One of the most effective measures of congestion control on freeways has been ramp metering, where vehicle entry to the freeway is regulated by traffic signals (meters). Meters are run with calibrated influx rates to prevent highway saturation. However, recent observations of some metering sites in San Diego, CA indicate that metering, during peak hour demand, is helping freeway flow while sometimes creating considerable traffic back-ups on local streets, transferring congestion problems from the freeway to intersections. Metering problems stem largely from the difficulty of designing an integrated, dynamic metering scheme that responds not only to changing freeway conditions but also to fluctuating demand throughout the ramp network; a scheme whose objective is to maintain adequate freeway throughput as well as minimize disproportionate ramp delays and queue overspills onto surface streets. Simulation modeling is a versatile, convenient, relatively inexpensive and safe systems analysis tool for evaluating alternative strategies to achieve the above objective. The objective of this research was to establish a basic building block for a discrete system simulation model, ONRAMP, based on a stochastic, mesoscopic, queueing approach. ONRAMP is for modeling entrance ramp geometry, vehicular generation, platooning and arrivals, queueing activities, meters and metering rates. The architecture of ONRAMP's molecular unit is designed in a fashion so that it can be, with some model calibration, duplicated for a number of ramps and, if necessary, integrated into some other larger freeway network models. SLAM.II simulation language is used for computer implementation. ONRAMP has been developed and partly validated using data from eight ramps at Interstate-B in San Diego. From a systems perspective, simulation will be short-sided and problem analysis is incomplete unless the other non-technical metering problems are explored and considered. These problems include the impacts of signalizing entrance ramps on the vitality of adjacent intersections, land use and development, "fair" geographic distribution of meters and metering rates throughout the freeway corridor, public acceptance and enforcement, and the role and influence of organizations in charge of decision making in this regard. Therefore, an outline of a contextual systems approach for problem analysis is suggested. Benefits and problems of freeway control via ramp metering, both operational short-term and strategic long-term, are discussed in two dimensions: global (freeway) and local (intersection). The results of a pilot study which includes interviews with field experts and law enforcement officials and a small motorist survey are presented.

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The cycling industry has long relied on expensive wind tunnel testing when designing aerodynamic products, particularly in the context of wheels which account for 10 to 15 percent of a cyclist's total aerodynamic drag. With the recent advent of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), the industry now has an economical tool to supplement the wheel design process; however, the complex nature of rotating spoked wheels requires high resolution meshes to model at acceptable fidelity. This research investigates an alternative CFD method that lowers the computational cost of modeling aerodynamic bicycle wheels by modeling spokes using Blade Element Method (BEM). Two CFD models of a HED Trispoke wheel, one with resolved spokes and one with modeled spokes, are compared to existing CFD and wind tunnel drag coefficient data at various headwind speeds and yaw angles. Data shows good agreement.

