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Im Rahmen des KONTEC Kongresses 2021 in Dresden wurden sowohl ein Poster als auch ein Paper des Forschungsprojekts EKont veröffentlicht. Neben der Schilderung des Versuchsaufbaus werden neuartige Schneidprozesse und Abtragsprinzipien vorgestellt. Im Anschluss daran werden vier Prototypen (gleichsinniger Stufenfräser, gegenläufiger Stufenfräser, mittig gegenläufiger Stufenfräser - Getriebe und oszillierender Werkzeugaufsatz) beschrieben.
Because process and product innovations are usually no longer sufficient to establish a company in the market or to generate a competitive advantage, Business Model Innovation is considered a powerful tool, especially for start-ups for which innovation is at the core of their business. Due to the complexity of this process, frameworks should help entrepreneurs with executing Business Model Innovation. However, theory and practice diverge. The aim of this paper is to identify the needs of a start-up regarding Business Model Innovation frameworks, underlining the importance of Business Model Innovation for start-ups as well as the relevance of a supporting framework. The research results aim to contribute to an ideal process for Business Model Innovation when applied to start-ups.
In order to support entrepreneurs in the Business Model Innovation (BMI) process, practice-oriented frameworks such as the St. Gallen Business Model NavigatorTM (BMN) are considered to be a powerful tool. The aim of this paper is to identify strengths and limitations of the BMN when applied to start-ups in their early stages and to contribute to the optimization of the BMN in terms of applicability for start-ups. Furthermore, the paper aims to emphasize the importance of BMI for start-ups and the relevance of a supporting framework as well as formulating a unified catalogue of requirements of BMI frameworks for start-ups.
Die vorausschauende Instandhaltung (engl. Predictive Maintenance) gewinnt für die produzierende Industrie weltweit an Bedeutung, da Produktionsmodernisierungen im Rahmen der Industrie 4.0 sowie die zunehmende Verwendung von heterogenen Sensoreinheiten die Instandhaltungsplanung immer komplexer gestalten. Darüber hinaus ist das Service-Kontingent, welches ein Maschinenbauer seinen Kunden im Bereich der Instandhaltung anbieten kann, durch die Ressource Mensch stark limitiert und nur ortsgebunden einsetzbar. Durch herkömmliche Instandhaltungsprozesse entstehen somit oft hohe Kosten, sowohl für den Maschinenbauer als auch für den Anwender. Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Einblick in aktuelle Forschungen der Sybit GmbH in direkter Zusammenarbeit mit der HTWG Konstanz und renommierten Maschinenbau-Unternehmen. Gemeinsames Ziel ist es, vorhandene Instandhaltungsprozesse durch die Verwendung von Augmented Reality (AR) und weiterführenden Technologien zu unterstützen. Hierbei wird ein Stufenplan erarbeitet und vorgestellt, in dem die notwendigen Erweiterungen auf dem Weg von der Implementierung eines Pilotprojekts bis hin zur vollwertigen Industrie-4.0-Anwendung diskutiert werden. Abschließend wird die plausible Erweiterbarkeit der vorgestellten Entwicklungen erörtert und die Übertragbarkeit der Ergebnisse auf andere Domänen vorgestellt.
Flooded Edge Gateways
(2019)
Increasing numbers of internet-compatible devices, in particular in the context of IoT, usually cause increasing amounts of data. The processing and analysis of a continuously growing amount of data in real-time by means of cloud platforms cannot be guaranteed anymore. Approaches of Edge Computing decentralize parts of the data analysis logics towards the data sources in order to control the data transfer rate to the cloud through pre-processing with predefined quality-of-service parameters. In this paper, we present a solution for preventing overloaded gateways by optimizing the transfer of IoT data through a combination of Complex Event Processing and Machine Learning. The presented solution is completely based on open-source technologies and can therefore also be used in smaller companies.
The development of native user interface components is a time consuming and repetitive process, especially for quite simple components like text fields in a form. In order to save time during development an approach is presented in this paper, abstracting the description of the elements into separate files independent from the source code. With aspects from generative and model-driven approaches this leads to simple reusable UI components without the need of deep knowledge in native programming languages.
The IETF, concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture, nowadays also looks into industrial automation processes. The contributions of a variety of IETF activities, initiated during the last ten years, enable now the replacement of proprietary standards by an open standardized protocol stack. This stack, denoted in the following as 6TiSCH-stack, is tailored for industrial internet of things (IIoTs). The suitability of 6TiSCH-stack for Industry 4.0 is yet to explore. In this paper, we identify four challenges that, in our opinion, may delay or hinder its adoption. As a prime example of that, we focus on the initial 6TiSCHnetwork
formation, highlighting the shortcomings of the default procedure and introducing our current work for a fast and reliable formation of dense network.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will leverage on wireless network technologies to integrate in a seamless manner Cyber-Physical Systems into existing information systems. In this context, the 6TiSCH architecture, proposed by IETF, represents the current leading standardization effort to enable timed and reliable data communication within IPv6 networks for industrial applications. In wireless networks, Link Quality Estimation (LQE) is a crucial task to select the best routes for data forwarding, regardless of unpredictable time varying conditions. Although, many solutions for LQE have been proposed in literature, the majority of them are not designed specifically for 6TiSCH networks. In this paper, we analyze the performance of existing LQE strategies on 6TiSCH networks.
First, we run a set of simulations to measure the performance of one existing LQE strategy in 6TiSCH. Our simulations show that such strategy can result in measurements with low accuracy due to the 6TiSCH default timeslot allocation strategy. Consequently, we propose an extension of the 6TiSCH Minimal Configuration that allocates specific timeslots for the transmission of probing messages to mitigate the problem. The proposed methodology is demonstrated to effectively reduce the LQE error.
