Computer vision onboard UAVs for civilian tasks

Computer vision is much more than a technique to sense and recover environmental information from an UAV. It should play a main role regarding UAVs’ functionality because of the big amount of information that can be extracted, its possible uses and applications, and its natural connection to human driven tasks, taking into account that vision is our main interface to world understanding. Our current research’s focus lays on the development of techniques that allow UAVs to maneuver in spaces using visual information as their main input source. This task involves the creation of techniques that allow an UAV to maneuver towards features of interest whenever a GPS signal is not reliable or sufficient, e.g. when signal dropouts occur (which usually happens in urban areas, when flying through terrestrial urban canyons or when operating on remote planetary bodies), or when tracking or inspecting visual targets—including moving ones—without knowing their exact UMT coordinates. This paper also investigates visual serving control techniques that use velocity and position of suitable image features to compute the references for flight control. This paper aims to give a global view of the main aspects related to the research field of computer vision for UAVs, clustered in four main active research lines: visual serving and control, stereo-based visual navigation, image processing algorithms for detection and tracking, and visual SLAM. Finally, the results of applying these techniques in several applications are presented and discussed: this study will encompass power line inspection, mobile target tracking, stereo distance estimation, mapping and positioning.

A comparative overview of "know-how" protection in Japan and Australia

"Know How" protection varies enormously from country to country and is a complex equation of legal, political, cultural and economic factors. A contrast between Japan and Australia serves to highlight some of these factors. For the purposes of this article, a working definition of "know how" is required. In Australia and other common law systems, no statutory definition of "know how" exists, "confidential information" proving the closest comparative term in Australia ('trade secret law' in the United States).

Disclosure under the prescribed insurance contracts regime : Section 35 of the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 and consumer protection revisited

Section 35 of the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 requires insurers offering insurance policies in six prescribed areas "to clearly inform" prospective insureds of any departure their policies may constitute from the standard covers established by the Act and its accompanying Regulations. This prescribed insurance contracts regime was designed to remedy comprehension problems generated by the length and complexity of insurance documents and to alleviate misunderstanding over the terms and conditions of individual policies. This article examines the rationale underpinning s 35 and the prescribed insurance contracts regime and looks at the operation of the legislation with particular reference to home contents insurance in Australia. It is argued that the means whereby disclosure of derogation from standard cover may be effected largely negates the thrust of the prescribed insurance contract reform. Recommendations to address these operational deficiencies are made.

Health protection

Our understanding of how the environment can impact human health has evolved and expanded over the centuries, with concern and interest dating back to ancient times. For example, over 4000 years ago, a civilisation in northern India tried to protect the health of its citizens by constructing and positioning buildings according to strict building laws, by having bathrooms and drains, and by having paved streets with a sewerage system (Rosen 1993). In more recent times, the ‘industrial revolution’ played a dominant role in shaping the modern world, and with it the modern public health system. This era was signified by rapid progress in technology, the growth of transportation and the expansion of the market economy, which lead to the organisation of industry into a factory system. This meant that labour had to be brought to the factories and by the 1820s, poverty and social distress (including overcrowding and infrequent sewage and garbage disposal) was more widespread than ever. These circumstances, therefore, lead to the rise of the ‘sanitary revolution’ and the birth of modern public health (Rosen 1993). The sanitary revolution has also been described as constituting the beginning of the first wave of environmental concern, which continued until after World War 2 when major advances in engineering and chemistry substantially changed the face of industry, particularly the chemical sector. The second wave of environmental concern came in the mid to late 20th century and was dominated by the environmental or ecology movement. A landmark in this era was the 1962 publication of the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. This identified for the first time the dramatic effects on the ecosystem of the widespread use of the organochlorine pesticide, DDT. The third wave of environmental concern commenced in the 1980s and continues today. The accelerated rate of economic development, the substantial increase in the world population and the globalisation of trade have dramatically changed the production methods and demand for goods in both developed and developing countries. This has lead to the rise of ‘sustainable development’ as a key driver in environmental planning and economic development (Yassi et al 2001). The protection of health has, therefore, been a hallmark of human history and is the cornerstone of public health practice. This chapter introduces environmental health and how it is managed in Australia, including a discussion of the key generic management tools. A number of significant environmental health issues and how they are specifically managed are then discussed, and the chapter concludes by discussing sustainable development and its links with environmental health.

