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Sensors, Volume 23, Issue 6 (March-2 2023) – 490 articles

Cover Story (view full-size image): Haptic perception is an essential component of the sensory information available to surgeons, but the direct tactile assessment of textures is impeded in minimally invasive surgery. However, surgical instruments provide limited and distorted haptic information that requires the surgeon’s interpretation. It is possible to acquire and analyse parts of this information using a vibration-sensing setup attached to the instrument. The presented study investigates this approach based on the vibro-acoustic signals acquired during robot-assisted palpation of different materials. A continuous wavelet transformation-based processing strategy shows that material-specific signatures in the time–frequency domain can be used to classify the materials. View this paper
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21 pages, 2586 KiB  
Article
Enhancing Microservices Security with Token-Based Access Control Method
by Algimantas Venčkauskas, Donatas Kukta, Šarūnas Grigaliūnas and Rasa Brūzgienė
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3363; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063363 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4024
Abstract
Microservices are compact, independent services that work together with other microservices to support a single application function. Organizations may quickly deliver high-quality applications using the effective design pattern of the application function. Microservices allow for the alteration of one service in an application [...] Read more.
Microservices are compact, independent services that work together with other microservices to support a single application function. Organizations may quickly deliver high-quality applications using the effective design pattern of the application function. Microservices allow for the alteration of one service in an application without affecting the other services. Containers and serverless functions, two cloud-native technologies, are frequently used to create microservices applications. A distributed, multi-component program has a number of advantages, but it also introduces new security risks that are not present in more conventional monolithic applications. The objective is to propose a method for access control that ensures the enhanced security of microservices. The proposed method was experimentally tested and validated in comparison to the centralized and decentralized architectures of the microservices. The obtained results showed that the proposed method enhanced the security of decentralized microservices by distributing the access control responsibility across multiple microservices within the external authentication and internal authorization processes. This allows for easy management of permissions between microservices and can help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data and resources, as well as reduce the risk of attacks on microservices. Full article
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17 pages, 8965 KiB  
Article
Timepix3: Compensation of Thermal Distortion of Energy Measurement
by Martin Urban, Ondrej Nentvich, Lukas Marek, David Hladik, Rene Hudec and Ladislav Sieger
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3362; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063362 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1330
Abstract
The Timepix3 is a hybrid pixellated radiation detector consisting of a 256 px × 256 px radiation-sensitive matrix. Research has shown that it is susceptible to energy spectrum distortion due to temperature variations. This can lead to a relative measurement error of up [...] Read more.
The Timepix3 is a hybrid pixellated radiation detector consisting of a 256 px × 256 px radiation-sensitive matrix. Research has shown that it is susceptible to energy spectrum distortion due to temperature variations. This can lead to a relative measurement error of up to 35% in the tested temperature range of 10 °C to 70 °C. To overcome this issue, this study proposes a complex compensation method to reduce the error to less than 1%. The compensation method was tested with different radiation sources, focusing on energy peaks up to 100 keV. The results of the study showed that a general model for temperature distortion compensation could be established, where the error in the X-ray fluorescence spectrum of Lead (74.97 keV) was reduced from 22% to less than 2% for 60 °C after the correction was applied. The validity of the model was also verified at temperatures below 0 °C, where the relative measurement error for the Tin peak (25.27 keV) was reduced from 11.4% to 2.1% at 40 °C. The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed compensation method and models in significantly improving the accuracy of energy measurements. This has implications for various fields of research and industry that require accurate radiation energy measurements and cannot afford to use power for cooling or temperature stabilisation of the detector. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensing for Space Applications (Volume II))
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33 pages, 16682 KiB  
Article
A Two-Stage Automatic Color Thresholding Technique
by Shamna Pootheri, Daniel Ellam, Thomas Grübl and Yang Liu
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3361; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063361 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 2687
Abstract
Thresholding is a prerequisite for many computer vision algorithms. By suppressing the background in an image, one can remove unnecessary information and shift one’s focus to the object of inspection. We propose a two-stage histogram-based background suppression technique based on the chromaticity of [...] Read more.
Thresholding is a prerequisite for many computer vision algorithms. By suppressing the background in an image, one can remove unnecessary information and shift one’s focus to the object of inspection. We propose a two-stage histogram-based background suppression technique based on the chromaticity of the image pixels. The method is unsupervised, fully automated, and does not need any training or ground-truth data. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated using a printed circuit assembly (PCA) board dataset and the University of Waterloo skin cancer dataset. Accurately performing background suppression in PCA boards facilitates the inspection of digital images with small objects of interest, such as text or microcontrollers on a PCA board. The segmentation of skin cancer lesions will help doctors to automate skin cancer detection. The results showed a clear and robust background–foreground separation across various sample images under different camera or lighting conditions, which the naked implementation of existing state-of-the-art thresholding methods could not achieve. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Machine Learning in Robust Object Detection and Tracking)
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17 pages, 43226 KiB  
Article
Fabrication of Ultra-Sharp Tips by Dynamic Chemical Etching Process for Scanning Near-Field Microwave Microscopy
by C. H. Joseph, Giovanni Capoccia, Andrea Lucibello, Emanuela Proietti, Giovanni Maria Sardi, Giancarlo Bartolucci and Romolo Marcelli
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3360; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063360 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1296
Abstract
This work details an effective dynamic chemical etching technique to fabricate ultra-sharp tips for Scanning Near-Field Microwave Microscopy (SNMM). The protruded cylindrical part of the inner conductor in a commercial SMA (Sub Miniature A) coaxial connector is tapered by a dynamic chemical etching [...] Read more.
