Real-Time Construction of Stereoscopic Video Frames using Three Omnidirectional Cameras

Complex computer simulations are a class of applications that demands high performance processing power in order to be realized in a feasible time. To achieve this processing power, networks composed of non-dedicated machines are increasingly being investigated. An efficient scheduling scheme is one of the most important issues to make a better use of these resources. In this paper we present an architecture for scheduling complex computer simulations aimed at heterogeneous non-dedicated machines which relies on information provided by the models that are being simulated. Furthermore, a case study demonstrates how the proposed architecture can assist in the execution of complex simulations applied to the protein structure prediction problem, which is one of the most important current challenges in structural bioinformatics.

Background The prevalence of jumper's knee across different sports has not been examined, and it is not known if there is a gender difference. Data from surgical case series indicate that there may be a high prevalence in sports with high speed and power demands. Hypothesis The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of jumper's knee in different sports among female and male athletes and to correlate the prevalence to the loading characteristics of the extensor mechanism in these sports. Study Design Cross-sectional study; Level of evidence, 4. Methods The authors examined approximately 50 Norwegian male and female athletes at the national elite level from each of the following 9 sports: athletics (male athletes: high jump, 100- and 200-m sprint), basketball (male athletes), ice hockey (male athletes), volleyball (male athletes), orienteering (male athletes), road cycling (male athletes), soccer (male and female athletes), team handball (male and female athletes), and wrestling (male athletes). The examination included an interview on individual characteristics (weight, age, height, and training background), a clinical examination, and self-recorded Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment score from 0 (worst) to 100 (best). Results The overall prevalence of current jumper's knee was 14.2% (87 of 613 athletes), with a significant difference between sports with different performance characteristics (range, 0%-45%). In addition, 51 athletes (8%) reported previous symptoms. The prevalence of current symptoms was highest in volleyball (44.6% ± 6.6%) and basketball (31.9% ± 6.8%), whereas there were no cases in cycling or orienteering. The prevalence of current jumper's knee was lower among women (5.6% ± 2.2%) compared with men (13.5% ± 3.0%; χ2 test, P =. 042). The duration of symptoms among athletes with current jumper's knee (n = 87) was 32 ± 25 (standard deviation) months, with a Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment score of 64 ± 19. Conclusion The prevalence of jumper's knee is high in sports characterized by high demands on speed and power for the leg extensors. The symptoms are often serious, resulting in long-standing impairment of athletic performance.

Development of digital simulators for transient analysis of electric power systems has been the subject of many research works during the last four decades. In most studies, the simulation can be done off-line but in some particular situations, usually equipment testing, it may be mandatory to have the simulation executed in real time so that the interaction with real equipments can be studied. Digital Real Time Power System Simulators, DRTPSS for short, became a mandatory tool to ensure the quality of power systems. Most of the DRTPSSs in use nowadays are based on high performance parallel processors using last generation technology. Recently, some works have proposed new architectures based on the use of FPGAs ("Field Programmable Gate Arrays") as a mean to increase the simulator's processing power without increasing its cost too much. This work shows how FPGAs can be used to implement a DRTPSS capable of simulating large electrical networks including high frequency power electronic devices.

The rapid development of Virtual Reality technology and the video sharing market of VOD (video-on-demand) stream nowadays makes online 360-degree video a new form of internet media. In the past few years, many 360-degree video delivery schemes are proposed. Yet, high fps requires a very high network band, otherwise will suffer from significant video quality drop. In this paper, we are focusing on using salient object detection and frame motion state detection for quality adjustment to reset 360-degree image quality of salient foreground and unimportant background. The system predicts the salient portion of video and then separate one frame in to foreground frame and back ground frame. Then by combining MS SSIM (Modified Structural Similarity of Images) algorithm, it also detects important frames and estimate the motion state of each view. The following procedure includes methods which lower the quality of dynamic background view and meanwhile maintain the high quality of foreground. This stage separates a 360-degree video into two videos with a much smaller file size of the background video. The core contribution of the scheme is that it is able to detect salient foreground and less noticed dynamic background of VR graphics. As a result in the transmission of the VR graphics, the network can execute a parallel transmission of a foreground and a economized background, costing less network resources.The results prove that this proposed scheme can effectively reduce global transmission bandwidth of the network with a wide adaptation of all genres of 360-degree videos.