TU Darmstadt HUMVIB-Bridge
(2016)
The simulation of the human-induced vibrations of lightweight footbridges is in general a complex problem where the dynamics of the pedestrian system meets the structural dynamics of the bridge. However, standard methods for numerical analysis of pedestrian bridges deal with this issue by using simplified approaches. The structure is mostly represented either by discretised multi mass systems or through a formulation in modal coordinates, while the excitation is typically described by a moving load.
Positive effects of the interaction between the two systems (pedestrian and structure) are usually completely neglected. This paper, which is partially
extracted from an actual research report of the Institute of Structural Mechanics and Design (TU Darmstadt), presents an experimental set-up developed for investigations of the human-structure interaction (HSI), as well as results of the preliminary investigations carried out in the same context.
Strategic renewal and the development of new types of innovation pose special challenges to established small and medium-sized companies. The paper at hand aims at answering the questions what the underlying mechanism of these challenges are and which approaches might help to properly counteracting them. This case study investigates the strategic renewal process and its corresponding interventions in a high-tech SME company during a four-year period. We analyse the findings in relation to existing frameworks for dynamic capabilities and strategic learning and provide new recommendations for practice and future research.
This contribution presents a data compression scheme for applications in non-volatile flash memories. The objective of the data compression algorithm is to reduce the amount of user data such that the redundancy of the error correction coding can be increased in order to improve the reliability of the data storage system. The data compression is performed on block level considering data blocks of 1 kilobyte. We present an encoder architecture that has low memory requirements and provides a fast data encoding.
In this paper we propose a method to determine the active speaker for each time-frequency point in the noisy signals of a microphone array. This detection is based on a statistical model where the speech signals as well as noise signals are assumed to be multivariate Gaussian random variables in the Fourier domain. Based on this model we derive a maximum-likelihood detector for the active speaker. The decision is based on the a posteriori signal to noise ratio (SNR) of a speaker dependent max-SNR beamformer.
Generalized concatenated (GC) codes with soft-input decoding were recently proposed for error correction in flash memories. This work proposes a soft-input decoder for GC codes that is based on a low-complexity bit-flipping procedure. This bit-flipping decoder uses a fixed number of test patterns and an algebraic decoder for soft-input decoding. An acceptance criterion for the final candidate codeword is proposed. Combined with error and erasure decoding of the outer Reed-Solomon codes, this bit-flipping decoder can improve the decoding performance and reduce the decoding complexity compared to the previously proposed sequential decoding. The bit-flipping decoder achieves a decoding performance similar to a maximum likelihood decoder for the inner codes.
The binary asymmetric channel (BAC) is a model for the error characterization of multi-level cell (MLC) flash memories. This contribution presents a joint channel and source coding approach improving the reliability of MLC flash memories. The objective of the data compression algorithm is to reduce the amount of user data such that the redundancy of the error correction coding can be increased in order to improve the reliability of the data storage system. Moreover, data compression can be utilized to exploit the asymmetry of the channel to reduce the error probability. With MLC flash memories data compression has to be performed on block level considering short data blocks. We present a coding scheme suitable for blocks of 1 kilobyte of data.
Error correction coding based on soft-input decoding can significantly improve the reliability of flash memories. Such soft-input decoding algorithms require reliability information about the state of the memory cell. This work proposes a channel model for soft-input decoding that considers the asymmetric error characteristic of multi-level cell (MLC) and triple-level cell (TLC) memories. Based on this model, an estimation method for the channel state information is devised which avoids additional pilot data for channel estimation. Furthermore, the proposed method supports page-wise read operations.
Error correction coding (ECC) for optical communication and persistent storage systems require high rate codes that enable high data throughput and low residual errors. Recently, different concatenated coding schemes were proposed that are based on binary Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes that have low error correcting capabilities. Commonly, hardware implementations for BCH decoding are based on the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm (BMA). However, for single, double, and triple error correcting BCH codes, Peterson's algorithm can be more efficient than the BMA. The known hardware architectures of Peterson's algorithm require Galois field inversion. This inversion dominates the hardware complexity and limits the decoding speed. This work proposes an inversion-less version of Peterson's algorithm. Moreover, a decoding architecture is presented that is faster than decoders that employ inversion or the fully parallel BMA at a comparable circuit size.
The computational complexity of the optimal maximum likelihood (ML) detector for spatial modulation increases rapidly as more transmit antennas or larger modulation orders are employed. Hence, ML detection may be infeasible for higher bit rates. This work proposes an improved suboptimal detection algorithm based on the Gaussian approximation method. It is demonstrated that the new method is closely related to the previously published signal vector based detection and the modified maximum ratio combiner, but can improve the detection performance compared to these methods. Furthermore, the performance of different signal constellations with suboptimal detection is investigated. Simulation results indicate that the performance loss compared to ML detection depends heavily on the signal constellation, where the recently proposed Eisenstein integer constellations are beneficial compared to classical QAM or PSK constellations.
Codes over quotient rings of Lipschitz integers have recently attracted some attention. This work investigates the performance of Lipschitz integer constellations for transmission over the AWGN channel by means of the constellation figure of merit. A construction of sets of Lipschitz integers is presented that leads to a better constellation figure of merit compared to ordinary Lipschitz integer constellations. In particular, it is demonstrated that the concept of set partitioning can be applied to quotient rings of Lipschitz integers where the number of elements is not a prime number. It is shown that it is always possible to partition such quotient rings into additive subgroups in a manner that the minimum Euclidean distance of each subgroup is strictly larger than in the original set. The resulting signal constellations have a better performance for transmission over an additive white Gaussian noise channel compared to Gaussian integer constellations and to ordinary Lipschitz integer constellations.
