- Date:
- 2005-2008
- Theme:
- Robotics and Control
- Funding:
- EPSRC
When you practice playing tennis you become better at it, because new nerve connections have been made within your brain and spinal cord. Not only do you need to practice, but you also need feedback of your performance so that you can correct your movement. In this research we are using this idea to teach people who have had a stroke how to learn new skills.
A Stroke is usually caused when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain. It acts like a dam stopping the blood reaching the brain downstream. As a result some of the connecting nerve fibres die and the person becomes partially paralysis on one side of the body, this is called hemiplegia. These fibres cannot re-grow, but the brain has plenty spare capacity so new connections can be made. In fact the brain is continually and rapidly changing as we learn new skills; new connections are formed, redundant ones disappear. When people re-learn skills after a stroke they go through the same process as you do when you learn to play tennis. But they have a problem because they can hardly move at all so they cannot practice which means they donââ¬â¢t get feedback. Muscles can be made to work by Electrical Stimulation. Electrical impulses travel along the nerves in much the same way as the electrical impulses from your brain. If stimulation is carefully controlled, a useful movement can be made. This works better if the person is attempting the movement themselves; we therefore need to combine a personââ¬â¢s own effort with just enough extra electrical stimulation to achieve the movement. This is what we will do in this project by adjusting the level of stimulation in response to the personââ¬â¢s movement.
To teach people who have had a stroke how to move their arm we will ask them to track a spot of light by moving a vertical rod over a flat board, like moving a chess piece. As they move we stimulate their muscles. If they track the target well, then on the next attempt we turn the stimulation down if not we increase it. To get the level and the timing of the stimulation right we measure the difference between the direction of the movement of the arm and the movement of the spot of light. We then adjust the stimulation in a way that we think will reduce the difference, ideally we want them to follow the same path exactly. After the person has had another go at following the spot of light we measure the difference again and make the adjustment again. In fact each time we make an adjustment to the stimulation we measure the effect so that we can continually improve their accuracy. This is called Iterative Learning. Adjustments are made according to a set of rules - making these rules is an important part of the project. This process is very similar to the way your brain works when you are learning to play tennis. One important addition though is that we need to keep reducing the stimulation to encourage the person to use their own effort to follow the spot of light, rather than relying on the stimulation. So if they track the spot well, then the next time they get less help from the stimulation. This technique of iterative learning is often used in ââ¬Ëtrainingââ¬â¢ robots for industrial purposes, but as far as we know nobody has tried using it to help people who have had a stroke learn to move again.
Primary investigators
- Professor Jane Burridge
- Christopher Freeman
- amh
- phc
Associated research groups
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Information: Signals, Images, Systems Research Group
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electrical Power Engineering
- Date:
- 2004-
- Theme:
- Nanophotonics and Biomimetics
The eyes and wings of some species of moth are covered in arrays of densely-packed pillars with heights and spacings of approximately 200 nm. These structures introduce a grading in the effective refractive index at the surface and so have an antireflective effect, allowing the moth to avoid detection by predators. This mechanism results in low reflectance for a broad range of wavelengths and angles of incidence, properties which would be highly beneficial to solar cells, where the aim is to transmit as much of the incident solar spectrum through the surface and into the cell as possible. We are investigating ways to mimic moth-eye structures in silicon solar cell designs to form antireflective surfaces that are superior to traditional thin film coatings.
Primary investigators
- sab04r
- Darren Bagnall
- pjs05r
Associated research groups
- Nano Research Group
- Southampton Nanofabrication Centre
The study of the potential decay in dielectric materials has a long history and is closely related to the wide application of corona charged dielectrics. One of the phenomenon that has an important influence on potential decay is the observation by Professor Ieda in 1967. His results were that in particular circumstances polyethylene potential decay curves with several initial charge levels did cross each other. This crossover phenomenon has been scoped in many works and excited theoreticians imagination. Many models about the potential decay have been published but no more experimental results to prove the hypothesis. This project aim is to utilize the space charge measurement technique to explain the crossover phenomenon and moreover to find physical mechanism through observing the charge decay process in a corona charged polymeric material. The anticipation is that the application of this charge mapping technique may shed more light on the mechanism of charge decay. As we know if the deposit charge can inject and transport from the bulk of charged sample, there should be an acoustic wave detected by the sensor because the charge will move under the columbic force produced by the narrow and high voltage pulse. If some signals detect by the oscilloscope, there should be charge inside the bulk of sample. If the charge distribution in the sample is observed, there will be experimental evidence for the research of charge injection, transport and storage in the dielectrics. One essential phenomenon; bipolar charge injection has been derived from charge distribution results. By combining both surface potential of two layers LDPE and space charge measurement, direct evidence has been found to support the theory that the bulk transport process is accountable for the surface potential decay. Charge mapping technique (PEA) was successfully introduced to the potential study. This provide an alternative way to investigate charge decay process and allows monitoring charge migration through the bulk of corona charged film.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
- zx04r
Associated research groups
- Electrical Power Engineering
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2007-2010
- Theme:
- Nanoelectronics
Electrodeposition is investigated as a technique for fabricating Nickel Palladium alloy contacts for carbon nanotube spintronic applications. Palladium forms good quality, reliable contacts with carbon nanotubes and the addition of Nickel to the alloy may yield high quality contacts capable of injecting spin into carbon nanotubes. The Nickel Palladium alloy forms good quality Schottky barriers with a 1-2 Ohm.cm resistivity Silicon wafer and the variation of alloy composition with different electrolytic solutions and variation of magnetisation with the Nickel percentage in the alloy is being studied. This project will also examine techniques to align Carbon nanotubes with patterned electrodes, improve the yield of devices obtained by spin coating carbon nanotubes on Silicon and will illustrate the suitability of electrodeposition as a fabrication technique for carbon nanotube spintronic applications.
