Mémoire (M.P.M.O.)-- Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, 1988. / Document électronique également accessible en format PDF. CaQCU

There are no written sources are available from the Predynastic period, but an array of art decorated artefacts has been found. This essay will take a closer look at one type of these artefact; the animal shaped stone palette to see what art of this artefact can tell us about the culture that made them.      I will do so by looking at the animal depictions found on the palettes, to allow comparison I will include D-wear, a decorated Predynastic pottery type. I have put together two data sets for the respective artefact that forms the base for this study. My theoretical perspective is that the art depictions of artefact as traces of the culture that made them. The palettes show a variety of patterns that can be seen as such traces in which type of animals are most common, how the animals can be connected by habitat and which animal depiction gets decorated features. My look at the D-ware data set is only brief but shows that animals are quite rare on the pottery and includes only three different kinds of animals. These still correlates with the animal palettes by both artefacts having birds as the most common. The bovids has an almost equal occurrence on the palettes and D-ware in my data sets. Other than this the animal depictions differ notably between the two artefacts. As the traces of culture does not provide any details, this study has given new questions that can be studied further in greater depth.

La dynamique actuelle des marchés entraîne avec elle une complexité croissante des demandes du client et nécessairement des contraintes de production. Les méthodologies traditionnelles de conception de systèmes montrent leurs limites dans des contextes très changeants pour lesquels les spécifications sont amenées à évoluer rapidement, des éléments technologiques particuliers de réalisation étant souvent pris en compte trop tôt dans le travail d'étude, limitant la versabilité des développements. Les entreprises doivent alors capitaliser au maximum les efforts menés dans les phases amont de spécification pour optimiser les temps d'étude. Notre travail de recherche s'intéresse plus précisément au domaine des systèmes antomatisés et se propose de répondre à la problématique précédente en utilisant des techniques issues du monde de l'informatique pour la réalisation des sytèmes physiques, comme l'OOA (Approche Orienté Objet) et la modélisation objet UML (Langage de Modélisation Unifié) avec la perspective d'une spécialisation tardive et d'une génération automatique selon les cibles technologiques choisies, comme le préconise la logique IDM (Ingéniérie Dirigée par les Modèles). L'originalité de ce mémoire est de décrire une méthodologie et une organisation de travail pour la conception des systèmes automatisés, en s'appuyant sur le concept d'objet d'automatisme multi-facettes. De plus, nous proposons une utilisation de l'extension SysML (Langage de Modélisation des Systèmes) pour la représentation d'éléments d'automatismes particuliers, les blocs fonctions de la norme IEC 61131-3, à travers le stéréotype "block". Enfin nous montrons comment il est possible d'obtenir une première génération de code automate en passant par les spécifications PLCopen, définissant un lien entre une syntaxe XML (Langage de balisage eXtensible), se voulant standard, et les langages de la norme IEC 61131-3. Le passage par cette représentation standardisée permet de garder l'indépendance des implémentations vis-à-vis d'un environnement intégré de développement particulier. Le processus de conception décrit a été appliqué à un cas d'étude industriel réel appartenant au domaine de la palettisation robotisée.

Digital growth and the adaption of internet-based solutions, particularly artificial intelligence and machine learning, have dramatically changed the way design is done today. This rapid change in technology has challenged the level of automation, which influences the human-automation interactions with the available colour-design tools (academic and commercial). As colour design and selection are known to be one of the most critical steps of any art or design journey, the currently available tools use one over the other approaches, from the automation-levels spectrum, when it comes to contextual search for colour palettes, colour-extracting, and colour compatibility. On the one hand, fully automated approaches could exclude the designers’ intervention; on the other hand, fully manual approaches could be affected by human errors and weaknesses. Both approaches tend to have problems when used in colour design tools, such as restricting the designers’ freedom, overwhelming designers with information-overload and option-widget clutter that exist in the interfaces of such tools, or limiting designers by the functionalities offered by the tool based on its purpose, causing it to partially support certain parts of the designers’ colour selection process rather than the whole process. The thesis focuses on investigating the possible solutions for balancing the automated and manual methods for generating colour palettes and supporting the designers’ non-standardised colour-selection processes while tailoring the solution to intellectually stimulate and engage designers who work in different design fields, in comparison with the Adobe Explore Page–which is one of the most well-known and established colour design tools in today’s market and one of the applications that offers a contextual search feature. To fulfil the purpose of this research, a web-based application was prototyped (named Paletto), which consists of the requirements for enabling the rapid generation and exploration of colour palette variations, supporting end-users to contextually search for palettes, and allowing users to apply constraints (via a preference selection list) for a holistic palette adjustment. Afterwards, the proposed application was evaluated with 20 individuals from the target audience, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches to prove the concept according to participants’ acceptance, estimate Paletto’s effectiveness on their workflow and design process, examine their engagement and experience when completing the exploratory tasks, and gather additional insights about the design or the conceptual design and implementation of the application. Paletto generally received positive responses towards (1) the accuracy and relevance of its search results, (2) the selection feature and its adaptability and flexibility for human interventions, and (3) the system’s feedback in terms of information accessibility (e.g., search word and number of pages in the pagination). However, the palette generation feature had partially negative responses where participants showed annoyance, confusion, and thought it was complicated. At the same time, several participants appreciated the diversity of the generated palettes and the conceptual design of Paletto in general. Paletto found to effectively facilitate the colour-selection process and designers’ workloads in several areas, such as: fulfilling the end-user goals of producing quality palettes to be used in design projects; resources-efficiency (e.g., money-preserving, effort facilitation, and time-saving) for inspirational image gathering; automatic colour extraction and palette generation; providing freedom and support of decision making to explore colour combinations and variations via the iterative preferences selection; supporting colour-pattern identification in the selections; providing variation and relevant results when searching inspirational image gathering with accurate colour extractions that represent the searched images. Moreover, Paletto proved to offer greater user engagement and a better user experience in comparison with Adobe’s Explore Page. This was due to the felt involvement and the continuous interactivity offered by Paletto’s search and preference-selection features that allowed iterative palette generation and modification. In conclusion, the evaluations indicated some pain-points and gaps in the current design that were discussed in this thesis, and are accordingly recommended to be investigated in future work.

