An official website of the United States government
Rats rely heavily on tactile information from their whiskers to acquire information about their surroundings. A whisker has no sensors along its length. Instead, mechanical deformation of the whisker is sensed via receptors at its base. The present study introduces a micro-sensor developed specifically to imitate the sensing of biological rat whiskers. The sensor responds to bending moments resulting from touch and/or airflow in two axes. The sensor was designed based on analytical models from cantilever beam theory, and the models were validated with finite-element analysis. Sensors were then fabricated using micro-milled molds and integrated into an Arduino-based circuit for simple signal acquisition. The present work begins to develop the technology to allow investigation of important engineering aspects of the rat vibrissal system at 1x scale. In addition to its potential use in novel engineering applications, the sensor could aid neuroscientists in their understanding of the rat vibrissal-trigeminal pathway.
more »
« less
Simplified Sensing and In-situ Measuring Approach for Building Window Properties
Windows and glazing systems play an important role in making an energy-efficient home. A portable easy-to-use in-situ measuring system of the window properties using low-cost Arduino platforms and compatible sensors is developed, 3D-printed, and then fabricated in this project and used to measure the parameters including U-factor, Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC), and Visible Light Transmittance (VT). Comparing resultant output from the developed Arduino sensing and measurements to professional in-situ instruments, we demonstrate that this simple and compact Arduino-based instrument can obtain major window properties with reasonable accuracy. This simple but scalable sensing and measuring approach and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) fabrication workflow could be performed by creative people and even homeowners without needing complex training and building physics knowledge.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1635089
- PAR ID:
- 10093239
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLEA 2018
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract: Aim In this study, we present the results of a project which used Landsat Collection 2 Surface Reflectance data and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) data to develop a machine learning model to estimate Secchi depth in Lake Yojoa, Honduras. Methods Satellite remote sensing data obtained within a 7-day window of an in situ measurement were matched with in situ Secchi depth measurements and were partitioned into train-test-validate data sets for model development. Results The machine learning model had good (R2= 0.57) agreement and reasonable uncertainty (MAE = 0.58 m) between remotely estimated and in situ observed Secchi depth. Application of the machine learning model increased the monitoring record of Lake Yojoa from 6 years of measured data to a 23-year record. Conclusions This model demonstrates the utility of coordinating in situ sampling schedules of short-term research projects with satellite imagery acquisition schedules in order to increase the temporal coverage of remote sensing derived estimates of water quality in understudied lakes.more » « less
-
Today’s STEM classrooms have expanded the domain of computer science education from a basic two-toned terminal screen to now include helpful Integrated Development Environments(IDE) (BlueJ, Eclipse), block-based programming (MIT Scratch, Greenfoot), and even physical computing with embedded systems (Arduino, LEGO Mindstorm). But no matter which environment a student starts programming in, all students will eventually need help in finding and fixing bugs in their code. While the helpful IDE’s have debugger tools built in (breakpoints for pausing your program, ways to view/modify variable values, and "stepping" through code execution), in many of the other programming environments, students are limited to using print statements to try and "see" what is happening inside their program. Most students who learn to write code for Arduino microcontrollers will start within the Arduino IDE, but the official Arduino IDE does not currently provide any debugging tools. Instead, a student would have to move on to a professional IDE such as Atmel Studio or acquire a hardware debugger in order to add breakpoints or view their program’s variables. But each of these options has a steep learning curve, additional costs, and can require complex configurations. Based on research of student debugging practices[3, 7] and our own classroom observations, we have developed an Arduino software library, called Arduino Debugger, which provides some of these debugging tools (ex. breakpoints) while staying within the official Arduino IDE. This work continues a previous library, (redacted), which focused on features specific to e-textiles development boards. The Arduino Debugger library has been modified to support not only e-textile boards (Lilypad, Adafruit Circuit Playground) but most AVR and ARM based Arduino boards.We are also in the process of testing a set of Debugging Code Templates to see how they might increase student adoption of debugging tools.more » « less
-
Rahman, M. M.; Jaksa, M. (Ed.)Measuring the parameters that control the deformability and strength of soils through either laboratory experiments or in situ testing is critical for numerous applications in geotechnical engineering. While image- and wave-based techniques are increasingly prevalent, there is a perpetual need for techniques capable of sensing local, nonlinear properties, for which mechanical testing is the only viable option. Existing methods for inferring mechanical properties have evolved largely by trial and error, and there is no general, systematic approach for evaluating one possible approach against another. As a first step toward addressing these challenges, this paper describes a quantitative metric that can discriminate between different types of mechanical tests with respect to how well they are able to recover the true mechanical properties of the material. The metric is devised by (1) creating a min-max optimization of parameter sensitivities, considering the local and global topological properties of the forward model, and (2) evaluating the metric for fundamental material tests.more » « less
-
Abstract. A tethered-balloon system (TBS) has been developed and is beingoperated by Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) on behalf of the U.S.Department of Energy's (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) UserFacility in order to collect in situ atmospheric measurements withinmixed-phase Arctic clouds. Periodic tethered-balloon flights have beenconducted since 2015 within restricted airspace at ARM's Advanced MobileFacility 3 (AMF3) in Oliktok Point, Alaska, as part of the AALCO (AerialAssessment of Liquid in Clouds at Oliktok), ERASMUS (Evaluation of RoutineAtmospheric Sounding Measurements using Unmanned Systems), and POPEYE(Profiling at Oliktok Point to Enhance YOPP Experiments) field campaigns. Thetethered-balloon system uses helium-filled 34 m3 helikites and 79 and104 m3 aerostats to suspend instrumentation that is used to measureaerosol particle size distributions, temperature, horizontal wind, pressure,relative humidity, turbulence, and cloud particle properties and tocalibrate ground-based remote sensing instruments. Supercooled liquid water content (SLWC) sondes using the vibrating-wireprinciple, developed by Anasphere Inc., were operated at Oliktok Point atmultiple altitudes on the TBS within mixed-phase clouds for over 200 h.Sonde-collected SLWC data were compared with liquid water content derivedfrom a microwave radiometer, Ka-band ARM zenith radar, and ceilometer at the AMF3, as well as liquid water content derived from AMF3 radiosonde flights. The in situ data collected by the Anasphere sensors were also compared with data collected simultaneously by an alternative SLWC sensor developed at the University of Reading, UK; both vibrating-wire instruments were typically observed to shed their ice quickly upon exiting the cloud or reaching maximum ice loading. Temperature sensing measurements distributed with fiber optic tethered balloons were also compared with AMF3 radiosonde temperature measurements. Combined, the results indicate that TBS-distributedtemperature sensing and supercooled liquid water measurements are inreasonably good agreement with remote sensing and radiosonde-basedmeasurements of both properties. From these measurements and sensorevaluations, tethered-balloon flights are shown to offer an effective methodof collecting data to inform and constrain numerical models, calibrate andvalidate remote sensing instruments, and characterize the flight environmentof unmanned aircraft, circumventing the difficulties of in-cloud unmanned aircraft flights such as limited flight time and in-flight icing.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
