ABSTRACT. The continuous scaling down in CMOS increase the computing power of a processor architecture but the power dissipation limits the use of higher and higher clock frequency in a single processor chip. An overview of our research activity is presented in the field of heterogeneous computing arrays to solve complex computational problems. Our experimental platforms are FPGA based. The results are ranging from fluid dynamics and extracellular measurement of brain electrical activity to real-time Multi-Camera Vision System for UAV Collision Warning and Navigation.

ABSTRACT. The goal of this paper is to perform a comparison on different classification algorithms applied on Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients and Moving Picture Experts Group-7 features in order to obtain a high average correct classification rate, greater than 98%, and a low computation time, less than 1 minute, for audio classification purposes in the case of audio signals from service robots. The highest correct classification rates are obtained using the Linear Discriminant Analysis for classification phase. For Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients the averaged accuracy is 99.78%, using 64 features, and the classification computation time is 5.26 seconds. For Moving Picture Experts Group-7 features the averaged accuracy is 99,65%, with a classification computation time of 5.30 seconds.

ABSTRACT. In this paper two new Buck-type converters are derived and analyzed. The new converters are obtained starting from an original converter to which a series LC cell is added in parallel to the switches. The LC cell can be added either in parallel to the transistor or in parallel to the freewheeling diode. The integrated magnetics technique is used to achieve ripple free output current in both cases. A dc analysis is carried out in order to derive the main static characteristics and waveforms. A comparison between the new Buck-type converters and the classical Buck converter is presented. The theoretical results are verified and confirmed through simulation.

ABSTRACT. The application of the Extended Describing Function Method (EDF) to PWM CCM operated converters is proposed in the paper in order to derive the small-signal transfer functions. In order to exemplify the method, two PWM converters have been chosen: a Buck and a Boost topology. In order to validate the obtained results, the models have been compared to the traditional averaged small-signal models and perfect agreement has been achieved.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, deep learning methods have fulfilled great image classification tasks. In this paper, we use convolutional neural networks for classifying brain images into four classes: no tumor, meningioma, glioma, and pituitary. The dataset used is public and contains 3064 T1-weighted contrast-enhanced MRI brain images from 233 patients, in addition, we have added another 980 images with no tumor. A comparison between pretrained AlexNet, GoogleNet, DenseNet201, and ResNet101 has been done using our dataset. Our results show an accuracy of 98.76% obtained with fine-tuned ResNet101.

ABSTRACT. This paper describes and demonstrates the way of realizing a compensation PCB for the oscilloscope probes. The compensation PCB is helping one person to use the probe at different attenuation values as 1:1 or 10:1. In this paper is analyzed the actual available circuits, a block-diagram of the compensation probe and where it is placed in a complete test system. Nevertheless, the simulation and results obtained with the help of LTSpice software are presented. The problem shown and solved in the paper is coming from the necessity of having a long oscilloscope cable (3 meters long) connected directly to a Device Under Test (DUT). The problem is showing up much more frequently in the last period of time in the automotive industry due to the needs of testing and validating different new Integrated Circuit’s (IC’s) and electronic components in climate chambers, which not allows one to introduce all the test equipment inside, but only the DUT and the probes. This circuit intends to help the user to obtain voltage measurement results with noise (which are coming from the cable length) cancelation and to compensate the wrong amplitude of the signal and also to eliminate the frequency disturbance caused also by the cable length. Beside the circuit, the paper presents also the models that were realized and the obtained results.

ABSTRACT. Abstract — This paper describes and validates an electronic circuit designed to synchronize the phase shift of two analog signals (ex. two audio signals) using an adaptive active all-pass filter. In the presented application, the adaptive feature means that the system is reading the output, interpreting the result and applying a certain value of the lag element, in our case a low-pass filter. This process is known as audio beam forming because a microphone module is being used to capture the signal and later to process it in the developed application. The theoretical part is presenting the state of the art and the design of the main circuit based on the theoretical formulas and calculation. The simulation part is presenting different environments like LTSpice, Kicad & Labview to get a first estimation over the outputs. To measure the real values, a test board was developed to prove the functionality of the circuit. Measurements have been performed using an Analog Discovery board (oscilloscope & function generator) and the results were centralized in a database which was used to determine the best configuration of the beamforming circuit to synchronize the two analog audio signals. Besides the identified application in the area of noise cancelling, new potential uses cases have been identified in the area of telecom and mobile networks, simple Integrated Circuits (IC) synchronizing applications or dynamic filtering.

