Maria Riccio

Remote Didactic Laboratory “G. Savastano,” The Italian Experience for E-Learning at the Technical Universities in the Field of Electrical and Electronic Measurements: Overview on Didactic Experiments

The Remote Didactic Laboratory Laboratorio Didattico Remoto - LA.DI.RE. ldquoG. Savastanordquo is the e-learning measurement laboratory supported by the Italian Ministry of Education and University. It involves about 20 Italian universities and provides students of electric and electronic measurement courses with access to remote measurement laboratories delivering different didactic activities related to measurement experiments. In order to demonstrate the versatility for didactic use, the overview of some experiments is given. The didactic experiments summarized in this paper concern measurement characterization of instruments and communication systems, measurement devices for remote laboratories, basic electrical measurements, magnetic measurements, electromagnetic-interference measurements, and signal processing for measurement applications.

Remote Didactic Laboratory “G. Savastano,” The Italian Experience for E-Learning at the Technical Universities in the Field of Electrical and Electronic Measurement: Architecture and Optimization of the Communication Performance Based on Thin Client Technology

The Remote Didactic Laboratory Laboratorio Didattico Remoto -LA.DI.RE. “G. Savastano” is an e-learning measurement laboratory supported by the Italian Ministry of Education and University. It provides the students of electric and electronic measurement courses with access to remote measurement laboratories, delivering different didactic activities related to measurement experiments. The core of the software architecture is the integration of the Learning Management System (LMS) with the remotely accessible measurement laboratories through web services and thin client paradigm, providing a new approach to remote experiments on measurement instrumentation. The overview of this paper is on the different solutions concerning the thin client technology, and the solution implemented is described. This solution takes into account the delivered services to students and teachers and permits optimization of the communication performances. The results of the comparison among the performances of different implementations of the thin client paradigm highlight the advantages of the adopted solution. As a consequence, the description of the thin client protocol implemented, together with the presentation of the LMS and delivered services given in a previous paper, makes an exhaustive analysis of the software architecture of the LA.DI.RE. “G. Savastano.”

Remote Control and Video Capturing of Electronic Instrumentation for Distance Learning

This paper focuses on the real-time visualization of the instrumentation involved in distance learning of electric and electronic measurement in order to allow students to better understand the real behavior of the instruments. This paper presents an integrated architecture enabling the dispatching of videos during the experimental sessions of the remote laboratory distributed on geographical network LA.DI.RE. ldquoG.Savastano.rdquo The new proposed architecture is able to adjust the video stream characteristics to the available bandwidth on the client side. In order to evaluate the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed solution, different technologies for video streaming have been analyzed and experimentally tested in the laboratory. In particular, bandwidth occupation and visualization quality have been analyzed by using different streaming technologies and by changing the frame rate and the light source in a multiclient scenario.

Wireless Active Guardrail System for environmental measurements

The paper presents the design and implementation of a Wireless Active Guardrail System (WAGS), that adds to the typical passive protection of guardrails the capability of monitoring both traffic and environment along the roads. The general overview of a WAGS, intended to be applied on highways, is presented and the measured quantities are discussed. The architecture of a sensor node for environmental monitoring experimentally validated in laboratory is presented and future improvements and features are suggested.

Blood oxygen saturation measurement by smartphone camera

This study investigates the usability of the smartphone camera for the evaluation of arterial blood oxygenation (SpO2%). The advantage of this solution derives from the pervasiveness of the smartphone that makes available the evaluation of the SpO2% everywhere. Differently from the pulse oximeter, which uses well-defined wavelength light, the smartphone uses Light Emitting Diodes as a light source to evaluate the SpO2%. The change of the light intensity in the Red and Green colour channels in the video frames of the patient fingertip are properly processed. Two PPG signals are obtained at the wavelengths 600nm and 940nm, respectively. These two PPGs are used to evaluate the SpO2% without calibration coefficients and independently of the smartphone hardware and skin characteristics. Experimental tests are performed to compare the proposed procedure with respect to a commercial pulse oximeter and gas chromatograph. The experimental tests assess the effectiveness of the proposal.

