The objective of this work is to develop a closed-loop controlled insulin pump to keep the blood glucose level of Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) patients in the desired range. In contrast to the existing artificial pancreas systems with syringe pumps, an energy-efficient, valveless piezoelectric pump is designed and simulated with different types of controllers and glucose-insulin models. COMSOL Multiphysics is used for piezoelectric-fluid-structural coupled 3D finite element simulations of the pump. Then, a reduced-order model (ROM) is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink together with optimal and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers and glucose–insulin models of Ackerman, Bergman, and Sorensen. Divergence angle, nozzle/diffuser diameters, lengths, chamber height, excitation voltage, and frequency are optimized with dimensional constraints to achieve a high net flow rate and low power consumption. A prototype is manufactured and experimented with different excitation frequencies. It is shown that the proposed system successfully controls the delivered insulin for all three glucose–insulin models.

With the growth in the share of variable renewable energy sources, fluctuations in the power generation caused by these types of power plants can diminish the stability and flexibility of the grid. These two can be enhanced by applying frequency containment using hydropower plants as an operational reserve. The frequency containment in hydropower plants is automatically controlled by speed governors within seconds. Disturbances such as fluctuations in the net head and aging may diminish the performance of the controllers of the speed governors. In this study, model reference adaptive control approaches based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) rule and Lyapunov method were exploited in order to improve the performance of the speed governor for frequency containment control. The active power control with frequency control was enhanced by the aforementioned adaptive control methods. A mathematical model of a hydropower plant with a surge tank and medium penstock was constructed and validated through site measurements of a plant. It was shown that, as they are applicable in real life, both methods perform significantly better compared to conventional proportional-integrator control. Even in first five deviations, the performance of the conventional controller improved by 58.8% using the MIT rule and by 65.9% using the Lyapunov method. When the two adaptive control approaches were compared with each other, the MIT rule outputted better results than the Lyapunov method when the disturbance frequency was higher; however, the latter was more functional for rare disturbances.

Visuo-haptic mixed reality (VHMR) adds virtual objects to a real scene and enables users to see and also touch them via a see-through display and a haptic device. Most studies with kinesthetic feedback use general-purpose haptic devices, which require the user to continuously hold an attached stylus. This approach constrains users to the mechanical limits of the device even when it is not needed. In this paper, we propose a novel VHMR concept with an encountered-type haptic display (ETHD), which consists of a precision hexapod positioner and a six-axis force/torque transducer. The main contribution is that the users work with unbound real-life tools with tracking markers. ETHD’s end-effector remains inside the virtual object and follows the tooltip to engage only during an interaction. We have developed a simulation setup and experimentally evaluated the relative accuracy and synchronization of the three major processes, namely tool tracking, haptic rendering, and visual rendering. The experiments successfully build-up to a simple simulation scenario where a tennis ball with a fixed center is deformed by the user.