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This paper describes the new Sweaty II humanoid adult size robot trying to qualify for the RoboCup 2016 adult size humanoid competition. Based on experiences during RoboCup 2014, the Sweaty robot has been completely redesigned to a new robot Sweaty II. A major change is the use of linear actuators for the legs. Another characteristic is its indirect actuation by means of rods. This allows a variable transmission ratio depending on the angle of a joint.
After having described many different aspects of our team software in previous years, in this paper we take the freedom to describe the magmaChallenge framework provided by the magmaOffenburg team. The framework is used as a benchmark tool to run different challenges like the running challenge in 2014 or the kick accuracy challenge in 2015. This description should serve as a documentation to simplify the maintenance by the community and to add new benchmarks in the future.
Transthoracic impedance cardiography (ICG) is a non-invasive method for determination of hemodynamic parameters. The basic principle of transthoracic ICG is the measurement of electrical conductivity of the thorax over the time. The aim of the study was the analysis of hemodynamic parameters from healthy individuals and the evaluation of various hemodynamic monitoring devices. Fourteen men (mean age 25 ± 4.59 years) and twelve women (mean age 24 ± 3.5 years) were measured during the cardiovascular engineering laboratory at Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, Offenburg, Germany. The ICG recordings were measured with the devices CardioScreen 1000, CardioScreen 2000 and TensoScreen with the corresponding Software Cardiovascular Lab 2.5 (Medis Medizinische Messtechnik GmbH, Illmenau, Germany). In order to create identical frame conditions, all measurements were recorded in the same position and for the same duration. Various positions were simulated from horizontal lying position to vertical standing position. Altogether, more than 30 hemodynamic parameters were measured.
In contrast to conventional aortic valve replacement, the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) is a new highly specialist alternative to surgical valve replacement for patients with symptomatic severe aortic stenosis and high operative risk. The procedure was performed in a minimally invasive way and was introduced at the university heart centre, Freiburg – Bad Krozingen in 2008. The results have been getting better and better over the years. The aim of the investigation is the analysis of electrocardiogram conduction time and the electrocardiography changes recorded hours and days after the procedure depending on artificial heart valve models, which may lead to pacemaker implantation, even the analysis of the effectiveness of treatment.
Energy and environment continue to be major issues of human mankind. This holds true on the regional, the national, and the global level. And it is one of the problems, where engineers and scientists in conjunction with political will and people's awareness, can find new approaches and solutions to save the natural resources and to make their use more efficient.
Components of rocket engines as actively cooled combustion chambers must withstand high pressure as well as severe and complex thermal transients. While the thermal transients result in temperature gradients and, thus, in constraint thermal strains, the pressure load induces mean stresses. To assess the mechanical behaviour of such components during design via finite-element calculations, constitutive models are necessary that describe the time- and temperature-dependent plasticity of the material appropriately.
Advanced models account for viscoplastic deformations including isotropic and kinematic hardening, recovery and ratcheting. However, the models contain a relatively large number of temperature-dependent material properties that must be determined on the basis of data of material tests. The determination of the properties is a non-trivial task because it is not clear which loading history must be applied in the tests for a certain material to obtain stable and robust (i.e. objective) material properties. Consequently, the determined properties are depending on the underlying loading history in the tests as well as on the experience and valuation of the person that determined the properties. This results in uncertainties during the assessment of the components that must be faced with conservative designs leading to negative consequences in terms of mass and costs.
It is the aim of this work funded by the European Space Agency ESA to derive a procedure to determine stable and robust material properties of an advanced viscoplastic constitutive model for aerospace materials. To this end, a special loading history is applied in isothermal material tests conducted with copper at different temperatures in the temperature range from 300 to 700 K. To determine the material properties and to assess stability and robustness methods for numerical optimization as well as analytical and statistical methods are used. The determined material properties are validated on the basis of results of thermomechanical material tests also conducted in the temperature range from 300 to 700 K.
Flexible Three-dimensional Camera-based Reconstruction and Calibration of Tracked Instruments
(2016)
Navigated instruments commonly include applied parts, e.g. burrs or saw blades, that need to be calibrated with respect to the attached or integrated tracker. Since this calibration has to be very precise, it is often performed by the manufacturer. However, due to the great variety of instruments and the option to exchange the applied parts (e.g. burrs) there is a definite demand for flexible and generic calibration techniques. Furthermore, if we look into the medical field, there is also a need for calibrating sterile instruments. We propose a new and flexible camera-based calibration technique that addresses these demands by working contactlessly, precisely, and generically for a large variety of tracked instruments. This is realized using one or more tracked cameras which are calibrated with respect to an attached or integrated tracker. The tracked instrument is rotated in front of the camera(s) and its 3D geometry and surface are reconstructed from the 2D images in the coordinate system of the attached or integrated tracker. The 3D geometry of the navigated instrument was reconstructed with an accuracy of under 0.2 mm. The radius of a sphere-shaped instrument was reconstructed with an RMS deviation of 0.015mm.
