H-2 and H-infinity - norm control of intelligent structures using LMI techniques

Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs) is a powerful too] that has been used in many areas ranging from control engineering to system identification and structural design. There are many factors that make LMI appealing. One is the fact that a lot of design specifications and constrains can be formulated as LMIs [1]. Once formulated in terms of LMIs a problem can be solved efficiently by convex optimization algorithms. The basic idea of the LMI method is to formulate a given problem as an optimization problem with linear objective function and linear matrix inequalities constrains. An intelligent structure involves distributed sensors and actuators and a control law to apply localized actions, in order to minimize or reduce the response at selected conditions. The objective of this work is to implement techniques of control based on LMIs applied to smart structures.

Controle ativo de vibrações em estruturas espaciais tipo treliças usando controladores IMSC

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A Proposed Structure of Knowledge-Based Hybrid Intelligent Systems for Sophisticated Environments

The paper deals with a problem of intelligent system’s design for complex environments. There is discussed a possibility to integrate several technologies into one basic structure. One possible structure is proposed in order to form a basis for intelligent system that would be able to operate in complex environments. The basic elements of the proposed structure have found their implemented in software system. This software system is shortly presented in the paper. The most important results of experiments are outlined and discussed at the end of the paper. Some possible directions of further research are sketched.

Intelligent Bio-Inspired system for manufacturing scheduling under uncertainties

A novel approach to scheduling resolution by combining Autonomic Computing (AC), Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), Case-based Reasoning (CBR), and Bio-Inspired Optimization Techniques (BIT) will be described. AC has emerged as a paradigm aiming at incorporating applications with a management structure similar to the central nervous system. The main intentions are to improve resource utilization and service quality. In this paper we envisage the use of MAS paradigm for supporting dynamic and distributed scheduling in Manufacturing Systems with AC properties, in order to reduce the complexity of managing manufacturing systems and human interference. The proposed CBR based Intelligent Scheduling System was evaluated under different dynamic manufacturing scenarios.

An Intelligent Distributed System for Environmental Management

Environmental management is a complex task. The amount and heterogeneity of the data needed for an environmental decision making tool is overwhelming without adequate database systems and innovative methodologies. As far as data management, data interaction and data processing is concerned we here propose the use of a Geographical Information System (GIS) whilst for the decision making we suggest a Multi-Agent System (MAS) architecture. With the adoption of a GIS we hope to provide a complementary coexistence between heterogeneous data sets, a correct data structure, a good storage capacity and a friendly user’s interface. By choosing a distributed architecture such as a Multi-Agent System, where each agent is a semi-autonomous Expert System with the necessary skills to cooperate with the others in order to solve a given task, we hope to ensure a dynamic problem decomposition and to achieve a better performance compared with standard monolithical architectures. Finally, and in view of the partial, imprecise, and ever changing character of information available for decision making, Belief Revision capabilities are added to the system. Our aim is to present and discuss an intelligent environmental management system capable of suggesting the more appropriate land-use actions based on the existing spatial and non-spatial constraints.

Development of Paperboard Forming Tools with a Focus on Intelligent Manufacturing

Tämä diplomityö käsittelee kartonginmuovaukseen käytettävien puristintyökalujen kehittämistä. Työntavoitteina oli kehittää työkalutekniikan suunnittelua ja valmistusta edullisemmaksi, nopeammaksi ja työkaluja toiminnoiltaan tehokkaammiksi. Työn tuli sisältää myös ohjeet työkalujen suunnittelemiseksi ja valmistamiseksi jatkoa ajatellen. Työn aikana selvitettiin mahdollisia työkalurakennevaihtoehtoja, valmistusmateriaaleja sekä niiden käsittelymenetelmiä ja lastuamista sekä sen tarjoamia mahdollisuuksia valmistusmenetelmänä. Työkalupari suunniteltiin modulaariseksi siten, että uusia työkaluja varten vain osa komponenteista täytyy valmistaa uudelleen, samalla työkalun osien lukumäärää pienennettiin merkittävästi. Valmistusmateriaaliksi valittiin hyvin lastuttava työkaluteräs ja sen koneistaminen tapahtui vaakakaraisessa koneistuskeskuksessa. Työn loppuvaiheessa työkalukokonaisuudelle tehtiin kustannuslaskelma jaoteltuna eri työvaiheille sekä komponenteittain. Työkalu asennettiin puristimeen ja sille suoritettiin käyttötestaus. Työn aikana karttuneen kokemuksen sekä koekäytön perusteella tehtiin jatkokehitysehdotuksia.

