Cookies
O website necessita de alguns cookies e outros recursos semelhantes para funcionar. Caso o permita, o INESC TEC irá utilizar cookies para recolher dados sobre as suas visitas, contribuindo, assim, para estatísticas agregadas que permitem melhorar o nosso serviço. Ver mais
Aceitar Rejeitar
  • Menu
Publicações

2017

PROPULSION SYSTEMS MODELLING FOR MATERIALS HANDLING VEHICLES - FORKLIFTS

Autores
Moura, C; Amorim, EV;

Publicação
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 3RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT (ICEE 2017)

Abstract
In the material handling industry, productivity is a vital driver of profitability. Efficient operation of a forklift fleet is a significant factor in determining overall warehouse productivity. Traditionally, lead-acid batteries have been the best choice for forklifts operated indoors where emissions are restricted for health and safety reasons. More recently the application of fuel cells in this type of activity has emerged, also guaranteeing operational and environmental benefits (Elgowainy et al., 2009), and it is also shown as a possible solution to increase the productivity of a warehouse (Ballard, 2013). Withing the material handling industry the increased productivity comes through range extension enabling operation of the forklift with quick refuelling, without the need for battery recharging, as well as the existence of a constant power throughout the whole work cycle (Ballard, 2013). The performance of a forklift truck powered by PEM fuel cell or a lead acid battery is modelled and investigated by conducting a parametric study (Hosseinzadeh et al., 2013). In this study as a function of the number of daily trips of a forklift is characterised its energy expenditure, with the purpose of dimensioning, in an intelligent way opt for the most efficient propulsion system. Note that the two systems currently have a very different development stage, because the use of batteries is a technology implemented much more than the fuel cells. Our objective is, according to the workload that the company demands its forklifts to adapt the propulsion system that allows obtaining a greater productivity. In this model is studied several kinds of forklifts of Class I, II and III of the 1000 to 9000 kg in a wide range of loads.

2017

Structural, morphological, ionic conductivity, and thermal properties of pectin-based polymer electrolytes

Autores
Mendes, JP; Esperanca, JMSS; Medeiros, MJ; Pawlicka, A; Silva, MM;

Publicação
MOLECULAR CRYSTALS AND LIQUID CRYSTALS

Abstract
New polymer electrolytes (PEs), potentially interesting for solid-state electrochemical devices applications, were synthesized by a solvent casting method using pectin and ionic liquid (IL) N,N,N-trimethyl-N-(2-hydroxyethyl)ammonium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([N-1 1 1 2(OH)] [NTf2]. The resulting electrolytes besides being moderately homogenous and thermally stable below 155 degrees C, they also exhibited good mechanical properties. The SPE membranes were analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and complex impedance spectroscopy.

2017

Validation of a low intrusiveness heart rate sensor for stress assessment

Autores
Pereira, T; Almeida, PR; Cunha, JPS; Aguiar, A;

Publicação
BIOMEDICAL PHYSICS & ENGINEERING EXPRESS

Abstract
Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis has been used as a quantitative marker of the autonomous nervous system activity to measure mental stress. Wearable sensors have been emerging as a solution to collect HRV data for stress assessment in a real context, however such studies raise additional requirements. The wearable system must be minimally obtrusive to allow the subjects to perform their tasks without interference, and inconspicuous to avoid the anxiety associated with wearing medical devices in public. The purpose of this study was to quantify the accuracy trade-off in the use of a chest band heart rate sensor that is less intrusive and less costly than a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG). The HRV metrics extracted from a chest band heart rate monitor, Zephyr HxM (TM) (Zph (TM)), were compared with those extracted from an ECG certified medical device, Vital Jacket (TM) (VJ (TM)). The two systems were worn simultaneously. under laboratory conditions by a population of 14 young and healthy subjects, aged 20 to 26 years, under the stress induced by the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) procedure. The results showed a mean difference between RR intervals of 9 ms; a. root-mean square error. (RMSE) of less than 8% and. a Pearson's correlation higher than 0.946, considering all TSST phases. In the HRV analysis, the average of all normal intervals (AVNN) showed errors less than 2% between the two systems with a correlation higher than 0.99 for all TSST phases. We thus conclude that the used chest band sensor represents an alternative to the current wearable medical devices to monitor RR intervals, and could be used for mental stress monitoring similar to the TSST protocol.

