Search Results (18)

This article presents a preliminary study on the potential application of artificial intelligence methods for assessing the durability of HTS tapes in superconducting fault current limiters (SFCLs). Despite their importance for the selectivity and reliability of power networks, these devices remain at the prototype testing stage, and the phenomena occurring in HTS tapes during their operation—particularly the degradation of tapes due to cyclic transitions into the resistive state—are difficult to model owing to their highly non-linear and dynamic nature. A concept of an engineering decision support system (EDSS) has been proposed, which, based on macroscopically measurable parameters (dissipated energy and the number of transitions), aims to enable the prediction of tape parameter degradation. Within the scope of the study, five approaches were tested and compared: Gaussian process regression (GPR) with various kernel functions, k-nearest neighbours (k-NN) regression, the random forest (RF) algorithm, piecewise cubic hermite interpolating polynomial (PCHIP) interpolation, and polynomial approximation. All models were trained on a limited set of experimental data. Despite the quantitative limitations and simplicity of the adopted methods, the results indicate that even simple GPR models can support the detection of HTS tape degradation in scenarios where direct measurement of the critical current is not feasible. This work constitutes a first step towards the construction of a complete EDSS and outlines directions for further research, including the need to expand the dataset, improve validation, analyse uncertainty, and incorporate physical constraints into the models. Full article

Data from earth observation satellites provide unique and valuable information about water quality conditions in freshwater lakes but require significant processing before they can be used, even with the use of tools like Google Earth Engine. We use imagery from Sentinel 2 and MODIS and in situ data from the State of Utah Ambient Water Quality Management System (AQWMS) database to develop models and to generate a highly accessible, easy-to-use CSV file of chlorophyll-a (which is an indicator of algal biomass), turbidity, and water temperature measurements on Utah Lake. From a collection of 937 Sentinel 2 images spanning the period from January 2019 to May 2025, we generated 262,081 estimates each of chlorophyll-a and turbidity, with an additional 1,140,777 data points interpolated from those estimates to provide a dataset with a consistent time step. From a collection of 2333 MODIS images spanning the same time period, we extracted 1,390,800 measurements each of daytime water surface temperature and nighttime water surface temperature and interpolated or imputed an additional 12,058 data points from those estimates. We interpolated the data using piecewise cubic Hermite interpolation polynomials to preserve the original distribution of the data and provide the most accurate estimates of measurements between observations. We demonstrate the processing steps required to extract usable, accurate estimates of these three water quality parameters from satellite imagery and format them for analysis. We include summary statistics and charts for the resulting dataset, which show the usefulness of this data for informing Utah Lake management issues. We include the Jupyter Notebook with the implemented processing steps and the formatted CSV file of data as ^{supplemental materials}. The Jupyter Notebook can be used to update the Utah Lake data or can be easily modified to generate similar data for other waterbodies. We provide this method, tool set, and data to make remotely sensed water quality data more accessible to researchers, water managers, and others interested in Utah Lake and to facilitate the use of satellite data for those interested in applying remote sensing techniques to other waterbodies. Full article

Pupillometry is commonly used to evaluate cognitive effort, attention, and facial expression response, offering valuable insights into human performance. The combination of eye tracking and facial expression data under the iMotions platform provides great opportunities for multimodal research. However, there is a lack of standardized pipelines for managing pupillometry data on a multimodal platform. Preprocessing pupil data in multimodal platforms poses challenges like timestamp misalignment, missing data, and inconsistencies across multiple data sources. To address these challenges, the authors introduced a systematic preprocessing pipeline for pupil diameter measurements collected using iMotions 10 (version 10.1.38911.4) during an endoscopy simulation task. The pipeline involves artifact removal, outlier detection using advanced methods such as the Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) and Moving Average (MA) algorithm filtering, interpolation of missing data using the Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolating Polynomial (PCHIP), and mean pupil diameter calculation through linear regression, as well as normalization of mean pupil diameter and integration of the pupil diameter dataset with facial expression data. By following these steps, the pipeline enhances data quality, reduces noise, and facilitates the seamless integration of pupillometry other multimodal datasets. In conclusion, this pipeline provides a detailed and organized preprocessing method that improves data reliability while preserving important information for further analysis. Full article