This work details an effective dynamic chemical etching technique to fabricate ultra-sharp tips for Scanning Near-Field Microwave Microscopy (SNMM). The protruded cylindrical part of the inner conductor in a commercial SMA (Sub Miniature A) coaxial connector is tapered by a dynamic chemical etching process using ferric chloride. The technique is optimized to fabricate ultra-sharp probe tips with controllable shapes and tapered down to have a radius of tip apex around ∼1 μm. The detailed optimization facilitated the fabrication of reproducible high-quality probes suitable for non-contact SNMM operation. A simple analytical model is also presented to better describe the dynamics of the tip formation. The near-field characteristics of the tips are evaluated by finite element method (FEM) based electromagnetic simulations and the performance of the probes has been validated experimentally by means of imaging a metal-dielectric sample using the in-house scanning near-field microwave microscopy system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microwave Techniques for Spectroscopy and Imaging Applications)
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18 pages, 3686 KiB  
Article
Photoplethysmography Driven Hypertension Identification: A Pilot Study
by Liangwen Yan, Mingsen Wei, Sijung Hu and Bo Sheng
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3359; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063359 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1274
Abstract
To prevent and diagnose hypertension early, there has been a growing demand to identify its states that align with patients. This pilot study aims to research how a non-invasive method using photoplethysmographic (PPG) signals works together with deep learning algorithms. A portable PPG [...] Read more.
To prevent and diagnose hypertension early, there has been a growing demand to identify its states that align with patients. This pilot study aims to research how a non-invasive method using photoplethysmographic (PPG) signals works together with deep learning algorithms. A portable PPG acquisition device (Max30101 photonic sensor) was utilized to (1) capture PPG signals and (2) wirelessly transmit data sets. In contrast to traditional feature engineering machine learning classification schemes, this study preprocessed raw data and applied a deep learning algorithm (LSTM-Attention) directly to extract deeper correlations between these raw datasets. The Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model underlying a gate mechanism and memory unit enables it to handle long sequence data more effectively, avoiding gradient disappearance and possessing the ability to solve long-term dependencies. To enhance the correlation between distant sampling points, an attention mechanism was introduced to capture more data change features than a separate LSTM model. A protocol with 15 healthy volunteers and 15 hypertension patients was implemented to obtain these datasets. The processed result demonstrates that the proposed model could present satisfactory performance (accuracy: 0.991; precision: 0.989; recall: 0.993; F1-score: 0.991). The model we proposed also demonstrated superior performance compared to related studies. The outcome indicates the proposed method could effectively diagnose and identify hypertension; thus, a paradigm to cost-effectively screen hypertension could rapidly be established using wearable smart devices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Topic Machine Learning and Biomedical Sensors)
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22 pages, 8315 KiB  
Article
Real-Time Fire Smoke Detection Method Combining a Self-Attention Mechanism and Radial Multi-Scale Feature Connection
by Chuan Jin, Anqi Zheng, Zhaoying Wu and Changqing Tong
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3358; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063358 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1951
Abstract
Fire remains a pressing issue that requires urgent attention. Due to its uncontrollable and unpredictable nature, it can easily trigger chain reactions and increase the difficulty of extinguishing, posing a significant threat to people’s lives and property. The effectiveness of traditional photoelectric- or [...] Read more.
Fire remains a pressing issue that requires urgent attention. Due to its uncontrollable and unpredictable nature, it can easily trigger chain reactions and increase the difficulty of extinguishing, posing a significant threat to people’s lives and property. The effectiveness of traditional photoelectric- or ionization-based detectors is inhibited when detecting fire smoke due to the variable shape, characteristics, and scale of the detected objects and the small size of the fire source in the early stages. Additionally, the uneven distribution of fire and smoke and the complexity and variety of the surroundings in which they occur contribute to inconspicuous pixel-level-based feature information, making identification difficult. We propose a real-time fire smoke detection algorithm based on multi-scale feature information and an attention mechanism. Firstly, the feature information layers extracted from the network are fused into a radial connection to enhance the semantic and location information of the features. Secondly, to address the challenge of recognizing harsh fire sources, we designed a permutation self-attention mechanism to concentrate on features in channel and spatial directions to gather contextual information as accurately as possible. Thirdly, we constructed a new feature extraction module to increase the detection efficiency of the network while retaining feature information. Finally, we propose a cross-grid sample matching approach and a weighted decay loss function to handle the issue of imbalanced samples. Our model achieves the best detection results compared to standard detection methods using a handcrafted fire smoke detection dataset, with APval reaching 62.5%, APSval reaching 58.5%, and FPS reaching 113.6. Full article
(This article belongs to the Topic Applications in Image Analysis and Pattern Recognition)
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17 pages, 6127 KiB  
Article
Fast Distributed Model Predictive Control Method for Active Suspension Systems
by Niaona Zhang, Sheng Yang, Guangyi Wu, Haitao Ding, Zhe Zhang and Konghui Guo
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3357; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063357 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1441
Abstract
In order to balance the performance index and computational efficiency of the active suspension control system, this paper offers a fast distributed model predictive control (DMPC) method based on multi-agents for the active suspension system. Firstly, a seven-degrees-of-freedom model of the vehicle is [...] Read more.
In order to balance the performance index and computational efficiency of the active suspension control system, this paper offers a fast distributed model predictive control (DMPC) method based on multi-agents for the active suspension system. Firstly, a seven-degrees-of-freedom model of the vehicle is created. This study establishes a reduced-dimension vehicle model based on graph theory in accordance with its network topology and mutual coupling constraints. Then, for engineering applications, a multi-agent-based distributed model predictive control method of an active suspension system is presented. The partial differential equation of rolling optimization is solved by a radical basis function (RBF) neural network. It improves the computational efficiency of the algorithm on the premise of satisfying multi-objective optimization. Finally, the joint simulation of CarSim and Matlab/Simulink shows that the control system can greatly minimize the vertical acceleration, pitch acceleration, and roll acceleration of the vehicle body. In particular, under the steering condition, it can take into account the safety, comfort, and handling stability of the vehicle at the same time. Full article
(This article belongs to the Topic Vehicle Dynamics and Control)
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27 pages, 739 KiB  
Article
Direction of Arrival Method for L-Shaped Array with RF Switch: An Embedded Implementation Perspective
by Tiago Troccoli, Juho Pirskanen, Jari Nurmi, Aleksandr Ometov, Jorge Morte, Elena Simona Lohan and Ville Kaseva
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3356; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063356 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1961
Abstract
This paper addresses the challenge of implementing Direction of Arrival (DOA) methods for indoor localization using Internet of Things (IoT) devices, particularly with the recent direction-finding capability of Bluetooth. DOA methods are complex numerical methods that require significant computational resources and can quickly [...] Read more.
