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QC 20201012

This report is about a novel approach to attenuation of fan noise in aerial vehicles, by way of implementing a ducted fan in the chassis of a four meter blended wing body plane. Three different one meter PVC pipes were used and their performances as silencers were tested by measuring the sound power level and calculating the insulation loss compared to a fan by itself. The ducts were either empty or lined with acoustic absorbents and micro perforated panels. Experiments were carried out in the reverberation room at KTH Marcus Wallenberg laboratory for sound and vibration research using the guidelines in ISO 3741 (2010). The results showed that the empty duct lead to a 15.3 dB(A) insulation loss with no decrease in thrust from the fan. The absorbent and micro perforated panel, however, lead to a 22.7 dB(A) insulation loss while giving a major decrease in thrust of more than one order of magnitude. The results show the failure of implementation of the latter two silencers due to choking, but also the success of the empty duct. This shows that there is room for improvement and perhaps even a future possibility of a successful implementation in a real vehicle.

The Examination Timetabling Problem (ETP) is the problem of scheduling a number of exams during a set time period so that no students are required to sit two exams simultaneously. Despite the complexity of the problem, universities all over the world solve ETPs several times each year. Two known methods for solving ETPs is using either heuristics or Hopfield Neural Networks (HNN). This thesis compares the performance of a heuristic algorithm implemented with Local Search, Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search to the performance of a HNN algorithm. Both algorithms were executed on ten different ETPs reduced to Graph Colouring Problems (GCP). The results show that the heuristic algorithm always generated more satisfactory solutions to the ETPs than the HNN. The HNN was, however, implemented as software in this thesis. It is intended to be implemented as hardware and if this method were to have been used instead the HNN algorithm might have produced other results. At this stage the heuristic algorithm is more suitable than the HNN algorithm for solving ETPs. Schemaläggningsproblem för examinationer (ETP) syftar på problemet att schemalägga ett antal examinationer under ett bestämt tidsintervall så att ingen student behöver närvara på flera examinationer samtidigt. Det är ett komplext problem som universitet världen över behöver lösa flera gånger per år. Två kända metoder för att lösa ETPs är användning av antingen heuristiker eller Hopfield Neural Networks (HNN). Den här uppsatsen jämför prestandan av en heuristik implementerad med Lokal Sökning, Simulerad Härdning och Tabusökning med presentandan av en HNN-algoritm då båda metoderna exekveras på tio ETPs reducerade till Graffärgningsproblem (GCP). Resultaten visar att heuristiken alltid genererade mer tillfredsställande lösningar till schemaläggningsproblemen än HNN-algoritmen gjorde. HNN-algoritmen, som egentligen bör implementeras som hårdvara, implementerades dock som mjukvara i den här avhandlingen. Hade den implementerats som hårdvara istället hade kanske andra resultat producerats. För tillfället lämpar sig heuristiken bättre än HNN-algoritmen för att lösa ETPs.