Wireless sensor networks have found their way into a wide range of applications among which environmental monitoring systems have attracted increasing interests of researchers. The main challenges for the applications are scalability of the network size and energy efficiency of the spatially distributed motes. These devices are mostly battery-powered and spend most of their energy budget on the radio transceiver module. A so-called Wake-On-Radio (WOR) technology can be used to achieve a reasonable balance among power consumption, range, complexity and response time. In this paper, a novel design for integration of WOR into IEEE802.1.5.4 is presented, which flexibly allows trade-offs in energy consumption between sender and receiver station, between real-time capability and energy consumption. For identical behavior, the proposed scheme is significantly more efficient than other schemes, which were proposed in recent publications, while preserving backward compatibility with standard IEEE802.15.4 transceivers.
Ultra wide band (UWB) signals are well suited both for short-range wireless communication and for high-precision localization applications. Channel impulse response (CIR) analysis in UWB systems is a major element in localization estimation. In this paper, practical aspects of CIR are presented. I.e. a technique for the construction of the accumulated echo-gram of a multipath delayed signal is proposed. Decawave hardware was used to demonstrate the technique of analysis of fine structure of signals with a sub-nanosecond resolution. Temporal stability, reliability and two-way characteristics of such echo-grams are discussed as well. The results of using two EVK1000 radio modules as a radar installation to detect a target in indoor environments prove that a low cost UWB intrusion detection and through-the-wall-vision systems might be developed using the proposed technique.
In the work at hand, we combine a Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocol with Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption (SHE) and use Searchable Encryption (SE) with the objective to provide security and confidentiality features for a third party cloud security audit. During the auditing process, a third party auditor will act on behalf of a cloud service user to validate the security requirements performed by a cloud service provider. Our concrete contribution consists of developing a PIR protocol which is proceeding directly on a log database of encrypted data and allowing to retrieve a sum or a product of multiple encrypted elements. Subsequently, we concretely apply our new form of PIR protocol to a cloud audit use case where searchable encryption is employed to allow additional confidentiality requirements to the privacy of the user. Exemplarily we are considering and evaluating an audit of client accesses to a controlled resource provided by a cloud service provider.
This work describes a non-parametric camera-based method for the calibration of Optical See-Through Glasses (OSTG). Existing works model the optical system through perspective projection and parametric functions. In the border areas of the displays such models are often inadequate. Moreover, rigid calibration patterns, that produce only a small amount of non-equidistant point correspondences, are used. In order to overcome these disadvantages every single display pixel is calibrated individually. The error prone user interaction is avoided by using cameras placed behind the displays of the OSTG. The displays show a shifting pattern that is used to calculate the pixels' locations. A camera mounted rigidly on the OSTG is used to find the relations between the system components. The obtained results show better accuracies than in previous works and prove that a second calibration step for user adaptation is necessary for high accuracy applications.
High mobility, electrolyte-gated transistors (EGTs) show high DC performance at low voltages (< 2 V). To model those EGTs, we have used different models for the below and the above threshold regime with appropriate interpolation to ensure continuity and smoothness over all regimes. This empirical model matches very well with our measured results obtained by the electrical characterization of EGTs.
The industry of the agave-derived bacanora, in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, has been growing substantially in recent years. However, this higher demand still lies under the influences of a variety of social, legal, cultural, ecological and economic elements. The governmental institutions of the state have tried to encourage a sustainable development and certain levels of standardization in the production of bacanora by applying different economical and legal strategies. However, a large portion of this alcoholic beverage is still produced in a traditional and rudimentary fashion. Beyond the quality of the beverage, the lack of proper control, by using adequate instrumental methods, might represent a health risk, as in several cases traditional-distilled beverages can contain elevated levels of harmful materials. The present article describes the qualitative spectral analysis of samples of the traditional-produced distilled beverage bacanora in the range from 0 cm−1 to 3500 cm−1 by using a Fourier Transform Raman spectrometer. This particular technique has not been previously explored for the analysis of bacanora, as in the case of other beverages, including tequila. The proposed instrumental arrangement for the spectral analysis has been built by combining conventional hardware parts (Michelson interferometer, photo-diodes, visible laser, etc.) and a set of self-developed evaluation algorithms. The resulting spectral information has been compared to those of pure samples of ethanol and to the spectra from different samples of the alcoholic beverage tequila. The proposed instrumental arrangement can be used the analysis of bacanora.
