Academic literature on the topic 'Infrared distance sensor'

Background: Infrared (IR) sensors are useful tools for detecting distance and proximity. However, these sensors are not good at detecting edges of an area, therefore when used in a smart toilet it has difficulty in detecting the orientation and position of the user’s body. The aim of this study was to design an IR sensor for a smart toilet with a more accurate and consistent detection. Methods: A total of 12(six men and six women) participants with different body types were involved in this study. IR sensor detection was tested in the sitting and squatting toilets. For the best accuracy, the IR sensor's angle was measured. Red, blue, and red-blue plastic covers were used, as these colors improve precision. The microcontroller was set up to calculate the participant’s distance and presence in the cubicle. Results: Toilet positioning varied greatly depending on whether one is sitting or squatting. For sitting toilet, the red cover was close to the accurate distance at a 172˚ angle. IR detected a man but not a woman's body. The blue cover provided the same best angle of 172˚ with a higher sensor distance. When the red and blue cover combination was applied, the reading of 141cm detected both men and women, at 172˚ angle. The actual distance for squatting toilets was 158cm. The optimal angle for both red and blue covers was 176˚, however the sensor distance was greater for the blue cover. Finally, the red and blue cover combination gave a more accurate distance of up to 163cm from the actual reading, when detecting both genders at a normal angle of 76˚. Conclusion: The combination of red and blue cover gave the most accurate detection for the squatting and sitting toilets. The best angle for sitting was 172˚, and for squatting was 176˚.

The paper describes a series of experiments conducted as part of the IRAMSWater Project, the aim of which is to establish methodologies for detecting and identifying pollutants in water bodies using aerial imagery data. The main idea is based on the hypothesis, that it is possible to identify certain types of physical, biological and chemical pollutants based on their spectral reflectance characteristics. The knowledge of these spectral curves is then used to determine very narrow spectral bands in which greatest reflectance variations occur between these pollutants. A frame camera is then equipped with a band pass filter, which allows only the selected bandwidth to be registered. In order to obtain reliable reflectance data straight from the images, the team at the Military University of Technology had developed a methodology for determining the necessary acquisition parameters for the sensor (integration time and f-stop depending on the distance from the scene and it's illumination). This methodology however is based on the assumption, that the imaging sensors have a linear response. This paper shows the results of experiments used to evaluate this linearity.

Energy consumption is one of the major problems in the development of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). Under certain application conditions, Free Space Optical (FSO) communication can effectively reduce system energy consumption. Combining the need of the short-distance communication in the cooperative control of the mobile robot, this paper focuses on the study for the infrared FSO communication method and devices. Eight infrared-transmitting and receiving modules with the angular spacing 45° were deployed to realize the omnidirectional communication. The systematic measurement shows that the designed communication system can effectively carry out data transmission within a distance of 14 meters when the bit error ratio (BER) is 0%. Through the link budget analysis, the theoretical transmission distance of the design system is about 24 meters, only accounting for 60% of the communication module data manual, and the BER rises rapidly as the distance increases. The analysis of the oscilloscope observation results indicates that due to the attenuation caused by each medium (mainly moisture, dust, etc.) in the propagation path, the BER rapidly increases when the distance increases. Therefore, based on the test results, this system is applicable for constructing a short-distance wireless sensor network to meet the needs of cooperative control of mobile robots, without involving the complicated pointing process.

Heterogeneous multi-sensor’s fusion tracking can detect precise distance and angle to the target. For heterogeneous multi-sensor issues, radar, infrared sensor and laser sensor’s data fusion, and target tracking are studied, weighted fusion algorithm based on Lagrange and unscented kalman filter are adopted, which make date fusion and tracking filtering for target. Simulation results show that the radar / infrared / laser sensors can realize data fusion and tracking to the target, and the accuracy is significantly higher than radar and infrared/laser, and then tracking effect is better.