This work proposes an efficient hardware Implementation of sequential stack decoding of binary block codes. The decoder can be applied for soft input decoding for generalized concatenated (GC) codes. The GC codes are constructed from inner nested binary Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes and outer Reed-Solomon (RS) codes. In order to enable soft input decoding for the inner BCH block codes, a sequential stack decoding algorithm is used.
Home health applications have evolved over the last few decades. Assistive systems such as a data platform in connection with health devices can allow for health-related data to be automatically transmitted to a database. However, there remain significant challenges concerning intermodular communication. Central among them is the challenge of achieving interoperability, the ability of devices to communicate and share data with each other. A major goal of this project was to extend an existing data platform (COMES®) and establish working interoperability by connecting assistive devices with differing approaches. We describe this process for a sleep monitoring and a physical exercise device. Furthermore, we aimed to test this setup and the implementation with a data platform in both a laboratory and an in-home setting with 11 elderly participants. The platform modification was realized, and the relevant changes were made so that the incoming data could be processed by the data platform, as well as visually displayed in real-time. Data was recorded by the respective device and transmitted into the data server with minor disruptions. Our observations affirmed that difficulties and data loss are far more likely to occur with increasing technical complexity, in the event of instable internet connection, or when the device setup requires (elderly) subjects to take specific steps for proper functioning. We emphasize the importance for tests and evaluations of home health technologies in real-life circumstances.
Wirkungen gestalten
(2016)
Generative Design Software - How does digitalization change the professional profile of architects
(2019)
Abstract, Poster und Vortrag
Advanced approaches for analysis and form finding of membrane structures with finite elements
(2018)
Part I deals with material modelling of woven fabric membranes. Due to their structure of crossed yarns embedded in coating, woven fabric membranes are characterised by a highly nonlinear stress-strain behaviour. In order to determine an accurate structural response of membrane structures, a suitable description of the material behaviour is required. A linear elastic orthotropic model approach, which is current practice, only allows a relative coarse approximation of the material behaviour. The present work focuses on two different material approaches: A first approach becomes evident by focusing on the meso-scale. The inhomogeneous, however periodic structure of woven fabrics motivates for microstructural modelling. An established microstructural model is considered and enhanced with regard to the coating stiffness. Secondly, an anisotropic hyperelastic material model for woven fabric membranes is considered. By performing inverse processes of parameter identification, fits of the two different material models w.r.t. measured data from a common biaxial test are shown. The results of the inversely parametrised material models are compared and discussed.
Part II presents an extended approach for a simultaneous form finding and cutting patterning computation of membrane structures. The approach is formulated as an optimisation problem in which both the geometries of the equilibrium and cutting patterning configuration are initially unknown. The design objectives are minimum deviations from prescribed stresses in warp and fill direction along with minimum shear deformation. The equilibrium equations are introduced into the optimisation problem as constraints. Additional design criteria can be formulated (for the geometry of seam lines etc.). Similar to the motivation for the Updated Reference Strategy [4] the described problem is singular in the tangent plane. In both the equilibrium and the cutting patterning configuration finite element nodes can move without changing stresses. Therefore, several approaches are presented to stabilise the algorithm. The overall result of the computation is a stressed equilibrium and an unstressed cutting patterning geometry. The interaction of both configurations is described in Total Lagrangian formulation.
The microstructural model, which is focused in Part I, is applied. Based on this approach, information about fibre orientation as well as the ending of fibres at cutting edges are available. As a result, more accurate results can be computed compared to simpler approaches commonly used in practice.
Sleep quality and in general, behavior in bed can be detected using a sleep state analysis. These results can help a subject to regulate sleep and recognize different sleeping disorders. In this work, a sensor grid for pressure and movement detection supporting sleep phase analysis is proposed. In comparison to the leading standard measuring system, which is Polysomnography (PSG), the system proposed in this project is a non-invasive sleep monitoring device. For continuous analysis or home use, the PSG or wearable Actigraphy devices tends to be uncomfortable. Besides this fact, they are also very expensive. The system represented in this work classifies respiration and body movement with only one type of sensor and also in a non-invasive way. The sensor used is a pressure sensor. This sensor is low cost and can be used for commercial proposes. The system was tested by carrying out an experiment that recorded the sleep process of a subject. These recordings showed the potential for classification of breathing rate and body movements. Although previous researches show the use of pressure sensors in recognizing posture and breathing, they have been mostly used by positioning the sensors between the mattress and bedsheet. This project however, shows an innovative way to position the sensors under the mattress.
This document presents a new complete standalone system for a recognition of sleep apnea using signals from the pressure sensors placed under the mattress. The developed hardware part of the system is tuned to filter and to amplify the signal. Its software part performs more accurate signal filtering and identification of apnea events. The overall achieved accuracy of the recognition of apnea occurrence is 91%, with the average measured recognition delay of about 15 seconds, which confirms the suitability of the proposed method for future employment. The main aim of the presented approach is the support of the healthcare system with the cost-efficient tool for recognition of sleep apnea in the home environment.
In many cases continuous monitoring of vital signals is required and low intrusiveness is an important requirement. Incorporating monitoring systems in the hospital or home bed could have benefits for patients and caregivers. The objective of this work is the definition of a measurement protocol and the creation of a data set of measurements using commercial and low-cost prototypes devices to estimate heart rate and breathing rate. The experimental data will be used to compare results achieved by the devices and to develop algorithms for feature extraction of vital signals.
