Trends in Intelligent Robotics, Automation, and Manufacturing

This paper addresses the development and application of heuristic control strategy to plan collision free configurations of a 5 D.O.F. planar robot manipulator, to position its end effector at the desired target with minimal error and convergence time, while avoiding the obstacles in the workspace. Four variants of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) technique is used as the heuristic approaches to solve the above problem. The efficiency and performance of the proposed approaches is investigated through both simulation and experimental studies. It is found out that the variant of PSO-W produces better results in terms of convergence and positional in scenarios such movements in environment with free obstacles, with one obstacle and two obstacle respectively with error less than 2.3% overall. Results revealed that the heuristic methods based on the search algorithms is a viable alternative over the traditional approaches for solving redundant manipulator problems constrained with nonlinearities and obstacles.

A new nonlinear disturbance observer based tracking control scheme for an underwater manipulator is presented in this paper. This observer overcomes the disadvantages of existing disturbance observers, which are designed or analyzed by the linear system techniques. The performance of the proposed tracking control scheme is demonstrated numerically by the payload compensation and interaction effects compensation for a two degrees of freedom vertical underwater manipulator.

This paper presents a multi-point potential field (MPPF) method for obstacle avoidance of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) in a 2D dynamic environment. In this method, an arc of predefined radius on a semicircle in the positive x-axis around the bow of an AUV is discretized into equiangular points with centre as the current position. By determining the point at which the minimum potential exists, the vehicle can be moved towards that point in 2D space. Here the analytical gradient of the total potential function is not calculated as it is not essentially required for moving the vehicle to the next position. The proposed obstacle avoidance algorithm is interfaced with the dynamic model of an underactuated flat-fish type AUV. The obstacle avoidance algorithm generates the path elements to the trajectory planner and the vehicle tracks the trajectory. The details of the algorithm and simulation results are presented.

This paper extends the synchronization approach for formation control of multiple mobile robots in switching between different time-varying formations tasks while the entire system moving in a line. Each robot in the group is controlled to track its desired trajectory while synchronizing it is motion with the two adjacent robots to maintain a time-varying desired formation. The proposed controller guarantees the asymptotic stability of both position errors and synchronization errors. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed synchronous controller in maintaining formation tasks.

Stewart platform in real time for reconfigurable applications has been a problem due to the lack of an efficient methodology for determining the optimum geometry for a given task. The authors extend the solution from their previous work (Satheesh et al., 2009) to encompass all the possible design constraints that generally might occur in scenarios with varying task requirements. This paper attempts to characterize the parameters for active vibration isolation applications through the same approach. The output of simulation shows a better performance for the 3-3 configuration over 6-6 configuration for active vibration isolation applications. Overshoot diminishes with a reduction in

η

. The effective active range of the dimensionless parameter joint vector

η

, is observed to be 2.0-0.5. This methodology thus becomes established encompassing all constraints to build a complete set of design tool for reconfiguration of any new reconfigurable Stewart platform..

The key objective of this research work is to develop and improve the posture estimation of the robots relative to each other using a combination of visual perception and optical (laser) pointers. The two critical parameters that are estimated in this work are the linear separation between the robots and the orientation angle of the robots. An empirical model is developed for linear separation estimation while five different models are developed towards the estimation of orientation related to the distance.Performance of the developed models are investigation through simulation studies and the results shows that the linear model exhibits an average error of 5.19% while the angular estimation model exhibits an error of 13.9% at a predetermined distance.

Fuzzy behaviours are commonly used in reactive mobile robot navigation strategies, where sensory information is either uncertain or incomplete. However, the complexity of such controllers usually grow exponentially with the number of fuzzy input partitions and rules in the rule base. Furthermore, attempts to reduce the number of input partitions will typically erode the performance of the controllers. This work investigates several membership function scaling mechanisms as an avenue for improving the performance of fuzzy behaviours based on minimal rule base controllers. The configurations are based on the closely-related concepts of linguistic hedges and non-linear scaling. The scaling parameters for the goal seeking and obstacle avoidance behaviours are tuned in simulation via a genetic algorithm optimisation process. The results show that the controller configuration based on input membership function scaling consistently outperforms simple fuzzy logic controllers with the same number of fuzzy input partitions and rules.

This paper deals with the development of an adaptive speed controller for autonomous mobile robot using a fuzzy logic controller.The analysis of performance between a system applying triangular membership and a system using gaussian membership is compared to distinguish their differences. The results have shown that the gaussian membership method has improved the tracking performance for the mobile robot to reach its target. This also suggest the same behavior even when a different mobile robot movements is assigned. This paper considers three, five and seven memberships for both techniques to determine their effectiveness and effects to the system performance. The investigation has leads to the conclusion that the gaussian membership has competently surpassed the triangular membership performances even when the robot has different movements to achieve its target.