Consumer-grade RGBD sensors that provide both colour and depth information have many potential applications, such as robotics control, localization, and mapping, due to their low cost and simple operation. However, the depth measurement provided by consumer-grade RGBD sensors is still inadequate for many high-precision applications, such as rich 3D reconstruction, accurate object recognition and precise localization, due to the fact that the systematic errors of RGB sensors increase exponentially with the ranging distance. Most existing calibration models for depth measurement must be carried out with different distances. In this paper, we reveal the mechanism of how an infrared (IR) camera and IR projector contribute to the overall non-centrosymmetric distortion of a structured light pattern-based RGBD sensor. Then, a new two-step calibration method for RGBD sensors based on the disparity measurement is proposed, which is range-independent and has full frame coverage. Three independent calibration models are used for the calibration for the three main components of the RGBD sensor errors: the infrared camera distortion, the infrared projection distortion, and the infrared cone-caused bias. Experiments show the proposed calibration method can provide precise calibration results in full-range and full-frame coverage of depth measurement. The offset in the edge area of long-range depth (8 m) is reduced from 86 cm to 30 cm, and the relative error is reduced from 11% to 3% of the range distance. Overall, at far range the proposed calibration method can improve the depth accuracy by 70% in the central region of depth frame and 65% in the edge region.

We report a numerical study of D-shaped photonic crystal fiber based plasmonic refractive index sensor with high resolution and sensitivity in the near-infrared region. D-shaped photonic crystal fiber is formed by side polishing one part of photonic crystal fiber. It has a polishing surface where plasmonic gold layer is coated to modulate the resonant wavelength and enhance the refractive index sensitivity. Several D-shaped photonic crystal fiber plasmonic sensors with various distances from the photonic crystal fiber’s core to the polishing surface and gold thicknesses are designed and their characteristics are analyzed by the finite element method. The simulation results indicate that distance from the photonic crystal fiber’s core to the polishing surface causes modifications in the loss intensity, the resonant wavelength, and the refractive index sensitivity of D-shaped photonic crystal fiber plasmonic sensor. Mass production of refractive index sensors were achieved using a simple fabrication process, whereby the D-shaped photonic crystal fiber is grinded where distance from the photonic crystal fiber’s core to the polishing surface is less than one layer thickness and then coated with the gold layer. For the refractive index sensing applications, the maxima theoretical resolution and sensitivity of D-shaped photonic crystal fiber plasmonic sensor reach 2.98 × 10 6refractive index unit and 6,140 nm/refractive index unit in range of 1.30–1.37, respectively. We also report an initial fabrication of the D-shaped photonic crystal fiber following the standard stack-and- draw method to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed device by using our in-house equipments. The proposed D-shaped photonic crystal fiber plasmonic sensor design in this work would be useful for the development of cheap refractive index sensors with high sensitivity and resolution.

This article presents a novel correction filter for infrared images captured by Kinect v2 sensor. Intended application areas are described and the basic concept of proposed sensory subsystem as well. Preliminary tests of the sensor Kinect v2 in real conditions gave promising results, therefore in-depth analysis of its applicability was performed. In the framework of the analysis, a relation between infrared value and a distance of captured surface was evaluated for different colors of the surface. Based on that relation and on additional information about the depth of a pixel, a correction filter was created. The filter allows improving infrared image in order to increase the success rate probability to be able to detect specific features and key points by algorithms more easily. Outputs from the filter on real conditions data sets are also presented in the article.

The article deals with the creation of a program for stopping an autonomous robotic vehicle Robotino® 4. generation at a defined distance from an obstacle. One of the nine infrared distance sensors located on the frame of the robotic vehicle in the front part of the frame is used for this application task. The infrared distance sensor characteristic is created from the measured experimental data, which is then linearized in the given section. The main aim of the experiment is to find such an equation of a line that corresponds to the stopping of a robotic vehicle with a given accuracy from an obstacle. The determined equation of the line is applied to the resulting program for autonomous control of the robotic vehicle. This issue is one of the many tasks performed by AGV in the industry. The introduction of AGVs into the industry is one of the many possibilities within Industry 4.0.