ABSTRACT. An increased use of robots in direct interaction with humans can be observed both in the industry and in the service sector. The specific areas of application as well as forms of interaction are diverse. Nevertheless in order to enable a structured comparison, a taxonomy is necessary, that, on one hand is generic enough to be applicable to a wide variety of human-robot interaction scenarios and on the other hand is specific enough to enable the analysis of superordinate features. This article introduces the development of a taxonomy that meets both criteria. A taxonomy of human-robot interaction was developed, which both meets the requirement of the highest possible generalizability and enables the interaction characterization of humans and robots with a high level of detail. The influence of certain design features of the robot on typical human factors aspects such as trust, acceptance, situation awareness or mental stress can be subjected to a systematic (meta) analysis. The taxonomy thus forms the basis for future recommendations for innovative and human-centered activities.

ABSTRACT. Safe administration of the cities from environment point of view is part of the focus of smart cities related to improving the quality of life of inhabitants. This paper presents a solution to the noise pollution problem in our communities. The noise parameter monitoring and analysis is based on the concept of Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) using smartphones. The first part of the paper presents the technologies used together with their advantages, followed by a description of implemented applications: the phone application, the web application, as well as the integration with SAP that acts as analytics and decision support platform. The implemented smartphone application has the role of data acquisition for sound values, recording and transmitting the real time parameters as well as a location and temporal stamp. The web application acts as a visualization dashboard for recorded data that can be further analyzed and filtered in various forms.

ABSTRACT. A grid-tied squirrel-cage induction machine can operate at the generating mode if its rotor is driven above the synchronous speed. However, once the mechanical power provided by the prime mover is unable to overdrive the rotor beyond the synchronous speed, the induction machine would switch to the motoring mode and begins to drain the electrical power from the power system. To restore the induction machine back to the generating mode, a series-shunt power conditioner (SSPC) was presented to serve as a controllable voltage source between the stator circuit and the power grid. The SSPC is formed by two power inverters in back-to-back connection through a common dc link. The coupled voltage provided by the series inverter contains not only a fundamental component but also a subsynchronous component. The subsynchronous component at the stator terminal enables the induction machine to generate subsynchronous active power to the power grid. As for the fundamental component, which is designated in phase with the grid voltage in order to alleviate the fundamental active power drained by the induction machine. To avert the current harmonic distortion due to the subsynchronous voltage produced by the series inverter, the shunt inverter was employed at the point of common coupling (PCC) to sink the current harmonic. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

ABSTRACT. Integral Sliding mode control scheme is developed in this paper for Full bridge LLC resonant converter. The developed controller can operate at three frequencies under converter modes. In first mode only converter-1 operates and output is reached up to 100V at particular frequency. And in second mode converter operates at two different frequencies for 250V and 420V respectively. Performance of this controller is compared with the PI controller under steady state and transient condition. Performance of SMC controller is better than PI controller as can be seen from simulation results in result and discussion.

ABSTRACT. There has been significant strides to integrate renewable energy sources into our current power system. In this work, we focus on wind farm integration into a weak grid. To ensure that this proposed idea is suitable, we perform tests to ensure that the power system remains stable under some potential scenarios. To facilitate integration and suitable steady state conditions are maintained, the use of Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices are employed. In this work, we focus on the transient stability characteristic for power system stability. Specifically, we present how the use of Static Synchronous Compensators (STATCOM) in the first portion of this work, used alongside Static Synchronous Series Compensators (SSSC) to improve voltage stability, also improved transient stability of the wind dominated power system.

