Accurate Control of a Pneumatic System using an Innovative Fuzzy Gain-Scheduling Pattern

Due to their high power-to-weight ratio and low cost, pneumatic actuators are attractive for robotics and automation applications; however, achieving fast and accurate control of their position have been known as a complex control problem. A methodology for obtaining high position accuracy with a linear pneumatic actuator is presented. During experimentation with a number of PID classical control approaches over many operations of the pneumatic system, the need for frequent manual re-tuning of the controller could not be eliminated. The reason for this problem is thermal and energy losses inside the cylinder body due to the complex friction forces developed by the piston displacements. Although PD controllers performed very well over short periods, it was necessary in our research project to introduce some form of automatic gain-scheduling to achieve good long-term performance. We chose a fuzzy logic system to do this, which proved to be an easily designed and robust approach. Since the PD approach showed very good behaviour in terms of position accuracy and settling time, it was incorporated into a modified form of the 1st order Tagaki- Sugeno fuzzy method to build an overall controller. This fuzzy gainscheduler uses an input variable which automatically changes the PD gain values of the controller according to the frequency of repeated system operations. Performance of the new controller was significantly improved and the need for manual re-tuning was eliminated without a decrease in performance. The performance of the controller operating with the above method is going to be tested through a high-speed web network (GRID) for research purposes.

An Approach for a Bidding Process Knowledge Capitalization

Preparation and negotiation of innovative and future projects can be characterized as a strategic-type decision situation, involving many uncertainties and an unpredictable environment. We will focus in this paper on the bidding process. It includes cooperative and strategic decisions. Our approach for bidding process knowledge capitalization is aimed at information management in project-oriented organizations, based on the MUSIC (Management and Use of Co-operative Information Systems) model. We will show how to capitalize the company strategic knowledge and also how to organize the corporate memory. The result of the adopted approach is improvement of corporate memory quality.

Embedding a Large Amount of Information Using High Secure Neural Based Steganography Algorithm

In this paper, we construct and implement a new Steganography algorithm based on learning system to hide a large amount of information into color BMP image. We have used adaptive image filtering and adaptive non-uniform image segmentation with bits replacement on the appropriate pixels. These pixels are selected randomly rather than sequentially by using new concept defined by main cases with sub cases for each byte in one pixel. According to the steps of design, we have been concluded 16 main cases with their sub cases that covere all aspects of the input information into color bitmap image. High security layers have been proposed through four layers of security to make it difficult to break the encryption of the input information and confuse steganalysis too. Learning system has been introduces at the fourth layer of security through neural network. This layer is used to increase the difficulties of the statistical attacks. Our results against statistical and visual attacks are discussed before and after using the learning system and we make comparison with the previous Steganography algorithm. We show that our algorithm can embed efficiently a large amount of information that has been reached to 75% of the image size (replace 18 bits for each pixel as a maximum) with high quality of the output.

Trace Emergence of Ants- Traffic Flow, based upon Exclusion Process

Biological evolution has generated a rich variety of successful solutions; from nature, optimized strategies can be inspired. One interesting example is the ant colonies, which are able to exhibit a collective intelligence, still that their dynamic is simple. The emergence of different patterns depends on the pheromone trail, leaved by the foragers. It serves as positive feedback mechanism for sharing information. In this paper, we use the dynamic of TASEP as a model of interaction at a low level of the collective environment in the ant-s traffic flow. This work consists of modifying the movement rules of particles “ants" belonging to the TASEP model, so that it adopts with the natural movement of ants. Therefore, as to respect the constraints of having no more than one particle per a given site, and in order to avoid collision within a bidirectional circulation, we suggested two strategies: decease strategy and waiting strategy. As a third work stage, this is devoted to the study of these two proposed strategies- stability. As a final work stage, we applied the first strategy to the whole environment, in order to get to the emergence of traffic flow, which is a way of learning.

