A multi-objective approach for multi-material topology and shape optimization

An automated multi-material approach that integrates multi-objective Topology Optimization (TO) and multi-objective shape optimization is presented. A new ant colony optimization algorithm is presented and applied to solving the TO problem, estimating a trade-off set of initial topologies or distributions of material. The solutions found usually present irregular boundaries, which are not desirable in applications. Thus, shape parameterization of the internal boundaries of the design region, and subsequent shape optimization, is performed to improve the quality of the estimated Pareto-optimal solutions. The selection of solutions for shape optimization is done by using the PROMETHEE II decision-making method. The parameterization process involves identifying the boundaries of different materials and describing these boundaries by non-uniform rational B-spline curves. The proposed approach is applied to the optimization of a C-core magnetic actuator, with two objectives: the maximization of the attractive force on the armature and the minimization of the volume of permanent magnet material.     

Electrical transport mechanisms of Neodymium-doped rare-earth semiconductors

Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics - This study reports the electrical properties of Nd-doped cerium oxide (CeO2) films synthesized by microwave assisted hydrothermal using a...     

Reliability analysis using exponentiated Weibull distribution and inverse power law

Today in reliability analysis, the most used distribution to describe the behavior of devices is the Weibull distribution. Nonetheless, the Weibull distribution does not provide an excellent fit to lifetime datasets that exhibit bathtub shaped or upside‐down bathtub shaped (unimodal) failure rates, which are often encountered in the performance of products such as electronic devices (ED). In this paper, a reliability model based on the exponentiated Weibull distribution and the inverse power law model is proposed, this new model provides a better approach to model the performance and fit of the lifetimes of electronic devices. A case study based on the lifetime of a surface‐mounted electrolytic capacitor is presented in this paper. Besides, it was found that the estimation of the proposed model differs from the Weibull classical model and that affects the mean time to failure (MTTF) of the capacitor under analysis.     

Non-newtonian laminar 2D swirl flow design by the topology optimization method

Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization - The performance of fluid devices, such as channels, valves, nozzles, and pumps, may be improved by designing them through the topology optimization...     

Lyapunov Self-triggered Controller for Nonlinear Trajectory Tracking of Unicycle-type Robot

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - This paper focuses on the design and implementation of an aperiodic control of nonholonomic robots tracking nonlinear trajectories. The...     

An ICA-based method for stress classification from voice samples

Emotion detection is a hot topic nowadays for its potential application to intelligent systems in different fields such as neuromarketing, dialogue systems, friendly robotics, vending platforms and amiable banking. Nevertheless, the lack of a benchmarking standard makes it difficult to compare results produced by different methodologies, which could help the research community improve existing approaches and design new ones. Besides, there is the added problem of accurate dataset production. Most of the emotional speech databases and associated documentation are either privative or not publicly available. Therefore, in this work, two stress-elicited databases containing speech from male and female speakers were recruited, and four classification methods are compared in order to detect and classify speech under stress. Results from each method are presented to show their quality performance, besides the final scores attained, in what is a novel approach to the field of study.

     

Immersive and interactive virtual reality applications based on 3D web browsers

This study explores the possibility of effectively using web-standard technologies (i.e., HTML5, JavaScript, WebGL, and WebRTC) to deploy full immersive and interactive virtual reality applications. These applications are based on computer clusters and run in multi-projection environments, such as CAVEs, Panoramas and Power Walls. Until recently, these applications were build using tailored solutions, such low-level libraries to distribute data. We discuss the modern-day web technology which allows these applications meet a multi-platform requirement. This paper also evaluates the communication and synchronization requirements of these applications that are traditionally the main bottleneck. As a proof-of-concept to show the feasibility of our study, we devised and implemented an immersive and interactive virtual reality application employing only web technologies. Our proof-of-concept runs on a miniCAVE environment with three displays and a 6-node cluster.     

How the R community creates and curates knowledge: an extended study of stack overflow and mailing lists

One of the effects of social media’s prevalence in software development is the many flourishing communities of practice where users share a common interest. These large communities use many different communication channels, but little is known about how they create, share, and curate knowledge using such channels. In this paper, we report a mixed methods study of how one community of practice, the R software development community, creates and curates knowledge associated with questions and answers (Q&A) in two of its main communication channels: the R tag in Stack Overflow and the R-Help mailing list. The results reveal that knowledge is created and curated in two main forms: participatory, where multiple users explicitly collaborate to build knowledge, and crowdsourced, where individuals primarily work independently of each other. Moreover, we take a unique approach at slicing the data based on question score and participation activities over time. Our study reveals participation patterns, showing the existence of prolific contributors: users who are active across both channels and are responsible for a large proportion of the answers, serving as a bridge of knowledge. The key contributions of this paper are: a characterization of knowledge artifacts that are exchanged by this community of practice; the reasons why users choose one channel over the other; and insights on the community participation patterns, which indicate an evolution of the community and a shift from knowledge creation to knowledge curation.     

Virtual reality software package for implementing motor learning and rehabilitation experiments

Virtual reality games for rehabilitation are attracting increasing growth. In particular, there is a demand for games that allow therapists to identify an individual’s difficulties and customize the control of variables, such as speed, size, distance, as well as visual and auditory feedback. This study presents and describes a virtual reality software package (Bridge Games) to promote rehabilitation of individuals living with disabilities and highlights preliminary researches of its use for implementing motor learning and rehabilitation. First, the study presents seven games in the software package that can be chosen by the rehabilitation team, considering the patient’s needs. All game characteristics are described including name, function presentation, objective and valuable measurements for rehabilitation. Second, preliminary results illustrate some applications of two games, considering 343 people with various disabilities and health status. Based on the results, in the Coincident Timing game, there was a main effect of movement sensor type (in this instance the most functional device was the keyboard when compared with Kinect and touch screen) on average time reached by sample analyzed, F(2, 225) = 4.42, p < 0.05. Similarly, in the Challenge! game, a main effect was found for movement sensor type. However, in this case, touch screen provided better performance than Kinect and Leap Motion, F(2, 709) = 5.90, p < 0.01. Thus, Bridge Games is a possible software game to quantify motor learning. Moreover, the findings suggest that motor skills might be practiced differently depending on the environmental interface in which the game may be used.     

An I&I‐Based Observer to Solve the Output‐Feedback Synchronization Problem for a Class of Chaotic Systems

A novel robust observer, intended to solve the output‐feedback chaos synchronization problem for the Master/Slave Configuration, is proposed here. Assuming that the given Master system belongs to a specific class of feedback‐linearized systems, our solution is based on the well‐known Immersion and Invariance (I&I) method. The proposed observer is devoted to the asymptotic estimation of the Master system's underlying dynamics, and its effectiveness is illustrated via computer‐based simulations that involve both the so‐called Duffing's oscillator and the Genesio & Tesi system.