ABSTRACT. Today, the development of renewable energy sources is going on large scale. Especially fast is the development of technologies for converting solar energy into electrical energy. The latest developments in this field give more and more promising results concerning the improvement of energy conversion efficiency. The purpose of this work is to design mobile solar power plant for remote areas without power supply. The paper describes the concept of a mobile automated solar power plant and given three dimensional models. The main structural units of an automated mobile power plant are shown and described. The relevance of this work is to develop a mobile source of green energy for remote areas in which there is no uninterrupted power supply, as well as a replacement for fuel generators. The paper shows the calculations of the power parameters of the lifting mechanism, as well as the algorithm of the automated power plant and the electrical circuit of the control unit. The output power of developed mobile power plant, according to the calculations, is 3 kWh. During the day, this power plant generates 18-20 kWh of energy. Mobile solar power plant with similar parameters can be used not only as an alternative power source of energy in various emergency situations, but as the main source of energy in remote areas in the absence of an uninterrupted power source. And also this model can be used as a replacement for fuel generators during construction works.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays convolutional neural networks have many applications, from autonomous driving to the medical field. The need for fast deployment of the algorithms, reduced latency, while maintaining a reduced cost created a new paradigm - edge computing - to bring the computational power closer to the user. One limitation for the implementation of convolutional neural networks on edge devices is the large number of parameters, implying high memory usage. As the memory constraints are very strict on an edge device, the need to reduce the memory usage of convolutional neural networks arises. One way is to perform network weights quantization. We propose an adaptive model-based quantization method, with a parameterizable number of quantization intervals. Using the double exponential probability density function, the quantization intervals are determined by taking into account the histogram of trained network weights. For a hardware implementation, we modified a classical convolutional network architecture by replacing fully connected layers with convolutional layers, and changing activation functions. We performed a comparison of the performance of several convolutional network architectures, while the proposed quantization method was applied over the trained network weights. We present experimental results in terms of both accuracy and network size, considering the unquantized network and the quantized network using the proposed method and a non-adaptive one. Proposed method obtained a reduction of the model size to a quarter, in some cases without losing accuracy.

ABSTRACT. The real-time control of nonlinear systems is an important topic nowadays. This paper presents a solution for longitudinal Control of autonomous mobile robot which is coordinated between the cruise control (CC) system and adaptive cruise control (ACC) system. The primary objective of autonomous mobile robots achieves a constant speed demanded by the driver for operating the CC mode ( i.e, speed control) or to keep a safe distance from the mobile robot ahead for operating the ACC mode ( i.e, spacing control) based on the sensors signals. The system was tested on prototype robots which are composed by using an Arduino board and a steerable scaled chassis. The autonomous mobile robot is equipped with three infrared sensors to monitor the spacing, the speed, and keeping the driving lane. The results experiment in real-time demonstrates the performance improvement of the integrated systems.

ABSTRACT. Fuzzy based hybrid maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control algorithm for Photovoltaic (PV) systems is presented in this paper. In fuzzy based hybrid control algorithm, whenever there is a change of atmospheric conditions new operating maximum power point is tracked through fuzzy Fractional Short Circuit Control(FSCC) algorithm and when atmospheric conditions remain without large variation maximum power operating point is tracked by fuzzy Perturb and Observe (P&O) algorithm. The fuzzy FSCC algorithm automates the conventional FSCC algorithm with no offline measurements with sensors. The variable step size provided by fuzzy P&O algorithm ensures a stable maximum power point tracking with no power oscillations around maximum power point. The performance indices Integral Absolute error (IAE), Integral square error (ISE),Integral time absolute error (ITAE) are evaluated for fuzzy based hybrid control algorithm and it is found to be improved than fuzzy FSCC algorithm and settling time is less than fuzzy P&O algorithm. The results show that the proposed fuzzy based hybrid MPPT control algorithm provides better dynamic performance than conventional P&O algorithm, fuzzy P&O and fuzzy FSCC algorithms.

ABSTRACT. Remote monitoring of electrical networks finds its utility in real-time acquisition of the available data from the existing network transformation points, globally collecting and specifically processing the data at power dispatcher level, as its main beneficiary. This implementation also provides important information for possible low and medium power network failure diagnosis, becoming a useful instrument in network data analysis. The paper exemplifies the utility of this approach through a specifically designed and implemented application. Data acquiring and transfer is assured by a hardware structure controlled through its own software application, particularly implemented for local processing and transfer of the sampled data. The information is provided to the higher hierarchical level using a specific MQTT protocol format. The software application was implemented and runs on power monitoring units installed in a distributed monitoring network for transformation points. Using such structures has improved the efficiency in consumption analysis for electrical networks, bringing easiness in real time identification for various failures in electrical network points.

