Design and Performance Evaluation of Residual Generators for the FDI of an Aircraft

In this work, several procedures for the fault detection and isolation (FDI) on general aviation aircraft sensors are presented. In order to provide a comprehensive wide–spectrum treatment, both linear and nonlinear, model–based and data–driven methodologies are considered. The main contributions of the paper are related to the development of both FDI polynomial method (PM) and FDI scheme based on the nonLinear geometric approach (NLGA). As to the PM, the obtained results highlight a good trade–off between solution complexity and resulting performances. Moreover, the proposed PM is especially useful when robust solutions are required for minimising the effects of modelling errors and noise, while maximising fault sensitivity. As to the NLGA, the proposed work is the first development and robust application of the NLGA to an aircraft model in flight conditions characterised by tight–coupled longitudinal and lateral dynamics. In order to verify the robustness of the residual generators related to the previous FDI techniques, the simulation results adopt a typical aircraft reference trajectory embedding several steady–state flight conditions, such as straight flight phases and coordinated turns. Moreover, the simulations are performed in the presence of both measurement and modelling errors. Finally, extensive simulations are used for assessing the overall capabilities of the developed FDI schemes and a comparison with neural networks (NN) and unknown input Kalman filter (UIKF) diagnosis methods is performed

Test Anxiety in Undergraduate Nursing Students: Implementation of a Brief Mindfulness Exercise

Nursing students experience test anxiety that may compromise their performance on class examinations, affecting their trajectory through their prelicensure nursing program. Nurse educators significantly impact student outcomes throughout the curriculum and are integral in supporting students with test anxiety. It is imperative to recognize precipitating factors of test anxiety and appoint prophylactic interventions for alleviating stressful situations. In turn, this will provide nursing students with practical and supportive strategies to alleviate testing-induced stress. This scholarly paper discusses the implementation of a brief mindfulness exercise before class examinations to combat test anxiety in undergraduate nursing students at a small midwestern college. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected to determine the effectiveness of the brief mindfulness activity before tests. This paper discusses methods, interventions, and results from the quality improvement project

Powerline Communication in Home-Building Automation Systems

Domotics, Smart Home Systems, Ambient Intelligence are all terms that describe the intelligent cooperation of several different equipments to manage the home environment in an intelligent, safe and comfortable way. The same idea is also applicable to bigger constructions, and in that case it takes the name of Building Automation. Whatever term one wants to use, it refers to a multidisciplinary field that includes informatics, electronics, automation and telecommunication, and also touches fields like building constructions and architecture. In fact, during the process of designing a building, people have to consider appropriate spaces for the electric plant, and if the presence of a domotic system is planned, it is better to take it into account during the design phase, just to optimize spaces, the amount of used wires, the position of the modules and so on. There are really many home system producers in the world (Smart Home Systems, EIB-Konnex, Lonworks, Bticino, Vimar, Duemmegi, EasyDom Corporation, Futurware, Digital Cybermasters, Hills Home Systems, Intellihome etc, just to mention a few) , and their products differ from each others in many characteristics, such as functionality, dimension, weight, typology of installation, materials, net topology, power consumes, aesthetic appearance, communication protocol and communication mean. Regarding this last point, the majority of the domotic systems, especially in Europe, tend to use a dedicated bus cable to exchange data among modules, to make the communication link more robust and reliable. Lately, using radio communication is in fashion, but radio modules, respect to their equivalent standard ones, are more expensive, and in the bargain many people don’t want to use them due to the fear of radio signals (even if it were proved that they are completely harmless). Another communication mean, that is often not taken into account, is the powerline. In point of fact, using the installed poweline wires to send information is a very smart idea: there is no additional cost to install other dozens of meters of wires, there is not the necessity to break the walls and to do building works at home, there are no interferences with other devices (like in the radio communication case) or reflection problems (like in the infrared case), there is the possibility to put the modules in every place (it is sufficient to have an electrical socket in the nearness, or to use an extension cable), there is no need to have an extra power source (usually, in a bus cable domotic system, there is a direct voltage generated by a power supply and distribuited on the whole domotic net). Moreover, powerline communication (PLC, also called BPL in the USA, where the acronym stays for Broadband over Power Line, or NPL, Narroband over Power Line) is not only used in a home environment to create a virtual net among domotic modules, but is also used on the power distribution net to perform actions like reading the electricity meter, monitoring the power consumes and the state of a building, finding faults along the net, detecting illegal electricity usages and to solve the so-called last mile problem , that is the problem related to the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer. In fact a cheap possibility to cover this final leg is using powerline communication. The intent of this work is therefore to illustrate, going into more details, advantages and disadvantages of the powerline communication systems (PLCS), to show the differences between PLCS for power distribution net and PLCS for home and building environments, to indagate the methods to send data over the powerline, to explain which are the automations that is possible to connect and to control in a powerline domotic system and to show some case studies tackled by the authors