Recently, 360-degree panorama and spherical displays have received more and more attention due to their unique panoramic properties. Compared with existing works, we plan to utilize omnidirectional cameras in our spherical display system to enable omnidirectional panoramic image as input and output. In our work, we present a novel movable spherical display embedded with omnidirectional cameras. Our system can use embedded cameras to shoot 360-degree panoramic video and project the live stream from its cameras onto its spherical display in real time.In addition, we implemented an approach to achieve the dynamic spherical projection mapping in order to project to moving spherical devices. We have also been creating applications utilizing system's features by using 360-degree panoramic image as input and output.

This paper presents a computationally scalable real-time observer, which allows the evolution of temperature distribution within slabs reheated in continuous furnaces to be tracked. Accurate tracking of skidmarks requires the use of two-dimensional models, which demand high computational power, generally provided by multiprocessor computers. To evaluate the behaviour of the observer under both typical and extreme operational conditions, a simulator of a complete furnace is presented. The emulation of extreme operational conditions using a real furnace would be impossible, due to the material waste and the cost of delaying normal production. This furnace simulator is the simplest method of generating the variables of the temperatures in the various furnace zones, which are fed to the observer during its operation in real time. Finally, in order to configure the observer, a simple and efficient graphic method is proposed. The method generates an optimum solution, minimizing the number of processors required to fulfil the specifications and maximize their utilization under all operational conditions.

A continuous wave (CW) E-band traveling wave tube (TWT) is developed to meet the demand of broadband, high power and high efficiency amplifiers for future wireless communications. Several methods are combined to improve the TWT performance, in particular the efficiency, including: increase of the interaction impedance by setting operation point near the cutoff frequency, use of the folded waveguide (FWG) slow wave structure (SWS) with modified circular bends (MCBs) and the phase velocity jumping (PVJ) technique. A novel dual-mode asymmetry multistage depressed collector is used to significantly improve the recovery efficiency without the return of electrons. The first prototype tube has been assembled and tested. A total efficiency of 43% with an electronic efficiency of 9.8%, output power of 120 W and gain of 41 dB is achieved in 81-86GHz where the beam voltage is 15.8kV and the beam current is 77mA. The tube shows very flat output characteristics in saturation state and provides high linear power and efficiency. The -1dB compression point output is over 50W with the linear (output back off 4dB) total efficiency up to 26.4%.

Competition in the aircraft industry market and global warming has driven the industry to think along economic and environmental lines. This has resulted in the emergence of More Electric Aircraft (MEA). A new DC standards for power distribution has been obtained with 270 V DC on board of MEA. Because of its high electric power demand MEA requires high energy density batteries and DC-DC converter system. The DC- DC converter functions as a charger for batteries. The features like high performance and galvanic isolation make the phase shifted bidirectional DC-DC converter (also known as Dual Active Bridge) a strong candidates amongst the available DC-DC converters. In this paper, authors have integrated a high energy density Li-ion battery system with power distribution DC bus using phase shifted high power bidirectional (PSHPB) DC-DC converter and proposed a simple dynamic duty cycle control (DDCC) algorithm for its operation under dynamic conditions. The full system is verified under different dynamic conditions with variations in output current (load) and input voltage (line). The modeling has been done in MATLAB® Simulink environment, and simulation results are presented and discussed in the paper.

Plasma spheroidization utilizing a plasma spray gun has been demonstrated for water-atomized stainless steel SUS316L powder. The angular particles were successfully spheroidized, and the D50 size of particles were decreased from 35 μm to 24 μm with 9 kW of processing power and to 15 μm with 17 kW of processing power. It was found that the high processing power of 17 kW generates a significant number of fine particles with the size of under 1 μm. By contrast, the powder formed on low processing power of 9 kW has better flow-ability and low cohesiveness, suggesting that an appropriate processing power exists to form the spherical powder suited for additive manufacturing

With the ever‐increasing demand for high power and high energy batteries, extensive researches devote to high voltage cathode materials. Graphite cathode‐based dual‐ion batteries (DIBs) possess the unique advantages of high working voltage (≈4.5−5.0) and high power, but still suffer from low coulombic efficiency and poor long‐term stability mainly resulted by the serious oxidative decomposition of electrolytes and significant structural deterioration of graphite cathode. From the perspectives of simultaneously reinforcing the mechanical strength of graphite cathode and suppressing the decomposition of electrolytes via a cathode/electrolyte interphase (CEI), polyacrylic acid (PAA) is adopted as the surface modifier of natural graphite (NG). The mechanical stability of graphite cathode is significantly improved by virtue of the bonding interaction between PAA and binder, which is validated through both theoretical calculation and experimental observation. In addition, PAA contributes to the formation of a LiF‐rich and homogeneous CEI through the preferential adsorption of anions, and effectively mitigates the cointercalation and decomposition of solvent. As the cathode material of DIBs, NG@PAA manifests fast charge/discharge capability and outstanding capacity retention of 73.9% after 8000 cycles. This work provides a surface modification strategy for optimizing the performance of electrode materials from multiple perspectives.