Biodegradation of PCP by the Rhizobacteria Isolated from Pentachlorophenol-tolerant Crop Species

Pentachlorophenol (PCP) is a polychlorinated aromatic compound that is widespread in industrial effluents and is considered to be a serious pollutant. Among the variety of industrial effluents encountered, effluents from tanning industry are very important and have a serious pollution potential. PCP is also formed unintentionally in effluents of paper and pulp industries. It is highly persistent in soils and is lethal to a wide variety of beneficial microorganisms and insects, human beings and animals. The natural processes that breakdown toxic chemicals in the environment have become the focus of much attention to develop safe and environmentfriendly deactivation technologies. Microbes and plants are among the most important biological agents that remove and degrade waste materials to enable their recycling in the environment. The present investigation was carried out with the aim of developing a microbial system for bioremediation of PCP polluted soils. A number of plant species were evaluated for their ability to tolerate different concentrations of pentachlorophenol (PCP) in the soil. The experiment was conducted for 30 days under pot culture conditions. The toxic effect of PCP on plants was studied by monitoring seed germination, plant growth and biomass. As the concentration of PCP was increased to 50 ppm, the inhibition of seed germination, plant growth and biomass was also increased. Although PCP had a negative effect on all plant species tested, maize and groundnut showed the maximum tolerance to PCP. Other tolerating crops included wheat, safflower, sunflower, and soybean. From the rhizosphere soil of the tolerant seedlings, as many as twenty seven PCP tolerant bacteria were isolated. From soybean, 8; sunflower, 3; safflower 8; maize 2; groundnut and wheat, 3 each isolates were made. They were screened for their PCP degradation potentials. HPLC analyses of PCP degradation revealed that the isolate MAZ-2 degraded PCP completely. The isolate MAZ-1 was the next best isolate with 90 per cent PCP degradation. These strains hold promise to be used in the bioremediation of PCP polluted soils.

Design, Simulation and Experimental Realization of Nonlinear Controller for GSC of DFIG System

In a wind power generator using doubly fed induction generator (DFIG), the three-phase pulse width modulation (PWM) voltage source converter (VSC) is used as grid side converter (GSC) and rotor side converter (RSC). The standard linear control laws proposed for GSC provides not only instablity against comparatively large-signal disturbances, but also the problem of stability due to uncertainty of load and variations in parameters. In this paper, a nonlinear controller is designed for grid side converter (GSC) of a DFIG for wind power application. The nonlinear controller is designed based on the input-output feedback linearization control method. The resulting closed-loop system ensures a sufficient stability region, make robust to variations in circuit parameters and also exhibits good transient response. Computer simulations and experimental results are presented to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.

A New Divide and Conquer Software Process Model

The software system goes through a number of stages during its life and a software process model gives a standard format for planning, organizing and running a project. The article presents a new software development process model named as “Divide and Conquer Process Model", based on the idea first it divides the things to make them simple and then gathered them to get the whole work done. The article begins with the backgrounds of different software process models and problems in these models. This is followed by a new divide and conquer process model, explanation of its different stages and at the end edge over other models is shown.

Realization of Electronically Tunable Current- Mode Multiphase Sinusoidal Oscillators Using CFTAs

An implementation of current-mode multiphase sinusoidal oscillators is presented. Using CFTA-based lossy integrators, odd and odd/even phase systems can be realized with following advantages. The condition of oscillation and frequency of oscillation can be orthogonally tuned. The high output impedances facilitate easy driving an external load without additional current buffers. The proposed MSOs provide odd or even phase signals that are equally spaced in phase and equal amplitude. The circuit requires one CFTA, one resistor and one grounded capacitor per phase without additional current amplifier. The results of PSPICE simulations using CMOS CFTA are included to verify theory.