This paper addresses the challenge of implementing Direction of Arrival (DOA) methods for indoor localization using Internet of Things (IoT) devices, particularly with the recent direction-finding capability of Bluetooth. DOA methods are complex numerical methods that require significant computational resources and can quickly deplete the batteries of small embedded systems typically found in IoT networks. To address this challenge, the paper presents a novel Unitary R-D Root MUSIC for L-shaped arrays that is tailor-made for such devices utilizing a switching protocol defined by Bluetooth. The solution exploits the radio communication system design to speed up execution, and its root-finding method circumvents complex arithmetic despite being used for complex polynomials. The paper carries out experiments on energy consumption, memory footprint, accuracy, and execution time in a commercial constrained embedded IoT device series without operating systems and software layers to prove the viability of the implemented solution. The results demonstrate that the solution achieves good accuracy and attains an execution time of a few milliseconds, making it a viable solution for DOA implementation in IoT devices. Full article
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21 pages, 9140 KiB  
Article
Recognition of Occluded Goods under Prior Inference Based on Generative Adversarial Network
by Mingxuan Cao, Kai Xie, Feng Liu, Bohao Li, Chang Wen, Jianbiao He and Wei Zhang
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3355; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063355 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1031
Abstract
Aiming at the recognition of intelligent retail dynamic visual container goods, two problems that lead to low recognition accuracy must be addressed; one is the lack of goods features caused by the occlusion of the hand, and the other is the high similarity [...] Read more.
Aiming at the recognition of intelligent retail dynamic visual container goods, two problems that lead to low recognition accuracy must be addressed; one is the lack of goods features caused by the occlusion of the hand, and the other is the high similarity of goods. Therefore, this study proposes an approach for occluding goods recognition based on a generative adversarial network combined with prior inference to address the two abovementioned problems. With DarkNet53 as the backbone network, semantic segmentation is used to locate the occluded part in the feature extraction network, and simultaneously, the YOLOX decoupling head is used to obtain the detection frame. Subsequently, a generative adversarial network under prior inference is used to restore and expand the features of the occluded parts, and a multi-scale spatial attention and effective channel attention weighted attention mechanism module is proposed to select fine-grained features of goods. Finally, a metric learning method based on von Mises–Fisher distribution is proposed to increase the class spacing of features to achieve the effect of feature distinction, whilst the distinguished features are utilized to recognize goods at a fine-grained level. The experimental data used in this study were all obtained from the self-made smart retail container dataset, which contains a total of 12 types of goods used for recognition and includes four couples of similar goods. Experimental results reveal that the peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity under improved prior inference are 0.7743 and 0.0183 higher than those of the other models, respectively. Compared with other optimal models, mAP improves the recognition accuracy by 1.2% and the recognition accuracy by 2.82%. This study solves two problems: one is the occlusion caused by hands, and the other is the high similarity of goods, thus meeting the requirements of commodity recognition accuracy in the field of intelligent retail and exhibiting good application prospects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Based on Deep Learning)
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16 pages, 3093 KiB  
Article
Using a Hybrid Neural Network and a Regularized Extreme Learning Machine for Human Activity Recognition with Smartphone and Smartwatch
by Tan-Hsu Tan, Jyun-Yu Shih, Shing-Hong Liu, Mohammad Alkhaleefah, Yang-Lang Chang and Munkhjargal Gochoo
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3354; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063354 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1560
Abstract
Mobile health (mHealth) utilizes mobile devices, mobile communication techniques, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve not only traditional telemedicine and monitoring and alerting systems, but also fitness and medical information awareness in daily life. In the last decade, human activity recognition [...] Read more.
Mobile health (mHealth) utilizes mobile devices, mobile communication techniques, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve not only traditional telemedicine and monitoring and alerting systems, but also fitness and medical information awareness in daily life. In the last decade, human activity recognition (HAR) has been extensively studied because of the strong correlation between people’s activities and their physical and mental health. HAR can also be used to care for elderly people in their daily lives. This study proposes an HAR system for classifying 18 types of physical activity using data from sensors embedded in smartphones and smartwatches. The recognition process consists of two parts: feature extraction and HAR. To extract features, a hybrid structure consisting of a convolutional neural network (CNN) and a bidirectional gated recurrent unit GRU (BiGRU) was used. For activity recognition, a single-hidden-layer feedforward neural network (SLFN) with a regularized extreme machine learning (RELM) algorithm was used. The experimental results show an average precision of 98.3%, recall of 98.4%, an F1-score of 98.4%, and accuracy of 98.3%, which results are superior to those of existing schemes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Developments in Wireless Network Technology)
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18 pages, 3725 KiB  
Article
A Scheduling Method of Using Multiple SAR Satellites to Observe a Large Area
by Qicun Zheng, Haixia Yue, Dacheng Liu and Xiaoxue Jia
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3353; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063353 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1248
Abstract
This paper presents a scheduling problem of using multiple synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites to observe a large irregular area (SMA). SMA is usually considered as a kind of nonlinear combinatorial optimized problem and its solution space strongly coupled with geometry grows exponentially [...] Read more.
This paper presents a scheduling problem of using multiple synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites to observe a large irregular area (SMA). SMA is usually considered as a kind of nonlinear combinatorial optimized problem and its solution space strongly coupled with geometry grows exponentially with the increasing magnitude of SMA. It is assumed that each solution of SMA yields a profit associated with the acquired portion of the target area, and the objective of this paper is to find the optimal solution yielding the maximal profit. The SMA is solved by means of a new method composed of three successive phases, namely, grid space construction, candidate strip generation and strip selection. First, the grid space construction is proposed to discretize the irregular area into a set of points in a specific plane rectangular coordinate system and calculate the total profit of a solution of SMA. Then, the candidate strip generation is designed to produce numerous candidate strips based on the grid space of the first phase. At last, in the strip selection, the optimal schedule for all the SAR satellites is developed based on the result of the candidate strip generation. In addition, this paper proposes a normalized grid space construction algorithm, a candidate strip generation algorithm and a tabu search algorithm with variable neighborhoods for the three successive phases, respectively. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in this paper, we perform simulation experiments on several scenarios and compare our method with the other seven methods. Compared to the best of the other seven methods, our proposed method can improve profit by 6.38% using the same resources. Full article
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9 pages, 2637 KiB  
Article
Direct Ink-Write Printing of Ceramic Clay with an Embedded Wireless Temperature and Relative Humidity Sensor
by Cory Marquez, Jesus J. Mata, Anabel Renteria, Diego Gonzalez, Sofia Gabriela Gomez, Alexis Lopez, Annette N. Baca, Alan Nuñez, Md Sahid Hassan, Vincent Burke, Dina Perlasca, Yifeng Wang, Yongliang Xiong, Jessica N. Kruichak, David Espalin and Yirong Lin
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3352; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063352 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1352
Abstract
This research presents a simple method to additively manufacture Cone 5 porcelain clay ceramics by using the direct ink-write (DIW) printing technique. DIW has allowed the application of extruding highly viscous ceramic materials with relatively high-quality and good mechanical properties, which additionally allows [...] Read more.