The importance of sleep for human life is enormous. It affects physical, mental, and psychological health. Therefore, it is vital to recognise sleep disorders in a timely manner in order to be able to initiate therapy. There are two methods for measuring sleep-related parameters - objective and subjective. Whether the substitution of a subjective method for an objective one is possible is investigated in this paper. Such replacement may bring several advantages, including increased comfort for the user. To answer this research question, a study was conducted in which 75 overnight recordings were evaluated. The primary purpose of this study was to compare both ways of measurement for total sleep time and sleep efficiency, which are essential parameters for, e.g., insomnia diagnosis and treatment. The evaluation results demonstrated that, on average, there are 32 minutes of difference between the two measurement methods when total sleep time is analysed. In contrast, on average, both measurement methods differ by 7.5% for sleep efficiency measurement. It should also be noted that people typically overestimate total sleep time and efficiency with the subjective method, where the perceived values are measured.
Health monitoring in a home environment can have broader use since it may provide continuous control of health parameters with relatively minor intrusiveness into regular life. This work aims to verify if it is possible to replace the typical in some sleep medicine areas subjective questioning by an objective measurement using electronic devices. For this purpose, a study was conducted with ten subjects, in which objective and subjective measurement of relevant sleep parameters took place. The results of both measurement methods were evaluated and analyzed. The results showed that while for some measures, such as Total Time in Bed, there is a high agreement between objective and subjective measurements, for others, such as sleep quality, there are significant differences. For this reason, currently, a combination of both measurement methods may be beneficial and provide the most detailed results, while a partial replacement can already reduce the number of questions at the subjective measurement by measurement through electronic devices.
The influence of sleep on human health is enormous. Accordingly, sleep disorders can have a negative impact on it. To avoid this, they should be identified and treated in time. For this purpose, objective (with an appropriate device) or subjective (based on perceived values) measurement methods are used for sleep analysis to understand the problem. The aim of this work is to find out whether an exchange of the two methods is possible and can provide reliable results. In accordance with this goal, a study was conducted with people aged over 65 years old (a total of 154 night-time recordings) in which both measurement methods were compared. Sleep questionnaires and electronic devices for sleep assessment placed under the mattress were applied to achieve the study aims. The obtained results indicated that the correlation between both measurement methods could be observed for sleep characteristics such as total sleep time, total time in bed and sleep efficiency. However, there are also significant differences in absolute values of the two measurement approaches for some subjects/nights, which leads us to conclude that the substitution is more likely to be considered in case of long-term monitoring where the trends are of more importance and not the absolute values for individual nights.
The recovery of our body and brain from fatigue directly depends on the quality of sleep, which can be determined from the results of a sleep study. The classification of sleep stages is the first step of this study and includes the measurement of vital data and their further processing. The non-invasive sleep analysis system is based on a hardware sensor network of 24 pressure sensors providing sleep phase detection. The pressure sensors are connected to an energy-efficient microcontroller via a system-wide bus. A significant difference between this system and other approaches is the innovative way in which the sensors are placed under the mattress. This feature facilitates the continuous use of the system without any noticeable influence on the sleeping person. The system was tested by conducting experiments that recorded the sleep of various healthy young people. Results indicate the potential to capture respiratory rate and body movement.
Healthy sleep is required for sufficient restoration of the human body and brain. Therefore, in the case of sleep disorders, appropriate therapy should be applied timely, which requires a prompt diagnosis. Traditionally, a sleep diary is a part of diagnosis and therapy monitoring for some sleep disorders, such as cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia. To automatise sleep monitoring and make it more comfortable for users, substituting a sleep diary with a smartwatch measurement could be considered. With the aim of providing accurate results, a study with a total of 30 night recordings was conducted. Objective sleep measurement with a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 was compared with a subjective approach (sleep diary), evaluating the four relevant sleep characteristics: time of getting asleep, wake up time, sleep efficiency (SE), and total sleep time (TST). The performed analysis has demonstrated that the median difference between both measurement approaches was equal to 7 and 3 minutes for a time of getting asleep and wake up time correspondingly, which allows substituting a subjective measurement with a smartwatch. The SE was determined with a median difference between the two measurement methods of 5.22%. This result also implicates a possibility of substitution. Some single recordings have indicated a higher variance between the two approaches. Therefore, the conclusion can be made that a substitution provides reliable results primarily in the case of long-term monitoring. The results of the evaluation of the TST measurement do not allow to recommend substitution of the measurement method.
The main aim of presented in this manuscript research is to compare the results of objective and subjective measurement of sleep quality for older adults (65+) in the home environment. A total amount of 73 nights was evaluated in this study. Placing under the mattress device was used to obtain objective measurement data, and a common question on perceived sleep quality was asked to collect the subjective sleep quality level. The achieved results confirm the correlation between objective and subjective measurement of sleep quality with the average standard deviation equal to 2 of 10 possible quality points.
Identifikation von Schlaf- und Wachzuständen durch die Auswertung von Atem- und Bewegungssignalen
(2021)
Das klinische Standardverfahren und Referenz der Schlafmessung und der Klassifizierung der einzelnen Schlafstadien ist die Polysomnographie (PSG). Alternative Ansätze zu diesem aufwändigen Verfahren könnten einige Vorteile bieten, wenn die Messungen auf eine komfortablere Weise durchgeführt werden. Das Hauptziel dieser Forschung Studie ist es, einen Algorithmus für die automatische Klassifizierung von Schlafstadien zu entwickeln, der ausschließlich Bewegungs- und Atmungssignale verwendet.
Recognition of sleep and wake states is one of the relevant parts of sleep analysis. Performing this measurement in a contactless way increases comfort for the users. We present an approach evaluating only movement and respiratory signals to achieve recognition, which can be measured non-obtrusively. The algorithm is based on multinomial logistic regression and analyses features extracted out of mentioned above signals. These features were identified and developed after performing fundamental research on characteristics of vital signals during sleep. The achieved accuracy of 87% with the Cohen’s kappa of 0.40 demonstrates the appropriateness of a chosen method and encourages continuing research on this topic.
