Meander structures are highly relevant in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) communication systems, their miniaturization remains as one of the key design issues. Meander structures allow to decrease the size of the IoT device, while maintaining the same operating parameters of the IoT device. Meander structures can also work as the delay systems, which can be used for the delay and synchronization of signals in IoT devices. The design procedure of the meander delay systems is time-consuming and cumbersome because of the complexity of the numerical and analytical methods employed during the design process. New methods, which will accelerate the synthesis procedure of the meander delay systems, should be investigated. This is especially relevant when the procedure of synthesis must be repeated many times until the appropriate configuration of the IoT device is found. We present the procedure of synthesis of the meander delay system using the Pareto-optimal multilayer perceptron network and multiple linear regression model with the M5 descriptor. The prediction results are compared with results, which were obtained using the commercial Sonnet software package and with the results of physical experiment. The difference between the experimentally achieved and predicted results did not exceed 1.53 %. Moreover, the prediction of parameters of the meander delay system allowed to speed up the procedure of synthesis multiple times from hours to only 2.3 s.INDEX TERMS Antenna arrays, antenna measurements, artificial neural networks, Internet of Things.

The process of designing microwave devices is difficult and time-consuming because the analytical and numerical methods used in the design process are complex. Therefore, it is necessary to search for new methods that will allow for an acceleration of synthesis and analytic procedures. This is especially important in cases where the procedures of synthesis and analysis have to be repeated many times, until the correct device configuration is found. Artificial neural networks are one of the possible alternatives for the acceleration of the design process. In this paper we present a procedure for analyzing a hybrid meander system (HMS) using the feed-forward backpropagation network (FFBN). We compared the prediction results of the transmission factor and the reflection factor , obtained using the FFBN, with results obtained using traditional analytical and numerical methods, as well as with experimental results. The comparisons show that prediction results significantly depend on the FFBN structure. In terms of the lowest difference between the characteristics calculated using the method of moments (MoM) and characteristics predicted using the FFBN, the best prediction was achieved using the FFBN with three hidden layers, which included 18 neurons in the first hidden layer, 14 neurons in the second hidden layer, and 2 neurons in the third hidden layer. Differences between the predicted and calculated results did not exceed 7% for the parameter and 5% for the parameter. The prediction of parameters using the FFBN allowed the analysis procedure to be sped up from hours to minutes. The experimental results correlated with the predicted characteristics.

Walking robots are considered as a promising solution for locomotion across irregular or rough terrain. While wheeled or tracked robots require flat surface like roads or driveways, walking robots can adapt to almost any terrain type. However, overcoming diverse terrain obstacles still remains a challenging task even for multi-legged robots with a high number of degrees of freedom. Here, we present a novel method for obstacle overcoming for walking robots based on the use of tactile sensors and generative recurrent neural network for positional error prediction. By using tactile sensors positioned on the front side of the legs, we demonstrate that a robot is able to successfully overcome obstacles close to robots height in the terrains of different complexity. The proposed method can be used by any type of a legged machine and can be considered as a step toward more advanced walking robot locomotion in unstructured terrain and uncertain environment.

Due to the prospect of using walking robots in an impassable environment for tracked or wheeled vehicles, walking locomotion is one of the most remarkable accomplishments in robotic history. Walking robots, however, are still being deeply researched and created. Locomotion over irregular terrain and energy consumption are among the major problems. Walking robots require many actuators to cross different terrains, leading to substantial consumption of energy. A robot must be carefully designed to solve this problem, and movement parameters must be correctly chosen. We present a minimization of the hexapod robot’s energy consumption in this paper. Secondly, we investigate the reliance on power consumption in robot movement speed and gaits along with the Cost of Transport (CoT). To perform optimization of the hexapod robot energy consumption, we propose two algorithms. The heuristic algorithm performs gait switching based on the current speed of the robot to ensure minimum energy consumption. The Red Fox Optimization (RFO) algorithm performs a nature-inspired search of robot gait variable space to minimize CoT as a target function. The algorithms are tested to assess the efficiency of the hexapod robot walking through real-life experiments. We show that it is possible to save approximately 7.7–21% by choosing proper gaits at certain speeds. Finally, we demonstrate that our hexapod robot is one of the most energy-efficient hexapods by comparing the CoT values of various walking robots.