Development of a cognitive robotic system for simple surgical tasks

The introduction of robotic surgery within the operating rooms has significantly improved the quality of many surgical procedures. Recently, the research on medical robotic systems focused on increasing the level of autonomy in order to give them the possibility to carry out simple surgical actions autonomously. This paper reports on the development of technologies for introducing automation within the surgical workflow. The results have been obtained during the ongoing FP7 European funded project Intelligent Surgical Robotics (I-SUR). The main goal of the project is to demonstrate that autonomous robotic surgical systems can carry out simple surgical tasks effectively and without major intervention by surgeons. To fulfil this goal, we have developed innovative solutions (both in terms of technologies and algorithms) for the following aspects: fabrication of soft organ models starting from CT images, surgical planning and execution of movement of robot arms in contact with a deformable environment, designing a surgical interface minimizing the cognitive load of the surgeon supervising the actions, intra-operative sensing and reasoning to detect normal transitions and unexpected events. All these technologies have been integrated using a component-based software architecture to control a novel robot designed to perform the surgical actions under study. In this work we provide an overview of our system and report on preliminary results of the automatic execution of needle insertion for the cryoablation of kidney tumours

Bridging the gap between robotic technology and health care

Although technology and computation power have become more and more present in our daily lives, we have yet to see the same tendency in robotics applied to health care. In this work we focused on the study of four distinct applications of robotic technology to health care, named Robotic Assisted Surgery, Robotics in Rehabilitation, Prosthetics and Companion Robotic Systems. We identified the main roadblocks that are limiting the progress of such applications by an extensive examination of recent reports. Based on the limitations of the practical use of current robotic technology for health care we proposed a general modularization approach for the conception and implementation of specific robotic devices. The main conclusions of this review are: (i) there is a clear need of the adaptation of robotic technology (closed loop) to the user, so that robotics can be widely accepted and used in the context of heath care; (ii) for all studied robotic technologies cost is still prohibitive and limits their wide use. The reduction of costs influences technology acceptability; thus innovation by using cheaper computer systems and sensors is relevant and should be taken into account in the implementation of robotic systems

A First Evaluation of a Multi-Modal Learning System to Control Surgical Assistant Robots via Action Segmentation

The next stage for robotics development is to introduce autonomy and cooperation with human agents in tasks that require high levels of precision and/or that exert considerable physical strain. To guarantee the highest possible safety standards, the best approach is to devise a deterministic automaton that performs identically for each operation. Clearly, such approach inevitably fails to adapt itself to changing environments or different human companions. In a surgical scenario, the highest variability happens for the timing of different actions performed within the same phases. This paper presents a cognitive control architecture that uses a multi-modal neural network trained on a cooperative task performed by human surgeons and produces an action segmentation that provides the required timing for actions while maintaining full phase execution control via a deterministic Supervisory Controller and full execution safety by a velocity-constrained Model-Predictive Controller

A Mechatronic Cardiovascular Simulation System for Jugular Venous Echo-Doppler Training

Echo-doppler examination of the jugular vessel is a powerful tool for the early diagnosis of cardiovascular disorders that can be further related to central nervous system diseases. Unfortunately, the ultrasound technique is strongly operator-dependent, so the quality of the scan, the accuracy of the measurement, and therefore the rapidity and robustness of the diagnosis reflect the degree of training. The paper presents the development of a mechatronic simulation system for improving the skill of novice physicians in echo-doppler procedures. The patient is simulated by a silicone manikin whose materials are designed to have a realistic ultrasound response. Two tubes allow blood-mimicking fluid to flow inside the manikin, simulating the hemodynamics of the internal jugular vein. The mechatronic system is designed for controlling the flow waveform, to reproduce several clinical cases of interest for diagnosis. The experiments investigate the accuracy of the echo-doppler measurements performed on the proposed system by novice operators using a real ultrasound scanner