Sleep study can be used for detection of sleep quality and in general bed behaviors. These results can helpful for regulating sleep and recognizing different sleeping disorders of human. In comparison to the leading standard measuring system, which is Polysomnography (PSG), the system proposed in this work is a non-invasive sleep monitoring device. For continuous analysis or home use, the PSG or wearable Actigraphy devices tends to be uncomfortable. Besides, these methods not only decrease practicality due to the process of having to put them on, but they are also very expensive. The system proposed in this paper classifies respiration and body movement with only one type of sensor and also in a noninvasive way. The sensor used is a pressure sensor. This sensor is low cost and can be used for commercial proposes. The system was tested by carrying out an experiment that recorded the sleep process of a subject. These recordings showed excellent results in the classification of breathing rate and body movements.
Good sleep is crucial for a healthy life of every person. Unfortunately, its quality often decreases with aging. A common approach to measuring the sleep characteristics is based on interviews with the subjects or letting them fill in a daily questionnaire and afterward evaluating the obtained data. However, this method has time and personal costs for the interviewer and evaluator of responses. Therefore, it would be important to execute the collection and evaluation of sleep characteristics automatically. To do that, it is necessary to investigate the level of agreement between measurements performed in a traditional way using questionnaires and measurements obtained using electronic monitoring devices. The study presented in this manuscript performs this investigation, comparing such sleep characteristics as "time going to bed", "total time in bed", "total sleep time" and "sleep efficiency". A total number of 106 night records of elderly persons (aged 65+) were analyzed. The results achieved so far reveal the fact that the degree of agreement between the two measurement methods varies substantially for different characteristics, from 31 minutes of mean difference for "time going to bed" to 77 minutes for "total sleep time". For this reason, a direct exchange of objective and subjective measuring methods is currently not possible.
Die Schlafapnoe ist eine häufig auftretende Schlafstörung,
die unterschiedliche Auswirkungen auf unseren Alltag hat; so wurde z. B.
über eine Tagesschläfrigkeit von etwa 25 % der Patienten mit obstruktiver
Schlafapnoe (OSA) berichtet. Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Entwicklung eines
Systems, das eine nichtinvasive Erkennung der Schlafapnoe in häuslicher
Umgebung ermöglichen soll.
This document presents an algorithm for a non-obtrusive recognition of Sleep/Wake states using signals derived from ECG, respiration, and body movement captured while lying in a bed. As a core mathematical base of system data analytics, multinomial logistic regression techniques were chosen. Derived parameters of the three signals are used as the input for the proposed method. The overall achieved accuracy rate is 84% for Wake/Sleep stages, with Cohen’s kappa value 0.46. The presented algorithm should support experts in analyzing sleep quality in more detail. The results confirm the potential of this method and disclose several ways for its improvement.
This paper presents a bed system able to analyze a person’s movement, breathing and recognize the positions that the subject is lying on the bed during the night without any additional physical contact. The measurements are performed with sensors placed between the mattress and the bed-frame. An Intel Edison board was used as an endpoint that served as a communication node from the mesh network to external service. Two nodes and Intel Edison are attached to the bottom of the bed frame and they are connected to the sensors. First test results have indicated the potential of the proposed approach for the recognition of sleep positions with 83% of correct recognized positions.
The last decades have shown that the volume of tourism, in general, is constantly increasing (with some justified exceptions). To offer a possibility of travel for all groups of people, it is necessary to pay attention to accessibility. One of the possibilities for increasing accessibility is digital technologies, which could assist in planning and the implementation and completion of trips. To make a selection of technologies, first, a study of barriers was conducted, which was then analyzed, and finally, some technologies were made available in a test setup. A focus on two technologies was made: 360°-Tours and mobile app with the travel information. The two technologies were implemented and presented to the test subjects.
The evaluation results showed that both technologies could increase accessibility if some essential aspects (such as usability, completeness, relevance, etc.) are considered during the implementation.
Healthy sleep is one of the prerequisites for a good human body and brain condition, including general well-being. Unfortunately, there are several sleep disorders that can negatively affect this. One of the most common is sleep apnoea, in which breathing is impaired. Studies have shown that this disorder often remains undiagnosed. To avoid this, developing a system that can be widely used in a home environment to detect apnoea and monitor the changes once therapy has been initiated is essential. The conceptualisation of such a system is the main aim of this research. After a thorough analysis of the available literature and state of the art in this area of knowledge, a concept of the system was created, which includes the following main components: data acquisition (including two parts), storage of the data, apnoea detection algorithm, user and device management, data visualisation. The modules are interchangeable, and interfaces have been defined for data transfer, most of which operate using the MQTT protocol. System diagrams and detailed component descriptions, including signal requirements and visualisation mockups, have also been developed. The system's design includes the necessary concepts for the implementation and can be realised in a prototype in the next phase.
The process of restoring our body and brain from fatigue is directly depend-ing on the quality of sleep. It can be determined from the report of the sleep study results. Classification of sleep stages is the first step of this study and this includes the measurement of biovital data and its further processing.
In this work, the sleep analysis system is based on a hardware sensor net, namely a grid of 24 pressure sensors, supporting sleep phase recognition. In comparison to the leading standard, which is polysomnography, the proposed approach is a non-invasive system. It recognises respiration and body move-ment with only one type of low-cost pressure sensors forming a mesh archi-tecture. The nodes implement as a series of pressure sensors connected to a low-power and performant microcontroller. All nodes are connected via a system wide bus with address arbitration. The embedded processor is the mesh network endpoint that enables network configuration, storing and pre-processing of the data, external data access and visualization.