QC 20210525

This thesis provides insights into the feasibility of managing product requirements in a concept leveraging an object-centric information model. The aim of this concept is to provide efective management of product requirements in the context of rising volume and complexity of requirements. Firstly, benefts and challenges between the current document-centric way of managing requirements and the novel object-centric concept for managing requirements are mapped and presented. Secondly, the organizational prerequisites necessary for adopting the object-centric product requirement applicability concept are explored and insights into how this transition can be facilitated with knowledge management are generated. Thirdly, the accuracy of this novel concept is evaluated in terms of applying the correct requirements onto products and not more nor less. The methods in this thesis are of mixed nature and combine qualitative and quantitative data sets. The quantitative data was collected from the analysis of the requirement applicability concept and the previous tests of the same concept on diferent products at Company X. The analysis of quantitative data for concept accuracy revolved around interpreting the nature of negative- and positive delta values following an automatic application of requirements in the novel object-centric concept. The former of these delta values relates to relevant requirements missing onto products whereas the latter relates to non-relevant requirements being applied following the automatic application. The qualitative data was collected mainly through a comprehensive literature review, semi-structured interviews, a workshop, meetings, Company X documents and observations. The analysis of qualitative data was done via an adaptation of two frameworks: The Multi-Dimensional Framework for Digital Transformation by Hanelt et al, 2021 and The Process of Organizational Knowledge Creation by Nonaka, 1994. These adapted frameworks were leveraged to generate insights into the necessary organizational prerequisites for adopting the object-centric product requirement applicability concept. While benefts and challenges exist between the two diferent ways of managing requirements, these are not weighted and thus no defnitive conclusion on best practice is drawn. Instead these fndings provide organizations a reference point for evaluating each approach in relation to their own circumstances. Some of the prerequisites identifed as critical for adopting an object-centric product requirement applicability model are a digital library of requirement specifcations that are convertible to object-centric data format, and a suitable PLM strategy chosen by the Top Management Teams that is aiding the development of the concept. As for knowledge management in order to transition to the new concept, fndings show that standardized knowledge creation and knowledge exchange is necessary as well as developing centralized knowledge databases. Lastly, the quantitative fndings indicate that the applicability concept is accurate, but that there is a need for additional iterations with model improvements where the negative delta can be eliminated and the positive delta held at an acceptable level. Den här studien ger insikter om genomförbarheten av att hantera produktkrav i ett koncept som utnyttjar en objektcentrerad informationsmodell. Syftet med detta koncept är att tillhandahålla efektiv hantering av produktkrav i samband med att de ökar i volym samt komplexitet. Studien kartlägger först fördelar och utmaningar mellan det nuvarande dokumentcentrerade sättet att hantera krav och det nya objektcentrerade konceptet. Även de organisatoriska förutsättningar som krävs för att införa det objektcentrerade produktkravskonceptet undersöks i samband med hur denna övergång kan underlättas med hjälp av kunskapshantering. Slutligen så utvärderas det objektcentrerade konceptet för kravapplicering beträfande hur exakt konceptet är i att applicera rätt krav på produkter. Metodiken i denna studie kombinerar kvalitativa och kvantitativa datamängder. Den kvantitativa datan samlades in från analys av kravappliceringskonceptet samt de tidigare testerna av konceptet på olika produkter som gjorts av Företag X. Analysen av kvantitativ data för hur exakt konceptet är i att applicera rätt krav kretsar kring att förstå grundorsakerna till de negativa och positiva deltavärden som uppkommit efter en automatisk applicering av krav i det nya objektcentrerade konceptet. Det negativa deltavärdet relaterar till nödvändiga krav som saknas på produkter, medan det positiva deltavärdet avser icke-relevanta krav som har applicerats efter en systemförfrågan och automatisk applicering av krav. Den kvalitativa datan samlades huvudsakligen in genom en omfattande litteraturstudie, semistrukturerade intervjuer, workshops, möten, dokument från Företag X och observationer. Analysen av kvalitativ data gjordes via en anpassning av två vetenskapliga ramverk: The Multi-Dimensional Framework for Digital Transformation av Hanelt et al, 2021 och The Process of Organizational Knowledge Creation av Nonaka, 1994. Dessa anpassade ramverk utnyttjas för att generera insikter i de nödvändiga organisatoriska förutsättningarna som krävs för att införa det objektcentrerade kravappliceringskonceptet i en organisation. Fördelar och utmaningar med de två olika sätten att hantera krav viktades inte i denna studie, därför dras ingen defnitiv slutsats om bästa praxis. Istället ger dessa fynd en referenspunkt till organisationer att utvärdera bästa praxis i förhållande till sina egna omständigheter. Några av förutsättningarna identiferade som kritiska för att tillämpa en objektcentrerad produktkravappliceringsmodell är ett digitalt bibliotek av kravspecifkationer som är konverterbara till objektcentrerat dataformat, samt en PLM-strategi införd av de högsta ledningsgrupperna som hjälper till med stödja det objekcentrerade konceptet för produktkravsapplicering. Vad gäller kunskapshantering för att övergå till det nya konceptet visar resultaten att standardiserad kunskapsskapande och utbyte av kunskap är nödvändigt, samt utvecklingen av centraliserade kunskapsdatabaser. Slutligen indikerar de kvantitativa resultaten att tillämpningskonceptet är noggrant, men att ytterligare iterationer med modellförbättringar behövs där den negativa deltan kan elimineras och där den positiva deltan hålls på en acceptabel nivå.