In this paper a new approach is developed for a two-wheeled mobile robot to navigate smoothly in unknown environments. This approach uses the ideas of Braitenberg strategy. The strategy is reactive when it perceives the sensory information and uses online path navigation. Furthermore, an algorithm called switching command strategy (SCS) has been developed in which the navigation method provides simple, efficient and effective motion path. The SCS is applied in order for the robot to skip out from a “dead cycle” problem. The algorithm is constructed for doing two principal tasks. The first task is reaching the goal safely in stationary environment while avoiding the static objects and the second task is to navigate in dynamic and complex environment by mobile robot while avoiding moving objects. During the experiments, a simple obstacle avoidance has been extensively tested with various static and dynamic environments. The results of the study showed the efficiency and enhanced performance of the navigation algorithm.

Articulated-morphology robots, with applications ranging from the basic to the sophisticated, have increased in importance and popularity, especially with decreasing costs of computers and increased studies on feasibility. The development of a complete mathematical model for industrial, selective compliance articulated (SCARA) robot arm including its servomotor dynamics, and simulation of the dynamics, are presented here, as are the analytical inverse kinematic problem (AIKP) and the forward kinematic solution with D-H parameters. The robot arm is built for trajectories in handling, manufacture, assembly, etc. The 3D virtual reality (VR) model realizing it builds and receives commands through a MATLAB/Simulink link, for the design to be simulated on MATLAB Version R2012a. The analytical solution of IKP and modelling under real phasic rule consideration are done here. The integrated approach improves system performance, cost-effectiveness, efficiency, dynamism, and high reality performance. The method’s effectiveness is proved, as is the faster response (settling). It is advantageous to industry, and real-time application is possible through interface cards.

Research in autonomous mobile robots is gaining much more attention in recent years, particularly in coordinating rescue missions and inspections of affected structures within disaster zones. It is the aim of this paper to contribute towards such advancements by introducing mobile robots navigation in virtually generated rescue mission environments. The randomly generated missions are mapped to real environments hosting mobile robots, which can unrestrictedly move in any open surroundings, without the need for the physical obstacles presence. To achieve this, a GUI was developed to randomly create missions of different sizes and complexities. The GUI offers the developer the choice of automatically generating such missions, edit them and/or create them. The robots may be programmed by various solving algorithms to complete the course and find a solution. The advantage of this approach is that it offers environment and robot real-time merging, robot performance tracking and rapid (on-the-fly) algorithms development. In this paper, the rescuing robot will follow an embedded Wall-Following algorithm.

The main objective of this paper is to replace an Industrial Teach-Pendant with a virtual GUI that contains many of the main traditional functions that are found in pendants designed to drive the Motoman HP3J by Yaskawa. The GUI is made up of separate Tabs for authentication, descriptive help, validations and descriptive error messages, all of which are presented in an aesthetically pleasing appearance with menus and buttons that depict the different functionalities. Some of the main functions include direct and inverse kinematics, as well as path planning. The paper will present a GUI Teaching Pendant interface that employs Linear Interpolation and Joint Interpolation, to navigate to control navigate and plan the robot arm path movement. Furthermore, direct and inverse kinematics, as well as the DH parameters of the HP3J manipulator will be explained along with the special functions that are used to enhance the safety and invalid inputs. The paper will conclude by comparing the GUI Teach Pendant functions to those of the Industrial Teach Pendant, highlighting the advantages of this proposal. The system was tested in the University of Nottingham and has proven to be a good teaching tool to aid students in understanding basic robotics, direct and inverse kinematics, and path planning.

This paper describes a novel wireless robotic hand system. The system is operated under master-slave configuration. A human operator tele-operates the slave robotic hand by wearing a master glove embedded with BendSensors. Bluetooth has been chosen as the communication medium between master and slave. The master glove is designed to acquire the joint angles of the operator’s hand and send to slave robotic hand. The slave robotic hand imitates the movement of human operator. The UTHM robotic hand comprises of five fingers (four fingers and one thumb), each having four degrees of freedom (DOF), which can perform flexion, extension, abduction, adduction and also circumduction. For the actuation purpose, pneumatic muscles and springs are used. The paper exemplifies the design for the robotic hand and provides the kinematic analysis of all the joints of the robotic hand. It also discusses different robotic hands that have been developed before date.

Navigation is one of the major challenges and a key ability for the mobile robots to accomplish the given task. It is a two point problem where the accurate positioning and path planning is necessary. The efficient path planning and positioning with the use of conventional sensors becomes cumbersome when the robots are resource constrained and uses minimal information of the environment. Therefore, a simple heuristic navigation algorithm based on grids is addressed in this paper. A simple visual perception method with a use of line scan camera is also employed in this work, as an alternative to the existing methods with conventional sensors, towards the identification of grids and lines in the workspace. The efficiency of the proposed technique is investigated experimentally by applying on a miniature wheeled mobile robot “Grid-bot” and the results are discussed. The results reveals that the proposed method be a viable alternative for a resource constrained robot to plan its path and navigate the environment efficiently in indoor applications.