ABSTRACT. One of the most important aspects of promoting a product is to well advertise it. The big advances in technology provide many modes to present the information. Some of the technologies which can provide a low cost, effective and impressive set-up to advertise a product are LED Persistence of Vision (POV) Displays. Current project has in focus to build a POV Display intended to be used for multiple applications: displaying a text message, creating a luminous clock and exposing hologram animations. The device consists of two main parts, each one being driven by its own microcontroller: a static part and a rotating arm (propeller). The fixed part is designed to control a DC motor, which rotates the propeller at different speeds. The mobile arm containing a LED strip, a Bluetooth module and two sensors for luminosity aims to display images and control the light intensity of LEDs. One feedback controller is set up for each of above mentioned project components. In order to control the DC motor speed, a Proportional-Integrative (PI) controller was designed. To adapt LED strip intensity at environment light, two approaches were proposed: conventional PI controller and Fuzzy logic controller. The controllers are tested in Simulink and after that implemented on microcontroller. Their benefits are emphasized. The user can change displayed images using an Android application which communicates with designed system via Bluetooth.

ABSTRACT. Increasing demand for electronic circuits raised new challenges for companies in this field. The development time became a key point in gaining market share. Under this circumstances, employment of machine learning techniques in functional verification, the most time-consuming step of front-end integrated circuits development, is more and more adopted. Because of diverse working flows inside different companies, each industrial entity needs to develop a personalized data pre-processing flow which must be robust, flexible, highly automated and reusable. This paper emphases opportunity of using classification tasks as a helper to reach functional verification targets with fewer human effort and good accuracy. Efficiency of proposed methods is further analyzed using different metrics, and correlations between real verification tasks and algorithms which can help to accomplish them are presented. To prove the efficiency of proposed machine learning based approaches, UART transmissions affected by baud rates issues are used as a case study.

ABSTRACT. Magnetic materials are an essential part in the manufacture of electrical devices. Thus, the B-H relationship is of great relevance, with an important impact in the technical applications where these materials are used. Iron silicon sheets have isotropic magnetic properties and are intensively used in building magnetic cores of electrical machines due to low coercive fields and energy losses. Most of the standardized equipment used to measure the B-H relationship, such as Epstein frame and Single Sheet Tester take into account the relationship between the time integral of the electric voltage and the source current which generates the magnetic field in the analyzed sample. The magnetic field strength is proportional to the current, while the magnetic flux density represents the ratio between the magnetic flux – obtained as the integral of the electric voltage – and the cross-section area of the sample. These devices present the following disadvantages: a special sample geometry is required, an uniform magnetic field is necessary, eddy currents can appear due to time variation of the excitation current. This paper presents the evaluation of steel sheets magnetic characteristic using a novel laboratory device which doesn’t have the aforementioned drawbacks. This device had been presented in previous works and basically it uses dc currents in order to obtain the BH relationship of the sample. It consists of a magnetic circuit having the shape of 8 and the measuring procedure implies the setting of two dc currents such that the measured magnetic flux through the median yoke is null. The obtained current pairs of increasing values are used as input data in a magnetic field inverse problem in order to reconstruct the BH curve.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we studied the effect of microwaves on the drying of apple slices. Drying was performed using a microwave applicator with a power that can be modified between 200 and 800 W. Experimental determinations were performed at powers of 450 W. The aim of this study was to estimate the influence of technological parameters on the antioxidant properties of apple slices. We set the optimal drying parameters, the thickness of the apple slices, and the optimal drying temperature for obtaining products with advantageous sensory value.

