Developed Tracking System Research Articles

3-D real-time ultrasound tracking of acoustically actuated swimming microdrone

Maneuverable microswimmers/microdrones that navigate in hard-to-reach spaces inside human bodies hold a great potential for various biomedical applications. Acoustically actuated microswimmers have already demonstrated feasibility. However, for eventual translation of this technology, a robust 3-D tracking strategy for the microswimmer is particularly required. This paper presents our lab-designed 3-D ultrasound tracking system for real-time tracking of an acoustically actuated 3-D swimming microdrone. The ultrasound tracking system utilizing two ultrasound probes, a step motor and a host controller, was built to track the 3-D arbitrary motion of the microdrone in real-time. The performance of tracking was evaluated in the benchtop experiments by comparing the reconstructed trajectories with synchronized camera recordings. The ultrasound tracking system showed high reliability, with an average error of less than 0.3 mm across six different trials when compared to camera tracking. The results demonstrated the capability of our lab-designed 3-D ultrasound tracking system in accurately tracking the undetermined motion of the acoustic actuated 3-D swimming microdrone in real-time. The developed tracking system holds promise as a potential approach for biomedical applications and could pave the way for future clinical translation of the microswimmer technology.

Blockchain-based Logistics 4.0: enhancing performance of logistics service providers

PurposeTechnology is the lifeline for the logistics industry, and it has been immensely disrupted by the emerging blockchain technology. This paper has two main objectives. The first is to explore how the current blockchain technology can be implemented in the logistics industry with the aim of improving logistic services amongst the network of logistics service providers (LSPs). The second is to propose the development of a blockchain model for the small and medium logistics service supply chain.Design/methodology/approachA prototype blockchain-based logistics system has been created and tested in a case study with a real logistics company. The primary technologies for developing a blockchain model on the Hyperledger platform as well as how the system is designed based on the logistics service flow are explained.FindingsThe study has resulted in the successful implementation of the proposed prototype blockchain-based logistics system. In particular, the case company has managed to fully utilise the developed tracking and tracing system. Whilst utilising the prototype, the participants have been able to fulfil their responsibilities in an effective manner. The performance of LSPs has improved following the World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) criteria.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to current research in the application of blockchain technologies in the domain of logistics and the supply chain to progress LSPs towards Logistics 4.0. The current frameworks for Logistics 4.0 and how blockchain as a disruptive technology revolutionises logistic services are reviewed. In addition, this paper highlights the benefits of blockchain technology that LSPs can leverage to further improve their performance based on the LPI criteria.

Intersection analysis using computer vision techniques with SUMO

Abstract This paper presents intersection analysis using computer vision techniques with Simulation of Urban MObility (SUMO). First, an efficient deep-visual tracking pipeline is proposed by using the off-the-shelf YOLO object detection architecture and cascading it with a discriminative correlation filter to produce reliable trajectories for traffic analysis of vehicles and pedestrians. While a variety of traffic measurements can be directly estimated from the extracted trajectories (e.g., speed, turning movement count), a method of incorporating turning movement count (TMC) within SUMO is proposed in order to mimic a realistic traffic flow for an observed intersection and its comprehensive analysis. Experimental evaluations on the developed tracking system implies that the YOLOv5 variant is the best for traffic cameras and, after appropriate fine-tuning using the University of Nevada, Las Vegas pedestrian data set, the YOLOv5 performance manifested a significant improvement with a recall value of 0.62. The tracking system is further employed for monitoring three other intersections in the downtown area of Las Vegas and turning movement counts were estimated for peak hours in the morning and evening of one day (7:00–9:00 and 16:00–18:00) at 15-min intervals. Finally, the intersection design, including traffic signals with estimated TMC, is used to calibrate SUMO to provide critical parameters (e.g., lane density, travel time, occupancy) for traffic signal performance evaluation and comprehensive intersection analysis. The signal design treatment demonstrates a significant improvement in travel times and simulation results indicate that the turning-left ratio is a crucial factor affecting the travel time of vehicles on each intersection leg.

Developing Smart Self Orienting Solar Tracker for Mobile PV Power Generation Systems

Photovoltaic (PV) devices are one of the most renewable energy sources in demand globally. To harvest the maximum possible energy output from PV panels, it is necessary to orient them in a position where the sunray can fall on them perpendicularly. In this paper, an autonomous dual-axis smart solar tracking system is designed and implemented for positioning PV panels in a way that would make them generate the highest achievable energy output automatically anywhere in the world. The designed tracking system is built based on a mathematical model which is integrated with a microcontroller (μC), a Global Positioning System (GPS), a digital compass, and a gyro orientation sensor. The designed system provides a smart solution to accurately track the sun at a minimum power budget to increase the overall efficiency of PV panels. The suggested model is implemented and tested using 50 W PV panels, and it is empirically tested in the Middle East region of Baghdad, IRAQ. For further evaluation, it is also tested using simulated tracking data collected from three different regions Berlin, Singapore, and Sydney. This was done by selecting a city above the Tropic of Cancer, a city below the Tropic of Capricorn, and a city within the tropical region near the Equator. The obtained results confirmed that the developed system can track the sun in any region around the world, optimizing power consumption by operating the tracker within specific intervals that enables mustering maximum possible power of PV panels while ensuring minimum power consumption by the tracking system. The developed tracking system expended a mere 0.62% to 0.68% of the energy gain made.