This paper presents a novel Unified modeling approach using Bond Graphs (BG) as framework for Unified Modeling and validation of Aerial Service Robots. The proposed framework is generic and supports a concurrent design approach across multiple domains. A general parametric Non Linear Bond Graph Model that can be used for all types of rotorcraft UAVs with 6 DOF has been developed from the first principles using Newton Euler formalism. By employing a judicious mixture of 1-Dimensional, Multi-bonds and Junction structures, an Integral causal structure has been maintained, thus avoiding algebraic loops. This results in a compact computationally efficient model. Using experimental data from system identification, these generic models have been refined to develop accurate dynamic models for a specific Quad rotor and validated using 20-SIM. Simulation results obtained are in general conformity to those reported.

This paper describes the design and development of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and the implementation of a Waypoint Navigation System built using low cost, commercially available components. The scope of development consists of an aerial vehicle platform, communication system and ground control system. The UAV is constructed by using GAUI 330X quad copter platform and combining a custom designed onboard controller which carries out quad copter stabilization and waypoint navigation. The communication system is constructed using XBEE Pro modules. The ground control system carries out path planning and waypoint generation using A-star algorithm, video processing to identify the landing pad and management of communication between UAV and ground control station.

In recent days, most vehicles have become equipped with electric assist systems helping drivers driving safe in roads. Sudden lateral motion of vehicle due to drivers’ fatigue, inattention, and drowsiness are major causes of accidents in roads. In order to prevent possible accidents due to such motions of vehicle, lateral motion control system of vehicle is designed and validated in this study. The location of vehicle is obtained by using Differential Global Positioning System/Real Time Kinematic (DGPS/RTK). When vehicles depart from any lanes, vehicle motion control system is activated to put vehicles back to lanes.

The Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) are becoming a popular method as the alternative control mechanism replacing the conventional trajectory-based method for designing the locomotion gait of mobile robot nowadays. CPG is described as a set of neural networks that have the ability to produce rhythmic movements, such as walking, swimming and flying without intervention from the sensory inputs and higher level control. This paper aims to highlight the efficiency of the biologically inspired, VDP-CPG based control method in modelling the walking gait for a quadruped robot. A new approach of VDP-CPG based walking gait model is developed in which 3-D foot trajectories are generated by mapping the output from CPG. The simulated foot trajectories of the CPG-based control and conventional trajectory-based method are compared to confirm the performance.

Blimp system with cameras is an appropriate method to conducts environmental surveillance, which offers the ability to hover at low altitude with less noise. However, blimps envelope causes large drag coefficient value compared to other aircrafts. Therefore, the structural design and motion control of the blimp system are very crucial thus contribute to the overall system performances. This paper presents the structural design and motion control method for low altitude surveillance system. The structural design of the Twin-hull blimp system (THCS) is separated into three parts, which are designs of blimp envelope, design of gondola and motion control mechanism. For the motion control, both open-loop and closed-loop control system are implemented into THCS for horizontal and vertical motion control. Several experiments with a real constructed blimp are performed in indoor environment to confirm the design performance and stability of THCS.

Dynamics analysis of a system is important before any controller can be applied on a system, especially for autonomous system. For underwater system, the dynamic analysis is a critical stage since the operator do not have any access on what happen to the system when it have been deploy. This paper suggest on analysis on underwater vertical profiler system using integration of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Design of Experiments (DOE). It is to analyze the vertical drag coefficients when the velocity and the depth are varied.

Biological systems can adapt excellently to the demands of a dynamic world and changing tasks. What kind of information processing and reasoning do they use? There are numerous studies in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence which complement each other and help in getting a better understanding of this riddle. Our paper presents a biologically inspired architecture for a spatiotemporal learning system. Multiple interconnected memory structures are used to incorporate different learning paradigms. Concurrent inherent learning processes complete the functionality of corresponding memory types. Our architecture has been evaluated in the context of mobile rescue robots: The task consists of searching objects while navigating in an unknown maze.

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal significantly reflects autonomic nervous system (ANS) activities during emotional stress changes. Undeniably, a variety of valuable information can be extracted from a single record of ECG signal. Audio-visual stimuli are selected arbitrarily for the laboratory experiment in order to induce emotional stress on 5 healthy subjects. Time domain features: heart rate (HR), mean R peak amplitude (MRAmp), and mean R-R intervals (MRRI) are extracted from ECG signals and mapped into emotional stress classification using K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). Classification performance has been investigated on three different sets of training and testing feature vector. The best mean classification accuracy for HR, MRAmp and MRRI in three classes is 66.49%, 56.95% and 61.52%, respectively and two classes are 77.69%, 61.48% and 60.21%, respectively. These results indicate that, the proposed methodology have a higher significance on distinguishing the emotional stress state of the subjects.

The studies of upper extremity on bio mechanics during walker assisted gait provides perception into the novel design of the ambulatory device as well as the rehabilitative strategy for those who are in need. Thus far, the knowledge of kinetic, kinematics and functional requirements to efficiently use the walking aid device is still inadequate. Hence, this paper addresses the theoretical analysis through the skeleton model created by Visual 3D. The infrared cameras are used to capture the still position of the individual as well as their moving position. The purpose is to find the position difference aiding in data and gait analysis. Subsequently, other kinetics parameters can be tabulated based on the position difference. Furthermore, the kinematics data which is forces and moments can also be tabulated based on the kinetics data. These simulated data will be compared with the measured data that can be attained through the pressure sensors.

