Significant research efforts have been directed into smart home environments in the last decade creating abundant opportunities for the broader home services ecosystem to foster a wide range of innovative services. Research interest has been given on automatic identification and tracking of people within the home environment to support customised services such as care services for elderly and disadvantaged people to enable and prolong their independent living. Although various approaches have been proposed to tackle this problem, solutions still remain elusive due to various reasons (e.g. user acceptance). Literature reviews have indicated the need for an advanced non-tagged identification and tracking approach that is capable to provide the infrastructure support for realisation of context-aware services, satisfy users’ needs, and deal with the complexity of smart home environmental conditions. The aim of this study is to develop and implement an advanced approach that is capable to accurately detect, identify, and track people within opportune and calm home environment to be used as infrastructure for various application domains such as assisted living, healthcare, security and energy management. Accordingly, a novel multimodal approach for non-tagged human identification and tracking within home environment is proposed. The proposed approach combined floor pressure and PIR sensors through unique designed integration strategy aiming to merge the advantages of the two sensor types and overcome or minimise their weaknesses. The designed strategy enabled the PIR output signal pattern to afford explicit information indicating a person’s body surface area (size/shape). This information enhanced the identification accuracy, facilitated the custom designed smart floor, and reduced the overall cost. The conceptual framework of the proposed approach/strategy encompassed two key stages, hardware system design and implementation, and data processing. The hardware system design included the custom designed PIR and smart floor units. A test bed was designed and implemented for supporting the research studies, including proof of concept, concept demonstration, experimental and test cases studies. Data processing system has divided into different stages to accomplish the identification and tracking goals. First, the interested patterns were segmented and generated with threshold edge detection method and advanced pattern generation algorithm respectively. Second, limited set of features were extracted and selected from each pattern including ground reaction force GRF, gait, and body size/shape (PIR) features. Third, these features were merged at different fusion level, namely, feature-level and decision-level to provide comprehensive description about the person’s identity. Fourth, MLPNN multiclass classifier was adopted to process the feature vectors and recognise the person’s identity. Finally, the footstep patterns were tracked using weighted centroid tracking technique, in addition to MLPNN classifier to handle the footsteps association problems. Four test cases were designed and carried out to demonstrate, test, and evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed non-tagged identification and tracking strategies/approach. The assessment outcomes have shown the potential of the proposed multimodal approach as an advanced strategy for implementation of an indoor non-tagged human identification and tracking system and to be used as infrastructure for supporting the delivery of various types of smart services within the smart home environments. In summary, the proposed multimodal approach has the potential to: (1) Identify up to 5 persons successfully with minimum 98.8% correct classification rate without tag, (2) detect, locate, and track multiple persons successfully without tag and the location error no more than 11.76 cm, approximately 1.5 times better in accuracy than the original set target (i.e. 30 cm), and (3) able to handle various tracking difficulties and solve 97.5% of data association problems.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / The turbo code is a block code even though a convolutional encoder is used to construct codewords. Its performance depends on the code word length. Since the invention of the turbo code in 1993, most of the bit error rate (BER) evaluations have been performed using large block sizes, i.e., sizes greater than 1000, or even 10,000. However, for telemetry and command, a relatively short message (<500 bits) may be used. This paper investigates the turbo-coded BER performance for short packets. Fading channel is also considered. In addition, biased channel side information is adopted to improve the performance.

This thesis addresses the subject of converging real and virtual environments to a combined entity that can facilitate physiologically complying interfaces for the purpose of training. Based on the mobility and physiological demands of dismounted soldiers, the base assumption is that greater immersion means better learning and potentially higher training transfer. As the user can interface with the system in a natural way, more focus and energy can be used for training rather than for control itself. Identified requirements on a simulator relating to physical and psychological user aspects are support for unobtrusive and wireless use, high field of view, high performance tracking, use of authentic tools, ability to see other trainees, unrestricted movement and physical feedback. Using only commercially available systems would be prohibitively expensive whilst not providing a solution that would be fully optimized for the target group for this simulator. For this reason, most of the systems that compose the simulator are custom made to facilitate physiological human aspects as well as to bring down costs. With the use of chroma keying, a cylindrical simulator room and parallax corrected high field of view video see-though head mounted displays, the real and virtual reality are mixed. This facilitates use of real tool as well as layering and manipulation of real and virtual objects. Furthermore, a novel omnidirectional floor and thereto interface scheme is developed to allow limitless physical walking to be used for virtual translation. A physically confined real space is thereby transformed into an infinite converged environment. The omnidirectional floor regulation algorithm can also provide physical feedback through adjustment of the velocity in order to synchronize virtual obstacles with the surrounding simulator walls. As an alternative simulator target use, an omnidirectional robotic platform has been developed that can match the user movements. This can be utilized to increase situation awareness in telepresence applications.