This thesis report revolved around the cloning process of plasmids. Attempts of cloning the red fluorescent protein mCherry, and the green fluorescent protein EGFP from various plasmids, into other plasmids containing different cell-junction/cytoskeleton plasmids were made. These plasmids were first amplified using PCR, and then cloned using Gibson-Assembly, and then transfected into live HEK293T or MDCK-II cells. After the transfection, the cells were examined in a microscope. The results showed no signal or localization for the cloned plasmids in their respective corresponding channel, 561 nm for the red fluorescent protein mCherry or 488 nm for the green fluorescent protein EGFP. The step that went wrong was the PCR step in the cloning process, since the backbone vector was not successfully amplified. The reasons for this was either that the backbone vector was too long, the primers regions were to rich with Guanine and Cytoseine, or the primers being too long. Den här tesen kretsade kring kloningsprocessen för plasmider. Det gjordes försök att från plasmider klona in det röda fluorescerande proteinet mCherry, samt det gröna fluorescerande proteinet EGFP in i andra plasmider som innehöll olika cell-junction proteiner. Både det fluorescerande fragmenten och plasmid-vektorerna innehållande cell-junction proteinerna amplifierades med PCR. Sedan gjordes Gibson-Assembly som var själva kloningsmetoden. Efter det transfekterades HEK293T, samt MDCK-II celler med lösningen från Gibson-Assembly kloningen. Dessa celler undersöktes sedan i mikroskop. Resultatet visade inga tydliga signaler varken i 561 nm kanalen (mCherry), eller i 488 nm kanalen (EGFP), vilket betyder att kloningen inte fungerade. Steget som gick fel var PCR-steget i själva kloningsprocessen, då plasmid-vektorerna inte amplifierades. Anledningen till detta var antingen att själva plasmid-vektorerna var för långa, primer regionerna hade för mycket Guanin och Cytosin, eller att alla primers själva var för långa.

This paper introduces a new kind of tool-coupling based electro-hydraulic system development method including designing character-oriented electro-hydraulic system development and design procedure, co-simulation based system coupling strategy, client-server model management method. An integrated development platform is designed for co-simulation among AMESim, Matlab\Simulink, Flowmaster, Saber and Simplorer. The platform can manage each simulator’s models and co-simulation procedure. The result illustrates tool coupling based electro-hydraulic system development method can improve the efficiency of multi-team collaborative design for electro-hydraulic system and also can analyze and evaluate the performance of integrated electro-hydraulic system at the initial stage of the design procedure.

We present an online API to access a number of Natural Language Processing services developed at KTH. The services work on Swedish text. They include tokenization, part-of-speech tagging, shallow parsing, compound word analysis, word inflection, lemmatization, spelling error detection and correction, grammar checking, and more. The services can be accessed in several ways, including a RESTful interface, direct socket communication, and premade Web forms. The services are open to anyone. The source code is also freely available making it possible to set up another server or run the tools locally. We have also evaluated the performance of several of the services and compared them to other available systems. Both the precision and the recall for the Granska grammar checker are higher than for both Microsoft Word and Google Docs. The evaluation also shows that the recall is greatly improved when combining all the grammar checking services in the API, compared to any one method, and combining services is made easy by the API.

The deployment of rescue robots in real operations is becoming increasingly commonthanks to recent advances in AI technologies and high performance hardware. Rescue robots can now operate for extended period of time, cover wider areas andprocess larger amounts of sensory information making them considerably more usefulduring real life threatening situations, including both natural or man-made disasters. In this thesis we present results of our research which focuses on investigating ways of enhancing visual perception for Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) through environmental interactions using different sensory systems, such as tactile sensors and wireless receivers. We argue that a geometric representation of the robot surroundings built upon vision data only, may not suffice in overcoming challenging scenarios, and show that robot interactions with the environment can provide a rich layer of new information that needs to be suitably represented and merged into the cognitive world model. Visual perception for mobile ground vehicles is one of the fundamental problems in rescue robotics. Phenomena such as rain, fog, darkness, dust, smoke and fire heavily influence the performance of visual sensors, and often result in highly noisy data, leading to unreliable or incomplete maps. We address this problem through a collection of studies and structure the thesis as follow:Firstly, we give an overview of the Search & Rescue (SAR) robotics field, and discuss scenarios, hardware and related scientific questions.Secondly, we focus on the problems of control and communication. Mobile robotsrequire stable communication with the base station to exchange valuable information. Communication loss often presents a significant mission risk and disconnected robotsare either abandoned, or autonomously try to back-trace their way to the base station. We show how non-visual environmental properties (e.g. the WiFi signal distribution) can be efficiently modeled using probabilistic active perception frameworks based on Gaussian Processes, and merged into geometric maps so to facilitate the SAR mission. We then show how to use tactile perception to enhance mapping. Implicit environmental properties such as the terrain deformability, are analyzed through strategic glancesand touches and then mapped into probabilistic models.Lastly, we address the problem of reconstructing objects in the environment. Wepresent a technique for simultaneous 3D reconstruction of static regions and rigidly moving objects in a scene that enables on-the-fly model generation. Although this thesis focuses mostly on rescue UGVs, the concepts presented canbe applied to other mobile platforms that operates under similar circumstances. To make sure that the suggested methods work, we have put efforts into design of user interfaces and the evaluation of those in user studies. QC 20180411