A novel approach for inspecting the condition of porcelain insulators based on statistical analysis of electromagnetic radiations of live insulators is demonstrated in this thesis. Physical defects such as puncture and contamination can degrade the insulators performance and result in power outages, potentiating costs to utilities. Therefore, condition assessment of line insulators has always been one of the most important aspects of maintenance programs in power networks. Realistic replicas of punctured and contaminated insulators were created in the High Voltage Lab at University of Manitoba, following the IEC standards. These defective insulators were tested under high voltage stress while the electromagnetic radiations originated from the partial discharge activities on the insulators were captured using electromagnetic sensors. During the experimental part of this thesis, a multitude of tests were conducted and resulted in measuring and recording a total of 410,000 cycles of discharge activities. The feature extraction algorithm, developed as part of this thesis, calculates the statistical features of the phase resolved interpretation of partial discharge (PD) pulses. The results of analyzing the extracted features from the radiated signature of defective insulators indicate that the scale and shape parameters of a two sided Weibull distribution function fit to the recorded measurement entail distinct information about the source of discharges that can be used to identify the source of defects. Based on the library of features extracted from the recorded electromagnetic radiations, a support vector machine (SVM) classier, developed as part of this thesis, can successfully classify the radiation signature of punctured and contaminated insulators. Therefore, the main outcome of this research was introducing a novel porcelain insulator inspection technique that can remotely differentiate the defective punctured and contaminated insulators using their electromagnetic radiation signature in a laboratory environment. By utilizing the signature of common discharge activities present in the recorded signature of all tested insulators, a gating algorithm was developed which improved the successful classification rate from 51 % to 75%. The inspection technique proposed in this research can eliminate the safety hazards involved in the live maintenance of line insulators, lower the maintenance costs, and improve the inspection efficiency considering the conventional labour intensive live maintenance assessments. / February 2016

With today’s smartphones and smart glasses, and the progression of augmented reality, the possibilities to interact over distance has made it feasible to guide one another in an intuitive and effective way. This combination of technology and software principles allows a local operator to record a scenario from his or her point of view and show this to a remotely located expert. An expert can, in turn, help the operator by interacting through that video feed by highlighting aspects and overlaying information for the operator to see. The aim of this study was to investigate how such a system should be configured if it were to be implemented in the context of final assembly of military aircraft. An understanding of the context and situations where external help might be needed was established through an ethnographical study. User tests were conducted with an existing system in comparable cases, inspired by results from the first study. This in order to evaluate the configuration of the hardware and interactivity. Results indicate that it is useful to implement a remote guidance system which allows augmented overlays in the context of final assembly. A greater need for such a system was found in situations in which a subject matter expert must investigate and assess issues and errors that has occurred. These scenarios are often characterized by differentiating environment, from cases where there is a good overview to situations in which the mirrors must be used to see from the right angle beyond one’s field of view. A remote guidance system should be able to support both cases and must, therefore, be modular in a way so that an external camera can be used to reach in while the screen can be seen simultaneously. Regarding the need for interaction between interactors in such situations are limited. The user studies indicate that simple referential gestures on frozen images of a video feed might be enough. / Global Assembly Instruction Strategies (GAIS) 2

Aims: The study of cognitive functioning in large epidemiological settings is hampered by a lack of instruments for the remote assessment of cognitive performance, especially when targeting variability across the full range of adult functioning. The present study examined the practicability of such investigations using a recently developed telephone interview (Cognitive Telephone Screening Instrument, COGTEL). Methods: A subcohort of an ongoing epidemiological study in the elderly German population (ESTHER) was interviewed via telephone by trained personnel. These data were combined with sociodemographic information obtained by standardized self-administered questionnaires, and analysed by tabulation, histograms and regression models. Results: A total of 1,697 interviews could be analysed. The eligible participants had a mean age ± standard deviation of 74.0 ± 2.8 years. The COGTEL total scores closely followed a normal distribution with no evidence of a ceiling effect. In adjusted regression models, COGTEL total and subcomponent scores were negatively associated with age and strongly positively with higher education, whereas the association with sex was less consistent. Conclusions: The results suggest that the COGTEL can readily be administered to large study populations and produces plausible and informative results. Education should be considered in all investigations using this instrument and requires further in-depth analyses. Future studies will need to elucidate its associations with risk factors and its prognostic potential for cognitive decline and dementia. / Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.

Aims: The study of cognitive functioning in large epidemiological settings is hampered by a lack of instruments for the remote assessment of cognitive performance, especially when targeting variability across the full range of adult functioning. The present study examined the practicability of such investigations using a recently developed telephone interview (Cognitive Telephone Screening Instrument, COGTEL). Methods: A subcohort of an ongoing epidemiological study in the elderly German population (ESTHER) was interviewed via telephone by trained personnel. These data were combined with sociodemographic information obtained by standardized self-administered questionnaires, and analysed by tabulation, histograms and regression models. Results: A total of 1,697 interviews could be analysed. The eligible participants had a mean age ± standard deviation of 74.0 ± 2.8 years. The COGTEL total scores closely followed a normal distribution with no evidence of a ceiling effect. In adjusted regression models, COGTEL total and subcomponent scores were negatively associated with age and strongly positively with higher education, whereas the association with sex was less consistent. Conclusions: The results suggest that the COGTEL can readily be administered to large study populations and produces plausible and informative results. Education should be considered in all investigations using this instrument and requires further in-depth analyses. Future studies will need to elucidate its associations with risk factors and its prognostic potential for cognitive decline and dementia. / Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.