[pt] Recentemente alguns estudos, especialmente em rochas, vêm considerando a região pós-pico da curva tensão x deformação visto o grande número de situações que ocorrem na prática, como as deformações pós-ruptura de pilares de minas e túneis. A dificuldade desses estudos está no fato das amostras se mostrarem em um estado intrinsecamente instável nesta região. Para controlar a ruptura das amostras após as mesmas atingirem suas resistências máximas é usado atualmente máquinas servo-controladas. Ocorre que mesmo nessas máquinas, alguns materiais que possuem comportamento tipo Classe II, a velocidade em que se propagam as fissuras é tão alta que o sistema de controle não consegue receber a tempo o sinal de realimentação e a amostra acaba rompendo sem o controle adequado. Assim os tradicionais métodos de controle, como carga e deformação constante,deixam espaço para o surgimento de técnicas alternativas que se mostram mais eficazes no controle do pós-pico de rochas. Dentre essas técnicas, está a da combinação linear de tensão e deformação e que será usada neste trabalho para controlar o pós-pico de rochas (leptinitos) e argamassas numa máquina de testes servo- controlada pouco rígida. Este fato é de grande valia pois com este controle alternativo é possível controlar um material Classe II, material este que, na maioria das situações práticas em que se deseja obter a porção pós- ruptura da sua curva tensão x deformação, a máquina de ensaios usada deve ter uma rigidez bem elevada. Ao longo do trabalho são discutidos também todos os problemas envolvidos num ensaio de compressão simples e aqueles intimamente ligados a região do pós-pico. / [en] Recently, some studies, especially in rocks, have been considering the post peak region of stress-strain curve due to the large number of practical instances such as post rupture strains in mine and tunnel piles. The difficulty lies in that the samples exhibit an intrinsically instable state in this region. For the samples rupture be controlled, after the maximum stress have been attained, servo controlled machines are currently being used. The matter is that, even in these machines in some materials, which have a class II behavior, the propagation velocity of the fissures is so high that the control system is not able to receive on time the feedback signal and the sample ends up disrupted with no suitable control. Accordingly, traditional control methods, such as constant load and strain, have given raise to alternatives techniques, which exhibit a more efficient post peak control in rocks. Among these techniques, there is the linear combination of stress and strain, which will be used in this work to control the post peak of rocks and mortars in a not very rigid servo controlled machine of tests. This fact is very important because with this alternative control it is possible to control a material Class II in which most of the practical situations to obtain the behavior post rupture of curve tension x deformation, the machine of tests should have a very high rigidity. Along with the work problems concerned with a uniaxial compression test and that intimately associated with post peak region are discussed. / [es] Debido al gran número de situaciones que ocurren en la práctica, algunos estudios recientes, especialmente en rocas, han considerado la región pospico de la curva tensión x deformación, como las deformaciones posruptura de pilares de minas y túneles. La dificuldad de esos estudios se debe a que las muestras se colectan en un estado intrínsecamente inestable de esta región. Actualmente, para controlar la ruptura de las muestras después que ellas alcanzan su máxima resistencia, se utilizan máquinas servo-controladas. Sucede que incluso en estas máquinas, algunos materiales que poseen comportamiento tipo Clase II, la velocidad en que se propagan las fisuras es tan alta que el sistema de control no consigue recibir a tiempo la señal de realimentación y la muestra se rompe sin el control adecuado. Es por ello que los métodos tradicionales de control, como carga y deformación constante, dan espacio para el surgimiento de técnicas alternativas, más eficazes en el control del pospico de rocas. Una de estas técnicas es la combinación lineal de tensión y deformación, que será usada en este trabajo para controlar el pospico de rocas (leptinitos) en una máquina de pruebas servo-controlada poco rígida. Este hecho tiene gran importancia ya que con este control alternativo es posible controlar un material Clase II. Enn la mayoría de las situaciones prácticas en que se desea obtener la porción posruptura de la curva tensión x deformación con este tipo de material, la máquina de ensayos utilizada debe tener una rígidez elevada. A lo largo del trabajo se discuten todos los problemas de un ensayo de compresión simple y aquellos íntimamente ligados con la región del pospico.

Dodder (Cuscuta gronovii Willd.) is a weed of serious concern to cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon Ait.) growers. It develops vigorously and has a long-lived seed bank. Cranberries are a perennial crop and therefore strategies available to growers of annual crops are not practical. Herbicides, the primary management tool for dodder, although effective, have a narrow window of application and extended seedling emergence after applications can result in escapes. This project examined the effect of water temperature on dodder seed germination and the use of short-term floods (less than 72 hr) for dodder management. Experiments investigated the effect of water temperature on dodder seed germination. Studies, ran twice, submerged dodder seed in water for 0 to 48 hr at 10, 15, and 20 C in one experiment (simulating spring water temperatures) and 0 to 48 hr at 15, 20, and 25 C in a separate experiment (simulating summer water temperatures). In Run 1, the effect of temperature on percent seed germination varied by flood duration; and by temperature alone in Run 2. Percent seed germination however, always fell within normal ranges (35-59%), indicating that flooding may not impact seed germination. Two 1-yr field studies were conducted to evaluate the use of short-term floods (24 to 48 hr) for managing dodder in cranberries. Two scenarios were simulated: cranberry beds with no emergent weed populations (cranberries alone) and cranberries with emergent weed populations (cranberries with additional host). There were three flood durations (0, 24, and 48 hr) and four flood initiations (1 to 4 wk after first seedling emergence). In 2006, mean percent germination from seeds incubated in Petri dishes was lower for seeds submerged 3 and 4 wk after first emergence (AFE) for the 48-hr flood durations. In 2007, mean percent germination for seeds submerged for 24 and 48-hr decreased for floods initiated at 4 wk AFE. Flooding 4 wk AFE resulted in lowest mean attachment ratings in both years and lowest mean dodder biomass on cranberry in the 2007 cranberry and tomato study, suggesting later flood initiation may provide better dodder management.