Technical and Functional Validation of a Teleoperated Multirobots Platform for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Nowadays Robotic assisted Minimally Invasive Surgeries (R-MIS) are the elective procedures for treating highly accurate and scarcely invasive pathologies, thanks to their abil- ity to empower surgeons\u2019 dexterity and skills. The research on new Multi-Robots Surgery (MRS) platform is cardinal to the development of a new SARAS surgical robotic platform, which aims at carrying out autonomously the assistants tasks during R- MIS procedures. In this work, we will present the SARAS MRS platform validation protocol, framed in order to assess: (i) its technical performances in purely dexterity exercises, and (ii) its functional performances. The results obtained show a prototype able to put the users in the condition of accomplishing the tasks requested (both dexterity- and surgical-related), even with rea- sonably lower performances respect to the industrial standard. The main aspects on which further improvements are needed result to be the stability of the end effectors, the depth per- ception and the vision systems, to be enriched with dedicated virtual fixtures. The SARAS\u2019 aim is to reduce the main surgeon\u2019s workload through the automation of assistive tasks which would benefit both surgeons and patients by facilitating the surgery and reducing the operation time

Discussion on: "State feedback fuzzy adaptive control for active shimmy damping"

The paper by Pouly et al. addresses modeling and control design for a classical physical system, an elastic rotating wheel with a vertical steering axis, which can be found in many vehicles characterized by critical safety issues, aircrafts and motorcycles above all. the aim of this discussion paper is to highlight the key points, in the paper by Pouly et al., that could be of interest for further investigation by the same authors and by other research groups working on similar topics. The rest of the paper presents the points of discussion following the sequential order in which fundamental steps of any control project are typically addressed: modeling, control design, realisation

Formal Methods for Manufacturing Systems Control Design

The aim of this thesis is to propose a formal methodology for the design and verification of industrial control systems, with particular regard to the domain of manufacturing machines. The methodology is driven by an approach derived from Software Engineering concepts and is supported by the definition of a set of specification languages, derived from the semi-formal notation of UML [UML01], that permit to describe all the aspects related to the design of a complete machine control system, both architectural and behavioral. In particular, the underlying approach of the development process is oriented to the modularization and encapsulation of control tasks, in order to obtain a system architecture composed of independent and reusable components, as is suggested by Object-Oriented design techniques. Because of the hybrid nature of Manufacturing Systems, the control system may be partitioned into logic control modules and continuous control modules. Ideally, the architecture specification language proposed in this thesis would permit to describe both kind of components, together with their interactions. However, since the proposed methodology is mainly oriented to the solution of logic control problems, which are those less supported by formal methods in the industrial practice, the behaviour specification language adopted, derived from Statecharts [Har87], is basically event-oriented, with extensions that permit the description of simple data-processing operations. With regard to behavioral design, the suggested approach is that of direct design, which means that operational specifications on the desired behaviour of the manufacturing machine (or its components) are explicitly mapped into an operational model for each control module defined in the architecture specification. Formal verification of the control system design model can be performed, by means of a translation into a formal language. In particular, the technique suggested is model checking, in order to prove desired properties expressed in a form of temporal logic. For example, a model checking tool that can serve the purpose is SMV [McM93], which uses the temporal logic dialect CTL [CA81]. The rest of the thesis is organized as follows: - Chapter 2 presents a review of the most important formalisms and techniques to model and control Discrete Event Systems, with particular regard to their applicability in the manufacturing industry. - Chapter 3 describes a number of Software Engineering techniques that have been successfully applied to the domain of Real-Time software design, even if they are principally supported by semiformal languages. In particular, the techniques adopting Statecharts for behavioral specification are described in depth and with emphasis on the different semantical interpretations. - Chapter 4 describes the design methodology for industrial control systems proposed by this thesis, including the underlying approach, the specification languages adopted and the relationships with the features of the application domain. - Chapter 5 presents the definition of formal procedures to verify the correctness of industrial control systems, designed and modeled with the methods proposed in Chapter 4, and briefly describes how the design models can be implemented on real controllers. - Chapter 6 summarizes the features of the proposed approach to Manufacturing Systems control design, that aim to introduce the use of formal methods in the industrial practice, and ends with proposals for future work. - The thesis ends with an illustrative example of control system design and verification, described in Appendix A, referred to a machine component quite common in the packaging industry