2022年

A traditional helicopter requires 60 - 80% more power to hover than when in forward or lateral flight, making the manoeuvre extremely power inefficient. To maximise efficiency, industrially many properties of the helicopter and rotor have been changed and tested, for example: optimising blade shape, fuselage shape and changing weights of different helicopter components. This report in particular aims to find a relationship between power efficiency and angular velocity for a twin bladed hovering helicopter with a single rotor. The angular velocity of a blade measures the frequency of its revolution about a fixed point. A theoretical approach was first taken and then justified with empirical data. Firstly, a model for power efficiency was derived with William Froude’s momentum and blade element theory. The efficiency equations incorporated the thrust and power coefficients. Therefore, the research focused on determining values for these coefficients by manipulating equations, using industrial specifications and simulations from the XFOIL software. In order to validate the accuracy for such theoretically generated data, an experiment was conducted for a comparison. The theoretical and empirical data were concurrent, as they followed a similar trend and the empirical values overlapped within the theoretical error bars. The power efficiency for different angular velocities were then found by substituting values for the coefficients. The results demonstrated a positive relationship; where, as angular velocity increases, power efficiency increases too, then plateaus and repeats the same trend once again. The research raises many questions and could be extended by determining if a similar relationship exists for tri-copters and quadcopters.

Two years ago, I attended a robot contest, in which one of the missions required the robot to follow the pedestrian to complete the task. At that time, I used their demo program to complete the task. Not long after, I found two main issues: 1. The program follows the closest point read by the depth camera, which if I walk close to a wall next to, the robot may likely ‘follow’ the wall. 2. Not to mention if another pedestrian crosses between the robot and the target. Regarding these two issues, I decided to improve it. We’ve designed a procedure of using YOLO Object Detection and Person re-identification to re-identify the target for continuous following.

Commercially available bandages such as hydrocolloid are neither biodegradable nor anti-bacterial. Chitin is known to be the second most naturally available polysaccharide which could be transformed to chitosan which is known to be anti-bacterial (Hasan, 2018) (Chao, 2019) and haemostatic (Okamoto, 2003) (Hu, 2018). Chitosan can be further converted to hydrogel which is bio-degradable and has good water absorbance. Anti-bacterial crab bio-bandages and crab bio-dressings should be bio-degradable as it took 42 days and a month for complete bio-degradation respectively, so they should be better than commercial bandages such as Nexcare Hydrocolloid as the disposal of anti-bacterial crab bio-bandages with bio-dressings would no longer pose burden to landfilling or threat to our environment. Anti-bacterial crab bio-bandages with bio-dressings are anti-bacterial with degree of deacetylation of DD% (measured using FTIR Spectrum II) 82.6% (due to the presence of chitosan) even without the application of other anti-bacterial agents and hence can provide complete protection of wounds from skin and soft tissues infections and haemostatic (due to the presence of chitosan). After testing and certification based on IS997:2004 and BS EN 13726-1, they should meet many requirements specified. Anti-bacterial crab bio-bandages should be eligible for marketing. Some results were as follows: 1.4 Anti-bacterial effect of crab hydrogels and roasted crab hydrogels Pure chitosan, crab chitosan, crab hydrogels and roasted crab hydrogels showed significant anti-bacterial effect. NO oral bacterial colonies were present in drinking water with crab hydrogels. Thus crab hydrogels could serve as effective anti-bacterial wound dressings. 1.6 Basing on IS997:2004 standard, the load per unit of area of anti-bacterial bio-bandages was 342g/m2 which met the minimum requirement of 36g/m2, the anti-bacterial bio-bandages had stronger tension strength (>20N both in dry and wet conditions) than commercial hydrocolloid. (2.7N dry 2.8N wet) which was comparable with that required (50-67N) and pH of about 7 which met the pH range of 4.5-8. 1.7 The FSA Free-Swell Absorbency of synthetic blood of crab hydrogel bio-dressings was 1.86g per 5cm x 5cm dressing which was much higher than that of commercial hydrocolloid (0.299g per 5cm x 5cm dressing) based on BS EN 13726-1.