Primary investigator
- Dr. C.H. de Groot
Secondary investigator
- Ashwin R. Usgaocar
Associated research groups
- Nano Research Group
- Southampton Nanofabrication Centre
The growing requirement for reliability of insulation systems gives researchers more responsibility to investigate new techniques of monitoring and diagnosis of dielectrics. It is well known that the presence of space charge plays an important role in premature failure of polymeric high voltage cables. Space charge surveillance is becoming the most generally used skill to evaluate polymeric materials, particularly high voltage cables. The well-known pulsed electroacoustic method (PEA) is a reliable non-destructive method. It gives a reasonable resolution about the concentration of the space charge in the insulation material. The main tasks in this project were carried out using PEA technique to measure space charge in low density polyethylene.
A sudy into space charge formation and distribution at the interface of a multi-layer sample under dc and ac applied voltage was initially carried out. Electrode materials and frequency are two important factors to determine the charge injection and distribution. It has been found that the interface between films acts as traps for charge carriers, especially for electrons. Positive charge has high mobility compared to negative charge shown from this interface study. An advanced PEA measurement system with high rate test and excellent phase resolving capability was then designed. Compared with the typical PEA system the new one can provide enhanced experimental results for transient situations, achieving high-quality diagnosis for the typical industrial conditions such as dc cable polarity reversal and transient voltage failure.
Primary investigator
Secondary investigator
- zx04r
Associated research groups
- Electrical Power Engineering
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 1989-
- Themes:
- Multimedia, Content Based Retrieval, Image Processing
VIPS is an open source image processing library which has evolved from many EU projects on imaging. It is designed for speed, automatic multithreading and ease of programming. Its NIP GUI provides a spreadsheet-like interface with its own functional language for scripting. It has a wide develop/user community around the world and runs on almost any platform (using C/C++/Python). It has been used for mosaicing images, dealing with multi-GB images and colour calibration.
Primary investigators
- Kirk Martinez
- John Cupitt
Partners
- Imperial College, London
- The National Gallery, London
Associated research group
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Date:
- 2005-
- Themes:
- Wireless Sensing and Sensor Networks, Pervasive Computing and Networks, Environmental Monitoring
- Funding:
- EPSRC
The Glacsweb designed a sensor network to monitor glaciers - including producing new hardware (node) designs, new radio communication network protocols and robust control and telemetry. It deployed systems in Norway and Iceland which produced continuous data previously unseen by glaciologists. The interdisciplinary research involved computer science, electronics, mechanical engineering, glaciology and GIS.
Primary investigators
- Kirk Martinez
- Jane Hart
Secondary investigators
- pjb08r
- le1d10
- cp1506
- Jeffrey Gough
- ddj07r
- aic1g11
Associated research groups
- Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
- Pervasive Systems Centre
- Web and Internet Science
- Date:
- -2010
- Themes:
- Superconductivity, HTS power apparatus, Liquid dielectrics
This project has been established by the Electrical Power Engineering Group at the University of Southampton to address some fundamental issues associated with the application of superconducting technology to power apparatus. One of the critical aspects for the application of high temperature superconductor (HTS) technology is suitable electrical insulation materials. In many HTS devices, liquid nitrogen (LN2) is a cheap and excellent cooling medium and also a good electrical insulator. However, bubbles are easily formed due to trapped vapour on surfaces during filling, thermally or electrically induced. These bubbles are known to reduce the breakdown withstand level.
This project is studying the thermally induced bubble dynamics and boiling process under electric fields. To date results have been obtained using rod-plane and inclined-plane electrodes. These results are useful for understanding electrohydrodynamic (EHD) phenomena influencing the bubble behaviour in liquid nitrogen and for developing a means of removing the gas from the cryostat of HTS transformers or fault current limiters (FCL) during ââ¬Åquenchââ¬?. In addition, the EHD technique can be used as an effective heat transfer enhancement method in liquids. Obtained experimental results of liquid nitrogen boiling curves under applied electric fields will allow future cooling equipment to exploit this phenomena.
Primary investigators
Secondary investigator
- pw04r
Associated research groups
- Electrical Power Engineering
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2006-
- Theme:
- Communication and Networking
To develop algorithms and protocols that can improve the scalability of sensor networks by using cluster-based routing mechanisms. The network must be able to balance energy consumption between nodes and maintain a low message latency.
Primary investigator
- pneb06r
Secondary investigators
Associated research groups
- Electronic Systems and Devices Group
- Electronics and Electrical Engineering
- Date:
- 2006-2010
- Themes:
- High Voltage Engineering, Modelling and Simulation, Condition monitoring
A partial discharge (PD) within a transformer can be considered as a high frequency transient event, therefore the development of high frequency models may inform the process of pd source location and evaluation. PD activity in large transformers can be detected using wideband sensors (vhf up to 500MHz)and therefore any model should be broadband. The use of a laboratory experimental model containing both interleaved and plain disk windings has provided a range of time and frequency response data that has yielded models based on lumped circuit parameters. Other modelling approaches are being investigated as well as techniques for determining PD source location based on the developed models and measurements of PD activity made at the bushing tap and neutral to earth points.
Primary investigators
- Paul Lewin
- djs
Secondary investigator
- rm05r
Associated research group
- Electronics and Computer Science