This research presents a simple method to additively manufacture Cone 5 porcelain clay ceramics by using the direct ink-write (DIW) printing technique. DIW has allowed the application of extruding highly viscous ceramic materials with relatively high-quality and good mechanical properties, which additionally allows a freedom of design and the capability of manufacturing complex geometrical shapes. Clay particles were mixed with deionized (DI) water at different ratios, where the most suitable composition for 3D printing was observed at a 1:5 w/c ratio (16.2 wt.%. of DI water). Differential geometrical designs were printed to demonstrate the printing capabilities of the paste. In addition, a clay structure was fabricated with an embedded wireless temperature and relative humidity (RH) sensor during the 3D printing process. The embedded sensor read up to 65% RH and temperatures of up to 85 °F from a maximum distance of 141.7 m. The structural integrity of the selected 3D printed geometries was confirmed through the compressive strength of fired and non-fired clay samples, with strengths of 70 MPa and 90 MPa, respectively. This research demonstrates the feasibility of using the DIW printing of porcelain clay with embedded sensors, with fully functional temperature- and humidity-sensing capabilities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Functional Materials for Sensor Applications)
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13 pages, 40819 KiB  
Article
Elastic Textile Wristband for Bioimpedance Measurements
by Giuseppina Monti, Federica Raheli, Andrea Recupero and Luciano Tarricone
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3351; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063351 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1190
Abstract
In this paper, wristband electrodes for hand-to-hand bioimpedance measurements are investigated. The proposed electrodes consist of a stretchable conductive knitted fabric. Different implementations have been developed and compared with Ag/AgCl commercial electrodes. Hand-to-hand measurements at 50 kHz on forty healthy subjects have been [...] Read more.
In this paper, wristband electrodes for hand-to-hand bioimpedance measurements are investigated. The proposed electrodes consist of a stretchable conductive knitted fabric. Different implementations have been developed and compared with Ag/AgCl commercial electrodes. Hand-to-hand measurements at 50 kHz on forty healthy subjects have been carried out and the Passing–Bablok regression method has been exploited to compare the proposed textile electrodes with commercial ones. It is demonstrated that the proposed designs guarantee reliable measurements and easy and comfortable use, thus representing an excellent solution for the development of a wearable bioimpedance measurement system. Full article
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22 pages, 704 KiB  
Review
Wearable and Portable Devices for Acquisition of Cardiac Signals while Practicing Sport: A Scoping Review
by Sofia Romagnoli, Francesca Ripanti, Micaela Morettini, Laura Burattini and Agnese Sbrollini
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3350; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063350 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2785
Abstract
Wearable and portable devices capable of acquiring cardiac signals are at the frontier of the sport industry. They are becoming increasingly popular for monitoring physiological parameters while practicing sport, given the advances in miniaturized technologies, powerful data, and signal processing applications. Data and [...] Read more.
Wearable and portable devices capable of acquiring cardiac signals are at the frontier of the sport industry. They are becoming increasingly popular for monitoring physiological parameters while practicing sport, given the advances in miniaturized technologies, powerful data, and signal processing applications. Data and signals acquired by these devices are increasingly used to monitor athletes’ performances and thus to define risk indices for sport-related cardiac diseases, such as sudden cardiac death. This scoping review investigated commercial wearable and portable devices employed for cardiac signal monitoring during sport activity. A systematic search of the literature was conducted on PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. After study selection, a total of 35 studies were included in the review. The studies were categorized based on the application of wearable or portable devices in (1) validation studies, (2) clinical studies, and (3) development studies. The analysis revealed that standardized protocols for validating these technologies are necessary. Indeed, results obtained from the validation studies turned out to be heterogeneous and scarcely comparable, since the metrological characteristics reported were different. Moreover, the validation of several devices was carried out during different sport activities. Finally, results from clinical studies highlighted that wearable devices are crucial to improve athletes’ performance and to prevent adverse cardiovascular events. Full article
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16 pages, 99728 KiB  
Article
A Cost-Effective Lightning Current Measuring Instrument with Wide Current Range Detection Using Dual Signal Conditioning Circuits
by Youngjun Lee and Young Sam Lee
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3349; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063349 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1576
Abstract
Lightning strikes can cause significant damage to critical infrastructure and pose a serious threat to public safety. To ensure the safety of facilities and investigate the causes of lightning accidents, we propose a cost-effective design method for a lightning current measuring instrument that [...] Read more.
Lightning strikes can cause significant damage to critical infrastructure and pose a serious threat to public safety. To ensure the safety of facilities and investigate the causes of lightning accidents, we propose a cost-effective design method for a lightning current measuring instrument that uses a Rogowski coil and dual signal conditioning circuits to detect a wide range of lightning currents, ranging from hundreds of A to hundreds of kA. To implement the proposed lightning current measuring instrument, we design signal conditioning circuits and software capable of detecting and analyzing lightning currents from ±500 A to ±100 kA. By employing dual signal conditioning circuits, it offers the advantage of detecting a wide range of lightning currents compared to existing lightning current measuring instruments. The proposed instrument has the following features: First, the peak current, polarity, T1 (front time), T2 (time to half value), and Q (amount of energy of the lightning current) can be analyzed and measured with a fast sampling time of 380 ns. Second, it can distinguish whether a lightning current is induced or direct. Third, a built-in SD card is provided to save the detected lightning data. Finally, it provides Ethernet communication capability for remote monitoring. The performance of the proposed instrument is evaluated and validated by applying induced and direct lightning using a lightning current generator. Full article
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16 pages, 13582 KiB  
Article
Non-Destructive Inspection of High Temperature Piping Combining Ultrasound and Eddy Current Testing
by David Santos, Miguel A. Machado, João Monteiro, José P. Sousa, Carla S. Proença, Fernando S. Crivellaro, Luís S. Rosado and Telmo G. Santos
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3348; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063348 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2327
Abstract
This paper presents an automated Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) system for the in-service inspection of orbital welds on tubular components operating at temperatures as high as 200 °C. The combination of two different NDT methods and respective inspection systems is here proposed to cover [...] Read more.