Extraction of Temporal Relation by the Creation of Historical Natural Disaster Archive

In historical science and social science, the influence of natural disaster upon society is a matter of great interest. In recent years, some archives are made through many hands for natural disasters, however it is inefficiency and waste. So, we suppose a computer system to create a historical natural disaster archive. As the target of this analysis, we consider newspaper articles. The news articles are considered to be typical examples that prescribe the temporal relations of affairs for natural disaster. In order to do this analysis, we identify the occurrences in newspaper articles by some index entries, considering the affairs which are specific to natural disasters, and show the temporal relation between natural disasters. We designed and implemented the automatic system of “extraction of the occurrences of natural disaster" and “temporal relation table for natural disaster."

Considering Assembly Operations and Product Structure for Manufacturing Cell Formation

This paper considers the integration of assembly operations and product structure to Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS) design so that to correct the drawbacks of previous researches in the literature. For this purpose, a new mathematical model is developed which dedicates machining and assembly operations to manufacturing cells while the objective function is to minimize the intercellular movements resulting due to both of them. A linearization method is applied to achieve optimum solution through solving aforementioned nonlinear model by common programming language such as Lingo. Then, using different examples and comparing the results, the importance of integrating assembly considerations is demonstrated.

A Wind Farm Reduced Order Model Using Integral Manifold Theory

Due to the increasing penetration of wind energy, it is necessary to possess design tools that are able to simulate the impact of these installations in utility grids. In order to provide a net contribution to this issue a detailed wind park model has been developed and is briefly presented. However, the computational costs associated with the performance of such a detailed model in describing the behavior of a wind park composed by a considerable number of units may render its practical application very difficult. To overcome this problem integral manifolds theory has been applied to reduce the order of the detailed wind park model, and therefore create the conditions for the development of a dynamic equivalent which is able to retain the relevant dynamics with respect to the existing a.c. system. In this paper integral manifold method has been introduced for order reduction. Simulation results of the proposed method represents that integral manifold method results fit the detailed model results with a higher precision than singular perturbation method.

Multi-view Description of Real-Time Systems- Architecture

Real-time embedded systems should benefit from component-based software engineering to handle complexity and deal with dependability. In these systems, applications should not only be logically correct but also behave within time windows. However, in the current component based software engineering approaches, a few of component models handles time properties in a manner that allows efficient analysis and checking at the architectural level. In this paper, we present a meta-model for component-based software description that integrates timing issues. To achieve a complete functional model of software components, our meta-model focuses on four functional aspects: interface, static behavior, dynamic behavior, and interaction protocol. With each aspect we have explicitly associated a time model. Such a time model can be used to check a component-s design against certain properties and to compute the timing properties of component assemblies.

Optimum Radio Capacity Estimation of a Single-Cell Spread Spectrum MIMO System under Rayleigh Fading Conditions

In this paper, the problem of estimating the optimal radio capacity of a single-cell spread spectrum (SS) multiple-inputmultiple- output (MIMO) system operating in a Rayleigh fading environment is examined. The optimisation between the radio capacity and the theoretically achievable average channel capacity (in the sense of information theory) per user of a MIMO single-cell SS system operating in a Rayleigh fading environment is presented. Then, the spectral efficiency is estimated in terms of the achievable average channel capacity per user, during the operation over a broadcast time-varying link, and leads to a simple novel-closed form expression for the optimal radio capacity value based on the maximization of the achieved spectral efficiency. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the proposed analysis.

Development of a Simulator for Explaining Organic Chemical Reactions Based on Qualitative Process Theory

This paper discusses the development of a qualitative simulator (abbreviated QRiOM) for predicting the behaviour of organic chemical reactions. The simulation technique is based on the qualitative process theory (QPT) ontology. The modelling constructs of QPT embody notions of causality which can be used to explain the behaviour of a chemical system. The major theme of this work is that, in a qualitative simulation environment, students are able to articulate his/her knowledge through the inspection of explanations generated by software. The implementation languages are Java and Prolog. The software produces explanation in various forms that stresses on the causal theories in the chemical system which can be effectively used to support learning.