溫熱化學治療(Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy, 簡稱HIPEC)，為將化療藥物加熱後灌注到腹腔內殺死癌細胞，但溫熱化學治療只能在開刀時使用，治療次數有限。為達到多次的熱化療效果，本研究開發奈米氧化鐵藥物磁性複合微粒(Nano iron oxide magnetic drug complex particles, NIOMP)，可利用開刀時包覆複合微粒於腹腔，術後用磁場加熱，加上微粒化療藥物釋放，達到多次溫熱化學治療。NIOMP以鐵氧化物奈米粒子為核心，海藻酸鈉為外殼體，利用電紡法將前其與氯化鈣交聯產生凝聚性微粒。數據顯示最佳製作條件為16 kv高電壓、距離4 cm、噴速5μm/s，可得直徑大小約為200~450 μm穩定性高微粒。藥物釋放實驗顯示，NIOMP於2~7小時藥物釋放速率較穩定。利用可變磁場之電磁效應加熱NIOMP中氧化鐵磁顆粒，可於30分鐘內快速升溫至43℃。細胞相容性測試結果得知，NIOMP對細胞無毒性。本研究改善HIPEC的治療限制，可多次針對腫瘤患部局部熱化學治療，未來將可改善病人存活率。

觀察紫葉(Oxalis triangularis)、紫花(Oxalis corymbosa)、黃花(Oxalis corniculata )三種酢漿草葉片在早上打開，晚上閉合主要是受生理時鐘影響。實驗比較發現紫葉、紫花、和黃花酢漿草在中午強光日照下，都有葉片閉合的午睡運動，且對光線的敏感度：紫葉酢漿草>紫花酢漿草>黃花酢漿草。再用遮光網遮蔭控制光度試驗中，發現光強度是影響酢漿草午睡現象的主要因子，與水分蒸散較無關。推測其目的是避免葉綠素因強光作用而產生光氧化現象(photooxidation)，導致光合作用無法進行。而在溫度試驗也發現酢漿草在遮蔭高溫下(42℃)葉片會閉合，應是水分蒸散導致膨壓下降使葉片閉合。另在實驗過程中觀察到酢漿草也有觸發運動，在強風吹襲及水平、垂直晃動下均會導致葉片閉合，推測其目的在減少葉片摩擦產生傷口，避免病菌的感染。總結酢醬草葉片開閉受生理時鐘、光線、溫度、風吹震動及水分膨壓的影響。

We study the creation of physical adversarial examples, which are robust to real-world transformations, using a limited number of queries to the target black-box neural networks. We observe that robust models tend to be especially susceptible to foreground manipulations, which motivates our novel Foreground attack. We demonstrate that gradient priors are a useful signal for black-box attacks and therefore introduce an improved version of the popular SimBA. We also propose an algorithm for transferable attacks that selects the most similar surrogates to the target model. Our black-box attacks outperform state-of-the-art approaches they are based on and support our belief that the concept of model similarity could be leveraged to build strong attacks in a limited-information setting.

QR Code是由黑白模組組成的二維數位條碼，掃描後可讀取儲存的訊息。受限於設計原理，QR Code使用二進位制儲存資料。增加模組數目可增加資料量，但若在條碼內塞進太多模組時，尺寸太小的模組將無法被掃描器讀取。此外，目前QR Code掃描器僅支援單張掃描，並無法應付同時多張條碼掃描的實務需求。 如能克服顏色辨識，理論上彩色二維條碼將能克服現行QR Code的限制，但市面上並無相關產品可供測試。因此本專題設計了一款10×10、具8顏色的"Colour Matrix"，並利用Raspberry Pi開發Colour Matrix在手持裝置上運作的軟硬體來進行實驗。此實驗成功利用機器學習演算法在Raspberry Pi上進行的顏色辨識。開發的程式在單張掃描上效能與使用pyzbar辨識QR Code相當；在多張掃描方面，使用pyzbar辨識QR Code的解碼成功率為3.1%，而本專題的方法將成功率提升至92.4%，擴增數位條碼的使用範圍，具商用價值。