ABSTRACT. The issue of the atmosphere gases concentration decrease, generated by the human activities, was the key point for integrating renewable energy sources into the electricity grid. Thus, consumers became prosumers, allowing energy consumers not only to use but also to generate energy, the surplus being sold on the electrical network. The suport of prosumers in the countries of the European Union has registered significant growth rates, especially regarding the energy produced from photovoltaic panels in households or in commercial spaces. Romania will promote the distributed generation from renewable sources with installed power between 3 kW and 100 kW ( most recently, starting from 4th of December 2020 ), the on-grid installations being subsidized through the financial support of the Environmental Fund Administration ( 3 kW for residential prosumers ) with ,,photovoltaic green house,, program and Ministry of Economy, Energy and Business Environment with the ,,Electric Up,, program ( between 27 kW - 100 kW power for commercial prosumers). This paper proposes an analysis of Romanian prosumers in with a specific case study comprise of a comparative analysis for an integrated 3kW (residential) energy user versus a smart prosumer, and their subsequent energy curves, in order to reduce the the energy consumption with a management system for the optimal coordination of the energy to the owner's need, also the rentability of the system and a minimum disturbance of the electricity grid.

ABSTRACT. The present paper presents a comparative study on the influence of the two components of contact resistance, namely the tensile strength and the resistance of disturbing pellicles. The study was performed by repetitively simulating the closing and opening of a contact system that operates [runs] idle, respectively under nominal load, following the structural changes of the contacts, especially the evolution of the resistance of disturbing pellicles. Changes in the contact surface were studied using an AFM microscope.

ABSTRACT. Knowing the electrical power losses of the medium voltage (MV) electrical network from an established areal and adopting some measures in order to reduce them, constitutes very important issues in the operation and maintenance of the electrical networks. Thus, the first step of this paper consists in modeling the MV network related to the CENTRU power station from the urban area of Cluj and then, through the proposed scenarios, the authors have as important objectives the determination of optimized solutions for the energy distribution in the chosen network. Some of the known measures to reduce electrical power losses, without the involvement of investments, are of an organizational nature. Among them, the more important refers to the following aspects: - optimizing the operating regime of networks: establishing the normal operating scheme with its updating twice a year, determining the optimal voltage and reactive power regime; - optimizing the voltage level. In this sense, for the CENTRU station, chosen in this study, it will be presented how to reduce losses by determining the optimal operating scheme, by an adequate network sectioning and by increasing the voltage level to the maximum limit approved in their operation. By using the Paladin DesignBase software, the quantities of interest in running the steady state regime will be determined comparatively, based on two approaches: determining the optimal supply scheme and raising the voltage level from 10kV to 20 kV. With regard to the switching of the MV network supply from 10 kV to 20 kV, keeping the same level of the end-users load, the effects that are expected to occur on the following quantities will be: active power losses, voltage drops and electrical power line loading. On the other hand, this change in the suppling voltage level in the MV networks will be made with significant expenses. Considering the benefits brought by the supplying voltage level, it is estimated that, in a relatively short time, the costs will be recoverable.

ABSTRACT. This paper is intended to present a practical and cutting-edge wireless power transfer system. Hard switching methods and topologies are getting obsolete since both the industry and consumer grade products are getting normalized in such a manner as to have more optimal performance and better Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) results. There are many continuous improvement projects which tackle how to improve the efficiency of the hard switched semiconductor-based power converters, most of them having arrived to a dead-end because of the limitations of the current semiconductor products. In the last years new technologies and switching methods like zero voltage, current switching and auto resonant power supplies have been put into practice, but they are quite new and have a small market share due to their high price and the immaturity of the technology.

ABSTRACT. The paper presents a study on the use of susceptors in a microwave heating system for obtaining nanopowders. In order to optimize the melting process, as well as to ensure constructive and functional advantages of the entire built system, research was conducted on the construction of the stainless steel crucible and on the realization of the alumina crucible coated with a thin layer of platinum. The results obtained from the numerical analysis of the electromagnetic field were validated by experimental determinations made using the built experimental equipment. The results show that the use of the crucible made of stainless steel has advantages over that made of alumina coated with a thin layer of platinum, both in terms of the efficiency of the microwave heating process and in terms of efficiency and durability of the entire built system.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, mobile applications (apps) are very popular, extending the functionality of smartphones and offering users way more features than the basic, built-in software. As there is a wide range of applications available on Google Play or other application platforms, smartphone users can choose those that better meet their needs and requirements. Among these demands, privacy tends to be more and more significant for people, who recognize the importance of data protection in the online environment. From the privacy and data protection perspective, social applications are a very particular type of application, because their primary aim is to facilitate online socialization through features that request a large number of permissions to be fully functional. This is why it is necessary to be aware of privacy risks and know how current social applications protect user privacy by applying the privacy-by-design and privacy-by-default principles.

