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The Hive is Hungry: Exploring Bee Colony Search and Foraging Behavior through Agent-Based Simulation

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Despite a lack of high-order communication, honeybee colonies efficiently coordinate search and foraging efforts across a large, dynamic search space. This natural emergent behavior, shaped by nature and evolution, is based on a combination of individual local search strategies, inter-agent communication via "waggle dancing", and collective behavior. Many parts of the real-life algorithm are unknown. We built a simulator to analyze honeybee colony foraging behavior using a variety of algorithms in several different environments. We examine both scouting strategies (as variants of randomized local search) as well as honeybee division of labor allocation in a variety of dynamic environments. (final paper)

(Note, a extension from this work was published at the Swarm Intelligence Conference (ANTS 2010) and won best the student paper award!)

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RFID-Based Indoor Localisation System-Abstract

Project Definition:

The goal of this project was to develop a system for localisation of people indoors. A reliable indoor localisation system can have many applications, particularly in the assisted living area, e.g. for monitoring whereabouts of elderly people or other people in need of assistance etc. The main idea behind this project is to use RFID technology for localisation. Fixed RFID tags are positioned around the house in places of localisation interest. The person then can wear the portable device that contains the RFID reader as well as other key components like a microprocessor and a Wifi module. The reader will detect RFID tags that are spread around the specified indoor area and then will be able to figure out the approximate position of the wearer (e.g. that the person is near specific spot in the house).

Abstract:

In order to achieve localisation, many factors such as reliability, usability, cost and size of devices have been carefully researched in order to be able to make the wisest choice regarding the equipment and the operation of the system.My main idea was to create a system that would be able locate any person wearing the device I built.

In order to archive that I have built a device with an RFID reader which will be scanning passive tags that will be placed around in fixed positions around the indoor area. Passive tags are the easy to be attached to objects as they are available in cards, stickers etc. which can be placed anywhere in the environment without being noticeable.

The device I have built contains an Ultra High Frequency RFID Reader which is able to scan the tags around the area and together with the Arduino Pro Mini and the CC3000 Wifi Breakout Board, the tag number is then sent over to a local server database where the website which displays the location is retrieving the information from. This way my system is able to determine the location of any person that is wearing the device in the indoor environment that has the tags.This idea is very effective and reliable since the system can not calculate wrong positions as it is physically impossible. Also this way, if is needed the positioning area can be easily expanded to any other indoor area with simply adding a few tags in the room that is needed. The website has been created in order for the system to demonstrate to the viewer the locations of the person that is being tracked in a user friendly way.

An Intelligible Scrum implementation for Project monitoring

ABSTRACT

Agile is increasingly becoming the dominating developing method in the software industry. A lot of companies are turning toward agility in one way or another because of the need for fast delivery while at the same time dealing with fast changing requirements. To tackle this problem, it is essential to have at your disposal a tool that enables requirements gathering, iteration planning, progress tracking and reporting. You can't rely on memory for requirements gathering. You can't rely on the universal perception for iteration planning and you definitely can't rely on telepathy for progress tracking and reporting. You need a tool that will do the job with minimum effort and minimum side effects. The problem with requirements is that they are often wrong. If a team isn’t given the opportunity to find out if the prescribed features solve a need that actually exists for real customers the effort is doomed to fail on the day it goes live. The only thing that will prove the project successful or not is the reality of real customers using it to solve real problems. Working in a waterfall style delays reality’s turn at bat until the end of the project when all resources have been spent. This is extremely risky since any fundamental failure in the solution — be it a feature customers didn’t actually need or customers’ difficulty in using it — is extremely costly to correct this far downstream.

Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile software development framework for managing software projects and product or application development, Scrum enables the creation of self-organizing teams by encouraging co-location of all team members, and verbal communication among all team members and disciplines in the project. A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, Scrum adopts an empirical approach —accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team's ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.

Result and snapshot

INTELLIGENT ROOM LIGHTS

ABSTRACT

The goal of this project is to develop a device that intelligently controls the light in a room. The device detects if there is person in the room and turns the LED light bulb ON. Also, if there is no motion in the room the device turns the light OFF. In addition to this, the device also detects infra-red signals from the TV remote control and dim the light. If the TV is turned OFF, the light returns back.

OBJECTIVE

To develop a project that detects presence in the room and turn the light ON

To turn the light OFF when there is no motion for a while.

To dim the light when TV is turned ON

To return the light back when TV is turned OFF

LED MATRIX GLASS WEARABLE-ELECTRONICS PROJECT

Overview

When opto-electronics, product design and fashion are combined, wearable technology is born. The aim of this project is to refine an existing product and bring it to market with the use of crowd sourcing. LED matrix glasses are a dot matrix display built onto a pair of glasses and are designed to visually enhance DJ's, clubbers, ravers, and festival goers. A number of prototypes were made prior to the start of this project, however the aim was to re-design the latest revision for manufacture and to extend the product’s functionality with additional hardware and software based features. The author’s responsibilities in the project are to manage the timing and budget of the entire project, as well as the creation and completion of all necessary tasks. There are 3 main aspects of the project that need to be considered and those are system level design, design of the physical product and creating additional features.

