Octavian Machidon

Effects of Playing Mobile Games While Driving

The use of smartphones while driving is a growing phenomenon that has reached alarming proportions. Playing games is a particular type of activity performed by drivers on their smartphones and is the subject of this paper. The study that was con-ducted aimed at investigating the influence of playing games on a smartphone while driving in a virtual reality simulator. The driver’s eye glance behavior has been analyzed for twelve subjects while driving in two environments, city and country (national) road. A reference set of data obtained by driving without the gaming distraction has been used for performing a comparison and drawing conclusions. The results have indicated increased accident risks when playing games, especially caused by loss of control of the vehicle and improper lane positioning due to the driver being distracted by the game played.

Remote SoC/FPGA platform configuration for cloud applications

The growing development of Cloud Computing raised the need of making hardware available “as a Service”. Reconfigurable hardware - like FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) - makes the ideal candidate for being integrated into Cloud systems due to their high flexibility and scalability. This work describes the design and implementation of a remote reconfigurable FPGA-based SoC (System on Chip) with a Service-oriented configuration interface over the Internet, and underlines several solutions in order to meet the specific challenges raised by this type of integration. The FPGA board (that can be at a remote location) is configured by a Web Service linked to a JSP (JavaServer Pages) Web-page where the user can provide a bitstream configuration file for the Programmable Logic (PL). On the SoC/FPGA board, dedicated software has been developed to run on the embedded Processing System (PS), managing the downloaded bitstreams and configuring the PL.

Characterization of Photovoltaic–Thermoelectric–Solar Collector Hybrid Systems in Natural Sunlight Conditions

AbstractTwo new hybrid systems incorporating photovoltaic, thermoelectric, and solar collector components were designed and characterized under natural sunlight conditions. Two types of photovoltai...

FPGA-enabled hardware multitasking applications in energy harvesting laboratories

This work describes the technical details of a novel methodology which enables the parallel deployment and execution of hardware applications onto the same FPGA chip using dynamic partial reconfiguration. Our approach, which makes use of the PCAP (Processor Configuration Access Port) available on the latest generation of Xilinx Zynq Systems-on-Chip, allows the processing system to operate a fast partial reconfiguration of the programmable logic with little logic overhead. The advantages brought by this technique, like scalability, high performance and dynamic management of the programmable logic are being put to use in implementing laboratory works involving running the mathematical models of energy harvesting sources. This allows the same FPGA development board to be used by several student at the same time for running their applications. Thus, this is part of a larger research effort in which we aim to develop remote online hardware design laboratories with hardware multitasking support.

Long Term Use Effects of a P300-Based Spelling Application

The P300-based Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are widely used for communication purposes and proven to be fast and reliable. The present study aimed to identify the effects of a long term use of a P300-based spelling application for clinical healthy subjects under two display cases represented by a computer monitor and a head-mounted display (HMD). The typical 6 × 6 row-column spelling application was used by 7 participants under 12 recording sessions for both display methods. The results of the experiment showed that over time there is a statistical significant difference for the average accuracy rates for each display method. The average classification accuracies improved overall by a maximum of 21.43% for monitor display and 25.72% for HMD. However, the results of the experiment demonstrated that no statistical significant interaction existed between the two display methods.

Study of Temperature Coefficients for Parameters of Photovoltaic Cells

The temperature is one of the most important factors which affect the performance of the photovoltaic cells and panels along with the irradiance. The current voltage characteristics, I-V, are measured at different temperatures from 25°C to 87°C and at different illumination levels from 400 to 1000 W/m2, because there are locations where the upper limit of the photovoltaic cells working temperature exceeds 80°C. This study reports the influence of the temperature and the irradiance on the important parameters of four commercial photovoltaic cell types: monocrystalline silicon—mSi, polycrystalline silicon—pSi, amorphous silicon—aSi, and multijunction InGaP/InGaAs/Ge (Emcore). The absolute and normalized temperature coefficients are determined and compared with their values from the related literature. The variation of the absolute temperature coefficient function of the irradiance and its significance to accurately determine the important parameters of the photovoltaic cells are also presented. The analysis is made on different types of photovoltaics cells in order to understand the effects of technology on temperature coefficients. The comparison between the open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current was also performed, calculated using the temperature coefficients, determined, and measured, in various conditions. The measurements are realized using the SolarLab system, and the photovoltaic cell parameters are determined and compared using the LabVIEW software created for SolarLab system.

System design to study hybrid systems in concentrated light using Fresnel lens

This paper presents the design of a system for studying photovoltaic cells PV, thermoelectric generators TEG, a solar collector SC and different hybrid structures comprising two or three of them in concentrated light. The concentrated light is obtained using a Fresnel lens and a sun tracker. The advantages of the system are: the reduction of the photovoltaic cells area, the use of the photovoltaic cells with high efficiency and the possibility to vary the levels of illumination up to 56 suns. The system control is achieved using the NI-cRIO and NI-myRIO embedded hardware and the software is developed in LabVIEW, using a mathematical algorithm for the sun tracker system.

Modelling and PSPICE simulation oi a photovoltaic/thermoelectric system

This paper describes a model and its PSPICE simulation for a hybrid electric generator that is composed of a photovoltaic cell and a thermoelectric generator. The focus is to combine both models to obtain a hybrid system model. The electrothermal models of the photovoltaic cell and thermoelectric generator are described. The simulations are done using the NI Multisim electronic circuit simulators. The comparison between the results obtained through simulation and through real measurements on commercial PV and thermoelectric generators is also presented.

3D Reconstruction as a Service – Applications in Virtual Cultural Heritage

As Virtual Reality (VR) expands its application range in various domains, one area that benefits more and more from VR implementation is cultural heritage. This synergy has created a new research subject: virtual cultural heritage, with specific challenges and with the key issue being to reconstruct the 3D virtual model of a real cultural artefact or item. We propose that by transcending the classic 3D reconstruction instruments to online services available remotely these newly appeared challenges can be properly addressed and the 3D reconstruction process will gain in accessibility and availability for a wider range of scientists, researchers and users. This paper presents an original implementation of such 3D reconstruction services that create virtual models based on data obtained from a 3D scanning system operating on the laser striping principle. This solution is intended to be used for digital preservation efforts of the cultural artefacts from the Brasov history museum by creating a digital archive with their 3D virtual models.