Institute of Reliable Embedded Systems and Communication Electronics, Offenburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany has developed an automated testing environment, Automated Physical TestBeds (APTB), for analyzing the performance of wireless systems and its supporting protocols. Wireless physical networking nodes can connect to this APTB and the antenna output of this attaches with the RF waveguides. To model the RF environment this RF waveguides then establish wired connection among RF elements like splitters, attenuators and switches. In such kind of set up it’s well possible to vary the path characteristics by altering the attenuators and switches. The major advantage of using APTB is the possibility of isolated, well controlled, repeatable test environment in various conditions to run statistical analysis and even to execute regression tests. This paper provides an overview of the design and implementation of APTB, demonstrates its ability to automate test cases, and its efficiency.
Due to a controversial enrollment policy in most engineering programs at German Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS), many freshmen show very low school grades in key subjects like Math and Physics. Nevertheless they expect to be entertained in the lectures and get demotivated easily. Despite initial reservations, a cheer-and-challenge approach was developed for teaching Mechanics to freshmen having very diverse school grades. When tested, it showed astonishing results.
IPv6 over LoRaWAN™
(2016)
Although short-range wireless communication explicitly targets local and regional applications, range continues to be a highly important issue. The range directly depends on the so-called link budget, which can be increased by the choice of modulation and coding schemes. The recent transceiver generation in particular comes with extensive and flexible support for software-defined radio (SDR). The SX127× family from Semtech Corp. is a member of this device class and promises significant benefits for range, robust performance, and battery lifetime compared to competing technologies. This contribution gives a short overview of the technologies to support Long Range (LoRa™) and the corresponding Layer 2 protocol (LoRaWAN™). It particularly describes the possibility to combine the Internet Protocol, i.e. IPv6, into LoRaWAN™, so that it can be directly integrated into a full-fledged Internet of Things (IoT). The proposed solution, which we name 6LoRaWAN, has been implemented and tested; results of the experiments are also shown in this paper.
Battery degradation is a complex physicochemical process that strongly depends on operating conditions and environment. We present a model-based analysis of lithium-ion battery degradation in smart microgrids, in particular, a single-family house and an office tract with photovoltaics generator. We use a multi-scale multi-physics model of a graphite/lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4, LFP) cell including SEI formation as ageing mechanism. The cell-level model is dynamically coupled to a system-level model consisting of photovoltaics, inverter, power consumption profiles, grid interaction, and energy management system, fed with historic weather data. The behavior of the cell in terms of degradation propensity, performance, state of charge and other internal states is predicted over an annual operation cycle. As result, we have identified a peak in degradation rate during the battery charging process, caused by charging overpotentials. Ageing strongly depends on the load situation, where the predicted annual capacity fade is 1.9 % for the single-family house and only 1.3 % for the office tract.
Background: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is an established therapy for heart failure (HF) patients (P) with reduced left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction and electrical interventricular desynchronization, but not all P improved clinically. The aim of the study was to evaluate electrical interventricular delay (IVD) to LV delay (LVD) ratio in atrial fibrillation (AF) CRT responder (R) and non-responder (NR).
Methods: AF P (n = 18, age 60.6 ± 11.4 years, 1 female, 17 males) with HF New York Heart Association (NYHA) class 3.0 ± 0.2, 25.3 ± 5.9 % LV ejection fraction and 157.8 ± 24.4 ms QRS duration (QRSD) were measured by surface ECG and focused transesophageal bipolar LV ECG before implantation of CRT pacemaker (n = 2) or CRT defibrillator (n = 16). IVD was measured between onset of QRS in the surface ECG and onset of LV signal in the LV ECG. LVD was measured between onset and offset of LV signal in the LV ECG.