The wooden multi-storey building industry is facing persistent sound transmission problems at low frequencies. Inserting elastomers within wall-floor junctions is common usage nevertheless no accurate studies have elucidated the real behavior of those nonlinear combined materials yet. Deeper knowledge is needed to create a relevant FE model which will help industry to use those materials efficiently.The nonlinear dynamic behavior of the elastomers inserted in wooden junctions is analyzed while the static load acting on them is varying. The specific situation where those elastomers were tested is a scaled room made of two walls and one floor.An experimental study was conducted on this prototype wooden construction and a numerical analysis was performed on the Finite Element model of it. The frequency response functions of several positions were measured on the physical setup.The study showed that loaded structures (up to 2 times the load of the floor) had a lower damping ratio. Having the structure standing on really stiff or elastic material does not differ when comparing experimental and analytical modal parameters.Those results depict the behavior of elastomers for different load cases and are definitely a step forward for the conception of a reliable FE model.

<p>During the 1990s two contrasting paths to the organization of work have emerged in the Swedish engineering industry: the structure-conservative and structure-innovative. This thesis deals with the latter, and focuses primarily on necessary changes in management control systems that support structureinnovative forms of team-organized work. Three types of management control systems are studied in this thesis: performance management and measurement systems, systems for continuous improvements and wage systems.</p><p>The empirical base of this thesis consists of data from an exploratory survey study as well as a multiple case study.</p><p>On a general level, the survey study indicates a lack of congruence between structure and systems. Many companies seem to have started to move along the structure-innovative path but have not changed the management control systems accordingly. However, there are good reasons for doing so. The companies that have chosen the structure-innovative path perform better in terms of productivity, quality and cost reduction. These are also the companies that have changed their management control systems to the greatest extent.</p><p>The case study provides examples of how management control systems may be changed to fit structure-innovative forms of team-organized work. The main focus has been on the use of Balanced Scorecard. How a strategic continuous improvement capability was developed and sustained in the studied companies is illustrated. The findings extend previous research on new production concepts, which, this thesis argues, are not to be regarded as an issue of technology and vertical division of labour only, but also of supportive management control systems.</p> / QC 20100525

<p>One of the universal characteristics of all organization concerns their attempts to achieve high product quality at low price. For that reason, the contemporary organizations direct their attempts to improve the utilization of workers’ potential and adopt the line-stopping strategies at the shop .The research presented in this thesis aims at analyzing and revealing to what extent the decisions at the shop floor depend on operators. The conclusions drawn in this paper contribute to determination of the scope of operators’ responsibilities and examination of the ways in which workers maintain the process uninterrupted. The role of operators for attaining the desired product quality is presented as well. These objectives have been accomplished through theoretical work.</p>

Ductile plastic hinge zones in beams of reinforced concrete frames are known to incur extensive damage and elongate. This ‘beam elongation’ can inflict serious damage to adjacent floor diaphragms, raising concerns of life safety. In light of this, the slotted reinforced concrete beam was investigated as a promising non-tearing floor substitute for conventional design. It consists of a conventional reinforced concrete beam, modified with a narrow vertical slot adjacent to the column face, running approximately three-quarters of the beam depth. Seismic rotations occur about the remaining concrete “top-hinge”, such that deformations are concentrated in the bottom bars of the beam, away from the floor slab, and beam elongation is minimised. The inclusion of the slot raised several design issues which needed to be addressed. These were the shear transfer across the top-hinge, buckling of bottom longitudinal reinforcement, low cycle fatigue, bond anchorage of reinforcement in interior joints, interior joint design, detailing with floor units and beam torsion resulting from eccentric floor gravity loads. These issues were conceptually investigated in this project. It was found that most issues could be resolved by providing additional reinforcement and/or specifying alternative detailing. As part of the experimental investigation, quasi-static cyclic tests were performed on in-plane beam-column joint subassemblies. Specimens tested included exterior and interior joint subassemblies with slotted-beams and a conventional exterior joint as a benchmark. This was followed by a test on a slotted-beam interior joint subassembly with precast floor units and imposed gravity load. Experimental tests revealed significant reductions in damage to both the beam and floor when compared to conventional beams. Issues of bar buckling, bond-slip and altered joint behaviour were also highlighted, but were resolved in the final test. A simple analytical procedure to predict the moment-rotation response of slotted-beams was developed and verified with experimental results. This was used to perform sensitivity studies to determine appropriate limits for the concrete top-hinge depth, top-to-bottom reinforcement ratio and depth of diagonal shear reinforcement. For the numerical investigation, a multi-spring model was developed to represent the flexural response of slotted-beams. This was verified with experimental tests and implemented into a five-storey, three-bay frame for earthquake time history analyses. To provide a benchmark, a conventional frame was also setup using the plastic hinge element developed by Peng (2009). Time history analyses showed that the slotted-beam frame response was very similar to the response of a conventional frame. Due to greater hysteretic damping, there was a slight reduction in the average interstorey drift and lateral displacement envelopes. The slotted-beam frame also exhibited 40% smaller residual drifts than the conventional frame. The research carried out in this thesis showed slotted reinforced concrete beams to be an effective non-tearing floor solution, which could provide a simple and practical substitute for conventional reinforced concrete design.