High-quality data are foundational to reliable environmental monitoring and urban planning in smart cities, yet challenges like missing values and outliers in air pollution and meteorological time series data are critical barriers. This study developed and validated a dual-phase framework to improve data quality using a 60-month gas and weather dataset from Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia, an industrial region. First, outliers were identified via statistical methods like Interquartile Range and Z-Score. Machine learning algorithms like Isolation Forest and Local Outlier Factor were also used, chosen for their robustness to non-normal data distributions, significantly improving subsequent imputation accuracy. Second, missing values in both single and sequential gaps were imputed using linear interpolation, Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolating Polynomial (PCHIP), and Akima interpolation. Linear interpolation excelled for short gaps (R² up to 0.97), and PCHIP and Akima minimized errors in sequential gaps (R² up to 0.95, lowest MSE). By aligning methods with gap characteristics, the framework handles real-world data complexities, significantly improving time series consistency and reliability. This work demonstrates a significant improvement in data reliability, offering a replicable model for smart cities worldwide. Full article

To address the challenges of automatic detection caused by the variation of surface normal vectors in automotive steering knuckles, an automatic detection method based on ultrasonic phased array technology is herein proposed. First, a point cloud model of the workpiece was constructed using ultrasonic distance measurement, and Gaussian-weighted principal component analysis was used to estimate the normal vectors of the point cloud. By utilizing the normal vectors, water layer thickness during detection, and the incident angle of the sound beam, the probe pose information corresponding to the detection point was precisely calculated, ensuring the stability of the sound beam incident angle during the detection process. At the same time, in the trajectory planning process, piecewise cubic Hermite interpolation was used to optimize the detection trajectory, ensuring continuity during probe movement. Finally, an automatic detection system was set up to test a steering knuckle specimen with surface circumferential cracks. The results show that the point cloud data of the steering knuckle specimen, obtained using phased array ultrasound, had a relative measurement error controlled within 1.4%, and the error between the calculated probe angle and the theoretical angle did not exceed 0.5°. The probe trajectory derived from these data effectively improved the B-scan image quality during the automatic detection of the steering knuckle and increased the defect signal amplitude by 5.6 dB, demonstrating the effectiveness of this method in the automatic detection of automotive steering knuckles. Full article

This study presents a method to support ship trajectory prediction at waterway confluences using historical Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. The method is meant to improve the recognition accuracy of ship behavior trajectory, assist in the proactive avoidance of collisions, and clarify ship collision responsibility, to ensure the safety of waterway transportation systems in the event of ship encounters induced by waterway confluence or channel limitation. In this study, the ship trajectory based on AIS data is considered from five aspects: time, location, heading, speed, and trajectory by using the piecewise cubic Hermite interpolation method and then quickly clustered by regional navigation rules. Then, an improved K-Nearest Neighbor Algorithm considering the sensitivity of data characteristics (SKNN) is proposed to predict the trajectory of ships, which considers the influence weights of various parameters on ship trajectory prediction. The method is trained and verified using the AIS data of the Yangtze River and Han River intersection in Wuhan. The results show that the accuracy of SKNN is better than that of conventional KNN and Naive Bayes (NB) in the same test case. The accuracy of the ship trajectory prediction method is above 99% and the performance metrics of the SKNN surpass those of both the conventional KNN and NB classifiers, which is helpful for early warning of collision encounters to ensure avoidance. Full article

The monitoring of the lifetime of cutting tools often faces problems such as life data loss, drift, and distortion. The prediction of the lifetime in this situation is greatly compromised with respect to the accuracy. The recent rise of deep learning, such as Gated Recurrent Unit Units (GRUs), Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), Attention networks, and Transformers, has dramatically improved the data problems in tool lifetime prediction, substantially enhancing the accuracy of tool wear prediction. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach known as PCHIP-Enhanced ConvGRU (PECG), which leverages multiple—feature fusion for tool wear prediction. When compared to traditional models such as CNNs, the CNN Block, and GRUs, our method consistently outperformed them across all key performance metrics, with a primary focus on the accuracy. PECG addresses the challenge of missing tool wear measurement data in relation to sensor data. By employing PCHIP interpolation to fill in the gaps in the wear values, we have developed a model that combines the strengths of both CNNs and GRUs with data augmentation. The experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method achieved an exceptional relative accuracy of 0.8522, while also exhibiting a Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient (PCC) exceeding 0.95. This innovative approach not only predicts tool wear with remarkable precision, but also offers enhanced stability. Full article