ABSTRACT. In this study, a passive fault-tolerant controller is designed for the dynamic system based on nonlinear fractional-order theory. The closed-loop control structure contains a linear quadratic regulator for calculating the optimum input signal based on physical criteria as well as nonlinear fractional-order PID. In fact, the summation of the controlling inputs, which are computed by the optimized robust nonlinear fractional-order PID controllers (NFOC), is modified by the LQR unit to achieve higher reliability and robustness. Using optimized robust NFOC along with LQR, the desired controller robustness and performance are evaluated by comparing its quantified performance indicator and optimized simple and fractional-order PID controllers' efficiency. This controller can improve the system's tracking performance by less amount of control effort and reject the effects of the faulty actuator on the system's dynamics.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents an application that uses the Jury stability criterion to determine if a system is stable or unstable. The software application described, in this paper, is based on a MATLAB script. With this application it can easily establish the fulfillment of stability conditions from Jury criterion.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents all the steps of developing an automated testing machine used for identifying wiring errors which may appear in the manufacturing process of ICT (in-circuit test) and FCT (functional test) fixtures. The machine is a Flying-Probe type machine, using the probe to touch every test pin of the fixture. The control of the machine is done by a PC used as a soft PLC (programmable logic controller) running TwinCAT 3. The UI (user interface) is made in NI LabVIEW, which communicates with the soft PLC using an ADS (Automation Device Specification) library. For measuring the continuity between the test pins and the backside interface of the fixture, a custom 2112 channel switching device was made using analog integrated circuits along with a STM32 microcontroller. The new automated testing machine proved to meet all the requirements, making fixture testing easier, faster and much more efficient.

ABSTRACT. Abstract – The paper presents the distance monitoring of the main parameters of the production facility for the separation of isotope 18O. The installation uses toxic and corrosive substances (nitrogen oxides, nitrogen acid) as well as explosive and under pressure gases (hydrogen). The paper shows how the process computer does monitoring of the temperature, the hydrogen’s pressure in the supply installation with hydrogen of the conversion reactors and the functioning of the cracking reactors.

ABSTRACT. The paper describes the obtaining method for isotope 18O, the reactions of isotopic exchange between nitrogen oxides and the aqueous nitric acid. Through these reactions, the isotopes of an element that differs only by the different number of neutrons within the nucleus, change places between two or more molecules. The security of the productive plant and the entire operation personnel requires monitoring on different hierarchical levels. All these justify the need of distance monitoring of its parameters of the two separation stages as well as the under pressure hydrogen supply system.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a primary theoretical research for a simplified version of analog modeling of an agricultural soil, both isolated and included in a simple temperature control scheme. Also, are exposed some specific details for interpretation of processed signals evolution, being emphasized the application aspects for such a system.

