Busy, busy, busy.....the journey continues.
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Name of project
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Uncertainties at start
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Issues arising during project
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Further work
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Ongoing/Ended
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CROAC – app to analyse Costa Rican frog
calls.
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Could we develop an analysis package to
run on mobile phone for identifying calls in the wild.
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Difficulties with running complex
analysis fast enough on mobile devices.
Complexity of the background noise to
the calls. Resulting in false calls.
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Algorithm needs refining to help reduce
false calls.
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Ongoing
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Rail infrastructure health monitoring.
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Could the health of railway
infrastructure (points, bridges, tunnels etc) be monitored through their
changing sounds.
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Difficulty getting access to real
railway infrastructure. So we used a model railway to prove the concepts and
think through the sensors required.
Preliminary analysis showed simplest
analysis would be to focus on bridges.
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Need to develop sensor to a level where
it can be left for a period of time in the field.
Need to prove we can identify signals
for real railway bridges.
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Ongoing
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PACE – air-conditioning control system.
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Could a new air-conditioning approach
be controlled using the new LoRA radio communication protocol and a simple
control device.
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Control of the peltier cooler was
non-trivial requiring significant hardware modifications.
LoRA communication setup proved less
effective that originally anticipated.
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May look to use more standard
communication methods.
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Ended – proved LoRA is not right for this
system.
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Wheel slip analysis
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Could a big-data approach be used to
analyse rail wheel slip occurrences.
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Access to appropriate data was
difficult to obtain.
Data was provided by Siemens in the end
but then we ended up with too much data. Effort then had to be expended
refining this data.
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Initial analysis has demonstrated the
technique. Larger data sets are now needed to refine the algorithms.
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Ongoing
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FOSSA – satellite swarm communications.
Effectively he ‘glue’ to communicating and transmitting data from remote
monitoring devices using cheap satellite systems.
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Could a cube-sat be developed to use
the new LoRA communication protocol. Built and launched at low cost.
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Difficulties encountered applying the
LoRA protocol to the satellite communication time window.
Power consumption on the satellite
required special design of solar cells.
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The cube sat now needs final build then
tested and commissioned for flight
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Ongoing – launch planned for Sept 2019
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