Double Parallelogram Lifting Mechanism (DPLM) is a compact and stable lifting mechanism with a large extension range widely adopted in robot designs. Rubber bands and springs are often installed on the DPLM to lighten the motors' load and maintain its height, yet the installation positions are often obtained through trial and error. This project aims at finding the optimal rubber band installation positions for DPLM using modeling and optimization techniques. A mathematical model which describes the forces and moments acting on all the linkages of DPLM was derived based on the conditions for the static equilibrium and verified with a 3D simulation software. A genetic algorithm (GA) was implemented to optimize rubber band installation positions, which managed to find solutions with the overall root-mean-square- error (RMSE) of the net moment less than 2 for 2 to 6 rubber bands. A further statistical analysis of 50000 random rubber band samples showed that installing rubber bands in triangles is the best solution with the overall lowest RMSE. A test was conducted with a prototype of the DPLM and the results were consistent with our model and optimization. This project derived and verified a mathematical model for the DPLM, and found the optimal way and positions to install rubber bands. The results of this project provides a theoretical basis for controlling DPLM with rubber bands, allowing it to be further adopted in industrial robots that require repetitive lifting and lowering such as inspection robots and aerial work platforms.

Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is one of the preferred online optimization algorithms. However, one of its major drawbacks is its predisposition to forgetting previous data when optimizing through a data stream, also known as catastrophic interference. In this project, we attempt to mitigate this drawback by proposing a new low-cost approach which incorporates backward queried images with SGD during online training. Under this new approach, we propose that for every new training sample through the data stream, the neural network is optimized using the corresponding backward queried image from the initial dataset. After compiling the accuracy of the proposed method and SGD under a data-stream of 50,000 training cases with 10,000 test cases and comparing our algorithm to SGD, we see substantial improvements in the performance of the neural network with two different MNIST datasets (Fashion and Kuzushiji), classifying the MNIST datasets at a high accuracy for the mean, minimum, lower quartile, median, and upper quartile, while maintaining lower standard deviation in performance, demonstrating that our proposed algorithm can be a potential alternative to online SGD.

The Briggs Rauscher reaction (BR reaction) is one of the famous oscillating reactions; the aqueous mixture of KIO3, H2SO4, H2O2, C3H4O4, MnSO4, and starch exhibit color change between yellow and blue-purple repeatedly. The blue-purple color formation is due to the iodine test reaction caused by inclusions of polyiodides such as I3- and I5- in the helical structure of starch. Therefore, starch has been regarded as only an indicator in the BR reaction. But our seniors have found that the oscillation did not last without starch. They hypothesized that starch’s linear helical framework is necessary to elongate the lifetime of the oscillating reaction. If this hypothesis is correct, similar BR-type oscillations must be observed when other polymers with helical structures are used instead of starch. We found the literature which reports that polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) forms a helical structure and indicates the iodine test reaction. In our research, we studied the BR reactions using PVA, with different saponification degrees and viscosities. First, we studied the correlation between the structural features of PVA and the iodine color reaction by spectroscopic approach, exhibiting that PVA with low saponification form helical structures and show the iodine color reactions, which gives red color solutions. Second, we found that additions of the helical-structured PVA to the reaction solution instead of starch induces the BR-type oscillating reactions, while PVA without helical structure induces only a few numbers of oscillations. This is the world-first example of the oscillating reaction using PVA. The oscillation that lasted for 6 minutes with 23 oscillations was almost the same as that of the general BR reaction using starch. We concluded that the polymers with helical structures are intrinsic to elongate the lifetime of the BR reaction. Furthermore, we found that the addition of K3[Fe(CN)6], which has a high redox activity, in the reaction solution with PVA drastically elongated the lifetime (50 min) and increased the numbers of the oscillations (nearly 100 times). This result suggests that the oxidation-reduction reactions by the ferricyanide ion promotes the redox process of iodine and iodide ions.