The operational life of wireless sensor network based distributed sensing systems is limited by the energy provided by a portable battery pack. Owing to the inherently resource constrained nature of wireless sensor networks and nodes, a major research thrust in this field is the search for energy-aware methods of operation. Communication is among the most energy-intensive operations on a wireless device. It is therefore, the focus of our efforts to develop an energy-aware method of communication and to introduce a degree of reconfigurability to ensure autonomous operation of such devices. Given this background, three research tasks have been identified and investigated during the course of this research. 1) Devising an energy-efficient method of communication in a framework of reconfigurable operation: The dependence of the energy consumed during communication on the number of bits transmitted (and received) was identified from prior research work. A novel method of data compression was designed to exploit this dependence. This method uses the time-limited, orthonormal Walsh functions as basis functions for representing signals. The L2 norm of this representation is utilized to further compress the signals. From Parseval’s relation, the square of the L2 norm represents the energy content of a signal. The application of this theorem to our research makes it possible to use the L2 norm as a control knob. The operation of this control knob makes it possible to optimize the number of terms required to represent signals. The time-limited nature of the Walsh functions was leveraged to inject dynamic behaviour into our coding method. This time-limited nature allows decomposition of finite time-segments, without attendant limitations like loss of resolution that are inherent to derived, discrete transforms like the discrete Fourier transform or the discrete time Fourier transform. This decomposition over successive, finite time-segments, coupled with innovative operation of the previously mentioned control knob on every segment, gives us a dynamic scaling technique. The amount of data to be transmitted is in turn based on the magnitude of the coefficients of decomposition of each time-segment, leading to the realization of a variable word length coding method. This dynamic coding method can identify evolving changes or events in the quantity being sensed. The coefficients of decomposition represent features present in successive time-segments of signals and therefore enable identification of evolving events. The ability to identify events as they occur enables the algorithm to react to events as they evolve in the system. In other words the data transmission and the associated energy consumption are imparted a reconfigurable, event-driven nature by implementation of the coding algorithm. Performance evaluation of this method via simulations on machine generated (bearing vibration) and biometric (electro-cardio gram) signals shows it be a viable method for energy-aware communication. 2) Developing a framework for reconfigurable triggering: A framework for completely autonomous triggering of the coding method has been developed. This is achieved by estimating correlations of the signal with the representative Walsh functions. The correlation coefficient of a signal segment with a Walsh function gives a picture of the amount of energy localized by the function. This information is used to autonomously tune the abovementioned control knob or, in more proper terms, the degree of thresholding used in compression. Evaluation of this framework on bearing vibration and electro-cardio gram signals has shown results consistent with those of previous simulations. 3) Devising a computationally compact method of feature classification: A method of investigating time series measurements of dynamic systems in order to classify features buried in the signal measurements was investigated. The approach involves discretizing time-series measurements into strings of pre-defined symbols. These strings are transforms of the original time-series measurements and are a representation of the system dynamics. A method of statistically analyzing the symbol strings is presented and its efficacy is studied through representative simulations and experimental investigation of vibration signals recorded from a rolling bearing element. The method is computationally compact because it obviates the need for local signal processing tasks like denoising, detrending and amplification. Results indicate that the method can effectively classify deteriorating machine health, changing operating conditions and evolving defects. In addition to these major foci, another research task was the design and implementation of a wireless network testbed. This testbed consists of a network of netbooks, connected together wirelessly and was utilized for experimental verification of the variable word length coding method.