Neurorehabilitation aims to aid the recovery/rehabilitation of neurological patients following strokes, spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries as well as other neurological diseases. The utilization of a rehabilitative robot can offer a repetitive and intensive rehabilitation training which helps improve the recovery rate and introduce a channel for patients to train independently or with minimal supervision. The future system will leverage on the utilization of EMG signal to drive the control system controlling the rehabilitative robot. Hence, it is necessary to investigate the influence of each muscle to the upper extremity’s movement. This paper presents the comprehensive observation on how 8 different muscles contribute to the flexion extension and abduction adduction movement of the upper limb. These muscles are biceps, triceps, deltoid, latissimus dorsi, brachioradialis, brachialis, flexor carpi radialis and flexor carpi ulnaris. The impact of each muscle to the upper limb’s movement will help in determining the EMG-force/torque relationship.

Most electroencephalography (EEG) based brain-computer interface (BCI) systems perform brain signal recording using all possible electrodes. Recent studies have shown that the performance of a BCI system can be enhanced by removing noisy or task-irrelevant electrodes. This paper presents an automated channel selection algorithm using genetic algorithms (GA) and Bayesian linear discriminant analysis (BLDA) for a P300 based BCI. The proposed method was implemented on data set II obtained from the third BCI competition (2005). It was found that the proposed algorithm outperforms other existing channel selection method in terms of character recognition rate. The character recognition rate is maintained at approximately 90% when the number of channels used is reduced from 64 to 8. This confirms the validity of stochastic based GA as an alternative channel selection method. The selected channels indicate that the task-relevant features are concentrated mainly on the parietal and occipital lobe which agrees well with previous findings.

Recent days, Electromyogram (EMG) signal acquired from muscles can be useful to measure the human stress levels. The aim of this present work to investigate the relationship between the changes in human stress levels to muscular tensions through Electromyography (EMG) in a stimulated stress-inducement environment. The stroop colour word test protocol is used to induce the stress and EMG signal is acquired from left trapezius muscle of 10 female subjects using three surface electrodes. The acquired signals were preprocessed through wavelet denoising method and statistical features were extracted using Wavelet Packet Transform (WPT). EMG signals are decomposed to four levels using db5 mother wavelet function. Frequency band information’s of third and fourth levels are considered for descriptive analysis. Totally, seven statistical features were computed and analyzed to find the appropriate frequency band and feature for stress level assessment. A simple non-linear classifier (K Nearest Neighbor (KNN)) is used for classifying the stress levels. Statistical features derived from the frequency range of (0-31.5) Hz gives a maximum average classification accuracy of 90.70% on distinguishing the stress levels in minimum feature.

The humanoid robot has attracted much interest of many researchers all over the world over the last three decades because of its high possibility to replace human in more difficult and dangerous tasks besides as a household helper and entertainer. However, there was not much activities reported in this area in Malaysia. In this paper, the author reports the initial attempt made in his research work in a biped robot. The biped system was a home-made aluminium structure resembling the 2 human legs. It was installed with 6 DC servo motors allowing for 6 degrees of freedom and the movement of the biped robot was controlled by using a SSC-32 servo controller and SSC Visual Sequencer. Although crude in design, the author has made the biped robot to walk, slowly though.

A wheelchair bound person requires the freedom of upper limb body movement to move around. Any attachment to the wheelchair in the form of luggage will restrict the performance of such person to navigate the wheelchair. Poor navigation of a wheelchair might, in the worst case scenario, lead to an accident that would cause injury to the person. In addition, the durability of the wheelchair might also be affected if the weight put onto it is increase. In this project, a cart follower is introduced to overcome the above mentioned problems faced by wheelchair bound person who need to carry around their luggage. The cart follower has been specifically designed for wheelchair bound persons to help them carry around their luggage. It will automatically track and follow the wheelchair without any attachment or cord between the wheelchair and the cart.Microcontroller, sensors, motors, and servo are used in order to achieve the objective. A CMUCam3 camera with vision sensors is used to track an object, which is in this case, a predefined color from an image pattern. The cart will only move when the configured color is detected and stops when there is no configured color detected. The cart will move backward in decreasing speed from 100 to 70 percent duty cycle if the infrared distance sensor detects an obstacle or if the wheelchair is in the range of 10-28cm a head and then maintains a distance of 28cm as the wheelchair is moving backward. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is applied to control the speed and a servo motor is used to control the angle rotation of the cart.

Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is a security system that acts as a protection layer to the infrastructure. Throughout the years, the IDS technology has grown enormously to keep up with the advancement of computer crime. Since the beginning of the technology in mid 80’s, researches have been conducted to enhance the capability of detecting attacks without jeopardizing the network performance. In this paper we hope to provide a critical review of the IDS technology, issues that transpire during its implementation and the limitation in the IDS research endeavors. Lastly we will proposed future work while exploring maturity of the topic, the extent of discussion, the value and contribution of each research to the domain discussed. At the end of this paper, readers would be able to clearly distinguish the gap between each sub-area of research and they would appreciate the importance of these research areas to the industry.

