Engineering Proceedings

It is often necessary to connect e-textile devices with power supplies and other peripherals using electrical wires. This connection is usually achieved with the use of wires that are consequently bonded to the e-textile circuit using conductive epoxies or solders. This paper reports the mechanical failures that arise from this bonded joint during bending by considering the connection of textile-based Litz wires to screen-printed silver conductors using a combination of conductive epoxies and tapes as bonding adhesives. Cyclic bending results of the conductors around a 5 mm bending diameter rod show that conductors with bonded joints degrade after 3500 cycles with the formation of cracks and fractures around the bonded joints. Conductors without bonded joints achieve more than 10,000 bending cycles without the formation of cracks in the conductors. Full article

This paper presents a dispenser printed electrode array on polyester/cotton fabric. The fabrication details needed to achieve the array, including the materials and printer set-up, are reported. The array consists of ten electrode elements for functional electrical stimulation (FES), including nine active electrodes and one common return electrode. The minimum gap between conductive tracks of 1 mm required for the design was achieved. The fabrication method can be used to tailor the electrode array to fit a wide variety of healthcare applications and an individual’s requirements for personalized healthcare. Full article

Personal thermal management devices provide a behaviourally aligned route to address dependence on energy-intensive heating and cooling systems. E-textiles form an ideal foundation for these devices. In this study, a Joule heating e-textile has been developed using green synthesised silver nanoparticles and polypyrrole, which can easily be dip-coated onto an environmentally benign linen fabric. A Plackett–Burman design was used to optimise the nanoparticle synthesis. Characterisation and electrothermal analysis were carried out to confirm the successful synthesis of silver nanoparticles (40–80 nm, polydispersity index (pdi): 0.25) and an electrical resistance of 28.5 Ω. Joule heating of 66 °C at 6 V applied DC voltage was attained. Full article

The domestic sector is the leading energy consumer in Pakistan. Due to an increase in population, urbanization, and economic development, energy demand is increasing day by day. To meet this energy demand, net-zero energy buildings provide the optimal solution. In zero energy buildings, energy demand is met by renewable energy sources, such as solar energy. This study describes techniques of home design using simulation, and energy conservation is achieved by using proper construction techniques and insulation materials in building construction. In this study, the actual climate data of different climate zones in Pakistan is being used to design zero-energy homes. The results show that there is a remarkable difference between the energy demand of standard homes and homes proposed by the simulator used. The total energy performance index of a house decreased from 94.6% to 67.6%. The comparative simulation analysis of different solar energy system solutions such as solar thermal, photo-voltaic, and hybrid photo-voltaic-thermal modules for different climate zones in Pakistan, is presented in this paper. This study also describes the best combination of solar energy systems to reach a close-to-zero energy balance and the results depend on the building design and design of building energy systems. A cost analysis based on the rate of return on investment is also presented to motivate the usage of this method. Full article

The adoption of circular principles by the EU and UK have led to greater focus on waste streams and the recoverability of materials and components. This has translated into regulations such as WEEE for electronic waste. Textiles and nanomaterials lag behind with no definitive waste legislation. As e-textiles are generally made up of a combination of these three components, it means e-textile products end up in electrical recycling facilities where textile components are disposed of in landfill or incinerated together with embedded nanomaterials. Consultations with recycling facilities indicate product design is key in preparing for disassembly and recycling. By embedding design for disassembly thinking into the research and development of new e-textiles, this study aims to test whether e-waste policy can be informed by design for disassembly principles. The motivation for this research is to find an anticipatory legislative solution for future e-textiles waste. Full article

Industrial Automation has revolutionized the processing industry due to its high accuracy, the time it saves, and its ability to work without tiring. Being the most fundamental part of automation machines, robotic arms are being used as a fundamental component in many types of domestic as well as commercial automation units. In this paper, we proposed a low-complexity convolutional neural network (CNN) model and successfully deployed it on a locally generated robotic arm with the help of a Raspberry Pi 4 module. The designed robotic arm can detect, locate, and classify (based on fresh or rotten) between three species of Mangos (Ataulfo, Alphonso, and Keitt), on a conveyor belt. We generated a dataset of about 6000 images and trained a three-convolutional-layer-based CNN. Training and testing of the network were carried out with MatLab, and the weighted network was deployed to an embedded environment (Raspberry Pi 4 module) for real-time classification. We reported a classification accuracy of 98.08% in the detection of fresh mangos and 95.75% in the detection of rotten mangos. For the designed robotic art, the achieved angle accuracy was 93.94% with a minor error of only 2°. The proposed model can be deployed in many food- or object-sorting industries as an edge computing application of deep learning. Full article

