Associate professor
The 8th of November I will remember as the day I became associate professor (Docent). The application for Docent was handed in to faculty in middle of March for external review. I was later asked to give a mandatory trial lecture for becoming Docent. In that lecture titled "Towards better vision" I was asked to point out future directions for my research. I feel honored by this change to talk about my field of research and where I want to go in future. I enjoy doing this presentation and the lecturing part was pure fun for me.
Installation of FOGGY
A vision based instrument called FOGGY was installed in field at Klövsjö, Vemdalen. This instrument can measure the content of liquid water droplets in air. It measures the concentration Liquid Water Content (LWC) and the droplet's Median Volume Diameter (MVD). See the rightside movie clip for a simple introduction of concepts.
The dissertation of Patrik Jonsson
The title of Patrik's thesis is "Surface Status Classification, Utilizing Image Sensor Technology and Computer Models". Dissertation was held at Campus Östersund. Patrik's work is an investigation of the use of imaging detectors for the detection of dry, wet, snowy or icy asphalt. The 2-dimensional coverage of a road surface allows for the detection of e.g. icy weel tracks covered with water using image analysis. This is an substantial scientific and technical contribution compared to state of the art in metrology. The motivation for this research is an expected improvement of road maintenance leading to improved traffic safety.
The discrimination of dry, wet, snowy or icy asphalt is possible due to characteristic obsorption peaks in Near and Short Wave InfraRed light spectra. Clever selection of optical pass bands in combination with supervised machine learning and classification results in an efficient measurement method for road surface monitoring.
Patrik Jonsson carried out his PhD studies part time at Combitech AB while also working as engineer. This kind of employment is usually referred to as industrial PhD student. I have been the assistant supervisor for Patrik since the time after his Licentiate seminar, Prof. Hans Erik Nilsson was the main supervisor.
Lower left picture: Dr. Patrik Jonsson, Mid Sweden
University
Upper left picture: Prof. Torbjørn Eltoft, Tromsø
University
Upper right picture: Docent Peter Glans, Mid Sweden University
Middle right picture: Docent Thomas Hellström, Umeå
University
Lower right picture: Dr. Matti Kutila, VTT Finland
Competition in popular science presentation
An annual competition ForskarGrandPrix in popular science presentation is arranged by Vetenskap och Allmänhet. I won third price in this national competition held at the rock club Debaser Medis in Stockholm. Karin Adelsköld was hosting the competition and in the jury was Nour El-Refai, Patrik Hadenius and Göran Östlin. You can watch all participating researchers at UR Play following this link or just watch my presentation in the following video player.
Photos made by Erik Cronberg, Pressbilder, Vetenskap och Allmänhet
Conference on Norwegian Oil and Gas industry
A conference was held in Trondheim on the topic, Norwegian Oil and Gas industry. This conference was financed and arranged as part of the Interreg project GIFU and in cooperation with the Norwegian Centres of Expertise Instrumentation (NCEI). I attended this conference as being interested in opportunuties for future R&D projects related to measurement techniques. Underwater robotics are often used for inspection of installations and for guidance of subsea construction work. This can also be an interesting area for machine vision and image analysis.
Five of our Norwegian students on the master program presented their thesis works.
The dissertation
of Xiaozhou Meng
The title of Meng's thesis is "Technology Driven Obsolescence Management
for Embedded System". This work focuses on embedded systems having
a a long life cycle. Embedded systems typically within avionics or automotive
industry must be maintained for maybe 30 years or more. How to handle
the problem when components such as microcontrollers or memories becomes
obsolete during this system life cycle? Meng's work indicates that if
both technology and dicision support for managment are concidered, total
costs for maintaining such a long life cycle system can be significantly
reduced. Opponent was Prof. Jim Tørresen from Oslo University.
Gradng comity: Dr. Torbjörn Olsson, BAE Systems, Prof. Jacob Axelsson,
Mälardalen University and Prof. Torbjörn Carlberg from our own
faculty at Miun.
I've had the pleassure to learn to know Meng as a hard working PhD student
during the five years I've been one of his supervisors.
I joined a group of conference participants for a study visit at Mörttjärnberget windfarm. This windfarm is owned by Statkraft SCA Vind AB who organized this visit within the WinterWind conference. There are 37 direct driven wind turbines from Siemens, each having a maximum power capacity of 2.3 MW. Direct driven turbines means that no gearbox is used and turbine shaft is directly connected to the electrical generator. Gearboxes in wind turbine are otherwise concidered to be a common source of failure. The major challange for maintaining a windfarm in our cold climate is spelled "icing". When air contains droplets of liquid water (fog) and temperature is around zero and colder, ice starts to build up on the turbine blades. Aerodynamics of the rotor blades will be affected by ice and power versus wind speed curve degrades. When weather conditions are the worst in our region, also the need for electricity and the price for electricity is the highest. Hence, it is important to have efficient methods for deicing of rotor blades in order to keep production during times when profits are the best. The picture to the right is showing ice partly covering areas of the turbine blade.
Real-Time Optical Position Sensing on FPGA is the title of a doctoral thesis written by Abdul Waheed Malik. He is the first PhD student I have supervised all the way to a dissertation. Opponent was Prof. Danny Crookes from Queen's University Belfast. Dr. Alec Gorkic from Optomotive, Ljubljana, Prof. Wiktor Öwall from Lund University, Prof. Zebo Peng from Linköping University and Prof. Håkan Olin from Mid Sweden University was in the grading comity.
I have learned to know Waheed very well during these five years that he spent here in Sundsvall. Beyond work experience, it has given me much better knowledge and insight about Islamic culture, traditions and religion. Waheed is now back in Pakistan and I wish him and his family good luck in future.
An open innovation workshop was arranged in Åre where companies, organisations, researchers and students could meet in discussions of new innovations. Focus was on new business opportunities. Work was organised in thematic groups, each of them with a process leader.