Present positioning applications demand macro positioning range with micro/nano positioning accuracy. This paper describes the development of a new prototype actuator with piezoelectric stack actuator as a primary actuation system for micro/macro positioning applications. The displacement of the primary actuator is amplified by a hydraulic displacement amplification mechanism. A displacement amplification factor of 72.2 is observed at an actuation frequency of 1Hz which is in good agreement with the theoretically estimated value. The behavior of the prototype actuator is studied at different loads and frequencies.

This paper presents a new type of mechanical actuator which is used to help in measuring deep holes that carry up to a load of 26kg during measurement. Often the measurement probe‘s attitude is misaligned due to acting force on it. Actuator prevents or controls the misalignment of such probe during measurement. In this research, the complete measurement system consists of a servo motor, a laser diode, a laser interferometer, an optical system as well as the integrated computer system. The main purpose of this research is to develop the new type of actuator which can control the attitude (position and inclination) of a measurement probe. The experimental results show that it is possible to carry mechanically the loads up to 26kg of the measurement probe during measurement of deep-holes. In this paper, the developed actuator’s mechanical function and its performance have been discussed with the experimental results.

Intelligent Pneumatic Actuator is a system that has been developed for application that requires better control and accuracy. The purpose of this paper is to present a controller design for position control of an Intelligent Pneumatic Actuator (IPA) system using Proportional-Derivative Fuzzy Logic Controller (PDFLC) and PID Controller. The controller is designed based on 3

rd

order transfer function of the system. The performance of the designed PDFLC controller is tested to the actuator position control in MATLAB environment and the results show fast response and good stability. The simulation result is compared and analyzed with PID Controller to illustrate the performance of the proposed controller. The result obtain in this paper are useful towards a proposed Pneumatic Actuated Ball Beam System (PABBS).

An acceleration sensor embedded semi-passive RFID tag has been successfully designed and prototyped for highway guardrail monitoring. The tag can sense acceleration of the tagged guardrail in 3 directions (X, Y & Z) and successfully communicate with a nearby reader based on the

EPC

Generation 2 protocol. A complete frame structure has also been defined to fit the dynamic data within the standardized framework. The sensor tag data can be further relayed to a remote data processing center via WLAN and the Internet.

In this paper we investigate guaranteeing assembly process information flow in real time, enterprise wide, from assembly station sensors directly to the industry policy making offices, is the true solution for improving productivity competence, reducing loses and greater than ever profits. In fact, the ideal production lies on the real machine or assembly capabilities of working non-stop at maximum speed, lacking downtimes or inactivity and assembled goods reject threats. Assembly lines will be prone to standstills and will produce defective pieces if the machines are unable to working to their full capability or demands made of them. This is often the case of misinformed factory management on real time factory floor performances. Even though equipped with original equipment manufacturer indicator knowledge about their systems, they still ca n’ t get t hat efficiency so needed to improve yield. Transformation is necessary to ride the expected tide of change in the today’s manufacturing environment, particularly in the information technology and automation landscape. A multinational company strives to reduce computing costs, to improve plant floor visibility and to achieve more efficient energy and surroundings use of their IT hardware and software investments. Cloud computing infrastructure accelerates and promotes these objectives by providing unparalleled flexible and dynamic IT resource collection, virtualization, floor visibility and high accessibility. This paper establish the value of realize cloud connect and usage state of affairs in cloud manufacturing environment, especially in automotive assembly stations which typically have large numbers of mixed applications, various hardware and huge data amount generated from sensors and devices in real-time and event-based exploration and assembly operations. The purpose of this paper is to behavior an Information Technology automotive assembly environment Systems analysis in the case of MNC’s . To validate this objective, the article has been divided into two parts: monitoring vision and control and case study with the help of manufacturing execution assembly system. The purpose of the theory part of the study is to first introduce the concept of Cloud connect in the respective field of manufacturing execution assembly system, and then chat about the substance of Service management in information technology.

Based on the first-order shear deformation shell theory involving Codazzi-Gauss geometrical discretion, Hamilton’s principle and Gibbs free energy function, this paper presents the analytical solution for magneto-thermo-electro-elastic structronics shell. In which the fundamental equations and its boundary conditions were solved using the generic forced-solution procedure, and its frequency parameters were evaluated in the simply supported boundary condition. Then, the transient solution is obtained by Newmark’s method to evaluate the influence of magnetic and electric parameters on the structure response. Results have been shown that the effect of the transverse shear is greater on the dynamic response than the static response. However, it is also observed that the ratio of transient to static deflection takes less with increasing of side to thickness ratio of the shell. The present results may serve as a reference in developing the structronics shell theories and to improve the benchmark solutions for judging the existence of imprecise theories and other numerical approaches.

An exact analysis for magneto-thermo-electro-elastic structronics shell is presented in this paper. The model was derived based on the first-order shear deformation shell theory involving Codazzi-Gauss geometrical discretion. The fundamental equation and its boundary conditions were derived using variational energy method. The generic forced-solution procedure for the response was derived, and its frequency parameters were evaluated in the simply supported boundary condition. Then, solution is obtained to evaluate the influence of magnetic and electric parameters on the structure frequencies. Whereas, result have shown a close agreement with alternative models that reported in literature. The present results may serve as a reference in developing of various sensors/actuators that formed from magneto-electro-elastic materials. Accordingly, the present results could improve the benchmark solutions for judging the existence of imprecise theories and other numerical approaches.