2017

Cross-layer classification framework for automatic social behavioural analysis in surveillance scenario

Autores
Pereira, EM; Ciobanu, L; Cardoso, JS;

Publicação
NEURAL COMPUTING & APPLICATIONS

Abstract
The increasing demand for human activity analysis in surveillance scenarios has been triggered by the emergence of new features and concepts to help in identifying activities of interest. However, the characterisation of individual and group behaviours is a topic not so well studied in the video surveillance community due to not only its intrinsic difficulty and large variety of topics involved, but also because of the lack of valid semantic concepts that relate human activity to social context. In this paper, we address the topic of social semantic meaning in a well-defined surveillance scenario, namely shopping mall, and propose new definitions of individual and group behaviour that consider environment context, a relational descriptor that emphasises position and attention-based characteristics, and a new classification approach based on mini-batches. We also present a wide evaluation process that analyses the sociological meaning of the individual features and outlines the performance impact of automatic features extraction processes into our classification framework. We verify the discriminative value of the selected features, state the descriptor performance and robustness over different stress conditions, confirm the advantage of the proposed mini-batch classification approach which obtains promising results, and outline future research lines to improve our novel social behavioural analysis framework.

2017

Using the multi-object adaptive optics demonstrator RAVEN to observe metal-poor stars in and towards the Galactic Centre

Autores
Lamb, M; Venn, K; Andersen, D; Oya, S; Shetrone, M; Fattahi, A; Howes, L; Asplund, M; Lardière, O; Akiyama, M; Ono, Y; Terada, H; Hayano, Y; Suzuki, G; Blain, C; Jackson, K; Correia, C; Youakim, K; Bradley, C;

Publicação
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

Abstract
The chemical abundances for five metal-poor stars in and towards the Galactic bulge have been determined from the H-band infrared spectroscopy taken with the RAVEN multi-object adaptive optics science demonstrator and the Infrared Camera and Spectrograph at the Subaru 8.2-m telescope. Three of these stars are in the Galactic bulge and have metallicities between -2.1<[Fe/H] < -1.5, and high [a/Fe]~+0.3, typical of Galactic disc and bulge stars in this metallicity range; [Al/Fe] and [N/Fe] are also high, whereas [C/Fe] < +0.3. An examination of their orbits suggests that two of these stars may be confined to the Galactic bulge and one is a halo trespasser, though proper motion values used to calculate orbits are quite uncertain. An additional two stars in the globular cluster M22 show [Fe/H] values consistent to within 1s, although one of these two stars has [Fe/H] = -2.01 ± 0.09, which is on the low end for this cluster. The [a/Fe] and [Ni/Fe] values differ by 2s, with the most metal-poor star showing significantly higher values for these elements. M22 is known to show element abundance variations, consistent with a multipopulation scenario though our results cannot discriminate this clearly given our abundance uncertainties. This is the first science demonstration of multiobject adaptive optics with high-resolution infrared spectroscopy, and we also discuss the feasibility of this technique for use in the upcoming era of 30-m class telescope facilities.

2017

Energy flexibility management based on predictive dispatch model of domestic energy management system

Autores
Gazafroudi A.S.; Prieto-Castrillo F.; Pinto T.; Prieto J.; Corchado J.M.; Bajo J.;

Publicação
Energies

Abstract
This paper proposes a predictive dispatch model to manage energy flexibility in the domestic energy system. Electric Vehicles (EV), batteries and shiftable loads are devices that provide energy flexibility in the proposed system. The proposed energy management problem consists of two stages: day-Ahead and real time. A hybrid method is defined for the first time in this paper to model the uncertainty of the PV power generation based on its power prediction. In the day-Ahead stage, the uncertainty is modeled by interval bands. On the other hand, the uncertainty of PV power generation is modeled through a stochastic scenario-based method in the real-Time stage. The performance of the proposed hybrid Interval-Stochastic (InterStoch) method is compared with the Modified Stochastic Predicted Band (MSPB) method. Moreover, the impacts of energy flexibility and the demand response program on the expected profit and transacted electrical energy of the system are assessed in the case study presented in this paper.

  • 2200
  • 4362