Car Black Box Video Recorder-Abstract

Objective

The project calls for the design and construction of a car black box video recorder which, in case of a crash, records and stores the 30 seconds before the crash to aid dispute resolution in case of an accident.

It does so by providing an independent eyewitness account of the incident. In this project, the main objective was to build a car black box video recorder by investigating the viability of the idea, looking at existing examples from around the world and tracing the evolution of the camera to find the right type of camera and application for this particular function.

Based on the steep rise in road accidents, it is quite evident that this device could become an industry standard as early. The viability of the device will be examined by looking at the practical uses of such an instrument. Practical aspects like the technical specifications of the camera, memory and the software to be used will also be examined. Issues of cost will be considered in conjunction with the requirements of creating a viable product.

The car black box video recorder is a device fitted on-board a car and saves video recordings of accidents that can be reviewed at a later date.

Moving images can be recorded on film or tape or on digital cards. Film and tape are inconvenient as they involve the use of bulky equipment. For the specific purpose of tracking accidents the use of digital recordings would be optimal.The on-board recording system will capture videos, and store them in a digital format on the RAM in the Raspberry pi.

The system will continually overwrite the RAM memory every one minute retaining the video recorded during the last minute of the video in case of an accident. This video can then be downloaded to a computer and reviewed.

Ultrasonic Radar Using PC Via USB

Objective

· To detect objects within the vicinity of a small area or room

· To rotate the sensor continuously 360 degrees

· To use an electro-mechanical device to rotate the ultrasonic sensor without twisting its wires

· To determine what the angle of the motor is

· To use a microcontroller for distance measurement and motor control

· To design an appropriate electronic circuit in order to achieve all the above

· To program the microcontroller using C language

· To send the data to the computer via USB

· To create a graphical user interface using LabVIEW programming

· To display a Radar display with all the objects detected

Project description:

The aim of this project was to design and implement a Radar system for detection of objects within the vicinity using an ultrasonic range sensor. The sensor needed to be mounted on a rotary shaft in order to scan the area 360 degrees at a suitable (Radar) speed. A Microcontroller was used to control the motor, get the range from the sensor, process the data and send it to the PC via USB. The data needed to be displayed on a PC in real time as a Radar display by plotting the distance of the objects vs the angle of the motor.

Fingerprint Based Identification System

The characteristics of the friction skin that generates the fingerprint are unique to each person and remain unchanged from the time of formation until decomposition after death. Identification is made on a system based on the reliable extraction of such features from a fingerprint image. Due to the uniqueness and permanence of this features, also called minutiae, the usage of fingerprint for identification purposes has begun in ancient times, bloomed in the late 1800s and early 1900s and is now the biometric most used in everyday life of human kind. However the fingerprint image in hand is not always of good quality, the image may not be clear, distorted, noisy, etc., and this could be due to many factors including acquisition method and environment condition. Since the performance of the system relies on the quality of the features extracted, in order to compensate for these negative factors, the fingerprint image has to go through different stages in order to be properly matched for identification. These stages are image pre-processing, feature extraction, post-processing and finally matching. The aim of this project is to implement a fingerprint identification system tool with Matlab Software in order to be used for teaching and research purposes by evaluating and comparing the performance of two algorithms for each of the main stages of the identification system.

Minutiae Points on a Fingerprint Image

Basic Fingerprint Identification System Block Diagram

Genetic Algorithm applied to a scheduling problem-Abstract

Genetic algorithms are a search methodology for concurrent and complex problems, based on the evolutionary concept of survival of the fittest. To solve a complex scheduling problem by iteration is many times either time consuming or impossible in a feasible amount of time. This project aims to show if a GA (genetic algorithm) applied timetable scheduling problem is a feasible solution methodology. It will use a software modeling of population, chromosomes, genes to represent the dataset and programmed operators for selection, mating and mutation to resolve the problem to an acceptable solution.

Requirements

Requirements are simple for this project:

1. Using Linux CentOS 6.4 installed on the computers in A2.03 and Mint 15 and Mint 16 machines at the students home.

2. Using open source software as a development suite, these are:

a. GCC compiler suite

b. C / C++ programming language family

c. Gnuplot an graphing program that can provide support for 2 and 3D graphs charts that is required, and is fully interfaced and programmable.

d. Gtk+ toolkit. A graphical toolkit for creating the GUI. It supports all the necessary features a modern GUI requires and is designed for use with C / C++.

Digital Speech Recorder Experiment-Abstract

A significant progress has been achieved over the past century, the technology has moved from the dictaphone to mobile telephony devices, the size of them has been reduced in the size of handheld devices. In advance, the quality and the record duration of the desired audio has been increased due to better materials, faster components and improved techniques of sampling, coding, compressing.

Aim of the project is to design, build and test a Digital Speech Recorder for demonstration purposes and implement it using PCM method. The requirements include illustrating the performance of the Digital Speech Recorder and the effects of applying and adjusting various parameters such as sampling frequency, number of bits
used to represent each sample, quality of the filter.