This paper presents an automated Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) system for the in-service inspection of orbital welds on tubular components operating at temperatures as high as 200 °C. The combination of two different NDT methods and respective inspection systems is here proposed to cover the detection of all potential defective weld conditions. The proposed NDT system combines ultrasounds and Eddy current techniques with dedicated approaches for dealing with high temperature conditions. Phased array ultrasound was employed, searching for volumetric defects within the weld bead volume while Eddy currents were used to look for surface and sub-surface cracks. The results from the phased array ultrasound results showed the effectiveness of the cooling mechanisms and that temperature effects on sound attenuation can be easily compensated for up to 200 °C. The Eddy current results showed almost no influence when temperatures were raised up to 300 °C. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Sensing and Evaluating Technology in Nondestructive Testing)
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12 pages, 704 KiB  
Article
Wearable Activity Trackers Objectively Measure Incidental Physical Activity in Older Adults Undergoing Aortic Valve Replacement
by Nicola Straiton, Matthew Hollings, Janice Gullick and Robyn Gallagher
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3347; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063347 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1448
Abstract
Background: For older adults with severe aortic stenosis (AS) undergoing aortic valve replacement (AVR), recovery of physical function is important, yet few studies objectively measure it in real-world environments. This exploratory study explored the acceptability and feasibility of using wearable trackers to measure [...] Read more.
Background: For older adults with severe aortic stenosis (AS) undergoing aortic valve replacement (AVR), recovery of physical function is important, yet few studies objectively measure it in real-world environments. This exploratory study explored the acceptability and feasibility of using wearable trackers to measure incidental physical activity (PA) in AS patients before and after AVR. Methods: Fifteen adults with severe AS wore an activity tracker at baseline, and ten at one month follow-up. Functional capacity (six-minute walk test, 6MWT) and HRQoL (SF 12) were also assessed. Results: At baseline, AS participants (n = 15, 53.3% female, mean age 82.3 ± 7.0 years) wore the tracker for four consecutive days more than 85% of the total prescribed time, this improved at follow-up. Before AVR, participants demonstrated a wide range of incidental PA (step count median 3437 per day), and functional capacity (6MWT median 272 m). Post-AVR, participants with the lowest incidental PA, functional capacity, and HRQoL at baseline had the greatest improvements within each measure; however, improvements in one measure did not translate to improvements in another. Conclusion: The majority of older AS participants wore the activity trackers for the required time period before and after AVR, and the data attained were useful for understanding AS patients’ physical function. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wearable and Unobtrusive Technologies for Healthcare Monitoring)
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11 pages, 2723 KiB  
Article
Binding of SARS-CoV-2 Structural Proteins to Hemoglobin and Myoglobin Studied by SPR and DR LPG
by Georgi Dyankov, Petia Genova-Kalou, Tinko Eftimov, Sanaz Shoar Ghaffari, Vihar Mankov, Hristo Kisov, Petar Veselinov, Evdokia Hikova and Nikola Malinowski
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3346; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063346 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2672
Abstract
One of the first clinical observations related to COVID-19 identified hematological dysfunctions. These were explained by theoretical modeling, which predicted that motifs from SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins could bind to porphyrin. At present, there is very little experimental data that could provide reliable information [...] Read more.
One of the first clinical observations related to COVID-19 identified hematological dysfunctions. These were explained by theoretical modeling, which predicted that motifs from SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins could bind to porphyrin. At present, there is very little experimental data that could provide reliable information about possible interactions. The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) method and double resonance long period grating (DR LPG) were used to identify the binding of S/N protein and the receptor bind domain (RBD) to hemoglobin (Hb) and myoglobin (Mb). SPR transducers were functionalized with Hb and Mb, while LPG transducers, were only with Hb. Ligands were deposited by the matrix-assisted laser evaporation (MAPLE) method, which guarantees maximum interaction specificity. The experiments carried out showed S/N protein binding to Hb and Mb and RBD binding to Hb. Apart from that, they demonstrated that chemically-inactivated virus-like particles (VLPs) interact with Hb. The binding activity of S/N- and RBD proteins was assessed. It was found that protein binding fully inhibited heme functionality. The registered N protein binding to Hb/Mb is the first experimental fact that supports theoretical predictions. This fact suggests another function of this protein, not only binding RNA. The lower RBD binding activity reveals that other functional groups of S protein participate in the interaction. The high-affinity binding of these proteins to Hb provides an excellent opportunity for assessing the effectiveness of inhibitors targeting S/N proteins. Full article
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15 pages, 3547 KiB  
Article
Time-Series Representation Learning in Topology Prediction for Passive Optical Network of Telecom Operators
by Haoran Zhao, Yuchen Fang, Yuxiang Zhao, Zheng Tian, Weinan Zhang, Xidong Feng, Li Yu, Wei Li, Hulei Fan and Tiema Mu
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3345; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063345 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1076
Abstract
The passive optical network (PON) is widely used in optical fiber communication thanks to its low cost and low resource consumption. However, the passiveness brings about a critical problem that it requires manual work to identify the topology structure, which is costly and [...] Read more.