Підвищення якості електропостачання у Energy Smart Community з джерелами розосередженої генерації

Solar photovoltaic energy is the most commercially attractive and widely used. The rapid development of the direction of renewable energy has become a prerequisite for the future change in the basic strategy for the functioning of energy systems and the energy market, the creation of new formats of interaction within the framework of "consumer — energy supply company", which are described in the concept of Energy Smart Community. The best option for building an Energy Smart Community is a mode of operation for private households, in which not only electricity is efficiently and economically consumed, but also generated into the grid. Grid connection requirements are fundamental principles in the design, management and operation of solar photovoltaic systems. These requirements are contained in the standards. The voltage (current) of photovoltaic generators is incompatible with the load in terms of amplitude and frequency, so power converters must be used. The control system of the DC/AC converter should be designed in such a way that the current is sinusoidal with low THD. The paper proposes a converter based on the developed tracking system with relay control and forced formation of sinusoidal currents consumed and generated from the network in the absence of a phase shift between voltage and current. Relay control allows you to realize the maximum speed. By digital modeling, the operating modes of the proposed converter were investigated: power supply of the load from the network and photovoltaic system (PV-system) power supply from the PV-system and power generation into the network; generating energy to the network, with the load disconnected; power supply from PV-system In all modes of operation, the current is sinusoidal. The quality of the current is analyzed using harmonic analysis. THD is 3.41 %, which meets the current quality standard. Individual harmonics do not exceed the maximum permissible values.

Animals exhibit consistent individual differences in their movement: A case study on location trajectories of Japanese macaques

Researching individual recognition (IR) is essential to understand the life history and adaptive behavior of social animals. Investigation of possible IR clues may also help us build new hypotheses about how social animals distinguish between different individuals. This study investigates behavioral individuality in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), focusing on one specific trait that is movement. Using a recently developed tracking system based on Bluetooth® Low Energy beacons, we collected three-dimensional (3D) location data from five Japanese macaques living in a group cage. A non-parametric, neural network-based analysis of the data revealed the existence of consistent individual differences in extremely limited aspects of the movement data (2-min trajectory of 3D location). Our results support the validity of multimodal approaches in studying IR, beyond the typical single-frame face recognition method, both for researchers and animal agents.

Tracking System for Indoor TV Antenna Based on CVBS Signal Processing

Analog terrestrial TV is still a popular choice for urban societies although the migration to digital system has already begun. Video quality of analog TV was heavily influenced by performance of the antenna. Most users prefer to use indoor antenna due to its simplicity. The disadvantage of this type of antenna is the users may need to change the antenna direction repeatedly when they change to different TV channel. In this research, we designed and developed tracking system that enable indoor TV antenna to adjust its direction automatically to get optimum video clarity. This system is built by several servo motors and telescopic antennas. Composite Video Baseband Signal (CVBS) processing is used to obtain reference information regarding video clarity level conditions on TV screen. The results show that CVBS signal processing has performance in describing video clarity level. System performance has been verified from trial results on some UHF channels. Minimum tracking time is reach 23.4 second and the maximum reach 24.6 second.

Sensor fusion of camera, GPS and IMU using fuzzy adaptive multiple motion models

A tracking system that will be used for Augmented Reality (AR) applications has two main requirements: accuracy and frame rate. The first requirement is related to the performance of the pose estimation algorithm and how accurately the tracking system can find the position and orientation of the user in the environment. Accuracy problems of current tracking devices, considering that they are low-cost devices, cause static errors during this motion estimation process. The second requirement is related to dynamic errors (the end-to-end system delay; occurring because of the delay in estimating the motion of the user and displaying images based on this estimate. This paper investigates combining the vision-based estimates with measurements from other sensors, GPS and IMU, in order to improve the tracking accuracy in outdoor environments. The idea of using Fuzzy Adaptive Multiple Models (FAMM) was investigated using a novel fuzzy rule-based approach to decide on the model that results in improved accuracy and faster convergence for the fusion filter. Results show that the developed tracking system is more accurate than a conventional GPS-IMU fusion approach due to additional estimates from a camera and fuzzy motion models. The paper also presents an application in cultural heritage context.