ABSTRACT. People's development in society is influenced by social and economic aspects in daily life, which is why people of all ages and types must be included in our environment and offered the independence they require to live a normal life. The elderly and disabled people are the main targets. We provide smart toilets to assist them, so they don't have to worry about basic necessities and can feel comfortable and free to visit places such as malls, hotels, concerts, and cinemas. To achieve this goal, the quality of public spaces and public toilets should be improved. This study intends to design an intelligent toilet system, especially for the elderly and persons with impairments, using cutting-edge technology. In addition to all of the advantages of this smart toilet, it may be equipped with an air quality monitoring system to initiate cleaning activities. Humidity, VOC, temperature, amount of water, and O2 have all been found to have a significant impact on human health. The research started with the iToilet project, which developed a solution that resulted in a prototype for home use that included the ability to alter the position and height of the toilet as well as other auxiliary means using a variety of technologies. Moreover, it was necessary to develop this concept in public spaces, and the Toilet4Me2 project made this possible by exploring and implementing this concept. The Toilet4Me2 system also provides an armrest, vertical adjustment mechanisms, a tilting lift function, and a shower unit, as well as emergency identification, detection facilities and optional supplements. These facilities are dedicated to elderly and / or disabled users, either able to walk or in a wheelchair.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we propose a software application for validating the automated decellularization process for a rat heart. This pilot study implemented a latex balloon that simulates a heart in which initially we introduced dye, using a syringe pump for clinical use. Then we pumped water with a controlled flow, so finally, we replaced this dye with injected water. With this design, we can validate the software application because it automatically detects the moment when the simulated heart completely discolored, and turned off the entire system, which is equivalent to total real heart decellularization. During this process, photos were automatically taken at a certain interval, selected by the user. Photos were processed according to the selected area at the beginning of each experiment. The data collected was stored and the evolution of the dye from the simulated heart was plotted. In other words, once validated, this application can be used further in the entire system created specifically for the decellularization of a rat heart. Because decellularization is a generally long process, which currently requires a lot of manual operations and supervision, the main goal in our study is to design an automated system for the entire decellularization process, so that it eliminates collecting samples for the method of ultraviolet spectrophotometry.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents a primary theoretical research for a simplified project management approach in steel manufacturing including a project plan followed by reporting and communication rules. Nowadays in digitalization era, either for an international business or for a small local business, having a good project plan is a must, in order to achieve productivity and profitability

ABSTRACT. Lung cancer was not common before the 1930s, but increased dramatically over the following decades as tobacco smoking increased. Therefore, lung cancer is one of the main causes of mortality due to neoplasia, both for men and women. Due to late detection, often in therapeutically overdosed stages, only 14% of the diagnosed patients are able to survive for a longer period of time (5 years). Once lung cancer begins to cause symptoms, it is usually visible on an X-ray and next, CT scan of the chest may be ordered for a more detailed exam. In this paper we aimed by image processing to develop a system for lung cancer recognition and detect the stage of the disease. In this study, some ultrasonography images with different types of lung cancer and with no lung cancer were tested. Active contour algorithms were designed and applied to the CT images in order to segment the image without clearly defined boundaries. Next, the resulted images have been interpreted. The proposed method for diagnosing lung cancer is useful, because it helps doctors to diagnose if it is the case of lung cancer or other disease.

ABSTRACT. This paper presents the design and implementation of the command and control system of a parallel robot, with functions of printing, milling or technical measurements. After a short introduction and a brief presentation of the mechanical structure of the robot, the electronic control system of the robot is shown, with the main specifications of the components used and the configuration of the block diagram of electronic components and their associated connections. The links of the mechanical structure of the robot are actuated by the Nema 17 stepper motors, which provide very precise positioning and movements, and, also, high torque at low speeds, being used for 3D printers and CNC machines. The control of the robot is provided by the Rumba 32 control board, based on an STM32 processor, Rumba being one of the most common and complex boards used for 3D linear Delta printers. For driving this parallel robot, it is used open-source firmware, Marlin, widely used to control the functions and kinematics of the 3D printers, plotters, and other such mechatronic devices, because of its precision and reliability, and also of its capacity to manage all machine's activities in real-time.

ABSTRACT. As more and more people are using technology as means to communicate, learn, run businesses or just having fun, there is hidden pressure over the infrastructure that offers all these services to the end users. In order to provide a better service reliability there is a need of using technologies that take advantage of the underlying hardware such as asynchronous libraries which by design are using the hardware resources at their full capabilities. The question here is what asynchronous approach should be used? We can take use of Microsoft’s asynchronous library implementation based on tasks manipulation: TPL (Task Parallel Library), create our own asynchronous library based on the ThreadPool or we can use a different approach by taking use of the Actor Model implemented by Akka.NET framework. This paper is making a performance comparison between two different asynchronous patterns implemented in .NET: task-based and actor-based, by comparing the timing results of the two approaches while realizing actions that can be found in any application: reading from database, data manipulation, saving in the database. In order to perform the analysis and to ensure the consistency of tests, two concurrent applications were developed, having the same data source one with the TPL library and the other with Akka.NET. The applications were run on four different architectures with different core and memory configurations; furthermore, a comprehensive analysis and discussion based on the obtained performance results was done and several conclusions were revealed. Advantages and drawbacks for each asynchronous technology were outlined, to support a decision that could be used in current applications.