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The presented research faces the problem of early detection of sepsis for patients in the Intensive Care Unit. The PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge 2019 facilitated the development of automated, open-source algorithms for the early detection of sepsis from clinical data. A labeled clinical records dataset for training and verification of the algorithms was provided by the challenge organizers. However, a relatively small number of records with sepsis, supported by Sepsis-3 clinical criteria, led to highly unbalanced dataset (only 2% records with sepsis label). A high number of unbalanced data records is a great challenge for machine learning model training and is not suitable for training classical classifiers. To address these issues, a method taking into the account the amount of time the patients spent in the intensive care unit (ICU) was proposed. The proposed method uses two separate ensemble models, one trained on patient records under 56 h in the ICU, and another for patients who stayed longer than 56 h. A solution including feature selection and weighting based training on imbalanced data was proposed in this paper. In addition, several performance metrics were investigated. Results show, that for successful prediction, a particular model having few or more predictors based on the length of stay in the Intensive Care Unit should be applied.

The condition of a bee colony can be predicted by monitoring bees upon hive entrance. The presence of pollen grains gives beekeepers significant information about the well-being of the bee colony in a non-invasive way. This paper presents a field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA)-based pollen detector from images obtained at the hive entrance. The image dataset was acquired at native entrance ramps from six different hives. To evaluate and demonstrate the performance of the system, various densities of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were trained and tested to find those suitable for pollen grain detection at the chosen image resolution. We propose a new CNN accelerator architecture that places a pre-trained CNN on an SoC FPGA. The CNN accelerator was implemented on a cost-optimized Z-7020 FPGA with 16-bit fixed-point operations. The kernel binarization and merging with the batch normalization layer were applied to reduce the number of DSPs in the multi-channel convolutional core. The estimated average performance was 32 GOPS for a single convolutional core. We found that the CNN with four convolutional and two dense layers gave a 92% classification accuracy, and it matched those declared for state-of-the-art methods. It took 8.8 ms to classify a 512 × 128 px frame and 2.4 ms for a 256 × 64 px frame. The frame rate of the proposed method outperformed the speed of known pollen detectors. The developed pollen detector is cost effective and can be used as a real-time image classification module for hive status monitoring.

In this paper the open cylindrical gyroelectric phase shifters characteristics are investigated. The investigation is performed by changing their parameters: the magnetic flux density, the number of layers of dielectric, width and permittivities. The highest differential phase shift in n-InAs semiconductor and semiconductor-dielectric phase shifters can be obtained in range of magnetic flux density from 0 to 0.25 T. The minimum attenuation in phase shifters is obtained with one external dielectric layer. Ill. 8, bibl. 6 (in English; abstracts in English and Lithuanian). V. Mališauskas, D. Plonis. Giroelektrinių n-InAs fazės keitiklių charakteristikų tyrimas // Elektronika ir elektrotechnika. -Kaunas: Technologija, 2012. -Nr. 6(122). -P. 121-124.Straipsnyje tiriamos atvirųjų cilindrinių giroelektrinių fazės keitiklių charakteristikos, keičiant jų parametrus: magnetinio srauto tankį, dielektrikų sluoksnių skaičių, storius ir dielektrines skvarbas. Nustatyta, kad n-InAs puslaidininkiniuose ir puslaidininkiniuosedielektriniuose fazės keitikliuose didžiausias diferencinis fazės pokytis gaunamas, kai magnetinio srauto tankis yra nuo 0 iki 0,25 T. Mažiausiai elektromagnetinės bangos slopinamos keitikliuose su vienu išorinio dielektriko sluoksniu. Il. 8, bibl. 6 (anglų kalba; santraukos anglų ir lietuvių k.).