Promoting child protection : early childhood education and care services playing their part

Over recent years, there has been a shift in government social policy in Australia toward interest and investment in family support, prevention and early intervention. Central to this new approach to supporting families and promoting better outcomes for children is the development of a continuum of services able to respond to different and changing family needs. This continuum or integrated service system seeks to better connect key human services, such as health, child care, education and family support. This paper explores the role of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in promoting child protection and strengthening the safety and wellbeing of children.

Fold back current control and admittance protection scheme for a distribution network containing distributed generators

Islanded operation, protection, reclosing and arc extinguishing are some of the challenging issues related to the connection of converter interfaced distributed generators (DGs) into a distribution network. The isolation of upstream faults in grid connected mode and fault detection in islanded mode using overcurrent devices are difficult. In the event of an arc fault, all DGs must be disconnected in order to extinguish the arc. Otherwise, they will continue to feed the fault, thus sustaining the arc. However, the system reliability can be increased by maximising the DG connectivity to the system: therefore, the system protection scheme must ensure that only the faulted segment is removed from the feeder. This is true even in the case of a radial feeder as the DG can be connected at various points along the feeder. In this paper, a new relay scheme is proposed which, along with a novel current control strategy for converter interfaced DGs, can isolate permanent and temporary arc faults. The proposed protection and control scheme can even coordinate with reclosers. The results are validated through PSCAD/EMTDC simulation and MATLAB calculations.

The concept of vulnerability and the protection of human subjects of research

This article provides an overview of the concept of vulnerability through the lens of the U.S. federal regulations for the protection of human subjects of research. General issues that emerge for nurse researchers working with regulated vulnerable populations are identified. Points of current controversy in the application of the regulations and current discourse about vulnerable groups are highlighted. Suggestions for negotiating the tension between federally regulated human subject requirements and the realities of research with vulnerable subjects are given. The limitations of the designation of vulnerable as a protection for human subjects will also be discussed.

Does physical protection of soil organic matter attenuate temperature sensitivity?

Global climate change may induce accelerated soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition through increased soil temperature, and thus impact the C balance in soils. We hypothesized that compartmentalization of substrates and decomposers in the soil matrix would decrease SOM sensitivity to temperature. We tested our hypothesis with three short-term laboratory incubations with differing physical protection treatments conducted at different temperatures. Overall, CO2 efflux increased with temperature, but responses among physical protection treatments were not consistently different. Similar respiration quotient (Q(10)) values across physical protection treatments did not support our original hypothesis that the largest Q(10) values would be observed in the treatment with the least physical protection. Compartmentalization of substrates and decomposers is known to reduce the decomposability of otherwise labile material, but the hypothesized attenuation of temperature sensitivity was not detected, and thus the sensitivity is probably driven by the thermodynamics of biochemical reactions as expressed by Arrhenius-type equations.

Mutual protection in a cloud computing environment

The term “cloud computing” has emerged as a major ICT trend and has been acknowledged by respected industry survey organizations as a key technology and market development theme for the industry and ICT users in 2010. However, one of the major challenges that faces the cloud computing concept and its global acceptance is how to secure and protect the data and processes that are the property of the user. The security of the cloud computing environment is a new research area requiring further development by both the academic and industrial research communities. Today, there are many diverse and uncoordinated efforts underway to address security issues in cloud computing and, especially, the identity management issues. This paper introduces an architecture for a new approach to necessary “mutual protection” in the cloud computing environment, based upon a concept of mutual trust and the specification of definable profiles in vector matrix form. The architecture aims to achieve better, more generic and flexible authentication, authorization and control, based on a concept of mutuality, within that cloud computing environment.