Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are considered an emerging technology in the industrial and educational fields. This technology is essential in the deployment of the intelligent transportation system, which is targeted to improve safety and efficiency of traffic. The implementation of VANETs can be effectively executed by transmitting data among vehicles with the use of multiple hops. However, the intrinsic characteristics of VANETs, such as its dynamic network topology and intermittent connectivity, limit data delivery. One particular challenge of this network is the possibility that the contributing node may only remain in the network for a limited time. Hence, to prevent data loss from that node, the information must reach the destina

This paper presents a robust algorithm for the assessment of risk priority for medical equipment based on the calculation of static and dynamic risk factors and Kohnen Self Organization Maps (SOM). Four risk parameters have been calculated for 345 medical devices in two general hospitals in Baghdad. Static risk factor components (equipment function and physical risk) and dynamics risk components (maintenance requirements and risk points) have been calculated. These risk components are used as an input to the unsupervised Kohonen self organization maps. The accuracy of the network was found to be equal to 98% for the proposed system. We conclude that the proposed model gives fast and accurate assessment for risk priority and it works as p

This paper presents a study of the application of gas lift (GL) to improve oil production in a Middle East field. The field has been experiencing a rapid decline in production due to a drop in reservoir pressure. GL is a widely used artificial lift technique that can be used to increase oil production by reducing the hydrostatic pressure in the wellbore. The study used a full field model to simulate the effects of GL on production. The model was run under different production scenarios, including different water cut and reservoir pressure values. The results showed that GL can significantly increase oil production under all scenarios. The study also found that most wells in the field will soon be closed due to high water cuts. Howev

Flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is one of the instances in flexible manufacturing systems. It is considered as a very complex to control. Hence generating a control system for this problem domain is difficult. FJSP inherits the job-shop scheduling problem characteristics. It has an additional decision level to the sequencing one which allows the operations to be processed on any machine among a set of available machines at a facility. In this article, we present Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm with Harmony Search for solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem. It is based on the new harmony improvised from results obtained by artificial fish swarm algorithm. This improvised solution is sent to comparison to an overall best

Abstract—In this study, we present the experimental results of ultra-wideband (UWB) imaging oriented for detecting small malignant breast tumors at an early stage. The technique is based on radar sensing, whereby tissues are differentiated based on the dielectric contrast between the disease and its surrounding healthy tissues. The image reconstruction algorithm referred to herein as the enhanced version of delay and sum (EDAS) algorithm is used to identify the malignant tissue in a cluttered environment and noisy data. The methods and procedures are tested using MRI-derived breast phantoms, and the results are compared with images obtained from classical DAS variant. Incorporating a new filtering technique and multiplication procedure, t

Abstract. This work presents a detailed design of a three-jointed tendon-driven robot finger with a cam/pulleys transmission and joint Variable Stiffness Actuator (VSA). The finger motion configuration is obtained by deriving the cam/pulleys transmission profile as a mathematical solution that is then implemented to achieve contact force isotropy on the phalanges. A VSA is proposed, in which three VSAs are designed to act as a muscle in joint space to provide firm grasping. As a mechatronic approach, a suitable type and number of force sensors and actuators are designed to sense the touch, actuate the finger, and tune the VSAs. The torque of the VSAs is controlled utilizing a designed Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) fuzzy controll

Abstract

This research presents a on-line cognitive tuning control algorithm for the nonlinear controller of path-tracking for dynamic wheeled mobile robot to stabilize and follow a continuous reference path with minimum tracking pose error. The goal of the proposed structure of a hybrid (Bees-PSO) algorithm is to find and tune the values of the control gains of the nonlinear (neural and back-stepping method) controllers as a simple on-line with fast tuning techniques in order to obtain the best torques actions of the wheels for the cart mobile robot from the proposed two controllers. Simulation results (Matlab Package 2012a) show that the nonlinear neural controller with hybrid Bees-PSO cognitive algorithm is m

The smart city concept has attracted high research attention in recent years within diverse application domains, such as crime suspect identification, border security, transportation, aerospace, and so on. Specific focus has been on increased automation using data driven approaches, while leveraging remote sensing and real-time streaming of heterogenous data from various resources, including unmanned aerial vehicles, surveillance cameras, and low-earth-orbit satellites. One of the core challenges in exploitation of such high temporal data streams, specifically videos, is the trade-off between the quality of video streaming and limited transmission bandwidth. An optimal compromise is needed between video quality and subsequently, rec

Sequence covering array (SCA) generation is an active research area in recent years. Unlike the sequence-less covering arrays (CA), the order of sequence varies in the test case generation process. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of the SCA strategies, earlier works reported that finding a minimal size of a test suite is considered as an NP-Hard problem. In addition, most of the existing strategies for SCA generation have a high order of complexity due to the generation of all combinatorial interactions by adopting one-test-at-a-time fashion. Reducing the complexity by adopting one-parameter- at-a-time for SCA generation is a challenging process. In addition, this reduction facilitates the supporting for a higher strength of