuropathy which significantly increases the risk of sustaining a foot wound called ‘loss of protective sensation. To implement a device to detect foot diabetes in patients using the Ankle Brachial pressure index values. The proposed system was tested by conducting experiment on 9 patients and whose ABPI value measured confirms the convention-al measured values.

Intelligent Control Frequency Microgrid in Islanded Mode by Central Protection Unit

The appearance of microgrids created challenges such as microgrid protection and due to the presence distributed generation in microgrid network fault currents basically are variable.protection projects based on constant current must be upgraded.one of the major challenges, changes of microgrid frequency in islanded mode.in this paper a new protection system have provided to monitor microgrids and update current errors use extensive communication network. This system has been designed to respond to the dynamic changes in the system like connection/disconnection DG sources and changing microgrid user condition from connected network mode to islanded mode. the protection system Provided takes over control frequency microgrid in islanded mode and prevents microgrid instability. To control frequency central protection unit changes one of the distributed generators to busbar slack. Studies for the provided network sample have been done and show how the proposed protection system can run these models.

Adaptive Resource Allocation for the Multi-Carrier GIS Networks

This paper focuses on the problem of adaptive resource allocation for the web-based GIS. The paper considers the multi-user condition and provides an optimization problem for a general utility function such that it could be nonconcave and nondifferetiable. To solve this problem, the paper decomposes the original optimization problem into the dual optimization problem, which can be easily solved by a simple iterative bisection algorithm to adaptively allocate the network resource through the web-based GIS.