추적이 가능한 쿼드로터 호버링 시스템 구현

쿼드로터는 일반 무인항공기와 달리 구조가 단순하고 그 활용 가치가 매우 높아 많은 사람들의 관심을 받고 있다. 하지만 드론에 대한 관심이 높아짐에 따라 항공 안전사고 또는 분실에 대비한 비행체의 안정성과 위치파악의 중요성이 대두되고 있다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 쿼드로터의 모델링을 수식적으로 유도하여 이를 선형화시켜 간단한 제어기로 모델을 안정화시키고 다양한 센서로부터 얻은 데이터를 필터를 거쳐 기울어진 정도를 파악하여 보다 안정한 호버링이 가능한 추적 시스템을 제안하였다. 개발된 추적시스템은 비행 중인 쿼드로터의 위치를 컴퓨터로 전송해 이를 경로로 나타내어 비행경로를 파악할 수 있고 비행속도, 고도 등의 다양한 정보를 동시에 확인할 수 있게 하였다. 그리고 실제 쿼드로터에 사용되는 센서는 외란과 진동에 의해 정확한 센서 값을 측정할 수 없기 때문에 칼만필터와 상보필터를 통한 센서 결합으로 이를 극복하여 쿼드로터 호버링의 안정성을 PID 제어를 통해 구현하였다. 이를 모의 실험을 통하여 쿼드로터의 속도, 위치, 고도 등의 다양한 정보를 실시간으로 확인하였다. Unlike general unmanned aerial vehicles, the quad-rotor is attracting the attention of many people because of simple structure and very useful value. However, as the interest in drones increases, the safety and location of vehicles are becoming more important provide against aviation safety accidents or lost accidents. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a tracking system that stabilizes the model with a simple controller by linearized modeling and grasp tilt angle data from various sensor through the filter. The developed tracking system transmits the position of the quad-rotor in flight to the computer and shows it through the route, so it can check the flight path and various information such as flight speed and altitude at the same time. Then the sensor used in the actual quad-rotor can not measure exact sensor data for disturbance and vibration. So we use sensor fusion of Kalman filter and Complementary filter to overcome this problem and the stability of the quad-rotor hovering is realized by PID control. Through simulation, various information such as the speed, position, and altitude of the quad-rotor were confirmed in real time.

Initial Outcomes of a Lung Cancer Screening Program in an Integrated Community Health System

PurposeLung cancer screening with low-dose CT (LDCT) demonstrated reduced mortality in the National Lung Screening Trial, yet there is debate as to whether the reported efficacy can translate into comparable effectiveness with community-based screening. The authors’ purpose is to report the baseline patient characteristics and malignancy rate in the first 18 months after implementing a lung cancer screening program in an integrated community health system. MethodsPatients were screened at 1 of 10 participating community-based centers within a 22-hospital system from 2013 to 2015. LDCT examinations were interpreted by 1 of 20 radiologists using structured reporting and an internally developed tracking system. Manual chart review was performed to ascertain the malignancy detection rate. ResultsA total of 357 patients were screened with LDCT. Of these, 80 patients were ineligible and 3 declined enrollment. The remaining 274 patients satisfied accepted screening criteria and were enrolled in the program. Malignancy was detected in a total of 11 enrollees (4.0%), 8 with lung cancer and 3 with extrapulmonary primary malignancies. Three patients (1.1%) were diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer and received definitive therapy. ConclusionsEarly-stage lung cancer was detected with LDCT screening in an integrated community health system at a rate similar to other trials.

Dual-Axis Solar Tracking System for Maximum Power Production in PV Systems

The power developed in a solar energy system depends fundamentally upon the amount of sunlight captured by the photovoltaic modules/arrays. This paper describes a simple electro-mechanical dual axis solar tracking system designed and developed in a study. The control of the two axes was achieved by the pulses generated from the data acquisition (DAQ) card fed into four relays. This approach was so chosen to effectively avoid the error that usually arises in sensor-based methods. The programming of the mathematical models of the solar elevation and azimuth angles was done using Borland C++ Builder. The performance and accuracy of the developed system was evaluated with a PV panel at latitude 3.53 o N and longitude 103.5 o W in Malaysia. The results obtained reflect the effectiveness of the developed tracking system in terms of the energy yield when compared with that generated from a fixed panel. Overall, 20%, 23% and 21% additional energy were produced for the months of March, April and May respectively using the tracker developed in this study. Keywords: solar tracking; photovoltaic system; dual-axis; azimuth; elevation angle, DAQ card

Tracking Mobile Robot in Indoor Wireless Sensor Networks

This work addresses the problem of tracking mobile robots in indoor wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Our approach is based on a localization scheme with RSSI (received signal strength indication) which is used widely in WSN. The developed tracking system is designed for continuous estimation of the robot’s trajectory. A WSN, which is composed of many very simple and cheap wireless sensor nodes, is deployed at a specific region of interest. The wireless sensor nodes collect RSSI information sent by mobile robots. A range-based data fusion scheme is used to estimate the robot’s trajectory. Moreover, a Kalman filter is designed to improve tracking accuracy. Experiments are provided to assess the performance of the proposed scheme.