Software :

Microsoft Visual Studio
Arduino IDE 1.0
Arduino IDE 1.5
Atmel Studio 6.2
Audacity
Fritzing
Matlab
Simulation of the sound capturing part

Stabilised platform for a machine-gun/artillery-gun/rocket-launcher on a warship - System Design

Requirement
A control platform system is to be designed to aid the gun targeting of the warship to stay in the same direction, irrespective of sea condition and ship level, which the ship is in. This is to improve the accuracy of the target aiming from a moving platform. This project requires knowledge of control and some analogue, digital interface to be able to read the position of the gun-platform and adjusting the gun position to compensate the errors produced.

Aim

Find the position of the gun-platform
Design the suitable controller
Translate the controller into difference equation to be programmed or using the PID algorithm
Feed PWM to motor
Design the overall hardware

System Architecture

There is two part to this project. First part requires digital interface for reading the position of the gun via accelerometer. The second part is to build the controller which involves control theory for finding the transfer function of DC motor. An improvement to the project, was to display the actual position, desired position and the error.

Accelerometer - 6 DOF IMU were used for detecting the position of the gun. All the data acquisition was done in the I2Cdev.h library and for reading the tilting angle; MPU6050.h library were used.

ATMega328 micro-controller chip - The Arduino Uno were built on the breadboard for better accessibility to the pins

L293D H-bridge - For controlling the direction of the motor and the speed

Encoder - The position of the motor is read via feedback control from an encoder (100:1 gear ratio encoder motor) that generates pulses depending on the direction of the motor which is detected by interrupt.

Manual control - A potentiometer were used for this. This was not in the initial design but during prototyping stage. The problem faced with the motor was it always started at zero. Therefore, a manual input were designed so that it can be controlled to the desired position.

Software - Matlab, servoCad and Arduino 1.0.5

Software Implementation

The main concept of merging the codes together were to look at the error produced from the sensor reading and potentiometer reading. Calling it as the desired value and the encoder value as the current value.

Mobile Instant Messenger - Abstract

This project is about creating a Instant Mobile Messenger (for android version only) and which will also be available in a PC version and Tablet which will again be for android version only. In here you will be able to send text messages to other clients which can either me a mobile, PC or a table. This will be one of the main features which is required in a mobile messenger, apart from that you will be able to send files to other clients which can be images, video or a document. Will also have a time stamp after every message so you can know when was the message sent in case you miss it, plus it will hold a history of your previous chats too unless you decide to clean it which is optional varying on different client. Finally in some additional features there will also be a option to change your profile picture and send emotions to other clients. Messages can be sent to a single client or multiple clients at once.

Matlab Based Loudspeaker Testing and Equalization Program-Abstract

This project is to develop a Matlab program able to measure the impulse response of the loudspeaker under the test and to use the various DSP techniques to alter and improve this response. GUI will be built to make easier access to various features of this program and to graphically present measured and altered response in a number of useful ways. For equalization, the adaptive filter can balance compensation and modify the sound sources through the LMS algorithm. Hence, the adaptive filter and LMS algorithm will be studied in this project.

Coursework Submission System -Abstract

This project is simply a course work submission system for the University of Portsmouth. Three users have access to the system. Administrators, teachers and students. The administrator sets up the users and manages the system, the teachers post coursework, display grades and post feedback while the students are able to view coursework, upload and submit work, view grades and feedback. The system is secure and can be accessed via the website with a unique log in for all users on the homepage.The administrator is able to view the details of all the users but the teachers are only allowed to view information about students in their course. Each student can only view information about themselves and courses that are assigned to them. The whole idea of this project is to eradicate the use of coursework. submission queues and last minute hullabaloo at the departments. Students can conveniently be able to carry on working from home. The Internet is readily available and that is what the system requires. A computer that is connected to the Internet and a decent Web browser. Your in!!

Palmprint Based Identification System -Abstract

Biometric technology is becoming widely used in personal identification system substituting existing conventional methods such as password and passport. Extracting feature vectors corresponding to individual palmprint images and performing palmprint matching based on some distance metrics is a major approach for palmprint recognition in past years. Matching performance is significantly influenced by many parameters in feature extraction process and may vary depending on environmental factors of image acquisition. The project aims to develop a palmprint recognition system using the phase components in two-dimensional discrete Fourier transforms of palmprint images. This project will use Gabor filter and Fisher linear discriminant processing images and compare the image in database and sample of experiment.

An Alternative Pointing Device

The Project

This project is about the development of an alternative pointing device which aims to replace or compliment the computer mouse in situations where it gives an advantage over other mouse alternatives. The solution device has been successfully developed and the final device it is believed that gives some advantages to the user such as the ability to navigate through screen without moving the hand to far away from keyboard when typing, or the ability to carry the device without holding anything since it is attached on the wrist. More about the device and its advantages will be discussed in later chapters where it is appropriate.
The device has been named “Gyrist” from the combination of the words Gyroscopeand Wrist. The reason for that is because the device uses gyroscopic technology (however, it is combined with accelerometer data) and it is attached on the wrist. Hence gy from gyroscope and ristfrom wrist give birth to “Gyrist”.

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