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During one of the most critical water crises in Brazil, in 2015, a Folha de São Paulo Journal report showed that 37 % of all water treated in Brazil does not reach the final consumer, being the failures in pipes the main cause. This master’s work addresses this problem of waste and failure in piping, for both water and sewage. In this way the characteristics of these types of pipes as well as the most common types of faults are presented. Existing inspection piping methods are also presented. And in an attempt to help reduce this pipeline waste, a pipe failure detection method was developed to achieve a low cost solution so that it can be widely used. The developed solution involved the development of a position control method using a reinforcement learning method, Q-Learning, which allows the robot to run through the pipe without tumbling, using only a gyroscope. It was also developed, using infrared distance sensors and an accelerometer, a method of detecting failures in which it was possible to detect faults with only 2 mm of thickness, in all the times in which the robot passed through it. The developed method is able to overcome the instability and imprecision of the infrared sensor, allowing, during the tests, the detection of all the faults in which the robot crossed, having only 1 false failure accusation in 25 m of course at a speed 60 % greater than the maximum speed of a video inspection. The results were satisfactory, but more work on increasing the inspected surface area and redundancy of fault detection is still required.
Durante uma das mais graves crises hídricas no Brasil, em 2015, uma reportagem da Folha de São Paulo mostrou que 37% de toda a água tratada no Brasil não chega até o consumidor final, sendo as falhas nas tubulações a principal causa. Este trabalho de mestrado aborda esse problema de desperdício e falhas em tubulações, tanto de água como de esgoto. Dessa forma são apresentadas as características desses tipos de tubulações bem como os tipos mais comuns de falhas. Os métodos de inspeção de tubulações existentes também estão apresentados. E na tentativa de auxiliar na redução do desperdício em tubulações foi desenvolvido um método de detecção de falhas de tubulações, objetivando alcançar uma solução de baixo custo para que ela possa ser amplamente utilizada. A solução criada envolveu o desenvolvimento de um método de controle de posição utilizando um método de aprendizagem por reforço, o Q-Learning, que permite o robô percorrer a tubulação sem tombar, apenas utilizando um giroscópio. Foi desenvolvido, utilizando sensores de distância infravermelho e um acelerômetro, um método de detecção de falhas em que se conseguiu detectar falhas com apenas 2 mm de espessura, em todas as vezes em que o robô passou por ela. O método desenvolvido é capaz de superar a instabilidade e imprecisão do sensor infravermelho, permitindo, durante os testes, a detecção de todas as falhas em que o robô atravessou, tendo apenas 1 acusação de falsa falha a cada 25 m de percurso a uma velocidade mais de 60% maior que a velocidade máxima de uma vídeo inspeção. Os resultados foram satisfatórios, porém mais trabalho no aumento da área da superfície inspecionada e na redundância da detecção de falhas ainda se faz necessário.

碩士
明新科技大學
電子工程研究所
101
The main drawback of common passive infrared sensing devices PIR is the failure in determining the changes in the environment, especially the slow-moving people within the range of detection since in the detection range the temperature of the object is not changed, it causes false positives in the PIR using the scheme. Active infrared sensors can improve the above shortcomings, however, the effective distance is mostly limited to three meters. A reflecting mirror is usually used to increase the reflection distance. The thesis is focused on the design and implementation of the active infrared sensing system, this system use of common electronic components, and design the preamplifier, amplifier, filter, rectifier, ADC conversion circuit with a Microcontroller Unit to determine the changes in the environment. We also use the program filter to reduce the sunlight error range. When the environmental changeover, the LED of our system will indicate this situation. This detection range changing can be interfaced through MATLAB software. Our system also improves the performance for the detection range to more than three meters. Finally, the application automatic doors and automatic lamp depict the correctness.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

In this study, multiple control systems were developed using commonly used wireless communication protocols like Bluetooth, Xbee, and Wi-Fi. Mechanical switch based control systems were initially designed using Xbee and Bluetooth protocols. Further, Android application based control systems were developed using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi protocols. A robotic vehicle was used as an electric-powered wheelchair prototype. Ultrasonic sensors and infrared sensors were integrated with the robotic vehicle for obstacle and pothole detection, respectively. The control systems were tested in an L-shaped corridor for identifying the suitable wireless communication protocol to efficiently guide the robotic vehicle through a scheduled navigational pathway. Both Xbee and Wi-Fi technology based control systems were able to guide the robotic vehicle through the corridor. But the implementation of Xbee communication protocol is economic. However, for shorter distances, Bluetooth technology may be used for cost-effective implementation.

Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation, usually a mixture of waves having different wavelengths. The wavelength of light, expressed by the symbol λ, is defined as the distance between two crests (or troughs) of a wave, measured in the direction of its progression. The unit used is the nanometre (nm, 10-9 m). Light that the human eye can sense is called visible light. Each colour that we perceive corresponds to a certain wavelength band in the 400-700 nm region. Spectrophotometry in its biochemical applications is generally concerned with the ultraviolet (UV, 185-400 nm), visible (400-700 nm) and infrared (700-15 000 nm) regions of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum, the former two being most common in laboratory practice. The wavelength of light is inversely related to its energy (E), according to the equation: . . . E = ch/ λ . . . where c denotes the speed of light, and h is Planck’s constant. UV radiation, therefore, has greater energy than the visible, and visible radiation has greater energy than the infrared. Light of certain wavelengths can be selectively absorbed by a substance according to its molecular structure. Absorption of light energy occurs when the incident photon carries energy equal to the difference in energy between two allowed states of the valency electrons, the photon promoting the transition of an electron from the lower to the higher energy state. Thus biochemical spectrophotometry may be referred to as electronic absorption spectroscopy. The excited electrons afterwards lose energy by the process of heat radiation, and return to the initial ground state. An absorption spectrum is obtained by successively changing the wavelength of monochromatic light falling on the substance, and recording the change of light absorption. Spectra are presented by plotting the wavelengths (generally nm or μm) on the abscissa and the degree of absorption (transmittance or absorbance) on the ordinate. For more information on the theory of light absorption, see Brown (1) and Chapters 2, 3 and 4. The most widespread use of UV and visible spectroscopy in biochemistry is in the quantitative determination of absorbing species (chromophores), known as spectrophotometry.

It is well recognized in the literature that thermal sensation and comfort are dependent on both core and skin temperatures. In particular, some regions of the human skin, such as the forehead, have a higher density of thermal receptors, giving a higher sensitivity to the skin temperature. Some studies suggest that the forehead skin temperature and its rate ofchange alone could potentially be a good indicator of one’s overall thermal comfort. To validate this claim, an idea for a smart sensor which would be able to read the occupants’ forehead temperature and other environmental parameters in a proximal way is here considered. Moreover, with the aim of exploiting the system not only in lab or test facility environments but, considering the 4.0 revolution, also in the building automation context, a non-invasive solution has been searched so as the occupants are not disturbed while the measurement is performed. Therefore, in this study, a new cheap and smart mechatronic sensor device for a non-invasive measurement of the occupants’ thermal comfort is proposed. The main components consist of a central unit, i.e. microprocessor, a small infrared sensor for thermal imaging, i.e a Lepton infrared camera by FLIR, as well as other sensors for measuring distance, humidity and temperature. The setup was imagined as the sensor being placed on the top of each desk, so it is not easily obstructed by a laptop or a similar object that can be found on top of the working surface. After the conceptual hardware definition and software development, an accurate experimental calibration has been performed exploiting an ad-hoc developed set-up based on a hot plate with an emissivity factor similar to the one of the human skin and with adjustable temperature. Finally, a first design for embedding the whole smart mechatronic system in a unique box has been developed and built.

We describe the design and testing of an implantable miniature infusion pump that uses a rechargeable battery as a power source. This design includes a receiver printed coil that allows inductive power transfer from a transmitter coil wound around a 20 cm diameter charging unit and a frequency-gated optical sensor that allows activation of the pump at a distance using pulses of infrared light. This mini pump can be charged in the home cage by inductive power transfer, and then operates independently from its power link in freely moving animals.