The system was tested by executing experiments recording the sleep of different healthy young subjects. The results obtained have indicated the po-tential to detect breathing rate and body movement. A major difference of this system in comparison to other approaches is the innovative way to place the sensors under the mattress. This characteristic facilitates the continuous using of the system without any influence on the common sleep process.
In recent decades, it can be observed that a steady increase in the volume of tourism is a stable trend. To offer travel opportunities to all groups, it is also necessary to prepare offers for people in need of long-term care or people with disabilities. One of the ways to improve accessibility could be digital technologies, which could help in planning as well as in carrying out trips. In the work presented, a study of barriers was first conducted, which led to selecting technologies for a test setup after analysis. The main focus was on a mobile app with travel information and 360° tours. The evaluation results showed that both technologies could increase accessibility, but some essential aspects (such as usability, completeness, relevance, etc.) need to be considered when implementing them.
Normal breathing during sleep is essential for people’s health and well-being. Therefore, it is crucial to diagnose apnoea events at an early stage and apply appropriate therapy. Detection of sleep apnoea is a central goal of the system design described in this article. To develop a correctly functioning system, it is first necessary to define the requirements outlined in this manuscript clearly. Furthermore, the selection of appropriate technology for the measurement of respiration is of great importance. Therefore, after performing initial literature research, we have analysed in detail three different methods and made a selection of a proper one according to determined requirements. After considering all the advantages and disadvantages of the three approaches, we decided to use the impedance measurement-based one. As a next step, an initial conceptual design of the algorithm for detecting apnoea events was created. As a result, we developed an activity diagram on which the main system components and data flows are visually represented.
Polysomnography is a gold standard for a sleep study, and it provides very accurate results, but its cost (both personnel and material) are quite high. Therefore, the development of a low-cost system for overnight breathing and heartbeat monitoring, which provides more comfort while recording the data, is a well-motivated challenge. The system proposed in this manuscript is based on the usage of resistive pressure sensors installed under the mattress. These sensors can measure slight pressure changes provoked during breathing and heartbeat. The captured signal requires advanced processing, like applying filters and amplifiers before the analog signal is ready for the next step. Then, the output signal is digitalized and further processed by an algorithm that performs a custom filtering before it can recognize breathing and heart rate in real-time. The result can be directly visualized. Furthermore, a CSV file is created containing the raw data, timestamps, and unique IDs to facilitate further processing. The achieved results are promising, and the average deviation from a reference device is about 4bpm.
Corporate venturing is one way for corporations to
introduce strategic renewal into their business portfolios, which is
imperative for ongoing success in innovation-driven industries.
Prior research finds that corporate ventures should be separated
from the mainstream business in loosely coupled sub-units, but
scholars continue to discuss how loose or tight the ventures should
be to balance exploration and exploitation. Hence, the antecedents
for successful venture management are yet to be fully explored and
our study contributes to this effort. The study shows that
corporate venture success is enhanced when corporate
management grants job and strategic autonomy to the venture
managers. This is further amplified when corporate management
simultaneously imposes an exploitative policy that forces venture
managers to prioritize extensions to and improvements of existing
competences and product-market offerings.
A method is investigated by which tight bounds on the range of a multivariate rational function over a box can be computed. The approach relies on the expansion of the numerator and denominator polynomials in Bernstein polynomials. Convergence of the bounds to the range with respect to degree elevation of the Bernstein expansion, to the width of the box and to subdivision are proven and the inclusion isotonicity of the related enclosure function is shown.
Das hier beschriebene und auf einem FPGA vom Typ Spartan-3A DSP realisierte System dient dazu, auf besonders effiziente Weise die Häufigkeitsverteilung nicht erkannter fehlerhafter Nachrichten mit verschiedenen CRCPolynomen
zu berechnen. Damit die Berechnung in möglichst kurzer Zeit stattfindet, wurde das System aus 64 parallel arbeitenden Instanzen von CRC-Findern in mehrstufiger Fließbandorganisation aufgebaut. In der hier beschriebenen Ausbaustufe erreicht das System eine Gesamtleistung von 6,4 ·109 Operationen in der Sekunde.
This paper focuses on the multivariable control of a drawing tower process. The nature of the process together with the differences in measurement noise levels that affect the variables to be controlled motivated the development of a new MPC algorithm. An extension of a multivariable predictive control algorithm with separated prediction horizons is proposed. The obtained experimental results show the usefulness of the proposed algorithm..
Three-level inverters are used in electrical drive systems, as grid infeed inverter in PV power plants or as active power line filters. Up to now so called hard switching topologies have been used. A new 'Soft Switching Three Level Inverter (S3L Inverter)' which is now available provides reduced switching losses and higher efficiency. In this paper the S3L inverter is compared with a hard switching T-type inverter topology (H3L inverter). S3L inverters provide higher efficiency and additionally advantages in electromagnetic compatibility due to the soft switching performance, especially when using the 'Super Soft Switching Three Level Inverter (SS3L Inverter)'.
Domain-specific modelling is increasingly adopted in the software development industry. While open source metamodels like Ecore have a wide impact, they still have some problems. The independent storage of nodes (classes) and edges (references) is currently only possible with complex, specific solutions. Furthermore the developed models are stored in the extensible markup language (XML) data format, which leads to problems with large models in terms of scaling. In this paper we describe an approach that solves the problem of independent classes and references in metamodels and we store the models in the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data format to support high scalability. First results of our tests show that the developed approach works and classes and references can be defined independently. In addition, our approach reduces the amount of characters per model by a factor of approximately two compared to Ecore. The entire project is made available as open source under the name MoDiGen. This paper focuses on the description of the metamodel definition in terms of scaling.
