That amazing Baroque world
The Baroque period was a time of great upheaval. Monarchs believed in the divine right to rule, a notion continuously threatened by the relentless spread of the Ottoman Empire. Civilisations clashed like never before, opposing religious ideals stoking that vicious fire. Curiously, this was also the age when science, technology, and art were making their own grand strides. The cannon and the musket altered military landscapes. The studies of Descartes, Kepler, and Newton revolutionised thought. Borromini, Bernini, Guarini, and Caravaggio altered the artistic world.
Road to resilience
Hardships do not befall us all in equal measure. Cassi Camilleri talks to Prof. Carmel Cefai about his work at the Centre for Resilience and Socio-Emotional Health and the dedicated curriculum that seeks to impart the skill of resilience to those who need it most.
Continue readingRobot see, robot maps
by Rachael N. Darmanin
The term ‘robot’ tends to conjure up images of well-known metal characters like C-3P0, R2-D2, and WALL-E. The robotics research boom has in the end enabled the introduction of real robots into our homes, workspaces, and recreational places. The pop culture icons we loved have now been replaced with the likes of robot vacuums such as the Roomba and home-automated systems for smoke detectors, or WIFI-enabled thermostats, such as the Nest. Nonetheless, building a fully autonomous mobile robot is still a momentous task. In order to purposefully travel around its environment, a mobile robot has to answer the questions ‘where am I?’, ‘where should I go next?’ and ‘how am I going to get there?’
Like humans, mobile robots must have some awareness of their surroundings in order to carry out tasks autonomously. A map comes in handy for humans. A robot could build the map itself while exploring an unknown environment—this is a process called Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM). For the robot to decide which location to explore next, however, an exploration strategy would need to be devised, and the path planner would guide the robot to navigate to the next location, which increases the map’s size.
Rachael Darmanin (supervised by Dr Ing. Marvin Bugeja), used a software framework called Robot Operating System (ROS) to develop a robot system that can explore and map an unknown environment on its own. Darmanin used a differential-drive-wheeled mobile robot, dubbed PowerBot, equipped with a laser scanner (LIDAR) and wheel encoders. The algorithms responsible for localising the robot analyse the sensors’ data and construct the map. In her experiments, Darmanin implemented two different exploration strategies, the Nearest Frontier and the Next Best View, on the same system to map the Control Systems Engineering Laboratory. Each experiment ran for approximately two minutes until the robot finished its exploration and produced a map of its surroundings. This was then compared to a map of the environment to evaluate the robot’s mapping accuracy. The Next Best View approach generated the most accurate maps.
Mobile robots with autonomous exploration and mapping capabilities have massive relevance to society. They can aid hazardous exploration, like nuclear disasters, or access uncharted archaeological sites. They could also help in search and rescue operations where they would be used to navigate in disaster-stricken environments. For her doctorate, Darmanin is now looking into how multiple robots can work together to survey a large area—with a few other solutions in between.
This research was carried out as part of a Master of Science in Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malta. It was funded by the Master it! Scholarship Scheme (Malta). This scholarship is part-financed by the European Union European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II Cohesion Policy 2007–2013, Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality Of Life.
Insects taking over
Malta is thought to harbour around 6,000 to 8,000 species of insects. In the last two years almost 200 new records of these fascinating creatures were found around the Maltese Islands, and a new endemic species, unique to Malta, was also described as new to science. Jessica Edwards meets up with Dr David Mifsud to find out more about these amazing findings and why insects really do run the world. Photography by Dr Edward Duca.
Continue readingSea Breeze
Malta’s long Mediterranean summers mean that ACs are everyone’s best friend. In a country endowed by sun and wind, renewable energies cannot be an afterthought, yet they are. The UoM’s OWTEP project is creating a cutting-edge solution by combining an offshore wind turbine with a district cooling system. Prof. Ing. Tonio Sant and Dr Ing. Robert N. Farrugia speak to Tuovi Mäkipere.
Continue readingWhere is the crowd?
Athletes who are cheered on during sporting activities are likely to perform better than athletes who don’t. The HeartLink project is investigating how to remotely cheer athletes while they are participating in sporting events. Dr Franco Curmi writes about his work for the HeartLink project.
Continue reading1565 – Was it that great?
A historical discovery does not always equal the unearthing of new documents or artefacts. Sometimes it’s about re-evaluating what we already know. Prof. Victor Mallia-Milanes tells Tuovi Mäkipere more.
Testing MEMS
How do you test the sensors in smartphones, smartwatches, and up-and-coming medical devices? With a Femtotools FT-RS1002 Microrobotic System of course! In 2016 the Department of Microelectronics and Nanoelectronics (Faculty of ICT, UoM) set up a slew of devices to be able to to probe, prod and poke devices up to a resolution of 1 nm (thinner than the diameter of a human hair).
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Number of axes: 3 Maximum velocity: 5 mm/s Minimum motion increment: 1 nm Actuation principle: Piezoelectric scanning/stepping Sensor probe tip area: 50 µm x 50 µm FT-S100000 sensor force range: ±100000 µN FT-S100000 sensor resolution at 10Hz: ±5 µN Operating temperature: 5°C to 100°C |
The team of computer scientists collaborated with global semiconductor chip maker ST Microelectronics to p roduce MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems). MEMS are the tiny sensors or devices often found in smartphones that allow them to act like a compass, know how fast a person is going, or detect sound. In Malta, the new equipment is being used to measure mechanical properties (for example shear testing and flexure testing) of tiny mirrors that can be used to turn phones into high-quality projectors (part of the Lab4MEMS2 project part-funded by the EU). This toolkit is incredibly versatile, forming part of a station that can have additional add-ons to widen its applications. Now the team wants to buy more sensitive microforce probes and microgrippers that will allo w the manipulation and assembly of microsystems. This toolkit’s micromechanical testing can be used in many research and industrial applications. This way, the horizon is open for studies into semiconductor technology, microsystem development, materials science, micromedicine, or biotechnology—placing Malta on the semiconductor map.