The aim of the study is to identify the major source of power losses in linear hydraulic actuators and to find suitable solutions. A new energy efficient hydraulic system is proposed. The concept of the proposed system is based on overcoming the back pressure in piston front chamber generated by flow restriction of outlet port. This is achieved by increasing the discharged flow rate of oil by adding two new outlet ports to the conventional hydraulic cylinder. Flow through the new outlet ports is controlled by a novel pressure actuated flow control valve. The discharge oil through the new ports is forwarded directly to the oil tank without passing through the directional control valve that controls the flow to the actuator. The conventional and the proposed hydraulic cylinders are simulated in FLUENT. Results show that the proposed four-port actuators give better performance regarding hydraulic resistance, piston speed and energy savings.

This paper proposes a new systematic procedure to design an adaptive proportional-integral (PI) controller using genetic algorithms. The optimization process reduces the effort of tuning the parameters of a learning and adaptive PI controller and ensures global optimization of these parameters. The simulation results of the newly developed control algorithms applied to induction motor control system. The results show enhanced control performance with high adaptation and learning capabilities.

Significant advancements in information and communication technologies have made remarkable developments in many fields including healthcare delivery and medical data management. Digital watermarking and encryption techniques have been used to increase medical image security, confidentiality and integrity in addition to conventional network security protection.The work mainly focuses on the DICOM images, DICOM has been an Universal Standard for secured communication of Medical Images over networks. The Digital Envelope method is used to assure data integrity and security.The DE, including the digital signature of the image as well as encrypted patient information from the DICOM image header, can be embedded in the background area of the image as an invisible permanent watermark The watermarked image is then encrypted using AES and RSA algorithms.The encrypted images are then tested with common attacks and the quality measures such as PSNR, correlation coefficient and TAF are calculated to evaluate the behaviour of the algorithms.

One of the major applications of image processing is robot vision. In this paper a rain degraded image enhancement algorithm is proposed, which is one of the applications of robot vision. The objective of the proposed method is to enhance the image sequences degraded by rain using sparse coding. Most of the other methods that deal with rain removal from image sequences are carried out only on continuous frames where temporal correlations among successive images are exploited. In sparse representation, with only a few dictionary elements, compared to the ambient signal dimension, can be used to well-approximate the signals. The proposed method makes use of Enhanced K-SVD (EK-SVD) for dictionary learning and orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) for sparse coding to retrieve the rain degraded image. This dictionary selection will provide an increased convergence speed and performance to the proposed method by ensuring minimum error as well as sparsity of representation. In this paper the proposed method is also examined with other well known dictionary learning techniques. Simulation results show that the proposed method provides improved performance in visual quality and also provides less computation time.

Over the past century there has been a dramatic increase in the consumption of resources such as energy, raw materials, water, etc. in the manufacturing domain. An intelligent resource monitoring system that uses structural, context and process information of the plant can deliver more accurate monitoring results that can be used to detect excessive resource consumption. Recent monitoring systems usually run on a central unit. However, modern plants require a higher degree of reusability and adaptability which can be achieved by several monitoring units running on decentralized autonomous devices that allow the components to monitor themselves.

To integrate structural, context and process information on such autonomous devices for resource monitoring, semantic models and rules are appropriate. This paper will present an architecture of a decentralized, intelligent resource monitoring system which uses structural, context and process knowledge to compute the state of the individual components by means of models and rules. This architecture might also be used for other manufacturing systems such as diagnostic or prognostic systems.

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique for depositing SiC on Si(100) substrates using Nd

3 + 

: YAG laser at 355 nm is studied. Influence of substrate temperature, ambient pressure and SiC powder grit size on both structure and morphology of SiC thin film is investigated. Experimental studies show that multicrystalline SiC film can be obtained with temperature ranging from 600 °C to 700 °C and at an ambient pressure of about 5.5×10

− 3

Pa. Although, alkali free glass show Micro-cracks on as deposited films, crystalline Si substrate did not show such micro cracks. Further, droplet formation on the deposited film was reduced significantly by selecting the grit size of SiC powder around 120. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies on deposited films clearly show multicrystalline (combined 3C-SiC and 4H-SiC) nature of SiC films. Based on the nano-indentation test, elastic modulus and hardness values of thin film were estimated as 300 GPa and 45 GPa.

This research highly focuses towards influence of different paprmaters in development of Sb doped ZnO nanostructures using Nano Particle Assisted Pulsed Laser Deposition by using Sb coated substrate.different types of nanostructures were synthesized with vartion in growth temperature. Nano wires generated from Sb coated silicon substrate posses a sharp UV emission from room temperature PL. vertically aligned ZnO nanowires were grown on different ZnO buffer layer thickness ranging from 100 to 1600 nm. With increase in buffer layer thickness a strong UV emission with improved structural properties are observed, which are highly suitable for optoelectronic device application.