The title of this thesis Extra Ordinary is intentionally ambiguous. Depending on how you read it, it can refer to either the very ordinary or to that which is outside of the ordinary.The works described within these pages functions similarly. From person to person and with time they move from the ordinary to beyond and back again. How can something be both mysterious and understood at the same time? How can I as a painter create a space where diametrically opposed forces can coexist and what is the effect of viewing such an object? This thesis addresses these issues with personal anecdote and through description of artwork and the art making process

Dans les dernierès années la politique des entreprises s'est concentrée sur la recherche de solutions industrielles plus écologiques pour réduire l'impact sur l'environnement et l'énergie consommée. La tendance s’est élargie aux machines stationnaires dans l'automatisation industrielle. Il inclut la technologie d’entraînement pour contrôler le mouvement séquentiel de plusieurs axes dans les presses à injecter. La conception des systèmes se focalise sur une approche conduisant à l’amélioration du rendement énergétique aussi bien que l’augmentation de la pression de service, la réduction de cycle de la machine et l’amélioration de sa répétabilité. Toutes ces exigences ont poussé la technologie d’entraînement à se développer en augmentant l'intérêt pour les modules électromécaniques et électro-hydrostatiques (EHM). Dans cette thèse, une solution innovatrice d'EHM est proposée qui associe un convertisseur, un servomoteur AC brushless et la pompe à palettes Parker. En détail, l'intérêt de recherche concerne le développement d'un modèle à niveau système de la pompe à palette. L'objectif principal est de permettre l'évaluation des pertes d'énergie de la pompe et la performance de module pendant des phases spécifiques du cycle de la machine : accélération, dépressurisation et phase de maintien de la pression. Premièrement analysée au moyen de l'approche analytique, la dynamique est alors évaluée par des modèles plus avancés basés sur le prototypage virtuel construit dans l'environnement LMS-AMESim. Les avantages concernant la prévision des performances du module EHM et sur l’évaluation des paramètres fondamentaux inconnus (comme la compressibilité du fluide et le contenu d’air dans le fluide) sont montrés par comparaison avec des résultats expérimentaux obtenus dans le laboratoire. Les phénomènes de la cavitation et d’aération sont aussi pris en compte pendant les phases d'accélération et des modèles sont ainsi développés pour prévoir les conditions de fonctionnement qui promeuvent ces phénomènes. La consommation d'énergie de l'EHM est alors analysée au moyen des modèles thermo-hydrauliques capables de déterminer les échanges de chaleur entre les composants de module et l'environnement. / In last years companies’ policy has been focusing on research of more eco-friendly solutions in order to reduce the environmental impact and the consumed energy. The trend has been affecting the stationary machinery in the industrial automation too. It includes the drive technology for motion control in the injection moulding machines. The design studies concern energy efficiency improvement, as well as increased service pressure, shorter cycle time and repeatability over a long period of time. All these requirements have led the drive technology to evolve by increasing the interest for the electro-mechanical and electro-hydrostatic modules (EHM). In this thesis an innovative solution of EHM is proposed that associates industrial inverter, AC brushless servo motor and fixed-displacement low-noise Parker vane pump. In detail, the research interest concerns the development of a system level model of the vane pump. The main objective is to enable assessing the pump energy losses and full module performance in specific phase of machine’s cycle: acceleration, depressurisation and holding pressure phases. Firstly analysed by means of analytical approach, dynamics are then evaluated through more advanced models based on virtual prototyping built in LMS-AMESim environment. The advantages on predicting the EHM performance and on estimating the unknown fundamental parameters (e.g. Bulk Modulus and fluid air content) are showed through comparison with experimental results obtained in laboratory. The cavitation/aeration phenomena are also taken into account during acceleration transients and models are thus developed in order to predict the operating conditions which promote these phenomena. Energy behaviour of the EHM is then analysed by means of thermal hydraulic models able to determine the heat exchanges between module components and environment.