ABSTRACT. Hardware design and software programming. Two powerful worlds, where functionality is described by coding complex functions which will operate either in silicon or in a processor logic. Hardware provides accurate implementation of application needs at highest speeds. Software provides the welcome flexibility when the system needs an update. And the combination of the two approaches, well represented in industry by System-on-chip[1], leads to the powerful devices which are more and more present in our lives. But the well co-operation between hardware and software bring its advantages even from design phase. Software helps a lot hardware development, through powerful tools used at design, verification, synthesis, and all other design steps. Software development is accelerated by hardware platforms which make possible intensive testing and scenarios creation for validation of new program releases. This paper exploits the opportunity of using software in hardware development. It demonstrates, both graphically and numerically, that desired verification scenarios can be faster reached by integrating a powerful machine learning technique in design verification: reinforcement learning.

ABSTRACT. We are currently witnessing an impetuous development of blockchain technology in various fields like business, supply chains or personal identity protection. Another technology that is becoming more widespread is the Internet of Things (IoT), which can be found in a lot of smart applications. In this paper we aim to study how blockchain finds its utility in IoT applications. Finally, we analyze comparatively the reliability and availability of centralized and decentralized blockchain oracle mechanisms that provide data from IoT devices.

ABSTRACT. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a communication framework for building connected, service-oriented applications, initially released by Microsoft as part of .NET Framework, but now open source. The WCF message-based communication represents a solution used for sending asynchronous messages from one service endpoint to another. Because WCF provides many functionalities it has a large-consuming development model and often the security measures implemented in applications are not proper. In this study we propose a methodology for offensive security analysis of an WCF endpoint or service, from red team perspective. A step by step approach, empirical information, and detailed analysis report of WCF vulnerabilities are presented. We conclude by proposing recommendations for mitigating attacks and securing endpoints.

ABSTRACT. Machine Learning method is increasingly used for data analysis, where large databases has to be analyzed. One of the areas where solutions include the use of machine learning is the field of medical prediction, used to observe the probability of a person may suffer from a disease in the future. One of the domains of medicine prediction in which machine learning solutions are used is predictions in the case of diabetes. Diabetes is a disease that is increasingly present in today’s society. This paper presents a comparison among the results experimentally obtained, using three machine learning algorithms in the prediction of diabetes. The three considered algorithms are support vector machine, Naive Bayes, and random forest. The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of the algorithms considering different metrics in order to compare different techniques to obtain better accuracy. We found that support vector machine and random forest obtained an accuracy of over 80%.

ABSTRACT. Web-based and mobile applications are increasingly used today in all areas of our life. In order to deliver software products as fast, as simple and economically possible, several cross-platform frameworks were created. The challenge is to choose the best framework that produces the desired solution and that integrates best with the existing systems and with higher user experience results. This paper describes and analyses the performance of two frameworks, Angular and Svelte, used for application development based on the implementation of a simple application. Results show that an important factor considered in order to choose the framework is the target device on which the application runs and also the complexity of the application.

ABSTRACT. The development of technology-led the world to a new vision. People are very busy and they need applications that help them. To-do list applications are beneficial for anyone who wants to manage and organize his program efficiently, without forgetting things, especially the important ones. JavaScript Frameworks comes with a helpful hand in terms of popularity, easy-to-use, and integration, using new technology in the favor of developer and user. In this paper, we will compare two main JavaScript frameworks: Angular and Vue.js.

ABSTRACT. It is known that these days the request for faster and better applications and tools has increased. JavaScript frameworks come with a helpful hand in terms of popularity, easy-to-use, and integration, using new technology to favor developer and user. It is probably the choice of the manager which framework is the best for his project. But in this analysis will be compared two main JavaScript frameworks: Vue.js and React.js.

ABSTRACT. Modern miniature trains, also known as “model trains”, are now designed and built by means of state-of-the-art mechanical and electrical technologies and require special care for handling and operation. Therefore, they must be considered as miniature robots and treated accordingly. Digital electronic modules have become very useful to supply power to the miniature railway systems, to provide commands and to ensure adequate safety and control. This paper presents several such digital electronic modules, which were built and used by the author for the operation of his miniature trains collection.