The recent earthquakes in Christchurch have made it clear that issues exist with current RC frame design in New Zealand. In particular, beam elongation in RC frame buildings was widespread and resulted in numerous buildings being rendered irreparable. Design solutions to overcome this problem are clearly needed, and the slotted beam is one such solution. This system has a distinct advantage over other damage avoidance design systems in that it can be constructed using current industry techniques and conventional reinforcing steel. As the name suggests, the slotted beam incorporates a vertical slot along part of the beam depth at the beam-column interface. Geometric beam elongation is accommodated via opening and closing of these slots during seismically induced rotations, while the top concrete hinge is heavily reinforced to prevent material inelastic elongation. Past research on slotted beams has shown that the bond demand on the bottom longitudinal reinforcement is increased compared with equivalent monolithic systems. Satisfying this increased bond demand through conventional means may yield impractical and economically less viable column dimensions. The same research also indicated that the joint shear mechanism was different to that observed within monolithic joints and that additional horizontal reinforcement was required as a result. Through a combination of theoretical investigation, forensic analysis, and database study, this research addresses the above issues and develops design guidelines. The use of supplementary vertical joint stirrups was investigated as a means of improving bond performance without the need for non-standard reinforcing steel or other hardware. These design guidelines were then validated experimentally with the testing of two 80% scale beam-column sub-assemblies. The revised provisions for bond within the bottom longitudinal reinforcement were found to be adequate while the top longitudinal reinforcement remained nominally elastic throughout both tests. An alternate mechanism was found to govern joint shear behaviour, removing the need for additional horizontal joint reinforcement. Current NZS3101:2006 joint shear reinforcement provisions were found to be more than adequate given the typically larger column depths required rendering the strut mechanism more effective. The test results were then used to further refine design recommendations for practicing engineers. Finally, conclusions and future research requirements were outlined.

Composite construction is widely used worldwide and is undergoing significant technological development. New Zealand is part of this development, with new beam options incorporating multiple unstiffened web openings and new deck profiles supported by extensive testing. However, one area where relatively little research has been undertaken is in the interaction of the composite slab with the seismic resisting system under lateral loading. In order to provide important new information in this area, a series of full scale beam-column-joint-slab subassemblies were tested at the University of Canterbury. Specimens tested had moment end plate connections and different combinations of deck tray direction, and isolation of the slab from the column. An additional test uses a sliding-hinge type connection to assess the effect of the floor slab in this type of low damage connection. In these tests the lateral capacity of the seismic resisting system was increased by up to 25% due to the presence of the slab in contact with the column. The increase in capacity is 10% greater for decking running in longitudinal direction than in the transverse direction as a result of a more substantial full depth slab bearing on the column. The floor slabs of the subassemblies with the slab cast against the column all showed a higher level of damage than for those with the isolated column and the post ultimate strength degradation of the subassemblies without special detailing was significant. The subassembly with a section of full depth slab surrounding the column also exhibited a higher capacity but with an improved post ultimate strength degradation. All moment end plate subassemblies sustained drifts of up to 5% without significant strength loss. The sliding hinge joint showed little signs of damage under testing to 5% drift. Some inelastic deformation of the connection and beams was noted above 5% drift. Results from both testing and numerical modelling have shown that the current methods used to design these systems are conservative but within 15% of the values observed. Further testing and modelling will be necessary before any meaningful changes can be made to the way in which these systems are designed. Recommendations have been made regarding the placements of shear studs in plastic hinge zones and the provision of slab isolation around beam-column connections.

A good work environment is important for the individual, for industry and for society. The work environment research has, predominantly, targeted identification of problems and the measurement of the size of these problems. Innovations to reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal disorder, MSD, have been introduced in different branches of industry, but with limited success. Few of the ergonomic innovations developed for the building and construction industry have reached a sufficient level of adoption. Ergonomic innovations in the health care sector are of an incremental character and seem to have similar problems of adoption as the ones in the building and construction industry. Three examples of ergonomic innovation are examined in the thesis: a glue spreader for floor layers a four-wheel walker with a lifting device a sonographer’s scanning support device The studies show that an ergonomic innovation is not adopted for prevention of occupational injury unless the innovation also has other relative advantages apart from the ergonomic ones. For the group who already has sustained an injury, it is enough that the ergonomic problems are solved, while the other, symptom-free group, requires other advantages in order to adopt the innovation; increased production economy seems to be the most prominent potential advantage. / <p>QC 20150114</p>