Using electroencephalogram to continuously discriminate feelings of personal thermal comfort between uncomfortably hot and comfortable environments

Thermal comfort is an important factor for the design of buildings. Although it has been well recognized that many physiological parameters are linked to the state of thermal comfort or discomfort of humans, how to use physiological signal to judge the state of thermal comfort has not been well studied. In this paper, the feasibility of continuously determining feelings of personal thermal comfort was discussed by using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in private space. In the study, 22 subjects were exposed to thermally comfortable and uncomfortably hot environments, and their EEG signals were recorded. Spectral power features of the EEG signals were extracted, and an ensemble learning method using linear discriminant analysis or support vector machine as a sub-classifier was used to build the discriminant model. The results show that an average discriminate accuracy of 87.9% can be obtained within a detection window of 60 seconds. This study indicates that it is feasible to distinguish whether a person feels comfortable or too hot in their private space by multi-channel EEG signals without interruption and suggests possibility for further applications in neuroergonomics.     

Multi-product continuous plant scheduling: combination of decomposition,genetic algorithm,and constructive heuristic

We propose a polylithic method for medium-term scheduling of a large-scale industrial plant operating in a continuous mode. The method combines a decomposition approach, a genetic algorithm (GA) and a constructive MILP-based heuristic. In the decomposition, decisions are made at two levels, using the rolling horizon approach. At the upper level, a reduced set of products and the time period is chosen to be considered in the lower level. At the lower level, a short-term scheduling MILP-model with event-based representation is used. A heuristic solution to the lower level problem is found using a constructive Moving Window heuristic guided by a genetic algorithm. The GA is applied for finding efficient utilisation of critical units in the lower level problem. For solving the one unit scheduling problem, a parallel dynamic programming algorithm is proposed. Implementation of the dynamic programming algorithm for a graphics processing unit (GPU) is incorporated in the GA for improving its performance. The experimental study of the proposed method on a real case of a large-scale plant shows a significant improvement of the solution quality and the solving time comparing to the pure decomposition algorithm proposed in the earlier study, and confirmed suitability of the proposed approach for the real-life production scheduling. In particular, the reduction of the number of changeovers and their duration in the obtained solution as well as the CPU time of solving the problem was about 60% using the new approach.     

基于线性自抗扰控制技术的永磁同步电机控制策略研究

永磁同步电机(PMSM)具有体积小、高速度、高精度等优势,广泛应用于现代工程实际当中。在多数情况下其控制策略采用经典的PID控制,但较多的实际复杂环境当中,传统的PID所暴露的固有缺陷已经无法满足PMSM的控制高效性。采用先进的线性自抗扰控制策略,其具有不依赖具体对象模型,控制器自身可以估计补偿作用于被控对象的所有扰动的优势,实验仿真结果表明,该方案有效抑制了扰动,进而提高了系统的控制性能。     

开关磁阻直线电机的设计及其推力优化

设计了一种开关磁阻直线电机,使用JMAG软件对其进行了仿真和优化。进行了推力公式的推导,研究了导通顺序和初始位置对电机推力的影响,并分析了三种典型情况的磁力线分布。对电机的定子和动子的齿部和轭部高度、宽度及铁耗进行仿真优化,得出了最优参数。将有取向硅钢应用于该电机,研究了推力与轧制角的关系,并与使用普通硅钢的开关磁阻直线电机进行了对比,推力有一定提升。提出在动子齿部开切向槽的方案,结果表明,开切向槽对推力的影响较小,并能显著减小推力波动。     

Nonlinear Factor-Augmented Predictive Regression Models with Functional Coefficients

This article introduces a new class of functional-coefficient predictive regression models, where the regressors consist of auto-regressors and latent factor regressors, and the coefficients vary with certain index variable. The unobservable factor regressors are estimated through imposing an approximate factor model on high dimensional exogenous variables and subsequently implementing the classical principal component analysis. With the estimated factor regressors, a local linear smoothing method is used to estimate the coefficient functions (with appropriate rotation) and obtain a one-step ahead nonlinear forecast of the response variable, and then a wild bootstrap procedure is introduced to construct the prediction interval. Under regularity conditions, the asymptotic properties of the proposed methods are derived, showing that the local linear estimator and the nonlinear forecast using the estimated factor regressors are asymptotically equivalent to those using the true latent factor regressors. The developed model and methodology are further generalized to the factor-augmented vector predictive regression with functional coefficients. Finally, some extensive simulation studies and an empirical application to forecast the UK inflation are given to examine the finite-sample performance of the proposed model and methodology.     

