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

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

Direct contact membrane distillation is an effective method for production of fresh water from saline water. In this study two samples were used as feed solutions; the first one was RO waste from Al-Hilla Coca-Cola Factory (TDS= 2382 mg/l) and the other was Haji Ali drainage water (TDS= 4127 mg/l). Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) hydrophobic membrane supported with polypropylene (PP) was used as flat sheet form with plate and frame cell. Results proved that membrane distillation is an effective technique to produce fresh water with high quality from brine with low salinity content. With membrane area of 8x8 cm², the volume of treated water decreased from 34.97 ml at first half hour to 33.02 ml after 180 min of

In this work, a new development of predictive voltage-tracking control algorithm for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFCs) model, using a neural network technique based on-line auto-tuning intelligent algorithm was proposed. The aim of proposed robust feedback nonlinear neural predictive voltage controller is to find precisely and quickly the optimal hydrogen partial pressure action to control the stack terminal voltage of the (PEMFC) model for N-step ahead prediction. The Chaotic Particle Swarm Optimization (CPSO) implemented as a stable and robust on-line auto-tune algorithm to find the optimal weights for the proposed predictive neural network controller to improve system performance in terms of fast-tracking de

The Electric Discharge (EDM) method is a novel thermoelectric manufacturing technique in which materials are removed by a controlled spark erosion process between two electrodes immersed in a dielectric medium. Because of the difficulties of EDM, determining the optimum cutting parameters to improve cutting performance is extremely tough. As a result, optimizing operating parameters is a critical processing step, particularly for non-traditional machining process like EDM. Adequate selection of processing parameters for the EDM process does not provide ideal conditions, due to the unpredictable processing time required for a given function. Models of Multiple Regression and Genetic Algorithm are considered as effective methods for determ

Copula modeling is widely used in modern statistics. The boundary bias problem is one of the problems faced when estimating by nonparametric methods, as kernel estimators are the most common in nonparametric estimation. In this paper, the copula density function was estimated using the probit transformation nonparametric method in order to get rid of the boundary bias problem that the kernel estimators suffer from. Using simulation for three nonparametric methods to estimate the copula density function and we proposed a new method that is better than the rest of the methods by five types of copulas with different sample sizes and different levels of correlation between the copula variables and the different parameters for the function. The

Steganography is defined as hiding confidential information in some other chosen media without leaving any clear evidence of changing the media's features. Most traditional hiding methods hide the message directly in the covered media like (text, image, audio, and video). Some hiding techniques leave a negative effect on the cover image, so sometimes the change in the carrier medium can be detected by human and machine. The purpose of suggesting hiding information is to make this change undetectable. The current research focuses on using complex method to prevent the detection of hiding information by human and machine based on spiral search method, the Structural Similarity Index Metrics measures are used to get the accuracy and quality

The emphasis of Master Production Scheduling (MPS) or tactic planning is on time and spatial disintegration of the cumulative planning targets and forecasts, along with the provision and forecast of the required resources. This procedure eventually becomes considerably difficult and slow as the number of resources, products and periods considered increases. A number of studies have been carried out to understand these impediments and formulate algorithms to optimise the production planning problem, or more specifically the master production scheduling (MPS) problem. These algorithms include an Evolutionary Algorithm called Genetic Algorithm, a Swarm Intelligence methodology called Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA), Bat Algorithm (BAT), T

Recently Genetic Algorithms (GAs) have frequently been used for optimizing the solution of estimation problems. One of the main advantages of using these techniques is that they require no knowledge or gradient information about the response surface. The poor behavior of genetic algorithms in some problems, sometimes attributed to design operators, has led to the development of other types of algorithms. One such class of these algorithms is compact Genetic Algorithm (cGA), it dramatically reduces the number of bits reqyuired to store the poulation and has a faster convergence speed. In this paper compact Genetic Algorithm is used to optimize the maximum likelihood estimator of the first order moving avergae model MA(1). Simulation results