A method of sensor location selection is introduced for distributed parameter systems. In this method, the sensitivities of spatial outputs to model parameters are computed by a model and transformed via continuous wavelet transforms into the time-scale domain to characterize the shape attributes of output sensitivities and accentuate their differences. Regions are then sought in the time-scale plane wherein the wavelet coefficient of an output-sensitivity surpasses all the others’ as indication of the output sensitivity’s uniqueness. This method yields a comprehensive account of identifiability each output provides for the model parameters as the basis of output selection. This output selection strategy is evaluated for a numerical case of pollutant dispersion by advection and discussion in a two-dimensional area.

Background. In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) has emerged as an important technology in both commercial and industrial use. This has prompted large investments from large corporations, and some have even shifted their focus toward this new rising technology. With the oncoming of this tech as mainstream, emphasis has been put on the content itself, while the surrounding user experiences of the UIsand the interaction methods in the VR environment have been put aside. Objectives. The objectives of this thesis are to explore different menu systems together with interaction methods while also evaluating their effect of them and the posture of the user on user experience and simulator sickness in VR applications. Data collected could provide good observations for how menus and interaction methods together with posture can be best designed for VR applications. Methods. A VR application with two different menu systems, and two different interaction methods were implemented, and a survey based on the System UsabilityScale (SUS), After-Scenario Questionnaire (ASQ), and Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ) was created. These questionnaires answer matters relating to user experience and cybersickness and were chosen for their ease of use in addition to being used in similar works. Together these formed the basis for an experiment which was carried out with 20 participants. The study measured the differences in user experience, time taken, and simulator sickness for the different combinations of controls, menus, and postures. Results. Results show that there are significant differences depending on the controls, menu systems, and posture in both user experience and simulator sickness. The study showed that participants reported fewer simulator sickness symptoms when seated and that the overall best control and menu combination was a traditional panel menu together with motion controls. Conclusions. Among the options explored in the study, traditional, top-down, panel menus together with motion controls form the best combination in regard to the user experience in VR applications. A sitting posture provides the overall best environment in VR applications in regard to less severe simulator sickness symptoms

Firmware development for Low-Level Controllers is an extremely complex task. Single-threaded microcontrollers are most commonly used for these controllers and thus are only capable of executing a single task at a time. Microcontroller software tends to be designed for an extremely specific task with little room for scalability or code reuse. Additionally, the state of a microcontroller at run-time is very difficult to observe and thus makes it harder to debug and develop these control systems. To alleviate these development issues, a software framework was designed to simplify firmware development for Hardware Abstract Layered (HAL) control systems. The software framework was implemented on Texas Instruments TM4C123GXL Tivas on a multi-joint robot with the purpose of experimenting on a distributed microcontroller system. All of the software for the microcontroller was implemented into one program with initialization files from the high-level controller to configure each individual Tiva based on its functionality in the distributed system. The EtherCAT communication protocol is used primarily for its fast communication speed between high-level and low-level controllers. A basic GUI development environment accompanies the framework to aid in the initial development of a custom controller firmware and thus reduce development time. Additionally, this framework is designed to be easily scalable such that a real-time operating system (RTOS) can be implemented with minimal effort should the developer desire to do so. The proposed software framework thus overcomes major challenges when developing firmware for low-level controllers making development overall less time-consuming. Further, this framework can be used for many different robotic applications with a low-level multi-layered control architecture. / Master of Science / Microcontrollers and embedded systems are used everywhere in our daily lives in the technology we love. From microwaves, to cars, to phones, to toaster ovens, these systems are implemented in practically every piece of technology we use on a daily basis. Software development of these systems tends to be extremely complicated and complex. Hence, the software designed for these systems is usually overly specific to the device with little room for code reuse and/or scalability. This issue is extremely present in the field of robotics. To alleviate this issue, this work proposed, designed, and implemented a software framework for microcontrollers in a distributed network for robotics applications. Additionally, a graphical interface was developed to customize the software framework for a developer's specific needs regarding what the application needs to do.