Many sampling based algorithms have been introduced recently. Among them Rapidly Exploring Random Tree (RRT) is one of the quickest and the most efficient obstacle free path finding algorithm. Although it ensures probabilistic completeness, it cannot guarantee finding the most optimal path. Rapidly Exploring Random Tree Star (RRT*), a recently proposed extension of RRT, claims to achieve convergence towards the optimal solution thus ensuring asymptotic optimality along with probabilistic completeness. However, it has been proven to take an infinite time to do so and with a slow convergence rate. In this paper an extension of RRT*, called as RRT*-Smart, has been prposed to overcome the limitaions of RRT*. The goal of the proposecd method is to accelerate the rate of convergence, in order to reach an optimum or near optimum solution at a much faster rate, thus reducing the execution time. The novel approach of the proposed algorithm makes use of two new techniques in RRT*–Path Optimization and Intelligent Sampling. Simulation results presented in various obstacle cluttered environments along with statistical and mathematical analysis confirm the efficiency of the proposed RRT*-Smart algorithm.

Social robots have evolved in diverse applications with the emergence of deep reinforcement learning methods. However, safe and secure navigation of social robots in a complex crowded environment remains a challenging task. The robot can safely navigate in a crowd only if it can predict the next action of humans, however this task becomes difficult because of the unpredictable human behavior. To address the issue of socially compliant navigation, the robot needs to learn real-time human behavior. This manuscript models Danger-Zone for the robot by considering all possible actions that humans can take at given time. The Danger Zones are formulated by considering the real time human behavior. The robot is trained to avoid these danger zones for safe and secure navigation. The proposed model is tested on the three state of art methods, Collision Avoidance with Deep Reinforcement Learning (CADRL), Long Short Term Memory Reinforcement Learning (LSTM-RL) and Social Attention with Reinforcement Learning (SARL) in multi-agent navigation. Experimental results signify that proposed model can understand human behavior and navigate in a socially compliant manner with safety as the highest priority.

The specific characteristics and operations of microgrid cause protection problems due to high penetration of distributed energy resources. To resolve these issues, the proposed scheme employs the Hilbert transform and data mining approach to protect the microgrid. First, the Hilbert transform is used to preprocess the faulted voltage and current signals to extract the sensitive fault features. Then, the obtained data set of the extracted features is input to the logistic regression classifier for fault detection. Later, fault classification is done by training the AdaBoost classifier. In the proposed scheme, the simulation results for feature extractions are evaluated on a standard International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) medium voltage microgrid, compatible with MATLAB/SIMULINK software environment, whereas, Python is used for training and testing of data mining model. The results are evaluated under grid-connected and islanded modes for both looped and radial configurations by simulating various fault and no-fault cases. The results show that the accuracy of the proposed logistic regression and AdaBoost classifier is higher when compared to decision tree, support vector machine, and random forest methods. The results further validate the robustness of the proposed method against the measurement noise.

Shape from focus (SFF), which relies on image focus as a cue within sequenced images, represents a passive technique in recovering object shapes in scenes. Although numerous methods have been recently proposed, less attention has been paid to particular factors affecting them. In regard to SFF, one such critical factor impacting system application is the total number of images. A large data set requires a huge amount of computation power, whereas decreasing the number of images causes shape reconstruction to be crude and erroneous. The total number of images is inversely proportional to interframe distance or sampling step size. In this paper, interframe distance (or sampling step size) criteria for SFF systems have been formulated. In particular, light ray focusing is approximated by the use of a Gaussian beam followed by the formulation of a sampling expression using Nyquist sampling. Consequently, a fitting function for focus curves is also obtained. Experiments are performed on simulated and real objects to validate the proposed schemes.

Urine tests are performed by using an off-the-shelf reference sheet to compare the color of test strips. However, the tabular representation is difficult to use and more prone to visual errors, especially when the reference color-swatches to be compared are spatially apart. Thus, making it is difficult to distinguish between the subtle differences of shades on the reagent pads. This manuscript represents a new arrangement of reference arrays for urine test strips (urinalysis). Reference color swatches are grouped in a doughnut chart, surrounding each reagent pad on the strip. The urine test can be evaluated using naked eye by referring to the strip with no additional sheet necessary. Along with this new strip, an algorithm for smartphone based application is also proposed as an alternative to deliver diagnostic results. The proposed colorimetric detection method evaluates the captured image of the strip, under various color spaces and evaluates ten different tests for urine. Thus, the proposed system can deliver results on the spot using both naked eye and smartphone. The proposed scheme delivered accurate results under various environmental illumination conditions without any calibration requirements, exhibiting performances suitable for real-life applications and an ease for a common user.

The protection problems in microgrid effect the reliability of the power system caused due to high distributed generator penetrations. Therefore, fault protection in microgrid is extremely important and needs to be resolved to enhance the robustness of the power system. This manuscript proposes a combined signal processing and data mining-based approach for microgrid fault protection. In this study, first the multiresolution decomposition of wavelet transform is employed to preprocess the voltage and current signals to compute the total harmonic distortion of the voltage and current. Then, the statistical indices of standard deviation, mean, and median of the total harmonic distortion and the negative sequence components of active and reactive power are used to collect the input data. After that, all the available data is provided to the random forest-based classifier to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed scheme in terms of the detection, identification, and classification of faults. This study used different aspects for data collection by simulating various fault and no-fault cases for both looped and radial configurations under grid-connected and islanded modes of operation. The simulations were performed on a standard medium voltage microgrid using MATLAB/SIMULINK, whereas the analysis for testing and training of the random forest were conducted in Python. It is recognized that the proposed method performed better than support vector machines and decision tree that are reported in the literature. The results further demonstrate that the proposed method can also detect simultaneous faults, and it is also effective against measurement noise.