Experimental comparison of orientation estimation algorithms in motion tracking for rehabilitation

This paper presents the experimental comparison of data fusion algorithms for human motion tracking in rehabilitation, using Inertial Measurement Units. Three algorithms for orientation estimation, taken from the scientific literature in the field, have been selected and their capability of accurately tracking the angle of a selected joint has been evaluated. In particular, two phases of experimental analysis have been carried out. The former, in laboratory, was directed to verify the capability of the algorithms of tracking a fixed angle range. In the latter, carried out in a rehabilitation center, the results obtained by the considered algorithms have been compared with those provided by a vision-based motion tracking system.

Preserving Synchronization Accuracy From the Plug-in of NonSynchronized Nodes in a Wireless Sensor Network

The synchronization accuracy of the nodes of a wireless sensor network (WSN) can be perturbed by the plug-in of nonsynchronized nodes (NSNs). In the case of peer-to-peer synchronization algorithms, the reference time of the WSN is established on the basis of the clock time of all nodes. Therefore, each NSN changes the reference time to synchronize all nodes with the new reference time interval needs. In this time interval, the synchronization accuracy can degrade, i.e., the delay among node clocks overcomes the admissible range. In the case of only one or many NSNs, it was assessed in previous papers that by filtering the message of each NSN, the synchronization accuracy of the already synchronized nodes (ASNs) is preserved. However, the spatial distribution of the NSNs can fool the ASNs, foiling the effect of the message filtering. This paper presents a procedure that overcomes this inconvenience. The new fully distributed and consensus-based procedure iteratively filters the messages of communicating NSNs that would increase the time delay over the admissible range. As a consequence, the synchronization accuracy is preserved whatever the spatial distribution of ASNs and NSNs. Numerical and experimental tests are performed to validate the proposed procedure.

Preserving synchronization accuracy in slow update Wireless Sensor Network perturbed by plug-in of multi-nodes

The plug-in of nodes in already synchronized Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) can perturb the synchronization accuracy. In the case of the plug-in of one node, the consensus based synchronization algorithm permits to deploy the local interactions among nodes, and, as a consequence, to detect and ignore the Non Synchronized Node (NSN). In the case of multiple nodes, the detection of NSNs can be misstated by different causes: (i) number and spatial distribution of nodes plugged-in, (ii) difference between the time values of the NSNs and the common sense of the time of the Already Synchronized Nodes (ASNs). In the paper, a new fully distributed and consensus based algorithm is proposed able to preserve the synchronization accuracy in the case of the plug-in of multiple NSNs. The NSNs are detected by statistical analysis of all the received messages. The messages increasing the standard deviation of the common sense of the time are rejected. Numerical and experimental tests are performed to validate the proposed algorithm.

Measurement science and education in the drone times

The usefulness of drones for professional and research activities is justified by the fact that the embedded sensors and data acquisition systems convert drones in flexible and portable measurement instruments. On the other hand, the drone operation introduces sources of uncertainty and accuracy degradation often not taken into account in traditional courses on drones. This paper aims to fulfil this education lack to prepare the next generation of professionals and scientists in the critical use of this new kind of measurement instrument. To reach this goal, in the paper a course on “Measurement for and by drones” to be held at the PhD School in Information Technology for Engineering at University of Sannio — Benevento, Italy, is presented.

Compensating magnetic disturbances on MARG units by means of a low complexity data fusion algorithm

The paper proposes a new algorithm for the estimation of orientation of MARG (Magnetic, Angular Rate and Gravity) units, capable of compensating the influence of short-duration magnetic disturbances on the magnetometer, with application in motion tracking for rehabilitation. The proposed algorithm has been designed starting from a widely used low-complexity orientation estimation algorithm, based on the gradient descent minimization. The proposed algorithm has been validated by means of laboratory experiments, aimed at verifying its capability of correctly estimating orientation, by compensating the magnetic disturbances both in static and in dynamic conditions. The results of such experimental phase are presented and discussed in the paper.