Measuring the Development Level of Chinese Regional Service Industry: An Empirical Analysis based on Entropy Weight and TOPSIS

Using entropy weight and TOPSIS method, a comprehensive evaluation is done on the development level of Chinese regional service industry in this paper. Firstly, based on existing research results, an evaluation index system is constructed from the scale of development, the industrial structure and the economic benefits. An evaluation model is then built up based on entropy weight and TOPSIS, and an empirical analysis is conducted on the development level of service industries in 31 Chinese provinces during 2006 and 2009 from the two dimensions or time series and cross section, which provides new idea for assessing regional service industry. Furthermore, the 31 provinces are classified into four categories based on the evaluation results, and deep analysis is carried out on the evaluation results.

Weight-Based Query Optimization System Using Buffer

Fast retrieval of data has been a need of user in any database application. This paper introduces a buffer based query optimization technique in which queries are assigned weights according to their number of execution in a query bank. These queries and their optimized executed plans are loaded into the buffer at the start of the database application. For every query the system searches for a match in the buffer and executes the plan without creating new plans.

Research on Weakly Hard Real-Time Constraints and Their Boolean Combination to Support Adaptive QoS

Advances in computing applications in recent years have prompted the demand for more flexible scheduling models for QoS demand. Moreover, in practical applications, partly violated temporal constraints can be tolerated if the violation meets certain distribution. So we need extend the traditional Liu and Lanland model to adapt to these circumstances. There are two extensions, which are the (m, k)-firm model and Window-Constrained model. This paper researches on weakly hard real-time constraints and their combination to support QoS. The fact that a practical application can tolerate some violations of temporal constraint under certain distribution is employed to support adaptive QoS on the open real-time system. The experiment results show these approaches are effective compared to traditional scheduling algorithms.

Product Ecodesign Approaches in ISO 14001 Certified Companies

The aim of the study was to investigate whether there is the promotion of product ecodesign measures as a result of adopting ISO 14001 certification in manufacturing companies in the Republic of Slovenia. Companies gave the most of their product development attention to waste and energy reduction during manufacturing process and reduction of material consumption per unit of product. Regarding the importance of different ecodesign criteria reduction of material consumption per unit of product was reported as the most important criterion. Less attention is paid to endof- life issues considering recycling or packaging. Most manufacturing enterprises considered ISO 14001 standard as a very useful tool or at least a useful tool helping them to accelerate and establish product ecodesign activities. Two most frequently considered ecodesign drivers are increased competitive advantage and legal requirements and two most important barriers are high development costs and insufficient market demand.

Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Wind System Based On a DFIG

This paper proposes the study of a robust control of the doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) used in a wind energy production. The proposed control is based on the linear active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) and it is applied to the control currents rotor of the DFIG, the DC bus voltage and active and reactive power exchanged between the DFIG and the network. The system under study and the proposed control are simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK.

Enhanced Clustering Analysis and Visualization Using Kohonen's Self-Organizing Feature Map Networks

Cluster analysis is the name given to a diverse collection of techniques that can be used to classify objects (e.g. individuals, quadrats, species etc). While Kohonen's Self-Organizing Feature Map (SOFM) or Self-Organizing Map (SOM) networks have been successfully applied as a classification tool to various problem domains, including speech recognition, image data compression, image or character recognition, robot control and medical diagnosis, its potential as a robust substitute for clustering analysis remains relatively unresearched. SOM networks combine competitive learning with dimensionality reduction by smoothing the clusters with respect to an a priori grid and provide a powerful tool for data visualization. In this paper, SOM is used for creating a toroidal mapping of two-dimensional lattice to perform cluster analysis on results of a chemical analysis of wines produced in the same region in Italy but derived from three different cultivators, referred to as the “wine recognition data" located in the University of California-Irvine database. The results are encouraging and it is believed that SOM would make an appealing and powerful decision-support system tool for clustering tasks and for data visualization.