The ceramic industry is a bit new in Pakistan, and the wastes produced during industrial processes are not properly managed. No effective reusing and recycling schemes have been developed. These wastes are contributing greatly to environmental pollution. In this study, an effort has been made to recycle and use the ceramic wastes as reinforcement fillers in polymeric composites, helping an ecologically and economically possible alternative for the disposal of these wastes. PANI-based ceramic composite samples were prepared and characterized morphologically and electrically. Ceramic wastes were also investigated for purification purposes of municipal wastewater. It was observed that prepared materials are capable for capacitor production. Wastes were found to be 50% efficient in removing methyl orange from water in a specific time. This suggests that the prepared materials can be used in energy harvesting appliances (i.e., capacitors) while the ceramic waste can be applied for purifying polluted water coming out from industrial as well as municipal sewerages. Full article

Nowadays, floating point multiplier (FPM) plays an essential role in computers. The IEEE 754 norm for floating point numbers is the most widely recognized portrayal for real numbers on today’s PCs. Addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division are the four important functions of single precision floating arithmetic, amongst which multiplication has the most extensive use in every algorithm. Fast multipliers are of critical need in modern high-performance applications, especially in digital signal processing, because DSP involves many important multiplication-based operations, e.g., fast Fourier transform (FFT) and convolution. These speedy computations can be implemented on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), because they can provide a high speed and a large number of on-board digital resources. FPGAs are involved in many modern applications such as cryptography and communication computations, arithmetic and scientific computation, digital image and signal processing, etc. There are many forms of FPM available. This paper describes an efficient way to implement single precision FPM in IEEE 754 standard format, where Verilog hardware description language (VHDL) is used to implement the design for Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA. Here, the 32-bit number will be divided into three parts: sign bit, exponent, and mantissa. This paper is implemented by using different types of adders, which includes carry increment adder (CIA), carry select adder (CSA), ripple carry adder (RCA), and carry look-ahead adder (CLA). Carry save array (CSA) multiplication is used for performing the mantissa multiplication. Full article

To estimate the location of an object in an indoor environment, many indoor positioning techniques have been developed in recent decades. The popularity of indoor positioning systems has increased nowadays to enable the implementation of indoor location-based services. WIFI-based fingerprinting is one the most promising techniques to estimate the user or robot’s location in an indoor environment. Fingerprinting-based indoor positioning systems require the laborious task of environmental surveys to generate the fingerprinting database. This calibration process of a fingerprinting database causes the adaptability problem due to the high cost of the survey of the WIFI environment. Researchers have proposed different techniques to minimize the survey cost by means of the automatic generation of a fingerprinting database and its calibration. Most of these techniques only generate 2D path loss heat maps, while ignoring the height information of transmitting and receiving devices. In this paper, a systematic approach is presented to generate 3D path loss heat maps in which height information is also incorporated in the generation of more realistic 3D heat maps. The results show that the proposed technique for 3D environment generation outperformed the existing techniques, and the root mean square error (RMSE) is 2.17. Moreover, the proposed technique generated 3D heat maps effortlessly and its accuracy is almost equivalent to the real maps. Full article

This paper presents the fabrication and working of a smart solar grass cutter. In this work, we have developed a solar-powered lawn mower and thus saved energy by decreasing air pollution and reducing labor cost. In the old model, cutting iron was used. Due to its high environmental impact, it was the most expensive cutter used by the engine. We have utilized a microcontroller in our project to control the different lawn mower actions. Two DC gear motors (10,000 RPM, starting current 1.7 A and no load current 1.5 A) are used to move the solar grass cutter, and one DC blade motor (7000–13,000 RPM, starting current 0.7 A and no load current 0.45 A) is used to cut the grass quickly. With current technology, this new prototype is designed as a remotely controlled grass cutter using Arduino UNO. The Smart Solar tracker is controlled via Bluetooth by using a smartphone. The Smart Solar Grass Cutter can run for more than two hours when the battery is completely charged. Full article

In this paper, we investigate the use of augmented reality technology within an E-textile environment. We place particular emphasis on the analysis of key performance and responsiveness metrics when utilizing augmented reality (AR) applications for embroidery-based logo/design image detection and recognition. To support this analysis and validation, we designed and created four test embroidered images, a fabric quilt with embroidered marker images, and a supporting augmented reality application. From an E-textile point of view, we explore the effects of high/low contrast thread colors, diverse light levels (lux measurements), and the range of angles at which the mobile device/camera, with the associated AR application, can be pointed towards the fabric-embroidered marker. This allows us to assess the level of functionality and responsiveness of the AR application and the overall performance in the testing environment, enabling more fluid usability of the AR-enabled E-textile application. Full article

