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Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 1988. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Fred Martin. / M.S.

Microrobotics is an emerging discipline with the potential to radically affect fields ranging from medicine to environmental stewardship. Already, there have been remarkable breakthroughs; small scale robots have been made that can selectively traverse the gastrointestinal tract, and others have been built that can fly in a manner inspired from bees. However, there are still significant challenges in microrobotics, and it remains difficult to engineer reliable power sources, actuators, and sensors to create robust, modular designs at the microscale. The miniaturization of the robotic system makes design and efficiency of these components particularly difficult. However, biological systems demonstrate the key features of robotics " sensing, actuation, processing" and are remarkably complex at the microscale. As such, many researchers have turned to biology for inspiration and living robotic components. In our laboratory we have engineered an Escherichia coli (E. coli) capable of producing surface display proteins to either anchor the cells, bind to functionalized nanoparticles, or capture small molecules from the environment, all complex actuation features. Additionally, we have created a processing unit that can create signals based on biological components, yet is non-living. This thesis focuses on the characterization of the surface display E. Coli system and the creation of programmable microparticle scaffolds that may be controlled by biological circuitry. In particular, by leveraging the strong interaction between biotin and streptavidin, I have created programmable microparticle scaffolds capable of attenuating the intensity of a fluorescent response in response to perturbations in the local environmental conditions. We believe this is an excellent enabling technology to facilitate the creation of complex behaviors at the microscale and can be used as a processing unit for simple decision making on microrobots. We foresee this technology impacting disciplines from medical microrobotics to environmental sensing and remediation. / Master of Science

The proposed demodulator is an all-digital implementation of a FM demodulator. The proposed design intends to implement a FM demodulator for high-speed applications, which makes the requirements for analog components minimal. The proposed circuit is an all-digital quadrature demodulator, where the individual components have been implemented without using any multipliers. The topology uses a Pulse width modulation (PWM) block to avoid the need for a DAC. The Xilinx virtex-7 FPGA has been used as the reference device for the work. The circuit is validated through behavioral simulations and the results conclude the proposed circuit demodulates the targeted FM channel and provides the spectrum information for the targeted FM channel / Master of Science / With the rise in popularity of reconfigurable hardware, such as FPGAs, digital signal processing has become one of the most widespread usage of such devices. The major advantage of using FPGAs for implementing signal processing algorithms is that they provide very less time to market and can be re-modeled or modified in easily. Moreover, the netlists designed for FPGAs can be easily translated to ASICs. As wireless communication has become omnipresent, modulation and demodulation schemes have become an area of great interest. With the increase in data rates for the modern-day communication systems, the digital implementation of these algorithms is becoming more and more common. This is further aided by the advancements in high-speed ADCs and the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools, which have made the usage of FPGAs lot more feasible and a lot more efficient. This work discusses the demodulation scheme for one of the most widespread modulation algorithms, Frequency Modulation (FM). An all-digital FM demodulator design is proposed for highspeed implementation on FPGAs. The proposed design is an all-digital quadrature I-Q based demodulator.

For about ten years, Texas Instruments has been developing a software environment of integrated tools for designing, debugging and documenting process control solutions that run on programmable controllers. The product - the Applications Productivity Tool (APT), allows process and control engineers to design and program in a graphical environment that compiles into machine code (relay ladder logic). APT is primarily targeted for the batch manufacturing industry in which engineers combine elements of both discrete and continuous control strategies. The objective of this research was to determine the applicability of APT in discrete parts manufacturing, using two applications of discrete manufacturing. One of these applications was a Fischertechnik model of a manufacturing system, configured to simulate the production of three distinct parts. The other application was the flexible manufacturing system being assembled in the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory (CIM Laboratory), which is equipped to produce models of a robot and a CNC milling machine. / Master of Science

Direct fault testing onboard Dynamic Position Vessels is a requirement to maintain the ships classification and ensure redundancy of the power system onboard to maintain position. The most vulnerable part of the ship when testing occurs is when a three phase fault is placed on a main bus. This puts tremendous amount of strain on the system. This thesis offers an alternate and safer way to ensure the protection equipment is working properly by using a fault signal using from Programmable Logic Controller in conjunction with the protection relays. A working PSCAD model of Transocean's DEEPWATER CHAMPION was developed using a one line diagram. Using the developed PSCAD model three phase fault currents could be calculated and then simulated as a scaled down secondary current to use for testing the protection relays. To test the develop testing system different bus configurations were analyzed to determine loss of thruster capabilities which deter the vessel to maintain position. / Master of Science

This thesis addresses the partitioning problem for configurable computing machines. Specifically, this thesis presents algorithms to partition chain-structured task graphs across configurable computing machines. The algorithms give optimal solutions for throughput and total execution time for these problems under constraints on area, pin count, and power consumption. The algorithms provide flexibility for applying these constraints while remaining polynomial in complexity. Proofs of correctness as well as an analysis of runtime complexity are given. Experiments are performed to illustrate the runtime of these algorithms. / Master of Science

