RFID-based interactive multimedia system for the children

In this paper, we present an interactive edutainment system for the children that leverages multimedia and RFID technologies in a seamless manner. The proposed system allows children to learn about new objects/entities by tapping on physical objects through a specially designed RFID-Bluetooth based Tangible User Interface (TUI) tool. The output of the system is delivered as a set of appropriate multimedia representations related to the objects being tapped. The TUI uses RFID technology for object identification and Bluetooth communication to transmit data to the computer where the system??s software is running. We incorporated our system in three games that allow children of different ages to benefit from the system??s functionalities and encourage them to interact with it.     

Photodegradation of acid dyes in nylon films

The photodegradation of three representative acid dyes commonly used to colour nylon was studied in nylon films. It was observed that irreversible photodegradation of the dyes occurs only at wavlengths shorter than 350nm and that the quantum yield increases as the photolysis wavelength decreases. It was also found that u.v. photolysis of the dyes is partially reversible and that photodegradation is inhibited by oxygen. Evidence is presented that photodegradation occurs by a reduction process, involving hydrogen transfer from the nylon polymer to the excited dye.     

SmartPads: a plug-N-play configurable tangible user interface

One common concern with video games today is the lack of physical activity they demand from the user. The design of games and tangible user interfaces (TUIs) that stimulate players and engage them into fun exercising activities is starting to attract the attention of many researchers and companies. This paper presents the software and hardware design and development of a TUI intended for exercise-based games targeted mostly towards children. The proposed TUI, SmartPads, can be constructed using elemental building blocks (pads) into numerous shapes. The pads-which are individually controlled by microcontrollers-are mapped onto a computer screen in real-time. A user interacts with the TUI by stepping on the pads. To evaluate the functionality and efficiency of the TUI, we developed three games in the field of exergaming. The games also have an educational value and are integrated with multimedia output modalities to enrich children’s playing experience.

     

Transfer learning for high‐precision trajectory tracking through adaptive feedback and iterative learning

Robust and adaptive control strategies are needed when robots or automated systems are introduced to unknown and dynamic environments where they are required to cope with disturbances, unmodeled dynamics, and parametric uncertainties. In this paper, we demonstrate the capabilities of a combined adaptive control and iterative learning control (ILC) framework to achieve high‐precision trajectory tracking in the presence of unknown and changing disturbances. The adaptive controller makes the system behave close to a reference model; however, it does not guarantee that perfect trajectory tracking is achieved, while ILC improves trajectory tracking performance based on previous iterations. The combined framework in this paper uses adaptive control as an underlying controller that achieves a robust and repeatable behavior, while the ILC acts as a high‐level adaptation scheme that mainly compensates for systematic tracking errors. We illustrate that this framework enables transfer learning between dynamically different systems, where learned experience of one system can be shown to be beneficial for another different system. Experimental results with two different quadrotors show the superior performance of the combined ‐ILC framework compared with approaches using ILC with an underlying proportional‐derivative controller or proportional‐integral‐derivative controller. Results highlight that our ‐ILC framework can achieve high‐precision trajectory tracking when unknown and changing disturbances are present and can achieve transfer of learned experience between dynamically different systems. Moreover, our approach is able to achieve precise trajectory tracking in the first attempt when the initial input is generated based on the reference model of the adaptive controller.     

Multimedia-oriented action recognition in Smart City-based IoT using multilayer perceptron

The Internet of Things (IoT) devices and technologies for smart city applications produces a vast amount of multimedia data (e.g., audio, video, image, text and sensorial data), such big data are difficult to handle with traditional techniques and algorithms. The emerging machine learning techniques have the potential to facilitate the development of a new class of applications that can deal with such multimedia big data. Recently, Activity Recognition systems suggest using of multimedia data to detect daily actions, since it provides more accurate patterns; prevent the arising complain on privacy issues (in case of using audio-base data) and able to work on a big data. In this paper, we propose a Deep Learning (DL) methodology for classifying audio data that is based on multilayer perceptron neural networks. The contributions of our work are to propose an efficient design of the network topology including hidden layers, neurons, and the fitness function. In addition, the proposed methodology contributed in producing high performance classifier in terms of accuracy and f-measure. The experiments have been conducted on four large audio-datasets that have been collected to represent different modalities in a smart city. The results indicated that the proposed methodology achieved high performance as compared to the state-of-the-art machine learning techniques.

     

RO membrane autopsy of Zarzis brackish water desalination plant

Tunisia, located in a semi-arid zone, has limited water resources. The shortage of good water quality in particular at the south regions required a brackish water desalination to supply these regions with potable water. Zarzis desalination plant, working since 1999, has revealed difficulties related to the loss of membrane performances. In the aim to determine the reason of membrane fouling, foulant layer were analysed. The membrane autopsy has achieved by different methods, such as TOC (total organic carbon) measurement, SEM (scanning electron microscopy), AFM (atomic force microscopy), FTIR (fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) analysis, diffraction by X-ray. Results show that the foulant layer composed mostly of SiO₂, clay, organic matter (polysaccharide, protein), CaSiO₃, Fe₃O₄, AlPO₄, and CaSO₄. The characteristics bonds obtained by IR indicate the presence of polysaccharides and proteins that constitute a source for further microbiological growth; this is the problem of biofouling. The metallic elements results of corroded stainless steel and internal coating of cartridges filter that are damaged by the silica particle rejected by sand filters. The scale of CaSO₄ and CaSiO₃ deposition is owing to the bad antiscaling efficiency. The results are presented and discussed in the light of new trends in material.