Why does a teacher use drama elements in her language classes? This article critically reflects on the author's experiences with employing drama elements in a compulsory class of German as a Foreign Language at college level. Motives for using drama are discussed, with regard to possible positive effects for the teacher-such as rapport with learners and personal confidence-and potential benefits for the language learners-such as promoting vocabulary and grammar learning, fostering oral skills and increasing motivation. After that the drama activities used in class are briefly described. However, two years of experimentation have also shown up a number of problems with implementing drama elements in class and still leave questions open, requiring further iterations of the drama-based approach in this context. The paper was developed from a talk given at the Drama in Education Days in Konstanz 2018.
Ingenieure auf die Bühne
(2018)
Steps to the stage
(2017)
Technology commercialization is described as the most dreadful challenge for technology-based entrepreneurs. The scarcity of resources and limited managerial experience make it a daunting task, putting in danger the whole firm emergence. Prior research has often build upon the resource-based view to propose that the new firms' performance is dependent on their initial resource endowments and configurations. Nevertheless, little is known on how the early-stage decisions of the entrepreneur might influence on the growth of the firm. Scholars have suggested that both technology and market orientation actions could influence the performance and growth of firms in this context; nevertheless, there is limited empirical evidence of the influence of these different orientations in the context of new technology-based firms (NTBFs). In this study we propose to explore the influence of technology and demand creation actions adopting a demand-side view. We use a longitudinal study on a panel dataset (2004-2007) with 249 U.S. new high-technology firms to test our hypothesis. The results point towards a rather limited influence of initial resource configurations, as well as an unexpected influence of market and technology orientation in the growth dimensions of an NTBF. The research holds implications for the management of new technology-based firms and for those interested in supporting the development of technology entrepreneurship.
For European space missions the importance of electric propulsion is strongly growing and has recently experienced a real burst in the telecom market. The initial drivers of this development were programs of the European Space Agency and projects of the European national space agencies. In addition, electric propulsion is now on the priority list of European commercial satellite manufacturers. Actual programs target orbit raising and station keeping with full electric propulsion for telecom satellites. European space industry, represented by individual companies, has developed specific and generic solutions for the electronics dedicated to powering and controlling electric propulsion systems. The European Space Agency and the European Commission providing support for enabling technology related to Power Processing Units (PPUs) and increasing competitiveness.
Three-dimensional ship localization with only one camera is a challenging task due to the loss of depth information caused by perspective projection. In this paper, we propose a method to measure distances based on the assumption that ships lie on a flat surface. This assumption allows to recover depth from a single image using the principle of inverse perspective. For the 3D ship detection task, we use a hybrid approach that combines image detection with a convolutional neural network, camera geometry and inverse perspective. Furthermore, a novel calculation of object height is introduced. Experiments show that the monocular distance computation works well in comparison to a Velodyne lidar. Due to its robustness, this could be an easy-to-use baseline method for detection tasks in navigation systems.
Motion estimation is an essential element for autonomous vessels. It is used e.g. for lidar motion compensation as well as mapping and detection tasks in a maritime environment. Because the use of gyroscopes is not reliable and a high performance inertial measurement unit is quite expensive, we present an approach for visual pitch and roll estimation that utilizes a convolutional neural network for water segmentation, a stereo system for reconstruction and simple geometry to estimate pitch and roll. The algorithm is validated on a novel, publicly available dataset recorded at Lake Constance. Our experiments show that the pitch and roll estimator provides accurate results in comparison to an Xsens IMU sensor. We can further improve the pitch and roll estimation by sensor fusion with a gyroscope. The algorithm is available in its implementation as a ROS node.
This paper studies suitable models for the identification of nonlinear acoustic systems. A cascaded structure of nonlinear filters is proposed that contains several parallel branches, consisting of polynomial functions followed by a linear filter for each order of nonlinearity. The second order of nonlinearity is additionally modelled with a parallel branch, containing a Volterra filter. These are followed by a long linear FIR filter that is able to model the room acoustics. The model is applied to the identification of a tube power amplifier feeding a guitar loudspeaker cabinet in an acoustic room. The adaptive identification is performed by the normalized least mean square (NLMS) algorithm. Compared with a generalized polynomial Hammerstein (GPH) model, the accuracy in modelling the dedicated real world system can be improved to a greater extend than increasing the order of nonlinearity in the GPH model.
Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) plays a crucial role in speech communication devices to enable full-duplex communication. AEC algorithms have been studied extensively in the literature. However, device specific details like microphone or loudspeaker configurations are often neglected, despite their impact on the echo attenuation or near-end speech quality. In this work, we propose a method to investigate different loudspeaker-microphone configurations with respect to their contribution to the overall AEC performance. A generic AEC system consisting of an adaptive filter and a Wiener post filter is used for a fair comparison between different setups. We propose the near-end-to-residual-echo ratio (NRER) and the attenuation-of-near-end (AON) as quality measures for the full-duplex AEC performance.
Fatigue and drowsiness are responsible for a significant percentage of road traffic accidents. There are several approaches to monitor the driver’s drowsiness, ranging from the driver’s steering behavior to analysis of the driver, e.g. eye tracking, blinking, yawning or electrocardiogram (ECG). This paper describes the development of a low-cost ECG sensor to derive heart rate variability (HRV) data for the drowsiness detection. The work includes the hardware and the software design. The hardware has been implemented on a printed circuit board (PCB) designed so that the board can be used as an extension shield for an Arduino. The PCB contains a double, inverted ECG channel including low-pass filtering and provides two analog outputs to the Arduino, that combined them and performs the analog-to-digital conversion. The digital ECG signal is transferred to an NVidia embedded PC where the processing takes place, including QRS-complex, heart rate and HRV detection as well as visualization features. The compact resulting sensor provides good results in the extraction of the main ECG parameters. The sensor is being used in a larger frame, where facial-recognition-based drowsiness detection is combined with ECG-based detection to improve the recognition rate under unfavorable light or occlusion conditions.