FPGAs provide an ideal template for run-time reconfigurable (RTR) designs. Only recently have RTR enabling design tools that bypass the traditional synthesis and bitstream generation process for FPGAs become available. The JBits tool suite is an environment that provides support for RTR designs on Xilinx Virtex and 4K devices. This research provides a comprehensive design process description of a two-dimensional discrete wavelet transform (DWT) core using the JBits run-time reconfigurable FPGA design tool suite. Several aspects of the design process are discussed, including implementation, simulation, debugging, and hardware interfacing to a reconfigurable computing platform. The DWT lends itself to a straightforward implementation in hardware, requiring relatively simple logic for control and address generation circuitry. Through the application of RTR techniques to the DWT, this research attempts to exploit certain advantages that are unobtainable with static implementations. Performance results of the DWT core are presented, including speed of operation, resource consumption, and reconfiguration overhead times. / Master of Science

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / This thesis investigates to the design, analysis and testing of a Superconducting Programmable Gate Array (SPGA). The objective was to apply existing programmable logic concepts to RSFQ circuits and in the process develop a working prototype of a superconducting programmable logic device. Various programmable logic technologies and architectures were examined and compared to find the best solution. Using Rapid Single Flux Quantum (RSFQ) circuits as building blocks, a complete functional design was assembled incorporating a routing architecture and logic blocks. The Large-Scale Integrated circuit (LSI) layout of the final chip is presented and discussed followed by a discussion on testing. This thesis demonstrates the successful implementation of a fully functional reprogrammable logic device using RSFQ circuitry.

Cette thèse traite de l'identification des systèmes à événements discrets (SED) automatisés dans un contexte industriel. En particulier, le travail aborde les systèmes formés par un processus et un automate programmable (AP) fonctionnant en boucle fermée - l'identification a pour but d’obtenir un modèle approximatif exprimé en réseaux de Petri interprétés (RPI) à partir du comportement externe observé sous la forme d'une seule séquence de vecteurs d’entrée-sortie de l’AP. Tout d'abord, une analyse des méthodes d'identification est présentée, ainsi qu’une étude comparative des méthodes récentes pour l'identification des SED. Puis le problème abordé est décrit - des importantes caractéristiques technologiques dans les systèmes automatisés par l’AP sont détaillées. Ces caractéristiques doivent être prises en compte dans la résolution du problème, mais elles ne peuvent pas être traitées par les méthodes existantes d’identification. La contribution principale de cette thèse est la création de deux méthodes d’identification complémentaires. La première méthode permet de construire systématiquement un modèle RPI à partir d'une seule séquence entrée-sortie représentant le comportement observable du SED. Les modèles RPI décrivent en détail l’évolution des entrées et sorties pendant le fonctionnement du système. La seconde méthode considère des SED grands et complexes - elle est basée sur une approche statistique qui permettre la construction des modèles en RPI compactes et expressives. Elle est composée de deux étapes - la première calcule à partir de la séquence entrée-sortie, la partie réactive du modèle, constituée de places observables et de transitions. La deuxième étape fait la construction de la partie non-observable, en rajoutant des places pour permettre la reproduction de la séquence entrée-sortie. Les méthodes proposées, basées sur des algorithmes de complexité polynomiale, ont été implémentées en outils logiciels, lesquels ont été testés avec des séquences d’entrée-sortie obtenues à partir des systèmes réels en fonctionnement. Les outils sont décrits et leur application est illustrée à travers deux cas d’étude. / This thesis deals with the identification of automated discrete event systems (DES) operating in an industrial context. In particular the work focuses on the systems composed by a plant and a programmable logic controller (PLC) operating in a closed loop- the identification consists in obtaining an approximate model expressed in interpreted Petri nets (IPN) from the observed behaviour given under the form of a single sequence of input-output vectors of the PLC. First, an overview of previous works on identification of DES is presented as well as a comparative study of the main recent approaches on the matter. Then the addressed problem is stated- important technological characteristics of automated systems and PLC are detailed. Such characteristics must be considered in solving the identification problem, but they cannot be handled by previous identification techniques. The main contribution in this thesis is the creation of two complementary identification methods. The first method allows constructing systematically an IPN model from a single input-output sequence representing the observable behaviour of the DES. The obtained IPN models describe in detail the evolution of inputs and outputs during the system operation. The second method has been conceived for addressing large and complex industrial DES- it is based on a statistical approach yielding compact and expressive IPN models. It consists of two stages- the first one obtains, from the input-output sequence, the reactive part of the model composed by observable places and transitions. The second stage builds the non observable part of the model including places that ensure the reproduction of the observed input-output sequence. The proposed methods, based on polynomial-time algorithms, have been implemented in software tools, which have been tested with input-output sequences obtained from real systems in operation. The tools are described and their application is illustrated through two case studies.