Robot manipulators have played an enormous role in the industry during the twenty-first century. Due to the advances in materials science, lightweight manipulators have emerged with low energy consumption and positive economic aspect regardless of their complex mechanical model and control techniques problems. This paper presents a dynamic model of a single link flexible robot manipulator with a payload at its free end based on the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory with a complete second-order deformation field that generates a complete second-order elastic rotation matrix. The beam experiences an axial stretching, horizontal and vertical deflections, and a torsional deformation ignoring the shear due to bending, warping due to torsion, and viscous air friction. The deformation and its derivatives are assumed to be small. The application of the extended Hamilton principle while taking into account the viscoelastic internal damping based on the Kelvin–Voigt model expressed by the Rayleigh dissipation function yields both the boundary conditions and the coupled partial differential equations of motion that can be decoupled when the manipulator rotates with a constant angular velocity. Equations of motion solutions are still under research, as it is required to study the behavior of flexible manipulators and develop novel ways and methods for controlling their complex movements. Full article

To ensure the flexibility and reliability of the power system demand and supply, demand side management with distributed generation is a tool to manage the high demand. In the present work, the demand side residential energy management for household equipment is investigated. Loads of units are divided according to priority. Every individual load is smart enough to switch on/off itself with respect to the power generated from the distributed source. Experiments are performed using MATLAB Simulink and the results showed improvements in electricity bills. Real-time pricing in the present system of billing is more economical than a flat rate system. When distributed resources are connected with the units, then flat rate billing is also more economical than real-time pricing. Full article

The primary goal of this work is to present the design of sliding mode control, based on the backstepping approach, for the attitude tracking control of a micro-satellite, using reaction wheels. The presented technique is developed by combining sliding mode control with the backstepping technique, to achieve a fast and accurate tracking response. Firstly, backstepping and sliding mode controllers are developed. Then, the hybrid controller is designed. The selected controllers are applied to a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) micro-satellite, and they are compared in terms of accuracy, convergence time, power consumption, and maximum reaction wheel velocity. The simulation results clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented technique. Full article

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are a key application underpinned by advances in electronic textiles (e-textiles). Achieving higher throughput, data-rate, network capacity, and delivering wireless power to miniaturized devices requires WBANs to operate at millimeter-wave 5G+ frequencies. This, however, imposes significant challenges on the antenna design to cope with the additional losses introduced by textile substrates. In this paper, the performance of a novel, high-efficiency, textile-based millimeter-wave antenna is investigated for wireless links with a wearable device. Indoor “real-world” channel gain measurements are used to evaluate the antenna’s performance compared to anechoic gain measurements. Based on the measured channel gain between textile antennas, it is concluded that high-speed wireless links in the 24–30 GHz 5G+ spectrum could be realized with over one meter range using e-textile antennas. Full article

The current study assessed the validity of a Kinematic Knee Sleeve (KiTT) against a gold-standard motion-capture system (Vicon, Oxofrd, UK). The relative knee angle, measured in the sagittal plane (RKA), was measured across a range of sporting movements to allow for comparisons and agreement between systems. The results demonstrate a high degree of validity of KiTT during a squat, deadlift, and leg curl, with partial validity of a leg extension (0.98, 0.97, 1.01, 1.31, respectively). KiTT serves as a valid method to collect information on the RKA. The KiTT appears to serve as a practical alternative to Vicon without sacrificing the quality of the data. Full article

E-textile sensor networks enable a variety of applications including pervasive monitoring for distributed healthcare. While commercial wearables can now measure various quantities such as heart rate and activities in a real-time, robust, and pervasive manner, breathing sensors remain an ongoing research challenge. In this paper, the use of wearable antennas for respiration monitoring is investigated based on a low-profile broadband fully textile antenna. It is demonstrated that the antenna, suitable for operation on different substrates and body parts, exhibits over 2 dB wireless gain sensitivity to normal breathing. Unlike recent wearable breathing sensors, the proposed antenna has a very simple structure and does not rely on active mechanical sensing elements or specific materials. A simple peak-detection algorithm is investigated showing a nearly 100% breath detection accuracy in line-of-sight. Based on the experimental results, it can be concluded that e-textile antennas can be utilized as highly accurate sensors for respiration monitoring, without the need for specific sensing elements or materials. Full article

This study reports a design of an e-textile microstrip patch antenna for wireless sensing of the moisture content of a fabric substrate. The microstrip patch antenna with a proximity coupled feeding line is implemented on two layers of polyester felt substrate. The performance of the antennas in terms of the reflection coefficient S11 is measured, indicating that the resonance frequency of the antenna shifts to a lower frequency for moisture contents ranging from 20% to 100%. This is the result of a change in the dielectric constant and the loss tangent of the substrate material caused by the presence of moisture. The proposed moisture sensor exhibits high linearity and higher sensitivity than state-of-the-art textile-based antenna sensors, and is suitable for a variety of applications such as sweat and wound monitoring. Full article