Facility layout problem is a critical issue in the early stages of designing a manufacturing system because it affects the total manufacturing cost significantly. This paper proposes a new mathematical model for designing a machine layout having maximum stability for the whole time planning horizon of the stochastic dynamic facility layout problem by using quadratic assignment formulation. This layout has the maximum ability to display a small sensitivity to demand changeability. In this investigation, the product demands are assumed to be independent Poisson distributed random variables with known probability density function in each period. In order to validate the proposed model, a randomly generated test problem is solved by using simulated annealing algorithm. Finally, the computational results are evaluated statistically.

As tier1 and tier 2 manufactures seek solutions to bridge the gap between supply chain management (SCM) and the critical plant floor operations. The classical manufactures are looking for customized solutions to bridge the gap between SCM and plant floor operations. In industries, shop floor and SCM remains a blockade to improve visibility. In floor manipulates more data and gain better control of processes, solutions proliferate, adding new challenges to gaining full visibility and integrating floor and SCM. In order to increase the visibility of plant floor activities, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are often used in conjunction with SCM systems to simplify and enable actual manufacturing processes. This paper proposes a solution to the integration of MES and supply chain management.

Supply chain management plays an important role in firms and organization. Supplier selection and allocating orders to supplier is a complex multi objective problem which includes both quantitative and qualitative factors. In order to achieve an efficient solution in the quantitative factors, a Fuzzy Multi Objective Integer Programming [FMOIP] model with

α

-cut is formulated to help the management to allocate the optimum order quantities, in which the three objectives are to optimize purchasing cost, quality, and service and satisfy constraints like supplier’s capacity, supply chain demand etc are considered. The model has been applied to supplier selection of a high technology company named Multi-Flex Lami-Print Ltd which manufactures Flexible Packaging materials. The result shows that the model is effective and applicable to industries.

In traditional layout design approach, inter-cell layout and flow path layout of the Material Handling System (

MHS

) of any manufacturing system is being carried out in step by step manner. This leads to sub-optimal solutions for facility layout problems (FLP). In this work an attempt is made to concurrently design the Inter-cell layout and the

MHS

using GA based meta heuristic using simulated annealing as local search tool (GASAA) for a Cellular Manufacturing System (

CMS

) environment under open field configuration. The proposed algorithm is employed to optimize one of the classical objective namely, Total material handling cost (TMHC). The algorithm is tested on two different bench mark problem instances and with different initial problem data sets. It is found that the proposed algorithm is able to produce good solutions in reasonable computational effort.

Hot corrosion of Gas Tungsten Arc Welded (GTAW) AISI 304 and AISI 4140 dissimilar weldment exposed in air as well as molten salt environment of Na

2

SO

4

-60%V

2

O

5

and K

2

SO

4

-60% NaCl are discussed. Weight gain studies were done for composite specimens containing both weld metal and heat-affected zone. The results indicated that the specimens were more corroded in molten salt environment as compared to air oxidation. Also weld interface of the samples showed more attack than base metals.

This paper reports on the performance of Electron Beam Welded (EBW) low alloy steel AISI 4140 and stainless steel AISI 304 in air as well as molten salt environments of Na

2

SO

4

-60%V

2

O

5

and K

2

SO

4

-60% NaCl at 650(C. The corrosion kinetics has been established by thermo-gravimetric technique during the initial stages. In this work, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive analysis and electron probe micro analysis techniques were used to analyze the corrosion products. It is well observed from the experimental results that the weldments suffered accelerated corrosion in K

2

SO

4

-NaClenvironment and showed spalling/sputtering of the oxide scale. Furthermore, corrosion resistance of weld interface was found to be lower than that of parent metals in molten salt environment. It is also inferred from the results that NaCl is the one of the main corrosive species in hot corrosion, involving mixtures of K

2

SO

4

-NaCl and which is responsible for internal corrosion attack.

This research work reports on the weldability, microstructure, mechanical and hot corrosion properties of manual Gas Tungsten Arc Welded (GTAW) dissimilar combinations of Monel 400 and AISI 304 stainless steel using ENiCrFe-3 filler metal. Bimetallic combinations of Monel 400 and AISI 304 have been characterized by microstructure examination. Mechanical properties include hardness and tensile strength of the weldment has been estimated for the aforementioned filler wire. Further hot corrosion studies have been carried out on the various zones of the weldment by subjecting to cyclic air oxidation and K

2

SO

4

+ NaCl (60%) molten salt environment at 600 °C. The corrosion products are systematically characterized using surface analytical techniques. It is a clear indication from the results that the weld region is susceptible to more corrosion in air as well as in the molten salt environment as compared to other regions of the weldment.