Pose estimation and trajectory tracking of a spherical rolling robot is a complex problem owing to kinematics and dynamics of the system and the constraint of not being able to add range sensors like ultrasonic or infrared distance sensors on the robot. The pose estimate for the robot under study, needs to be derived purely using inertial measurement unit (IMU) and odometry from analog wheel encoders, which in turn include high uncertainties. Adding to this, the system kinematic and dynamic model to accurately predict the behavior is quite complex. In this paper we present a simplified kinematic model, sensor filtering techniques and the control strategy adopted to locate and navigate the robot to a desired waypoint autonomously. A filter block provides clean heading output from the IMU and incremental pulses from an analog wheel encoder; the pose estimator uses heading and incremental pulses to calculate its position according to the system kinematic model. A pure-pursuit algorithm generates left & right wheel velocities to keep the robot on a commanded waypoint, using the robot kinematic model and localization data. The validity of our kinematic model and performance of our waypoint tracking are verified with the ground truth using a motion capture system and onboard sensors, where the application domain is bio-inspired, micro (small scale) robotics.

This paper documents the design and validation of a measurement tool for chronic wound assessment. Using the Google Glass™ head-mounted display (HMD) as a platform for research, we developed a digital ruler to dynamically capture wound dimensions in a hands-free manner. The system consists of the Glass HMD equipped with an infrared light emitting diode (IR-LED) distance sensor, lithium polymer battery, and a custom printed circuit board. Programmed using Android 4.4.2 (API 19), orthogonal rulers along the X and Y axes are superimposed on the Glass eyepiece and calibrated for measurement accuracy. To evaluate system performance, we conducted an ANOVA Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility (R&R) analysis with six wound care nurses measuring seven artificial wounds of various dimensions, two times each. Data was analyzed using Minitab statistical software. For width measurements, the results indicate that the total Gage R&R percent contribution was 10.2%, with 4.2% attributed to equipment variation (repeatability) and 6.0% to operator variation (reproducibility). Wound-to-wound variation was 89.8%. For length measurements, the total Gage R&R percent contribution was 16.7%, with 14.1% attributed to equipment variation and 2.6% to operator variation. Wound-to-wound length variation was 83.3%. The system received positive feedback from nurses as a hands-free measurement tool for sterile wound handling. Yet, further refinements are needed to improve system accuracy and depth measurement capabilities.

Currently, to evaluate the dynamic characteristics of objects, quite a large number of devices are used in the form of chronographs, which consist of various optical, thermal and laser sensors. Among the problems of these devices, the following can be distinguished: the lack of recording of the received data; the inaccessibility of taking into account the trajectory of the object flying in the sensor area, as well as taking into consideration the trajectory of the object during the approach to the device frame. The signal received from the infrared sensors is recorded in a separate document in txt format, in the form of a table. When you turn to the document, data is read from the current position of the input data stream in the specified list by an argument in accordance with the given condition. As a result of reading the data, it forms an array that includes N number of columns. The array is constructed in a such way that the first column includes time values, and columns 2...N- the value of voltage . The algorithm uses cycles that perform the function of deleting array rows where there is a fact of exceeding the threshold value in more than two columns, as well as rows where the threshold level was not exceeded. The modified array is converted into two new arrays, each of which includes data from different sensor frames. An array with the coordinates of the centers of the sensor operation zones was created to apply the Pythagorean theorem in three-dimensional space, which is necessary for calculating the exact distance between the zones. The time is determined by the difference in the response of the first and second sensor frames. Knowing the path and time, we are able to calculate the exact speed of the object. For visualization, the oscillograms of each sensor channel were displayed, and a chronograph model was created. The chronograph model highlights in purple the area where the threshold has been exceeded.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) utilize multiple devices, like high-resolution cameras and radar sensors, to interpret the driving environment and achieve full autonomy. One of these instruments—the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor—utilizes pulsed infrared (IR) light, typically at wavelengths of 905 nm or 1,550 nm, to calculate object distance and position. Exterior automotive paint covers an area larger than any other exterior material. Therefore, understanding how LiDAR wavelengths interact with vehicle coatings is extremely important for the safety of future automated driving technologies. Sensing technologies and materials are two different industries that have not directly interacted in the perception and system sense. With the new applications in the AV industry, multidisciplinary approaches need to be taken to ensure reliability and safety in the future. Unsettled Topics Concerning Coating Detection by LiDAR in Autonomous Vehicles provides a transversal view of different industry segments, from pigment and coating manufacturers to LiDAR components and vehicle system development and integration. The report includes a structured decomposition of the different variables and technologies involved.