The passive optical network (PON) is widely used in optical fiber communication thanks to its low cost and low resource consumption. However, the passiveness brings about a critical problem that it requires manual work to identify the topology structure, which is costly and prone to bringing noise to the topology logs. In this paper, we provide a base solution firstly introducing neural networks for such problems, and based on that solution we propose a complete methodology (PT-Predictor) for predicting PON topology through representation learning on its optical power data. Specifically, we design useful model ensembles (GCE-Scorer) to extract the features of optical power with noise-tolerant training techniques integrated. We further implement a data-based aggregation algorithm (MaxMeanVoter) and a novel Transformer-based voter (TransVoter) to predict the topology. Compared with previous model-free methods, PT-Predictor is able to improve prediction accuracy by 23.1% in scenarios where data provided by telecom operators is sufficient, and by 14.8% in scenarios where data is temporarily insufficient. Besides, we identify a class of scenarios where PON topology does not follow a strict tree structure, and thus topology prediction cannot be effectively performed by relying on optical power data alone, which will be studied in our future work. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Optical Sensors)
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19 pages, 7975 KiB  
Article
Trusted Autonomous Operations of Distributed Satellite Systems Using Optical Sensors
by Kathiravan Thangavel, Dario Spiller, Roberto Sabatini, Stefania Amici, Nicolas Longepe, Pablo Servidia, Pier Marzocca, Haytham Fayek and Luigi Ansalone
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3344; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063344 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 1990
Abstract
Recent developments in Distributed Satellite Systems (DSS) have undoubtedly increased mission value due to the ability to reconfigure the spacecraft cluster/formation and incrementally add new or update older satellites in the formation. These features provide inherent benefits, such as increased mission effectiveness, multi-mission [...] Read more.
Recent developments in Distributed Satellite Systems (DSS) have undoubtedly increased mission value due to the ability to reconfigure the spacecraft cluster/formation and incrementally add new or update older satellites in the formation. These features provide inherent benefits, such as increased mission effectiveness, multi-mission capabilities, design flexibility, and so on. Trusted Autonomous Satellite Operation (TASO) are possible owing to the predictive and reactive integrity features offered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), including both on-board satellites and in the ground control segments. To effectively monitor and manage time-critical events such as disaster relief missions, the DSS must be able to reconfigure autonomously. To achieve TASO, the DSS should have reconfiguration capability within the architecture and spacecraft should communicate with each other through an Inter-Satellite Link (ISL). Recent advances in AI, sensing, and computing technologies have resulted in the development of new promising concepts for the safe and efficient operation of the DSS. The combination of these technologies enables trusted autonomy in intelligent DSS (iDSS) operations, allowing for a more responsive and resilient approach to Space Mission Management (SMM) in terms of data collection and processing, especially when using state-of-the-art optical sensors. This research looks into the potential applications of iDSS by proposing a constellation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for near-real-time wildfire management. For spacecraft to continuously monitor Areas of Interest (AOI) in a dynamically changing environment, satellite missions must have extensive coverage, revisit intervals, and reconfiguration capability that iDSS can offer. Our recent work demonstrated the feasibility of AI-based data processing using state-of-the-art on-board astrionics hardware accelerators. Based on these initial results, AI-based software has been successively developed for wildfire detection on-board iDSS satellites. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed iDSS architecture, simulation case studies are performed considering different geographic locations. Full article
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19 pages, 22296 KiB  
Article
Detection of Power Line Insulators in Digital Images Based on the Transformed Colour Intensity Profiles
by Michał Tomaszewski, Rafał Gasz and Jakub Osuchowski
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3343; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063343 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1459
Abstract
Proper maintenance of the electricity infrastructure requires periodic condition inspections of power line insulators, which can be subjected to various damages such as burns or fractures. The article includes an introduction to the problem of insulator detection and a description of various currently [...] Read more.
Proper maintenance of the electricity infrastructure requires periodic condition inspections of power line insulators, which can be subjected to various damages such as burns or fractures. The article includes an introduction to the problem of insulator detection and a description of various currently used methods. Afterwards, the authors proposed a new method for the detection of the power line insulators in digital images by applying selected signal analysis and machine learning algorithms. The insulators detected in the images can be further assessed in depth. The data set used in the study consists of images acquired by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) during its overflight along a high-voltage line located on the outskirts of the city of Opole, Opolskie Voivodeship, Poland. In the digital images, the insulators were placed against different backgrounds, for example, sky, clouds, tree branches, elements of power infrastructure (wires, trusses), farmland, bushes, etc. The proposed method is based on colour intensity profile classification on digital images. Firstly, the set of points located on digital images of power line insulators is determined. Subsequently, those points are connected using lines that depict colour intensity profiles. These profiles were transformed using the Periodogram method or Welch method and then classified with Decision Tree, Random Forest or XGBoost algorithms. In the article, the authors described the computational experiments, the obtained results and possible directions for further research. In the best case, the proposed solution achieved satisfactory efficiency (F1 score = 0.99). Promising classification results indicate the possibility of the practical application of the presented method. Full article
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15 pages, 5288 KiB  
Article
Stiffness Considerations for a MEMS-Based Weighing Cell
by Karin Wedrich, Valeriya Cherkasova, Vivien Platl, Thomas Fröhlich and Steffen Strehle
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3342; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063342 - 22 Mar 2023
Viewed by 1291
Abstract
In this paper, a miniaturized weighing cell that is based on a micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) is discussed. The MEMS-based weighing cell is inspired by macroscopic electromagnetic force compensation (EMFC) weighing cells and one of the crucial system parameters, the stiffness, is analyzed. The system [...] Read more.
In this paper, a miniaturized weighing cell that is based on a micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) is discussed. The MEMS-based weighing cell is inspired by macroscopic electromagnetic force compensation (EMFC) weighing cells and one of the crucial system parameters, the stiffness, is analyzed. The system stiffness in the direction of motion is first analytically evaluated using a rigid body approach and then also numerically modeled using the finite element method for comparison purposes. First prototypes of MEMS-based weighing cells were successfully microfabricated and the occurring fabrication-based system characteristics were considered in the overall system evaluation. The stiffness of the MEMS-based weighing cells was experimentally determined by using a static approach based on force-displacement measurements. Considering the geometry parameters of the microfabricated weighing cells, the measured stiffness values fit to the calculated stiffness values with a deviation from −6.7 to 3.8% depending on the microsystem under test. Based on our results, we demonstrate that MEMS-based weighing cells can be successfully fabricated with the proposed process and in principle be used for high-precision force measurements in the future. Nevertheless, improved system designs and read-out strategies are still required. Full article
(This article belongs to the Topic MEMS Sensors and Resonators)
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15 pages, 4184 KiB  
Article
Fault Voiceprint Signal Diagnosis Method of Power Transformer Based on Mixup Data Enhancement
by Shuting Wan, Fan Dong, Xiong Zhang, Wenbo Wu and Jialu Li
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3341; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063341 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1332
Abstract
A voiceprint signal as a non-contact test medium has a broad application prospect in power-transformer operation condition monitoring. Due to the high imbalance in the number of fault samples, when training the classification model, the classifier is prone to bias to the fault [...] Read more.