This paper combines the piecewise Cubic Hermite (CH) interpolation algorithm and the weighted least square support vector machine (WLS-SVM) to improve identification accuracy for marine crafts built based on the characteristic model. The characteristic model is first used to describe the heading dynamics of marine crafts and is a superior model to the traditional response model in both accuracy and complexity. Especially in order to improve identification accuracy, a CH-based data preprocessing strategy is utilized to densify and smooth data for further accurate identification. Subsequently, the combination of the linear kernel function and the Gaussian kernel function is introduced in the conventional WLS-SVM method, which renders global and local performance improvements compared with the conventional WLS-SVM method. Finally, informative maneuvers composed of Zigzag and Sine are carried out to test the performance of the improved identification method. Compared to the conventional LS-SVM method based on the response model, the root mean square error of the proposed CH-MK-WLS-SVM method based on the characteristic model is reduced by an order of magnitude in the presence of sensor noise. Full article

A simple CFD-based data-driven reduced order modeling method was proposed for the study of damaged ship motion in waves. It consists of low-order modeling of the whole concerned parameter range and high-order modeling for selected key scenarios identified with the help of low-order results. The difference between the low and high-order results for the whole parameter range, where the main trend of the physics behind the problem is expected to be captured, is then modeled by some commonly used machine learning or data regression methods based on the data from key scenarios which is chosen as Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolating Polynomial (PCHIP) in this study. The final prediction is obtained by adding the results from the low-order model and the difference. The low and high-order modeling were conducted through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations with coarse and refined meshes. Taking the roll Response Amplitude Operator (RAO) of a DTMB-5415 ship model with a damaged cabin as an example, the proposed physics-informed data-driven model was shown to have the same level of accuracy as pure high-order modeling, whilst the computational time can be reduced by 22~55% for the studied cases. This simple reduced order modeling approach is also expected to be applicable to other ship hydrodynamic problems. Full article

Thanks to wearable devices joint with AI algorithms, it is possible to record and analyse physiological parameters such as heart rate variability (HRV) in ambulatory environments. The main downside to such setups is the bad quality of recorded data due to movement, noises, and data losses. These errors may considerably alter HRV analysis and should therefore be addressed beforehand, especially if used for medical diagnosis. One widely used method to handle such problems is interpolation, but this approach does not preserve the time dependence of the signal. In this study, we propose a new method for HRV processing including filtering and iterative data imputation using a Gaussian distribution. The particularity of the method is that many physiological aspects are taken into consideration, such as HRV distribution, RR variability, and normal boundaries, as well as time series characteristics. We study the effect of this method on classification using a random forest classifier (RF) and compare it to other data imputation methods including linear, shape-preserving piecewise cubic Hermite (pchip), and spline interpolation in a case study on stress. Features from reconstructed HRV signals of 67 healthy subjects using all four methods were analysed and separately classified by a random forest algorithm to detect stress against relaxation. The proposed method reached a stable F1 score of 61% even with a high percentage of missing data, whereas other interpolation methods reached approximately 54% F1 score for a low percentage of missing data, and the performance drops to about 44% when the percentage is increased. This suggests that our method gives better results for stress classification, especially on signals with a high percentage of missing data. Full article

Curves on a polygonal mesh are quite useful for geometric modeling and processing such as mesh-cutting and segmentation. In this paper, an effective method for constructing $C^1$ piecewise cubic curves on a triangular mesh $\mathbb{M}$ while interpolating the given mesh points is presented. The conventional Hermite interpolation method is extended such that the generated curve lies on $\mathbb{M}$. For this, a geodesic vector is defined as a straightest geodesic with symmetric property on edge intersections and mesh vertices, and the related geodesic operations between points and vectors on $\mathbb{M}$ are defined. By combining cubic Hermite interpolation and newly devised geodesic operations, a geodesic Hermite spline curve is constructed on a triangular mesh. The method follows the basic steps of the conventional Hermite interpolation process, except that the operations between the points and vectors are replaced with the geodesic. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by designing several sophisticated curves on triangular meshes and applying them to various applications, such as mesh-cutting, segmentation, and simulation. Full article

