Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 223-228). Also available via the Internet.

The suggestion that bilinguals show enhanced cognitive control compared to monolinguals in certain aspects of executive function has received much contention. While this has been explained as a result of the extensive training in bilinguals having to manage the conflict that arises from their concurrently active langauges, others have argued that the superiority in executive control is attenuated when background variables such as immigration status, education and general cognitive ability is taken into account. This thesis was motivated by the general question: How is executive control influenced by differing bilingualism experiences? To this end, we compared attentional control performance in bilinguals and monolinguals on the Attention Network Test, the auditory Elevator task (Test of Everyday Attention), and the number Stroop task. The main aim of the thesis was to examine the role of two bilingualism factors: (i) interactional context (defined in the Adaptive Control Hypothesis, Green & Abutalebi, 2013), which pertains to how bilinguals switch between their languages, and (ii) linguistic distance, which refers to the extent of similarity between the bilingual's languages. The comparison between Edinburgh monolinguals, Edinburgh late bilinguals, Edinburgh early bilinguals, and Singapore early bilinguals as differentiated by their interactional context revealed better performance in bilinguals on two specific test components. Singapore bilinguals, who came from a dual-language and dense code-switching context, showed enhanced conflict resolution on the Attention Network Test, whilst Edinburgh late bilinguals, who were from a single-language context, were better on the Elevator reversal subtest tapping on attentional switching. The results thus suggest differential effects of interactional context on attentional control. We further compared task performance of bilinguals with related or distant L1-L2 combinations as defined by the linguistic and orthography overlap between their two languages. The data did not support a role of linguistic distance on attentional control. Edinburgh bilinguals studying an Indo-European language performed similarly to those studying the non Indo-European languages of Chinese and Japanese. In Singapore bilinguals, English-Chinese bilinguals also did not differ from English-Malay bilinguals on any of the test components. We supplemented the investigation by further examining if the factors of test-order and age could impact on how differences between monolinguals and bilinguals are exhibited. Our results suggest that monolinguals may show an improvement in attentional control after relatively short periods of engagement in experimental tasks, whilst bilinguals did not receive this boost. Test order may therefore partly explain the inconsistencies in literature regarding the claimed bilingual advantage. The comparison between older and younger adults also implied an effect of age. In young adults, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on the Elevator reversal subtest of auditory switching, whereas the advantage shown in older bilinguals was on visual attentional orienting. The results across the various themes are reviewed and discussed with relevance to the current standing in the field, and suggestions for future research directions are put forth.

Hybrid renewable energy system was introduced to improve the individual renewable energy power system’s productivity and operation-ability. This circumstance has led towards an extensive technological study and analysis on the hybrid renewable energy system. The extensive technological study is conducted using many different approaches, but in this research the linear programming, artificial intelligence and smart grid approaches are studied. This thesis proposed a complete hardware system development, implementation and construction of real-time DC Hybrid Renewable Energy System for solar-wind-battery energy source integrated with grid network support. The proposed real-time DC HRES hardware system adopts the hybrid renewable energy system concept which is composed of solar photovoltaic, wind energy system, battery energy storage system and grid network support. The real-time DC HRES hardware system research work is divided into three stages. Stage 1 involves modelling and simulation of the proposed system using MATLAB Simulink/Stateflow software. During this stage, system’s methodological design and development is emphasised. The obtained results are considered as fundamental finding to design, develop, integrate, implement and construct the real-time DC HRES hardware system. Stage II is designing and developing the electronic circuits for the real-time DC HRES hardware system using PROTEUS software. Real time simulation is performed on the electronic circuits to study and analyse the circuit’s behaviour. This stage also involves embedded software application development for the microcontroller PIC16F877A. Thus, continuous dynamic decision-making algorithm is developed and incorporated into microcontroller PIC16F877A. Next, electronic circuits and continuous dynamic decision-making algorithm are integrated with the microcontroller PIC16F877A as a real-time DC HRES hardware system to perform real time simulation. The real-time DC HRES hardware system simulation results are studied, analysed and compared with the results obtained in Stage 1. Any indifference between the obtained results in Stage 1 and Stage 2 are analysed and necessary changes are made. Stage 3 involves integrating, implementation and construction of real-time DC HRES. The continuous dynamic decision-making algorithm is also incorporated into the real microcontroller PCI16F877A development board. Real-time DC HRES’s experimental results have successfully demonstrated the system’s ability to perform supervision, coordination, management and control of all the available energy sources with lease dependency on the grid network. The obtained results demonstrated the energy management and optimisation of the available energy sources as primary power source deliver.

The Diploma thesis deals with the problem of energy-efficient train control. It presents the basic survey of mathematical models used in the problem of energy-efficient train control, analysis of optimal driving regimes, determining optimal switching times between optimal driving regimes and timetabling of the train. The mathematical formulation of the problem is done using Newton's second law of motion and other known physical laws. To analyse optimal driving regimes and determine the switching times between optimal driving regimes, we apply tools of optimal control theory, particularly Pontryagin's Maximum Principle. The timetabling of the train is discussed from the numerical solution of the settled non-linear programming problem.

This master’s thesis is an introduction to switching mode power supplies, especially focused on digital control. It summarizes the basic topologies of switching mode power supplies, and discusses the fundamental issues of digital power supply control. It also summarizes basic informations about Piccolo microcontrolers, about experimental kit and about main parts of sample source code. Also is described here own implementation of the control law and the theory and implementation of maximum power point tracking. The conclusion of this thesis deals with implemantation a testing of the designed digitally controled switching power supply.