Was in Kommunen im benachbarten Ausland, bspw. der Schweiz, Österreich oder den Niederlanden offenbar seit vielen Jahren Stand der Technik ist, ist auf Deutschlands Kommunalstraßen eine „Sonderbauweise“: Betonfahrbahnen. Obwohl, gerade in den neuen Bundesländern diese Bauweise häufig zum Einsatz kam, wird sie heute auf größeren Flächen wie gesamte Straßenzüge, bspw. in Wohngebieten, kaum noch angewendet (Bild 1). Die Gründe liegen offenbar in den schlechten Erfahrungen hinsichtlich einer komfortablen Nutzungsdauer sowie der Notwendigkeit, einen „leichteren“ Zugriff auf die unter der Straßenoberfläche liegenden Ver- und Entsorgungseinrichtungen zu haben. Infolge vermehrt auftretender Schäden wie Spurrinnen, Verdrückungen und weiteren Schäden werden hochbelastete Verkehrsflächen wie Bushaltestellen, Busspuren und Kreisverkehre immer häufiger anstatt in Asphalt- oder Pflaster in Betonbauweise ausgeführt. Die Gründe für die Vernachlässigung der Betonbauweise im kommunalen Umfeld liegen neben einem geringen Erfahrungsschatz sicherlich auch in einer aufwändigeren Planung, höheren Ausführungskosten, einem komplexeren Einbau, gerade in Zusammenhang mit Einbauten, Instandhaltungsmaßnahmen und Maßnahmen Dritter an den Ver- und Entsorgungseinrichtungen. Offen ist auch der Nachweis, dass die Betonbauweise im Lebenszyklus wirtschaftlicher als beispielsweise die Asphaltbauweise ist. Die Thematik „Einsatz von Betonflächen in Kommunen“ ist sehr umfangreich und weitläufig und lässt sich mit einem Vortrag generell nicht behandeln. Mit nachfolgenden Ausführungen soll demnach grundsätzlich auf die Belange der Planung, dem Bau und der Wirtschaftlichkeit kommunaler Verkehrsflächen in Betonbauweise eingegangen werden. Es können leider nicht alle Besonderheiten und Einzelheiten wie Baustoffe (Glasfaser) Berücksichtigung finden. Ziel des Vortrages ist, generelle Möglichkeiten hinsichtlich dem Einsatz von Betonflächen im kommunalen Bereich aufzuzeigen. Besonderer Dank gilt dem Straßenbauamt Böblingen sowie Herrn Baudirektor Andreas Klein, dessen persönliche Erfahrungen hier einfließen durften.
Digital bedruckte Oberflächen müssen strengen funktionalen und ästhetischen Anforderungen genügen. Diese Eigenschaften werden im Rahmen der Qualitätsprüfung kontrolliert. Hierbei wirken sich Oberflächendefekte oftmals erst dann aus, wenn diese auch vom Menschen wahrgenommen werden. Aufgrund der hohen Produktionsgeschwindigkeit kann eine solche Bewertung der Sichtbarkeit von Defekten bisher nur außerhalb des Produktionsflusses durch manuelle - subjektiv geprägte - Inspektion erfolgen. Ziel des Projektes ist (1) die Modellierung von Texturen in einer Form, die an das menschliche visuelle System angepasst ist und (2) die automatisierte Beurteilung der Wahrnehmung von Texturfehlern. Im Rahmen des Projekts wurde ein prototypisches System zur Inline-Erfassung von texturierten Oberflächen entwickelt. Auf Basis von realen Aufnahmen industriell produzierter Holzdekore wurde eine repräsentative Texturdatenbank erstellt. Gezeigt werden erste Resultate im Bereich der Defektdetektion auf Basis von statistischen Merkmalen. Diese Ergebnisse dienen als Grundlage für die spätere wahrnehmungsorientierte Bewertung. Letztlich sollen die im Rahmen des Projekts erlangten Ergebnisse in einen prototypischen Aufbau zur Inspektion von digital bedruckten Dekoren einfließen.
Digital cameras are used in a large variety of scientific and industrial applications. For most applications the acquired data should represent the real light intensity per pixel as accurately as possible. However, digital cameras are subject to different sources of noise which distort the resulting image. Noise includes photon noise, fixed pattern noise and read noise. The aim of the radiometric calibration is to improve the quality of the resulting images by reducing the influence of the different types of noise on the measured data. In this paper, a new approach for the radiometric calibration of digital cameras using sparse Gaussian process regression is presented. Gaussian process regression is a kernel based supervised machine learning technique. It is used to learn the response of a camera system from a set of training images to allow for the calibration of new images. Compared to the standard Gaussian process method or flat field correction our sparse approach allows for faster calibration and higher reconstruction quality.
Optical surface inspection: A novelty detection approach based on CNN-encoded texture features
(2018)
In inspection systems for textured surfaces, a reference texture is typically known before novel examples are inspected. Mostly, the reference is only available in a digital format. As a consequence, there is no dataset of defective examples available that could be used to train a classifier. We propose a texture model approach to novelty detection. The texture model uses features encoded by a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on natural image data. The CNN activations represent the specific characteristics of the digital reference texture which are learned by a one-class classifier. We evaluate our novelty detector in a digital print inspection scenario. The inspection unit is based on a camera array and a flashing light illumination which allows for inline capturing of multichannel images at a high rate. In order to compare our results to manual inspection, we integrated our inspection unit into an industrial single-pass printing system.