A voiceprint signal as a non-contact test medium has a broad application prospect in power-transformer operation condition monitoring. Due to the high imbalance in the number of fault samples, when training the classification model, the classifier is prone to bias to the fault category with a large number of samples, resulting in poor prediction performance of other fault samples, and affecting the generalization performance of the classification system. To solve this problem, a method of power-transformer fault voiceprint signal diagnosis based on Mixup data enhancement and a convolution neural network (CNN) is proposed. First, the parallel Mel filter is used to reduce the dimension of the fault voiceprint signal to obtain the Mel time spectrum. Then, the Mixup data enhancement algorithm is used to reorganize the generated small number of samples, effectively expanding the number of samples. Finally, CNN is used to classify and identify the transformer fault types. The diagnosis accuracy of this method for a typical unbalanced fault of a power transformer can reach 99%, which is superior to other similar algorithms. The results show that this method can effectively improve the generalization ability of the model and has good classification performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Sensing for Mechanical Vibration and Fault Diagnosis)
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19 pages, 5956 KiB  
Article
Bilateral Cross-Modal Fusion Network for Robot Grasp Detection
by Qiang Zhang and Xueying Sun
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3340; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063340 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1349
Abstract
In the field of vision-based robot grasping, effectively leveraging RGB and depth information to accurately determine the position and pose of a target is a critical issue. To address this challenge, we proposed a tri-stream cross-modal fusion architecture for 2-DoF visual grasp detection. [...] Read more.
In the field of vision-based robot grasping, effectively leveraging RGB and depth information to accurately determine the position and pose of a target is a critical issue. To address this challenge, we proposed a tri-stream cross-modal fusion architecture for 2-DoF visual grasp detection. This architecture facilitates the interaction of RGB and depth bilateral information and was designed to efficiently aggregate multiscale information. Our novel modal interaction module (MIM) with a spatial-wise cross-attention algorithm adaptively captures cross-modal feature information. Meanwhile, the channel interaction modules (CIM) further enhance the aggregation of different modal streams. In addition, we efficiently aggregated global multiscale information through a hierarchical structure with skipping connections. To evaluate the performance of our proposed method, we conducted validation experiments on standard public datasets and real robot grasping experiments. We achieved image-wise detection accuracy of 99.4% and 96.7% on Cornell and Jacquard datasets, respectively. The object-wise detection accuracy reached 97.8% and 94.6% on the same datasets. Furthermore, physical experiments using the 6-DoF Elite robot demonstrated a success rate of 94.5%. These experiments highlight the superior accuracy of our proposed method. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Modal Image Processing Methods, Systems, and Applications)
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25 pages, 10766 KiB  
Review
Fluorescence Methods for the Detection of Bioaerosols in Their Civil and Military Applications
by Mirosław Kwaśny, Aneta Bombalska, Miron Kaliszewski, Maksymilian Włodarski and Krzysztof Kopczyński
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3339; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063339 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1946
Abstract
The article presents the history of the development and the current state of the apparatus for the detection of interferents and biological warfare simulants in the air with the laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) method. The LIF method is the most sensitive spectroscopic method and [...] Read more.
The article presents the history of the development and the current state of the apparatus for the detection of interferents and biological warfare simulants in the air with the laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) method. The LIF method is the most sensitive spectroscopic method and also enables the measurement of single particles of biological aerosols and their concentration in the air. The overview covers both the on-site measuring instruments and remote methods. The spectral characteristics of the biological agents, steady-state spectra, excitation–emission matrices, and their fluorescence lifetimes are presented. In addition to the literature, we also present our own detection systems for military applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Optical Sensing, Instrumentation and Systems)
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23 pages, 20552 KiB  
Article
ABANICCO: A New Color Space for Multi-Label Pixel Classification and Color Analysis
by Laura Nicolás-Sáenz, Agapito Ledezma, Javier Pascau and Arrate Muñoz-Barrutia
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3338; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063338 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1883
Abstract
Classifying pixels according to color, and segmenting the respective areas, are necessary steps in any computer vision task that involves color images. The gap between human color perception, linguistic color terminology, and digital representation are the main challenges for developing methods that properly [...] Read more.
Classifying pixels according to color, and segmenting the respective areas, are necessary steps in any computer vision task that involves color images. The gap between human color perception, linguistic color terminology, and digital representation are the main challenges for developing methods that properly classify pixels based on color. To address these challenges, we propose a novel method combining geometric analysis, color theory, fuzzy color theory, and multi-label systems for the automatic classification of pixels into 12 conventional color categories, and the subsequent accurate description of each of the detected colors. This method presents a robust, unsupervised, and unbiased strategy for color naming, based on statistics and color theory. The proposed model, “ABANICCO” (AB ANgular Illustrative Classification of COlor), was evaluated through different experiments: its color detection, classification, and naming performance were assessed against the standardized ISCC–NBS color system; its usefulness for image segmentation was tested against state-of-the-art methods. This empirical evaluation provided evidence of ABANICCO’s accuracy in color analysis, showing how our proposed model offers a standardized, reliable, and understandable alternative for color naming that is recognizable by both humans and machines. Hence, ABANICCO can serve as a foundation for successfully addressing a myriad of challenges in various areas of computer vision, such as region characterization, histopathology analysis, fire detection, product quality prediction, object description, and hyperspectral imaging. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Trends and Advances in Color and Spectral Sensors)
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11 pages, 7348 KiB  
Communication
Optimized Weight Low-Frequency Search Coil Magnetometer for Ground–Airborne Frequency Domain Electromagnetic Method
by Fei Teng, Ye Tong and Bofeng Zou
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3337; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063337 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2089
Abstract
The vertical component magnetic field signal in the ground–airborne frequency domain electromagnetic (GAFDEM) method is detected by the air coil sensor, which is parallel to the ground. Unfortunately, the air coil sensor has low sensitivity in the low-frequency band, making it challenging to [...] Read more.