E-PORT. Improving efficiency of Finnish port community by intelligent systems Final report of the Mobile Port project

The management of port-related supply chains is challenging due to the complex and heterogeneous operations of the ports with several actors and processes. That is why the importance of information sharing is emphasised in the ports. However, the information exchange between different port-related actors is often cumbersome and it still involves a lot of manual work and paper. Major ports and port-related actors usually have advanced information systems in daily use but these systems are seldom interoperable with each other, which prevents economies of scale to be reached. Smaller ports and companies might not be equipped with electronic data transmission at all. This is the final report of the Mobile port (MOPO) project, which has sought ways to improve the management and control of port-related sea and inland traffic with the aid of ICT technologies. The project has studied port community systems (PCS) used worldwide, evaluated the suitability of a PCS for the Finnish port operating environment and created a pilot solution of a Finnish PCS in the port of HaminaKotka. Further, the dry port concept and its influences on the transportation system have been explored. The Mobile Port project comprised of several literature reviews, interviews of over 50 port-related logistics and/or ICT professionals, two different kinds of simulation models as well as designing and implementing of the pilot solution of the Finnish PCS. The results of these multiple studies are summarised in this report. Furthermore, recommendations for future actions and the topics for further studies are addressed in the report. The study revealed that the information sharing in a typical Finnish port-related supply chain contains several bottlenecks that cause delays in shipments and waste resources. The study showed that many of these bottlenecks could be solved by building a port community system for the Finnish port community. Almost 30 different kinds of potential services or service entities of a Finnish PCS were found out during the study. The basic requirements, structure, interfaces and operation model of the Finnish PCS were also defined in the study. On the basis of the results of the study, a pilot solution of the Finnish PCS was implemented in the port of HaminaKotka. The pilot solution includes a Portconnect portal for the Finnish port community system (available at https://www.portconnect.fi) and two pilot applications, which are a service for handling the information flows concerning the movements of railway wagons and a service for handling the information flows between Finnish ports and Finland-Russian border. The study also showed that port community systems can be used to improve the environmental aspects of logistics in two different ways: 1) PCSs can bring direct environmental benefits and 2) PCSs can be used as an environmental tool in a port community. On the basis of the study, the development of the Finnish port community system should be continued by surveying other potential applications for the Finnish PCS. It is also important to study if there is need and resources to extend the Finnish PCS to operate in several ports or even on a national level. In the long run, it could be reasonable to clarify whether there would be possibilities to connect the Finnish PCS as a part of Baltic Sea wide, European-wide or even worldwide maritime and port-related network in order to get the best benefit from the system

The Architect's Collaborator: Toward Intelligent Tools for Conceptual Design

In early stages of architectural design, as in other design domains, the language used is often very abstract. In architectural design, for example, architects and their clients use experiential terms such as "private" or "open" to describe spaces. If we are to build programs that can help designers during this early-stage design, we must give those programs the capability to deal with concepts on the level of such abstractions. The work reported in this thesis sought to do that, focusing on two key questions: How are abstract terms such as "private" and "open" translated into physical form? How might one build a tool to assist designers with this process? The Architect's Collaborator (TAC) was built to explore these issues. It is a design assistant that supports iterative design refinement, and that represents and reasons about how experiential qualities are manifested in physical form. Given a starting design and a set of design goals, TAC explores the space of possible designs in search of solutions that satisfy the goals. It employs a strategy we've called dependency-directed redesign: it evaluates a design with respect to a set of goals, then uses an explanation of the evaluation to guide proposal and refinement of repair suggestions; it then carries out the repair suggestions to create new designs. A series of experiments was run to study TAC's behavior. Issues of control structure, goal set size, goal order, and modification operator capabilities were explored. In addition, TAC's use as a design assistant was studied in an experiment using a house in the process of being redesigned. TAC's use as an analysis tool was studied in an experiment using Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie houses.