High frame-rate tracking of multiple color-patterned objects

In this study, we develop a high frame-rate vision system that can execute color histogram-based tracking of multiple color-patterned objects in a 512 × 512 image at 2,000 fps by implementing an expanded cell-based labeling algorithm as the hardware logic. In the hardware implementation of the expanded cell-based labeling algorithm, the 16-bin hue-based color histograms of 1,024 color-patterned objects in an image can be extracted simultaneously by dividing the image into 8 × 8 cells concurrently, after calculating the 0th, 1st, and 2nd moment features to obtain the positions, areas, and orientation angles of multiple objects. We verified the effectiveness of our developed tracking system by performing several experiments using multiple color-patterned objects, which were always tracked even when they moved rapidly with occlusions in the camera views.

SU-E-T-181: Development of a Single-Marker-Based Optical Tracking System to Enhance Patient Safety in Radiotherapy.

To develop an accurate and efficient single-marker-based optical tracking system to enhance patient safety and quality of care in radiotherapy. The optical tracking system consists of a Polaris camera as well as in-house software. The camera is mounted inside the treatment room and detects the location of a single infra-red (IR) reflective marker affixed on patient skin in real-time. The tracking system safeguards patient from treating wrong sites by comparing real-time marker position to the position predicted by virtual simulation, which is independent of couch or any indexing system. The deviation of marker position is shown in color (red or green) to indicate accuracy of patient positioning. The system works in concert with record-and-verify (R&V) system to further enhance patient safety and smooth clinic work flow. Marker information matching the patient under treatment is automatically loaded by the tracking system when a setup or treatment field is loaded in R&V. In non-coplanar treatment, the system automatically adjusts expected marker coordinators by accounting for each beam's couch angle extracted from R&V. Accuracy of the developed tracking system on a pelvis phantom has been verified against a CBCT system to be within 1.0 mm for coplanar treatment. In non-coplanar treatment, uncertainty of the system increases as the distance of the marker relative to treatment isocenter. The system precisely and automatically loads in patient and marker information for each beam, in concert with our R&V system. We have developed an accurate and efficient single IR marker-based optical tracking system for patient treatment position verification. It significantly enhances patient safety with streamlined clinic work flow. The system can be readily upgraded for high-precision radiotherapy with the use of multiple markers (>4).

On Addressing Network Synchronization in Object Tracking with Multi-modal Sensors

The performance of a tracking system is greatly increased if multiple types of sensors are combined to achieve the objective of the tracking instead of relying on single type of sensor. To conduct the multi-modal tracking, we have previously developed a multi-modal sensor-based tracking model where acoustic sensors mainly track the objects and visual sensors compensate the tracking errors [1]. In this paper, we find a network synchronization problem appearing in the developed tracking system. The problem is caused by the different location and traffic characteristics of multi-modal sensors and non-synchronized arrival of the captured sensor data at a processing server. To effectively deliver the sensor data, we propose a time-based packet aggregation algorithm where the acoustic sensor data are aggregated based on the sampling time and sent to the server. The delivered acoustic sensor data is then compensated by visual images to correct the tracking errors and such a compensation process improves the tracking accuracy in ideal case. However, in real situations, the tracking improvement from visual compensation can be severely degraded due to the aforementioned network synchronization problem, the impact of which is analyzed by simulations in this paper. To resolve the network synchronization problem, we differentiate the service level of sensor traffic based on Weight Round Robin (WRR) scheduling at the routers. The weighting factor allocated to each queue is calculated by a proposed Delay-based Weight Allocation (DWA) algorithm. From the simulations, we show the traffic differentiation model can mitigate the non-synchronization of sensor data. Finally, we analyze expected traffic behaviors of the tracking system in terms of acoustic sampling interval and visual image size.

Intelligent sun-tracking system for efficiency maximization of photovoltaic energy production

This paper focuses on the optimization of the electric energy production by photovoltaic cells through the development of an intelligent sun-tracking system. The developed tracking system is innovative in relation to the usual sun tracking systems available in the market. In fact, the developed solution has many advantages in relation to similar existing devices, as this system is autonomous regarding the information needed to process the optimal orientation and is intelligent in a way that it performs on-line monitoring of the photovoltaic energy production. An experimental prototype was built and field results have proven the good performance of the developed tracking system.