Thesis (M. Tech. - Engineering: Electrical, Department Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology)--Vaal University of Technology. / Curing of materials in order to obtain different properties has been a practice for many years. New developments in composite materials increase the need to control certain variables during the curing process. One very significant variable is temperature. Temperature control by itself is an old practice, however when the need for repeatedly controlling the process accurately over long periods of time arises, a system is required that outperforms normal manual control. One of the aspects within such a system that needs to be considered is the ability to replicate the temperatures within an oven which were originally used for a specific material’s curing profile. This means that a curing profile would need to be defined, saved for later and finally be interpreted correctly by the controlling system. Different control methods were simulated to enable the system to control the temperature which has been defined by literature. This dissertation introduces a variation on the standard control methods and shows improved results. Switching the oven on and off in order to increase or decrease internal oven temperature seems simple, but can cause switching devices to decrease their operational life span, if not designed carefully. A combination switch was introduced which harnesses the advantages of two very common switching devices to form an improved combination switch. Software for the personal computer environment, as well as software for the embedded environment were developed and formed a control system that produced acceptable results for temperature control. Accuracies of 98% and more were achieved and found to be acceptable according to standard engineering control practices. An accurate temperature profile controller was designed, simulated and built in order to control the temperature inside a specific curing oven which, in turn, determined the curing properties of specific materials. The overall results were satisfactory which lead to achieving the objectives outlined in this dissertation.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / A very important aspect in robotics is the decision making and execution the system uses to achieve its goals. In literature, many different approaches can be found about how the robot must behave in different situations in order to have a more robust system. Subsumption architecture is one of the most used and referenced in the area. In this architecture, the global task is divided into subtasks which are performed by behaviors organized in hierarchical layers. However, little research has been done regarding the stability analysis of this architecture. Behavioral changes imply in controller switching, which can lead the system to instability even in cases where all controllers are stable. In this work, a subsumption architecture with guaranteed stability is presented based on the theory of switched systems with main control objective. In addition, a formalism capable of allowing behaviors modeling in a simple and fast way is proposed based on the theory of discrete events systems. Tests in real environments were performed with the Pioneer P3-DX robot and obtained results demonstrate the proposed approach effectiveness. / Um aspecto muito importante na robótica é a tomada de decisão e execução que o sistema utiliza para alcançar seus objetivos. Na literatura, existem vários trabalhos diferentes para abordar como o robô deve se comportar diante de várias situações diferentes a fim de trazer uma maior robustez ao sistema, sendo a arquitetura de subsunção uma das mais utilizadas e referenciadas na área. Nesta arquitetura, a tarefa global é dividida em subtarefas que são executadas por comportamentos organizados em camadas de forma hierárquica. No entanto, pouco se pesquisa no que diz respeito a análise de estabilidade desta arquitetura, sendo que as mudanças de comportamento implicam em chaveamento de controladores, que por sua vez podem levar o sistema a instabilidade mesmo em casos em que todos os controladores sejam estáveis. Desta forma, neste trabalho é apresentada uma arquitetura de subsunção com prova de estabilidade garantida com base na teoria de controle chaveado com objetivo de controle principal. Além disso, um formalismo capaz de permitir a modelagem dos comportamentos de forma simples e rápida é proposto com base na teoria de sistemas a eventos discretos. Testes em ambientes reais foram realizados com o robô Pioneer P3-DX e os resultados obtidos comprovam a eficácia da abordagem proposta.

Eine stetig gleichbleibende hohe Qualität zu fertigen, ist erklärtes Ziel des Spritzgießgewer-bes. Aus technischen oder wirtschaftlichen Gründen ist es jedoch nicht möglich, für konstan-te Produktionsrahmenbedingungen zu sorgen. Die effizienteste Methode ist , die Schwan-kungen über die Wahl der richtigen Prozessführungsmethode auszugleichen. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit konnte herausgefunden werden, welche praxisrelevanten Störgrö-ßen einen Einfluss auf den Spritzgießprozess haben und wie sie sich auswirken. Bei den Materialparametern sind Änderungen der Viskosität (15 %) und der Einfriertemperatur des Materials (4 °C) am Einzug festzustellen. Zusätzlich veränderte sich das Messverhalten der Drucksensoren, wodurch ein Drift von 5 bar entstand. Störgrößenbedingt änderten sich auch die Prozesstemperaturen um 1 °C. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit werden diverse, während der Arbeit entwickelte, Prozessfüh-rungsmethoden miteinander verglichen. Aufgabe war es, die im ersten Teil gefundenen rea-len störgrößenbedingten Einflüsse zu kompensieren. Es stellte sich heraus, dass sich ledig-lich die materialbedingten Schwankungen nicht ausgleichen lassen. Zumindest können de-ren Auswirkungen durch eine Regelung der werkstoffnahen Parameter abschwächt werden. / To produce a steady consistent high quality is the declared goal of the injection moulding industry. For technical or economic reasons, it is not possible to ensure constant production framework conditions. The proper method is to compensate the variable influences with the choice of the correct process control method. The first part of the thesis focuses on the analysis of the different disturbances factors. The investigation showed that the material property, melt viscosity, varies about 15% and the recrystallisation temperature arises a deviation of 4°C. Another changes could be measured in the offset of the pressure sensor (5 bar) and the process temperatures (1°C). The next goal was to find a suitable control method to balance these intermittencies. The test series showed clearly that changes in the material properties could not be compensated. But there impact toward the quality could be extenuated with a constant course of the process parameter in the cavity.