In this paper, we describe a new telepresence system which enables a user to look around a virtualized real world easily in network environments. The proposed system includes omni-directional video viewers on web browsers and allows the user to look around the omni-directional video contents on the web browsers. The omni-directional video viewer is implemented as an Active-X program so that the user can install the viewer automatically only by opening the web site which contains the omni-directional video contents. The system allows many users at different sites to look around the scene just like an interactive TV using a multi-cast protocol without increasing the network traffic. This paper describes the implemented system and the experiments using live and stored video streams. In the experiment with stored video streams, the system uses an omni-directional multi-camera system for video capturing. We can look around high resolution and high quality video contents. In the experiment with live video streams, a car-mounted omni-directional camera acquires omni-directional video streams surrounding the car, running in an outdoor environment. The acquired video streams are transferred to the remote site through the wireless and wired network using multi-cast protocol. We can see the live video contents freely in arbitrary direction. In the both experiments, we have implemented a view-dependent presentation with a head-mounted display (HMD) and a gyro sensor for realizing more rich presence.

Aquaharmonics Inc (AH) intends to develop, build, and perform open ocean testing on a 1:7 scale device. Testing will include data capture and performance optimization in wave climates representative of full scale in potential deployment locations. Test data will be used to develop a scaled device to provide minimized levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for markets with high power demand.

This paper presents an investigation into the feasibility and performance of fluidic thrust vector control based on the Coanda effect for smaller aircraft. The study focuses on medium-mass unmanned airborne systems and demonstrates that fluidic thrust vector nozzles are viable at both the engine and aircraft level. A fully coupled simulation between the aircraft and its engine is conducted for an example generic mission with two variants to deflect the thrust vector. The results show that using fluidic thrust vectoring systems can lead to slight improvements in aerodynamic characteristics while reducing control surface size and thereby drag and radar cross-section. However, this comes at the cost of a slight increase in fuel consumption and a loss in the available engine thrust during flight situations with high power demand. The aerodynamic parameters used to model the fluidic thrust vector nozzle are obtained from CFD calculations.

Commercial porous membranes as well as in-house fabricated ultraporous nonwoven membranes were tested as separators in aqueous carbon-based supercapacitors. The separators were obtained by electrospinning and melt-blowing of nonwoven nano and microfibers. A pressure-controlled laboratory cell was designed and fabricated in order to precisely compare the supercapacitor performance and discriminate the separator influence. The electrochemical results showed that the separator does not influence the capacitance of the cell but has a significant impact on its internal resistance. It was demonstrated that increasing the porosity of the separator led to a decreased cell resistance and then to a higher energy available at high power demand.

Nuclear energy's high-density, enduring power offers key solutions for deep-sea development's energy challenges in extreme marine conditions. This paper systematically introduces the current applications of marine nuclear-powered equipment in the civilian sector, which are primarily reflected in nuclear-powered merchant ships and icebreakers. Three key insights were identified by analyzing the technical parameters of deep-sea resource development equipment and the current state of small modular reactor (SMR) and nuclear battery technology: First, deep-sea resource development equipment has high power demands and energy consumption, making energy supply challenging for offshore operations. Second, SMRs and nuclear batteries can provide ships with stable and continuous power output and propulsion. Third, the successful application of SMRs and nuclear batteries in deep-sea resource development equipment depends on optimizing regulatory frameworks, achieving technological maturity, and enhancing public acceptance. However, several challenges remain, including those related to nuclear battery technology, SMR technology, nuclear energy policy, and public acceptance. Finally, in response to the existing technological bottlenecks, the paper suggests measures such as optimizing energy conversion efficiency, improving safety regulatory frameworks, and enhancing public understanding and acceptance to facilitate the effective application of nuclear energy in deep-sea resource development.