Results: Electrical ventricular desynchronization in AF CRT P were 61.9 ± 26.9ms IVD, 80.6 ± 24.3ms LVD, 0.85 ± 0.41 IVD-LVD-ratio (Figure), 3.12 ± 1.89 QRSD-IVD-ratio and 2.07 ± 0.47 QRSD-LVD-ratio. There were 72.2 % AF CRT R (n = 13) with 64.2 ± 24.6ms IVD and 77.8 ± 21.6ms LVD with Pearson correlation to 0.89 ± 0.39 IVD-LVD-ratio (r = 0.87, P < 0.01; r = -0.69, P < 0.01), 2.82 ± 1.32 QRSD-IVD-ratio (r = -0.76, P < 0.01; r = 0.67, P = 0.011) and 2.13 ± 0.46 QRSD-LVD-ratio (r = 0.57, P = 0.041; r = -0.85, P < 0.01). There were 27.8% AF CRT NR (n = 5) with 56.0 ± 34.5ms IVD and 87.8 ± 31.9ms LVD without correlation to 0.74 ± 0.48 IVD-LVD-ratio, 3.88 ± 2.98 QRSD-IVD-ratio and 1.90 ± 0.48 QRSD-LVD-ratio. During 15.3 ± 13.1 month CRT follow-up, the AF CRT R NYHA class improved from 3.0 ± 0.2 to 2.2 ± 0.3 (P < 0.001). During 18.8 ± 20.7 month CRT follow-up, the AF CRT NR NYHA class not improved from 3 to 3.3 ± 0.97.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have emerged as interesting topic in the research community due to its manifold applications. One of the main challenges of this field is the energy consumption of the nodes, which typically is quite restricted due to the required lifetime of such WSNs. To solve that problem several energy-saving MAC protocols have been developed so far. One of them recently presented by the authors is the so-called SmartMAC as an extension to the IEEE802.15.4 standard. In this paper, we present the implementation details of the porting of the SmartMAC protocol to the discrete event network simulator NS3. We develop this module for NS3 to simulate the performance, multi node execution, and multi node configuration. Along with this model, we also present an energy model for the evaluation of the energy consumption. The current implementation in NS3 is based on the LR-WPAN (Low-Rate Wireless Personal Area Networks) as specified by the IEEE802.15.4 (2006) standard. The simulation results show that the SmartMAC with its sleep and wake-up mechanisms for the transceivers, is significantly more efficient than the current NS3 MAC (Medium Access Control) scheme.
In this work, we consider a duty-cycled wireless sensor network with the assumption that the on/off schedules are uncoordinated. In such networks, as all nodes may not be awake during the transmission of time synchronization messages, nodes will require to re-transmit the synchronization messages. Ideally a node should re-transmit for the maximum sleep duration to ensure that all nodes are synchronized. However, such a proposition will immensely increase the energy consumption of the nodes. Such a situation demands that there is an upper bound of the number of retransmissions. We refer to the time a node spends in re-transmission of the control message as broadcast duration. We ask the question, what should be the broadcast duration to ensure that a certain percentage of the available nodes are synchronized. The problem to estimate the broadcast duration is formulated so as to capture the probability threshold of the nodes being synchronized. Results show the proposed analytical model can predict the broadcast duration with a given lower error margin under real world conditions, thus demonstrating the efficiency of our solution.
IPv6 over resource-constrained devices (6Lo) emerged as a de-facto standard for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications especially in home and building automation systems. We provide results of an investigation of the applicability of 6LoWPAN with RPL mesh networks for home and building automation use cases. The proper selection of Trickle parameters and neighbor reachable time-outs is important in the RPL protocol suite to respond efficiently to any path failure. These parameters were analyzed in the context of energy consumption w.r.t the number of control packets. The measurements were performed in an Automated Physical Testbeds (APTB). The results match the recommendation by RFC 7733 for selecting various parameters of RPL protocol suite. This paper shows the relationship between various RPL parameters and control traffic overhead during network rebuild. Comparative measurement results with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) in this work showed that 6Lo with RPL outperformed BLE in this use case with less control traffic overheads.
In the last decade, IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (IEEE802.15.4), also known as 6LoWPAN, has well evolved as a primary contender for short range wireless communications and holds the promise of an Internet of Things, which is completely based on the Internet Protocol. The authors' team has developed a 6LoWPAN protocol stack in C language, the stack without the necessity to use a specific design environment or operating system. It is highly flexible, modular, and portable and can be enhanced by several interesting modules, like a Wake-On-Radio-(WOR) MAC layer or a TLS1.2 based security sublayer. The stack is made available as open source at https://github.com/hso-esk/emb6. It was extensively tested on the Automated Physical Testbed (APTB) for Wireless Systems, which is available in the authors' lab and allows a flexible setup and full control of arbitrary topologies. The results of the measurements demonstrate a very good stability and short-term with long-term performance also under dynamic conditions.