A numerical filtering method for linear state-space models with Markov switching

A class of discrete-time random processes arising in engineering and econometrics applications consists of a linear state-space model whose parameters are modulated by the state of a finite-state Markov chain. Typical filtering approaches are collapsing methods, which approximate filtered distributions by mixtures of Gaussians, each Gaussian corresponding to one possibility of the recent history of the Markov chain, and particle methods. This article presents an alternative approach to filtering these processes based on keeping track of the values of the underlying filtered density and its characteristic function on grids. We prove that it has favorable convergence properties under certain assumptions. On the other hand, as a grid method, it suffers from the curse of dimensionality, and so is only suitable for low-dimensional systems. We compare our method to collapsing filters and a particle filter with examples, and find that it can outperform them on 1- and 2-dimensional problems, but loses its speed advantage on 3-dimensional systems. Meanwhile, our method has a proven theoretical convergence rate that is probably not achieved by collapsing and particle methods.     

Leader-following consensus of fractional-order multi-agent systems via adaptive control

This article focuses on the consensus problem of leader-following fractional-order multi-agent systems (MASs) with general linear and Lipschitz nonlinear dynamics. First, the distributed adaptive protocols for linear and nonlinear fractional-order MASs are constructed, respectively. We allow the control coupling gains to be time varying for each agent. Moreover, the adaptive modification schemes for the control gain are designed, which renders smaller control gains and thus requires smaller amplitude on the control input without sacrificing consensus convergence. Second, based on fractional-order Lyapunov stability theorem and Barbalat's lemma, two novel sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities are provided to ensure that the leader-following consensus can be obtained in the case for any undirected connected communication graph. Furthermore, we show that the proposed algorithm also works for consensus of agents with intrinsic Lipschitz nonlinear dynamics. As a result, the proposed framework requires no global information and thus can be implemented in a fully distributed manner. Finally, the numerical simulations are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of obtained the theoretical results.     

Outlier accommodation in moving-horizon state estimation: A risk-averse performance-specified approach

This paper presents a novel state estimation approach for linear dynamic systems when measurements are corrupted by outliers. Since outliers can degrade the performance of state estimation, outlier accommodation is critical. The standard approach combines outlier detection utilizing Neyman-Pearson (NP) type tests with a Kalman filter (KF). This approach ignores all residuals greater than a designer-specified threshold. When measurements with outliers are used (ie, missed detections), both the state estimate and the error covariance matrix become corrupted. This corrupted state and covariance estimate are then the basis for all subsequent outlier decisions. When valid measurements are rejected (ie, false alarms), potentially using the corrupted state estimate and error covariance, measurement information is lost. Either using invalid information or discarding too much valid information can result in divergence of the KF. An alternative approach is moving-horizon (MH) state estimation, which maintains all recent measurement data within a moving window with a time horizon of length L. In MH approaches, the number of measurements available for state estimation is affected by both the number of measurements per time step and the number of time steps L over which measurements are retained. Risk-averse performance-specified (RAPS) state estimation works within an optimization setting to choose a set of measurements that achieves a performance specification with minimum risk of outlier inclusion. This paper derives and formulates the MH-RAPS solution for outlier accommodation. The paper also presents implementation results. The MH-RAPS application uses Global Navigation Satellite Systems measurements to estimate the state of a moving platform using a position, velocity, and acceleration model. In this application, MH-RAPS performance is compared with MH-NP state estimation.     

Fix-and-relax approaches for controlled tabular adjustment

Controlled tabular adjustment (CTA) is a relatively new protection technique for tabular data protection. CTA formulates a mixed integer linear programming problem, which is challenging for tables of moderate size. Even finding a feasible initial solution may be a challenging task for large instances. On the other hand, end users of tabular data protection techniques give priority to fast executions and are thus satisfied in practice with suboptimal solutions. This work has two goals. First, the fix-and-relax (FR) strategy is applied to obtain good feasible initial solutions to large CTA instances. FR is based on partitioning the set of binary variables into clusters to selectively explore a smaller branch-and-cut tree. Secondly, the FR solution is used as a warm start for a block coordinate descent (BCD) heuristic (approach named FR+BCD); BCD was confirmed to be a good option for large CTA instances in an earlier paper by the second and third co-authors (Comput Oper Res 2011;38:1826–35 [23]). We report extensive computational results on a set of real-world and synthetic CTA instances. FR is shown to be competitive compared to CPLEX branch-and-cut in terms of quickly finding either a feasible solution or a good upper bound. FR+BCD improved the quality of FR solutions for approximately 25% and 50% of the synthetic and real-world instances, respectively. FR or FR+BCD provided similar or better solutions in less CPU time than CPLEX for 73% of the difficult real-world instances.