A case study of intelligent buildings: Manchester stadium

This paper provides a case study of the City of Manchester Stadium based on relevant literatures, based on a comprehensive description of multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral and future-oriented requirements and operations in the design of modern intelligent sports buildings. The successfulness of the City of Manchester Stadium gives constructive experience and knowledge for the building professions including architecture, building structure, building services, construction, and facilities management, etc. In addition, this paper is valuable for developing intelligent sports buildings in China.

Autonomous intelligent cruise control using a novel multiple-controller framework incorporating fuzzy-logic-based switching and tuning

This paper presents a novel intelligent multiple-controller framework incorporating a fuzzy-logic-based switching and tuning supervisor along with a generalised learning model (GLM) for an autonomous cruise control application. The proposed methodology combines the benefits of a conventional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, and a PID structure-based (simultaneous) zero and pole placement controller. The switching decision between the two nonlinear fixed structure controllers is made on the basis of the required performance measure using a fuzzy-logic-based supervisor, operating at the highest level of the system. The supervisor is also employed to adaptively tune the parameters of the multiple controllers in order to achieve the desired closed-loop system performance. The intelligent multiple-controller framework is applied to the autonomous cruise control problem in order to maintain a desired vehicle speed by controlling the throttle plate angle in an electronic throttle control (ETC) system. Sample simulation results using a validated nonlinear vehicle model are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the multiple-controller with respect to adaptively tracking the desired vehicle speed changes and achieving the desired speed of response, whilst penalising excessive control action. Crown Copyright (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

KAIFIA: Knowledge assisted intelligent framework for information access

Accessing information, which is spread across multiple sources, in a structured and connected way, is a general problem for enterprises. A unified structure for knowledge representation is urgently needed to enable integration of heterogeneous information resources. Topic Maps seem to be a solution for this problem. The Topic Map technology enables connecting information, through concepts and relationships, and their occurrences across multiple systems. In this paper, we address this problem by describing a framework built on topic maps, to support the current need of knowledge management. New approaches for information integration, intelligent search and topic map exploration are introduced within this framework.

Sustainability assessment indicators and methodology for intelligent buildings

The sustainable intelligent building is a building that has the best combination of environmental, social, economic and technical values. And its sustainability assessment is related with system engineering methods and multi-criteria decision-making. Therefore firstly, the wireless monitoring system of sustainable parameters for intelligent buildings is achieved; secondly, the indicators and key issues based on the “whole life circle” for sustainability of intelligent buildings are researched; thirdly, the sustainable assessment model identified on the structure entropy and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed.

Structure and properties of conducting bacterial cellulose-polyaniline nanocomposites

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

SISTAX - An intelligent tool for recovering information on natural products chemistry

This work describes the development of a new program, named SISTAX, for the expert system SISTEMAT. This program allows anyone interested in chemotaxonomy to carry out an intelligent search for organic compounds in databases through chemical structures. When coupled with can efficient encoding system, the program recognizes skeletal types and can find any substructural constraints demanded by the user. An example of an application of the program to the diterpene class found in plants is described.

Robust control applications for smart truss structure

A finite element modeling of an intelligent truss structure with piezoelectric stack actuators for the purpose of active damping and structural vibration attenuation is presented. This paper concerns with the following issues aspects: the design of intelligent truss structure considering electro-mechanical coupling between the host structure and piezoelectric stack actuators; the H 2 norm approach to search for optimal placement of actuators and sensors; and finally some aspects in robust control techniques. The electro-mechanical behavior of piezoelectric elements is directly related to the successful application of the actuators in truss structures. In order to achieve the desired damping in the interested bandwidth frequency it is used the H ∞ output feedback solved by convex optimization. The constraints to be reached are written by linear matrix inequalities (LMI). The paper concludes with a numerical example, using Matlab and Simulink, in a cantilevered, 2-bay space truss structure. The results demonstrated the approach applicability.