Patient-to-medical image registration is a crucial factor that affects the accuracy of image-guided ENT- and neurosurgery systems. In this study, a novel registration protocol that extracts the point cloud in the patient space using the contact approach was proposed. To extract the optimal point cloud in patient space, we propose a multi-step registration protocol consisting of augmentation of the point cloud and creation of an optimal point cloud in patient space that satisfies the minimum distance from the point cloud in the medical image space. A hemisphere mathematical model and plastic facial phantom were used to validate the proposed registration protocol. An optical and electromagnetic tracking system, of the type that is commonly used in clinical practice, was used to acquire the point cloud in the patient space and evaluate the accuracy of the proposed registration protocol. The SRE and TRE of the proposed protocol were improved by about 30% and 50%, respectively, compared to those of a conventional registration protocol. In addition, TRE was reduced to about 28% and 21% in the optical and electromagnetic methods, respectively, thus showing improved accuracy. The new algorithm proposed in this study is expected to be applied to surgical navigation systems in the near future, which could increase the success rate of otolaryngological and neurological surgery. Full article

We propose a real-time approximation of $R_0$ in an SIR-type model that applies to the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak. A very useful direct formula expressing $R_0$ is found. Then, various type of models are considered, namely, finite differences, cubic splines, Piecewise Cubic Hermite interpolation and linear least squares approximation. Preserving the monotonicity of the formula under consideration proves to be of crucial importance. This latter property is preferred over accuracy, since it maintains positive $R_0$. Only the Linear Least Squares technique guarantees this, and is finally proposed here. Tests on real COVID-19 data confirm the usefulness of our approach. Full article

Using the wavelet transform defined in the infinite domain to process the signal defined in finite interval, the wavelet transform coefficients at the boundary are usually very large. It will bring severe boundary effect, which reduces the calculation accuracy. The construction of interval wavelet is the most common method to reduce the boundary effect. By studying the properties of Shannon-Cosine interpolation wavelet, an improved version of the wavelet function is proposed, and the corresponding interval interpolation wavelet based on Hermite interpolation extension and variational principle is designed, which possesses almost all of the excellent properties such as interpolation, smoothness, compact support and normalization. Then, the multi-scale interpolation operator is constructed, which can be applied to select the sparse feature points and reconstruct signal based on these sparse points adaptively. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, we compare the proposed method with Shannon-Cosine interpolation wavelet method, Akima method, Bezier method and cubic spline method by taking infinitesimal derivable function $cos\left(x\right)$ and irregular piecewise function as an example. In the reconstruction of $cos\left(x\right)$ and piecewise function, the proposed method reduces the boundary effect at the endpoints. When the interpolation points are the same, the maximum error, average absolute error, mean square error and running time are $1.20$ × 10${}^{-4}$, $2.52$ × 10${}^{-3}$, $2.76$ × 10${}^{-5}$, $1.68$ × 10${}^{-2}$ and $4.02$ × 10${}^{-3}$, $4.94$ × 10${}^{-4}$, $1.11$ × 10${}^{-3}$, $9.27$ × 10${}^{-3}$, respectively. The four indicators mentioned above are all lower than the other three methods. When reconstructing an infinitely derivable function, the curve reconstructed by our method is smoother, and it satisfies $C^2$ and $G^2$ continuity. Therefore, the proposed method can better realize the reconstruction of smooth curves, improve the reconstruction efficiency and provide new ideas to the curve reconstruction method. Full article

In this paper, multibody dynamic modeling and a simulation method for the wingtip-jointing process of a new-concept composite aircraft system are investigated. When the wingtips of two aircraft are jointed, the resultant wingtip-jointed aircraft is regarded as variable-geometry multiple rigid bodies, and a seven-degree-of-freedom non-linear dynamic model is established by mathematical derivation. The slip-meshing method is adopted to analyze the unsteady aerodynamic influence. We also present specific aerodynamic database acquisition methods under the quasi-steady assumption. Based on this, the simulation results indicate that the longitudinal and lateral movements are highly jointed and complex. A new composite aircraft system is investigated, in order to meet the balance requirement. With the lift–drag ratio (K) considered, the piecewise cubic Hermite interpolation (PCHIP) method, with a sufficient sample size, was utilized to help the cruise strategy optimization analysis under fixed altitude and speed conditions. Meanwhile, distribution of cruise characteristics with different sampling values of composite flight characteristic parameters were also analyzed. The research results can be used as a reference for new-concept composite aircraft model establishment, simulation, and multibody dynamic characteristic investigation. Full article