The objective of this experimental study was analyzing the joining behavior of 6 mm thick cold rolled copper plate using Friction Stir Welding (FSW) technique. The role of tool rotational speed, travel speed and tool pin profiles on the weld quality, tensile and bend behaviors, hardness, and microstrucuture was investigated. Defect free weld was obtained at tool rotational speeds ranging between 1300 - 1600rpm and welding travel speeds ranging between 30-45mm/min. Tensile strength interms of joint efficiency was found to be 73% compare to the base material (BM). The average hardness of the nugget zone was lesser than the base material because of annealing of the cold rolled copper plates during welding. Different microstructure zones were revealed by optical microscopy (OM). The nugget zone (NZ) and heat affected zone (HAZ) were found to have fine equiaxed grains and fine elongated grains respectively.

The development and characterization of self-healing structural ceramics have been inspired by researchers in which damage triggers an autonomic healing response. This is one of the emerging and fascinating areas of research that could significantly extend the working life and safety of the ceramic components at higher temperature. The structural ceramics are superior in strength to metal at high temperature, but they are brittle and sensitive to flaws. Due to this, the structural integrity of the ceramic components is seriously affected. There are few advantages in crack healing ability of materials (a) higher fabrication efficient at low cost, of the self-healing takes place after the machining is performed, (b) reliability of the material improves, when all the cracks are healed and (c) if the crack gets healed in service, the full strength of the material is recovered. In this paper, Overview of various self-healing concepts for structural ceramic materials; Literature crack healing ability and the Parameters that influence the crack healing are presented.

The effect of the tool nose profile deviations in cutting tool inserts on the surface roughness of the work piece produced based on the actual tool nose profile geometry is studied. The nose profile was detected from the tool nose image captured using the 3-D metrology system. A edge detection approach combining moment invariance operator with Sobel 2-D filter operator is proposed. A work piece surface profile is then generated by considering tool nose profile deviation, feed rate, nose radius and wedge angle to study the effect of the work piece geometry deviation on the roughness values. Based on the experimental results, the maximum differences from ideal and experimental results are 19.8% for

R

t

, 19.9% for

R

a

and 16.1% for

R

q

respectively.

As a novel vibration-assisted machining method, elliptical vibration cutting (EVC) technique has been found to be a better technique, compared to conventional cutting and conventional vibration cutting techniques. Due to the transient thickness of cut and continuous variation of tool velocity direction, its fundamental cutting mechanics is different from other cutting techniques. In the field of metal cutting, cutting force is usually considered as the most important indicator of machining state and quality. Analysis of the cutting force plays a vital role in determining and predicting various machining performances. In this study, a series of low-frequency orthogonal EVC tests were conducted to study the effects of three essential parameters on the transient cutting force values. It is found that the transient cutting force increases with the increment of speed ratio, the increment of tangential amplitude, and the decrement of thrust amplitude.

Traditional supplier selection methods are often based on the quoted price, which ignores the significant direct and indirect costs associated with quality, delivery, use and service cost. This paper proposes Reliability based total cost of ownership (RBTCO) model by incorporating the initial cost, replacement cost and downtime cost. The mathematical formulation of the RBTCO model for the supplier selection problem fits into the nonlinear integer programming problem, which belongs to the NP-hard category. A recently developed Cuckoo search algorithm is used to provide the optimal solutions. The performance of the algorithm is tested with numerical problems.

Software quality is assessed by a number of variables. These variables can be divided into external and internal quality criteria. External quality is what a user experiences when running the software in its operational mode. Internal quality refers to aspects that are code-dependent, and that are not visible to the end-user. Internal quality of the software is measured by software developer only. Developer fix the code complexity according to the problem. Minimum size of source code will leads to reduce debugging time and cost. This paper proposes a software quality support tool, a Java source code evaluator and a code profiler based on computational intelligence techniques to reduce schedule slippage of development activity. It gives a new approach to evaluate and identify inaccurate source code usage and transitively, the software product itself. The aim of this project is to provide the software development industry with a new tool to increase software quality by extending the value of source code metrics through computational intelligence.

In foundries, continuous quality improvement through failure investigation and identification is based on the traditional failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) using Risk priority Number (RPN). Prioritize the failure modes through RPN produces the result which does not match in practice. This research paper addresses a novel model named FEAROM to prioritize the failure modes through FMEA. The most popular technique ANOVA has been used for testing the equality of RPN values mean data through a statistical software package. An experimental study was carried out for a cast component in a steel foundry using investment casting method to validate the proposed model. It has been found that application of the proposed FEAROM model resulted in sound castings.

Equi-Channel Angular Pressing(ECAP) involves development of large simple shear which induces plastic deformation on the sample pressed through a die containing two intersecting channels of identical cross-section. The channel angle in ECAP die is having significant influence to induce the strain on the material during pressing. The strain imposed on the material increases while channel angle decreases. On another hand, the imparted strain increases with increase in hydrostatic pressure. The relation between hydrostatic pressure and channel angle is not communal because hydrostatic pressure decreases with increase in channel angle. Hence, it is clear that channel angle plays an influencing factor for inducing strain on the material and also hydrostatic pressure determination based on channel angle. Therefore a compromise solution has to be selected in determining the channel angle for achieving effective ECAP condition.The influence of channel angle on deformation behavior for AA 6061 Aluminum Alloy using ANSYS V12 was studied. The Analysis is carried out for different channel angles of 90˚, 110˚ and 120˚ for different hydrostatic pressure conditions.