Sensors and their applications have received attention in the last few years, mainly due to the high demand of devices able to make improvements in quality, performance and safety across many industrial sectors. The automotive and medical industries being outstanding examples. Different technologies have been used in this regard and have produced reliable devices and systems. Despite this, some crucial technical drawbacks, which limit performance and reliability, are still present: limited response control, bandwidth, and relatively large dimensions. Metasurfaces, engineered electromagnetic materials, can overcome and/or mitigate such issues. In this paper, devices based on metasurface technology for advanced sensing and medical diagnostic applications are manufactured and experimentally validated. First, their properties are designed in terms of electromagnetic parameters and structure physical dimensions. An additive manufacturing process will use the specifications to physically realize the sensors. They will then be experimentally tested in a variety of bio-medical applications. Metasurfaces pave a new way to realize sensors and use them for many practical applications beyond sensing and diagnostics.

A device for a low-to-intermediate level of gesture recognition which uses a passive thermal-infrared (PIR) sensor array is described. The detection system which discriminates between a small number of simple dynamic gestures, such as ‘hand swiping’ in different directions and at varying velocities. The technology is low powered, in terms of energy consumption and computational power. The sensor enables a gesture sensing input, for mobile device application areas, where hands-free operation can be useful and where low-power consumption is essential.

In the half-duplex relay channel applying the decode-and-forward protocol the relay introduces energy over random time intervals into the channel as observed at the destination. Consequently, during simulation the average signal power seen at the destination becomes known at run-time only. Therefore, in order to obtain specific performance measures at the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of interest, strategies are required to adjust the noise variance during simulation run-time. It is necessary that these strategies result in the same performance as measured under real-world conditions. This paper introduces three noise power allocation strategies and demonstrates their applicability using numerical and simulation results.

A sensing device for a touchless, hand gesture, user interface based on an inexpensive passive infrared pyroelectric detector array is presented. The 2 x 2 element sensor responds to changing infrared radiation generated by hand movement over the array. The sensing range is from a few millimetres to tens of centimetres. The low power consumption (< 50 μW) enables the sensor's use in mobile devices and in low energy applications. Detection rates of 77% have been demonstrated using a prototype system that differentiates the four main hand motion trajectories -- up, down, left and right. This device allows greater non-contact control capability without an increase in size, cost or power consumption over existing on/off devices.

Most current work on gesture recognition focuses on the analysis of complex video sequences. In this paper we present an alternative approach that is intended for simple gesture control using a relatively inexpensive pyroelectric array detector. The detector is manufactured using standard wafer processing techniques. It consists of a 16 element passive infrared sensor array that responds to changing infrared signals, such as are generated by a hand moving at a distance of some tens of centimetres in front of the array. There is quite a large variation in the responsivity of the pixels within the array, but despite that it is relatively easy to use differential signals from the array or to apply a simplified version of an image processing algorithm to track movement in front of the detector. We have developed a prototype system that can recognise hand movements in different directions in front of the detector. This has allowed us to develop a demonstrator system that can be used to control, for instance, a PowerPoint presentation by gesture.

We present an approach that is intended for simple gesture control using a relatively inexpensive pyroelectric array detector. The detector is manufactured using standard wafer processing techniques. It consists of a 16 element passive infrared sensor array that responds to changing infrared signals, such as are generated by a hand moving at a distance of some tens of centimetres in front of the array. There is quite a large variation in the responsivity of the pixels within the array, but despite that it is relatively easy to use differential signals from the array or to apply a simplified version of an image processing algorithm to track movement in front of the detector. We have developed a prototype system that can recognise hand movements in different directions in front of the detector. This has allowed us to develop a demonstrator system that can be used to control, for instance, a PowerPoint presentation by gesture.

In this paper we present our work towards a hand gesture recognition system realised with a passive thermal infrared sensor array. In contrast with the majority of recent research activities into gesture recognition, which focus on the complex analysis of video sequences, our approach shows that the functionality of a simple pyroelectric movement sensor can be expanded to detect differing hand gestures at short range. We show that blob detection from a hand waving over a 16 element passive infrared sensor array provides sufficient information to discriminate four directions of hand stroke. This sensor system is unique and lends itself to low cost, low profile and low power applications. Keywords-touchless input device; dynamic hand gesture; infrared motion sensor; infrared sensor array; pyroelectricity;

This paper describes a Hardware Description Language (HDL) based fully customizable module for real-time Infrared (IR) hot spot detection and feature extraction from a video stream. The aim of the research was to investigate and evaluate possible solutions for object detection using connected component labelling that could be implemented within a streaming video embedded processing platform as a hardware accelerator. The proposed algorithm is based on a single-pass approach; this guarantees real-time processing together with very low resource utilisation. The hardware implementation was verified on a Xilinx XUP V2P (XC2VP30 FPGA) development board with an IR camera module interfaced as a real-time video source. The system was tested with an image resolution of 640 × 480 processing input data at a speed of 30fps which was limited by the bandwidth of the camera.

The objective of this paper is to carry out a detailed analysis of the most popular connected components labeling (CCL) algorithms for binary images. This study investigates their usability for processing streaming data and suitability for implementation using Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. The first part of this paper presents the state of the art on CCL algorithms. Both capability for real-time video processing as well as memory requirements are taken into consideration. The second part of the paper describes an efficient implementation of the single pass labeling algorithm using a Virtex-II Pro FPGA. It is verified on the development board with an infrared camera module as a real-time video source. The system is capable of processing video stream with 640 x 480 pixels per frame at a speed of 30 fps limited by the bandwidth of the video source.

This paper discusses the design and implementation of replacement Press Control System for a manufacturer of aerospace forgings. Previous controllers consisted of customised hardware and software and were difficult to maintain, primarily due to component availability. Criteria for the replacement design include the use "off the shelf" hardware, and software, which could be readily supported. Short control loop times are crucial in the design, due to the dynamic nature of the application. The replacement system must deliver robust performance with added data management facilities. Predictable failure modes are essential. Copyright © 2006 NAEC

This paper describes our work measuring the movement of pedestrians. We describe our data collection system, processing techniques and introduce our data analysis software system. Our work aims to provide data to improve security and monitoring of pedestrians in public areas that would otherwise be unavailable. This data is important to those working in market research, behavioural psychology or safety and security.

In this paper, we will describe a number of research projects at Napier University on pedestrian tracking. This work started with systems based on ordinary cameras working at visible wavelengths. This work has expanded to include infrared imaging systems (of varying resolutions). Recently, combinations of visible and infrared systems have been used, and we have been collaborating with Irisys (Infrared Integrated Systems Ltd.) to develop tracking systems that can accurately measure the trajectories of pedestrians in real time.