G. Sen Gupta

Wireless Sensor Network for Selective Activity Monitoring In a Home for the Elderly

In this paper we present the design intricacies and implementation details of a novel selective activity monitoring (SAM) system targeted for homes for the elderly. The system is designed to support people who wish to live alone but, because of old age, ill health or disability, there is some risk in this, which worries their family or friends. The system works on the principle of using sensor units (SU) to monitor the appliance throughout a house and detect when certain desired electrical equipments are turned on. Rules are defined for appliances to turn on in certain time intervals. The rules are flexible and can be user-defined based on the daily activities of a person. Several levels of alarm conditions have been created based on combination of rules that are violated. Any number of sensor units may be installed in a house, one each to monitor an electrical appliance. A central controller unit (CCU) queries the sensor units and logs the data into a PC at a pre-defined rate. Communication between the SUs and the controller is using radio-frequency wireless media. The rules inference engine runs on the PC and whenever the situation requires, sends a text message to the care-givers or relatives. Since no vision sensors (camera or infrared) are used, the system is non-invasive, respects privacy and has found wide acceptance. The system is completely customizable, allowing the user to select which appliances to monitor and define exactly what is classified as unusual behavior.

Strategy for collaboration in robot soccer

Robot soccer is a challenging platform for multi-agent research, involving topics such as real-time image processing and control, robot path planning, obstacle avoidance and machine learning. The robot soccer game presents an uncertain and dynamic environment for cooperating agents. Dynamic role switching and formation control are crucial for a successful game. The fuzzy logic based strategy described in the paper employs an arbiter which assigns a robot to shoot or pass the ball.

Wireless Sensors Networks based monitoring: Review, challenges and implementation issues

Due to the advances in the field of communications networks there evolved, a very interesting and challenging area of wireless sensors networks, which is rapidly coming of age. These wireless sensors in the network are capable of performing various tasks and sense many types of information for various applications. These wireless sensor network technology has an ample potential to change the way we live and work, as these are applicable in various fields like entertainment, travel, retail, industry, medicine, care of the very young and very old people, emergency management thus enrich lives and make processes easier. In this paper a review of wireless sensors especially designed for health monitoring has been discussed. The characteristics of the sensors for this type of application have been studied. The requirement of the sensor for making a smart sensor network has been investigated. A typical in-house developed system for home monitoring for eldercare application has been presented.

Improving predictive control of a mobile robot: Application of image processing and Kalman filtering

This paper discusses a control algorithm for the interception of a mobile target. The application domain is robot soccer in which the target is a ball while the interceptor is a wheeled robot. A case study of a wheeled robot approaching a target in a given direction is presented in detail. A shoot function has been developed, using the proposed algorithm, which calculates the robot wheel velocities to position the robot behind the ball. In order to improve the efficiency of the control, a scaling factor has been introduced which can be optimized so that the robot travels a shorter distance to intercept the target. Since the target is constantly moving, it is imperative that the future position of the target be predicted and used in the control algorithm to calculate the wheel velocities. Kalman filtering has proven to be an effective tool for predicting the target position at the point of interception, several frames ahead and thus improve the accuracy of interception.

Robotics competitions in engineering eduction

Internationally engineering education has had to become more pro-active in attracting students with the technical knowledge, skills and motivation enabling them to excel in four or more years of study with the ultimate goal of addressing the ever-growing demand for qualified engineers from the industry. General public perceptions that engineering is a difficult career field while offering inadequate financial rewards as compared to alternative fields have resulted in significant reduction in student numbers, particularly among high quality students across all the engineering, sciences and technical disciplines. This paper presents the experience of using robotic competition events to motivate school students and help them appreciate what is involved in an engineering design and development fields.

Sheep skin property estimation using a low-cost planar sensor

Interdigital sensors have been successfully employed in various fields; in this paper we attempted to determine the looseness in sheep skins using interdigital sensors. Looseness is one of the quality attributes that determines the value of the leather. A low cost interdigital based sensing system with an effective data acquisition system has been designed.

Autonomous anthromorphic robotic system with low-cost colour sensors to monitor plant growth in a laboratory

An autonomous anthropomorphic robotic arm has been designed and fabricated to automatically monitor plant tissue growth in a modified clonal micro-propagation system which is being developed for the New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research Limited. The custom-fabricated robotic arm uses a vertical linear ball shaft and high speed stepper motors to provide the movements of the various joints, with the arm able to swivel 180 degrees horizontally. Sensors located at the end of the arm monitor plant growth and the ambient growing environment. These include a compact colour zoom camera mounted on a pan and tilt mechanism to capture high resolution images, RGB (red, green and blue) colour sensors to monitor leaf colour as well as sensors to measure ambient atmospheric temperature, relative humidity and carbon dioxide. The robotic arm can reach anywhere over multiple trays (600mm x 600mm) of plantlets. Captured plant tissue images are processed using innovative algorithms to determine tissue, or whole plant, growth rates over specified time periods. Leaf colour sensors provide information on the health status of tissue by comparing the output with predetermined optimum values. Custom software has been developed to fully automate the operation of the robotic arm and capture data, allowing the arm to return to specified sites (i.e. individual plantlets) at set time intervals to identify subtle changes in growth rates and leaf colour. This will allow plant nutrient levels and the immediate environment to be routinely adjusted in response to this continuous sensing, resulting in optimised rapid growth of the plant with minimal human input. These low cost colour sensors can be incorporated into a continuous automated system for monitoring leaf colour of growing plants. Subtle colour changes can be an early indication of stress from less than optimum nutrient concentrations. In this chapter we also detail the calibration technique for a RGB sensor and compare it with a high end spectrophotometer.

State transition based supervisory control for a robot soccer system

Distributed robot control systems consist of mechanical systems powered by actuators that are under the control of computer systems that rely on sensor input, such as vision, touch and torque sensing. Often these systems are installed in production processes in which they must cooperate and collaborate with both humans and other robotic systems. This complexity requires a framework in which the many interacting components can be managed. This paper introduces state transition based system (STBS) techniques for managing the behaviour of collaborative robotic systems.

Determination of sleep quality of inhabitant in a smart home using an intelligent bed sensing system

There are many issues in designing and implementing an intelligent wireless sensor network based smart home for monitoring the elderly. The smart home is based on a few smart and intelligent wireless sensors, which can be configured around a wireless ad-hoc network. The system will generate early warning message to care giver, when an unforeseen abnormal condition occurs. The costs and risks associated with system also dictate that unnecessary components be filtered from the systems design; therefore, all sensors in the network must justify their existence and purpose of the system. An intelligent bed sensing system is very important to determine the quality of sleep of the inhabitant in the smart home. The paper has proposed an intelligent bed sensing system and trial results are presented.

Wireless Master-Slave Embedded Controller for a Teleoperated Anthropomorphic Robotic Arm with Gripping Force Sensing

This paper details the design and development of a control rig to intuitively manipulate an anthropomorphic robotic arm using a master-slave control methodology. The control rig is fitted to the user’s arm and the forces exerted by the robotic arm’s various joints are fed back to the user. Of special significance is the force feedback from the slave when its gripper is in contact with a real object. Several methods of force sensing have been explored and detailed. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by experiments on a commercially available robotic arm which is controlled by a prototype 6-DOF master unit. The robotic arm mimics the dexterity of the human hand and wrist. The proposed master control unit is cost-effective and will have wide ranging applications in the fields of medicine, manufacturing, security, extreme- environment, entertainment and ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) teleoperation in undersea recovery or extraterrestrial exploration vehicle.