The vertical component magnetic field signal in the ground–airborne frequency domain electromagnetic (GAFDEM) method is detected by the air coil sensor, which is parallel to the ground. Unfortunately, the air coil sensor has low sensitivity in the low-frequency band, making it challenging to detect effective low-frequency signals and causing low accuracy and large error for interpreted deep apparent resistivity in actual detection. This work develops an optimized weight magnetic core coil sensor for GAFDEM. The cupped flux concentrator is used in the sensor to reduce the weight of the sensor while maintaining the magnetic gathering capacity of the core coil. The winding of the core coil is optimized to resemble the shape of a rugby ball, taking full advantage of the magnetic gathering capacity at the core center. Laboratory and field experiment results show that the developed optimized weight magnetic core coil sensor for the GAFDEM method is highly sensitive in the low-frequency band. Therefore, the detection results at depth are more accurate compared with those obtained using existing air coil sensors. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Physical Sensors)
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19 pages, 13346 KiB  
Article
Lightweight SM-YOLOv5 Tomato Fruit Detection Algorithm for Plant Factory
by Xinfa Wang, Zhenwei Wu, Meng Jia, Tao Xu, Canlin Pan, Xuebin Qi and Mingfu Zhao
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3336; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063336 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2744
Abstract
Due to their rapid development and wide application in modern agriculture, robots, mobile terminals, and intelligent devices have become vital technologies and fundamental research topics for the development of intelligent and precision agriculture. Accurate and efficient target detection technology is required for mobile [...] Read more.
Due to their rapid development and wide application in modern agriculture, robots, mobile terminals, and intelligent devices have become vital technologies and fundamental research topics for the development of intelligent and precision agriculture. Accurate and efficient target detection technology is required for mobile inspection terminals, picking robots, and intelligent sorting equipment in tomato production and management in plant factories. However, due to the limitations of computer power, storage capacity, and the complexity of the plant factory (PF) environment, the precision of small-target detection for tomatoes in real-world applications is inadequate. Therefore, we propose an improved Small MobileNet YOLOv5 (SM-YOLOv5) detection algorithm and model based on YOLOv5 for target detection by tomato-picking robots in plant factories. Firstly, MobileNetV3-Large was used as the backbone network to make the model structure lightweight and improve its running performance. Secondly, a small-target detection layer was added to improve the accuracy of small-target detection for tomatoes. The constructed PF tomato dataset was used for training. Compared with the YOLOv5 baseline model, the mAP of the improved SM-YOLOv5 model was increased by 1.4%, reaching 98.8%. The model size was only 6.33 MB, which was 42.48% that of YOLOv5, and it required only 7.6 GFLOPs, which was half that required by YOLOv5. The experiment showed that the improved SM-YOLOv5 model had a precision of 97.8% and a recall rate of 96.7%. The model is lightweight and has excellent detection performance, and so it can meet the real-time detection requirements of tomato-picking robots in plant factories. Full article
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23 pages, 12903 KiB  
Article
Sensor Fusion in Autonomous Vehicle with Traffic Surveillance Camera System: Detection, Localization, and AI Networking
by Muhammad Hasanujjaman, Mostafa Zaman Chowdhury and Yeong Min Jang
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3335; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063335 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 5474
Abstract
Complete autonomous systems such as self-driving cars to ensure the high reliability and safety of humans need the most efficient combination of four-dimensional (4D) detection, exact localization, and artificial intelligent (AI) networking to establish a fully automated smart transportation system. At present, multiple [...] Read more.
Complete autonomous systems such as self-driving cars to ensure the high reliability and safety of humans need the most efficient combination of four-dimensional (4D) detection, exact localization, and artificial intelligent (AI) networking to establish a fully automated smart transportation system. At present, multiple integrated sensors such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR), radio detection and ranging (RADAR), and car cameras are frequently used for object detection and localization in the conventional autonomous transportation system. Moreover, the global positioning system (GPS) is used for the positioning of autonomous vehicles (AV). These individual systems’ detection, localization, and positioning efficiency are insufficient for AV systems. In addition, they do not have any reliable networking system for self-driving cars carrying us and goods on the road. Although the sensor fusion technology of car sensors came up with good efficiency for detection and location, the proposed convolutional neural networking approach will assist to achieve a higher accuracy of 4D detection, precise localization, and real-time positioning. Moreover, this work will establish a strong AI network for AV far monitoring and data transmission systems. The proposed networking system efficiency remains the same on under-sky highways as well in various tunnel roads where GPS does not work properly. For the first time, modified traffic surveillance cameras have been exploited in this conceptual paper as an external image source for AV and anchor sensing nodes to complete AI networking transportation systems. This work approaches a model that solves AVs’ fundamental detection, localization, positioning, and networking challenges with advanced image processing, sensor fusion, feathers matching, and AI networking technology. This paper also provides an experienced AI driver concept for a smart transportation system with deep learning technology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Intelligent Transportation Systems Based on Sensor Fusion)
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15 pages, 5287 KiB  
Article
Autonomous Planning of Discontinuous Terrain-Dependent Crawling for Space Dobby Robots
by Jiabo Jiang, Cheng Wei, Yunfeng Yu and Shengxin Sun
Sensors 2023, 23(6), 3334; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23063334 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1005
Abstract
Complex space missions require more space robotic extravehicular operations required to crawl on spacecraft surfaces with discontinuous features at the graspable point, greatly increasing the difficulty of space robot motion manipulation. Therefore, this paper proposes an autonomous planning method for space dobby robots [...] Read more.
Complex space missions require more space robotic extravehicular operations required to crawl on spacecraft surfaces with discontinuous features at the graspable point, greatly increasing the difficulty of space robot motion manipulation. Therefore, this paper proposes an autonomous planning method for space dobby robots based on dynamic potential fields. This method can realize the autonomous crawling of space dobby robots in discontinuous environments while considering the task objectives and the self-collision problem of robotic arms when crawling. In this method, a hybrid event–time trigger with event triggering as the main trigger is proposed by combining the working characteristics of space dobby robots and improving the gait timing trigger; the dynamic potential field function is designed to adjust the space robot robotic arm grasping point adaptively according to the space robot state. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed autonomous planning method. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Physical Sensors)
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