Wireless communication systems more and more become part of our daily live. Especially with the Internet of Things (IoT) the overall connectivity increases rapidly since everyday objects become part of the global network. For this purpose several new wireless protocols have arisen, whereas 6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks) can be seen as one of the most important protocols within this sector. Originally designed on top of the IEEE802.15.4 standard it is a subject to various adaptions that will allow to use 6LoWPAN over different technologies; e.g. DECT Ultra Low Energy (ULE). Although this high connectivity offers a lot of new possibilities, there are several requirements and pitfalls coming along with such new systems. With an increasing number of connected devices the interoperability between different providers is one of the biggest challenges, which makes it necessary to verify the functionality and stability of the devices and the network. Therefore testing becomes one of the key components that decides on success or failure of such a system. Although there are several protocol implementations commonly available; e.g., for IoT based systems, there is still a lack of according tools and environments as well as for functional and conformance testing. This article describes the architecture and functioning of the proposed test framework based on Testing and Test Control Notation Version 3 (TTCN-3) for 6LoWPAN over ULE networks.
The humanoid Sweaty was the finalist in this year’s robocup soccer championship(adult size). For the optimization of the gait and the stability, data concerning forces and torques in the ankle joints would be helpful. In the following paper the development of a six-axis force and torque sensor for the humanoid robot Sweaty is described. Since commercial sensors do not meet the demands for the sensors in Sweatys ankle joints, a new sensor was developed. As a measuring devices we used strain gauges and custom electronics based on an acam PS09. The geometry was analyzed with the FEM program ANSYS to get optimal dimensions for the measuring beams. In addition ANSYS was used to optimize the position for the strain gauges on the beam.
Due to its numerous application fields and benefits, virtualization has become an interesting and attractive topic in computer and mobile systems, as it promises advantages for security and cost efficiency. However, it may bring additional performance overhead. Recently, CPU virtualization has become more popular for embedded platforms, where the performance overhead is especially critical. In this article, we present the measurements of the performance overhead of the two hypervisors Xen and Jailhouse on ARM processors in the context of the heavy load “Cpuburn-a8” application and compare it to a native Linux system running on ARM processors.
This paper focuses on appropriately measuring the accuracy of forecasts of load behavior and renewable generation in micro-grid operation. Common accuracy measures like the root mean square of the error are often difficult to interpret for system design, as they describe the mean accuracy of the forecast. Micro-grid systems, however, have to be designed to handle also worst case situations. This paper therefore suggests two error measures that are based on the maximum function and that better allow understanding worst case requirements with respect to balancing power and balancing energy supply.
Economic dispatch is a well-known optimization problem in smart grid systems which aims at minimizing the total cost of power generation among generation units while maintaining some system constraints. Recently, some distributed consensus-based approaches have been proposed to replace traditional centralized calculation. However, existing approaches fail to protect privacy of individual units like cost function parameters, generator constraints, output power levels, etc. In this paper, we show an attack against an existing consensus-based economic dispatch algorithm from [16] assuming semi-honest non-colluding adversaries. Then we propose a simple solution by combining a secure sum protocol and the consensus-based economic dispatch algorithm that guarantees data privacy under the same attacker model. Our Privacy Preserving Economic Dispatch (PPED) protocol is information-theoretically secure.
BiCI users’ sensitivity to interaural phase differences for single- and multi-channel stimulation
(2016)
The ability to detect a signal masked by noise is improved in normal-hearing (NH) listeners when interaural phase differences (IPD) between the ear signals exist either in the masker or the signal. We determined the impact of different coding strategies in bilaterally implanted cochlear implant (BiCI) users with and without fine-structure coding (FSC) on masking level differences. First, binaural intelligibility level differences (BILD) were determined in NH listeners and BiCI users using their clinical speech processors. NH subjects (n=8) showed a significant mean BILD of 7.5 dB. In contrast, BiCI users (n=9) without FSC as well as with FSC revealed a barely significant mean BILD (0.4 dB respectively 0.6 dB). Second, IPD thresholds were measured in BiCI users using either their speech processors with FS4 or direct stimulation with FSC. With the latter approach, synchronized stimulation providing an interaural accuracy of stimulation timing of 1.67 µs was realized on pitch matched electrode pairs. The resulting individual IPD threshold was lower in most of the subjects with direct stimulation than with their speech processors. These outcomes indicate that some BiCI users can benefit from increased temporal precision of interaural FSC and adjusted interaural frequency-place mapping presumably resulting in improved BILD.
NEXCODE is a project promoted by the European Space Agency aimed at research design development and demonstration of a receiver chain for telecomm and links in space missions including the presence of new short low-density parity-check codes for error correction. These codes have excellent performance from the error rate viewpoint but also put new challenges as regards synchronization issues and implementation. In this paper after a short review of the results obtained through numerical simulations we present an overview of the breadboard designed for practical testing and the test-plan proposed for the verification of the breadboard and the validation of the new codes and novel synchronization techniques under relevant operation conditions.