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The design of Reconfigurable Control Systems (RCS) is a tremendous task since that their increasing need for reconfiguration imposes the anticipation of all potential runtime changes at design time, which is in most cases infeasible. To deal with the high dynamicity of RCS at design-time we propose a novel design approach, RLReC (R einforcement L earning-based Re configuration C ontrol) allowing for the improvement of reconfiguration knowledge through online (runtime) exploration. This approach combines the benefits of meta-modelling with Reinforcement Learning (RL) principals for reconfiguration knowledge modelling in order to handle early and effective exploration of various design choices. In this work, the reconfiguration controller is an autonomous software agent designed as a RL agent (RLRA) that handles both offline (exploitation) and online (exploration) learning through interactions with the controlled system at runtime. In particular, the RLRA has to select reconfiguration rules that were not selected before, which is known as exploration. The main aim of this proposal is to cope with design-time unplanned changes by giving the RLRA the ability of improving its knowledge through online learning feedback. We illustrate the use of our contributions with a running example from the manufacturing domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educators have been using social media to enrich learning activities and promote interactive and collaborative learning. Under the context of dynamic learning - the way that 21st century's learners learn, the new challenges are: how educators design such a setting to effectively integrate certain social media tools to improve learning, and what the influential factors might be that educators need to focus during the design. In this article, we employ the concept "logistics" to explain and redefine dynamic design, dynamic learning, and dynamic thinking, which furthermore formulate the framework of the study. This article presents a critical content review of current literature, and an analysis of 276 cases located from the literature on seven factors (Information Logistics, Technology Logistics, Overall Design Logistics, Collaborative Learning, Active Stimulation, Motivation, and Objective-Driven Activities) regarding their influence on the success of social medial supported learning experiences. All seven factors were found to be significant and included in a static predictive model. An in-depth comprehension of this static predictive model is provided, based on which a new dynamic model is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-combustion capture is a promising solution to mitigate the anthropogenic CO 2 emission rate and reduce global warming. However, to make it economically attractive, the techno-economic performance of this process needs to be improved. This includes steady-state but also dynamic operation of the plant. Flexibility is particularly crucial from an economic and operational point of view since plants must balance the power production and the electricity demand on a daily basis. This work shows the impact of design decisions and uncertainties on the dynamic operation and economics of a CO 2 capture plant using piperazine (PZ), compared to the benchmark MEA solvent. This is exemplified through dynamic model calculations. The results show that the capacity of the buffer tank is a key parameter for the flexibility of the plant. A small tank corresponds to lower capital cost but it leads to increased operation cost and also to flexibility/controllability issues. Both, the PZ and MEA plants present inverse response for small tanks. These plants are challenging to control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Damping force-velocity hysteresis of a magnetorheological (MR) damper under sinusoidal displacement excitation is not only a typical indication of its dynamic performance, but also the foundation upon which a practical control strategy is established. Although numerous parametric and non-parametric models are effectively in predicting the hysteresis, their accuracy strongly depends on specific experimental data. Furthermore, little design guiding information can be explored from these models. With compressibility of MR fluid considered, ordinary differential equations (ODEs) of a physical MR damper model are derived in this paper. Then the corresponding lumped parameter model is developed, that is, a quasi-static MR model connected in series with a spring expressing compression of MR fluid. Moreover, the spring stiff expression is found to be equivalent to the “oil spring” in hydraulic technology. Decomposing a quasi-static MR model further to a friction element and a parallel-connected viscous element, these two basic elements in combination with a spring together fundamentally constitute a dynamic MR damper model. Consequently, a clear developing process of the hysteresis can be described with these three basic elements. As another main contribution of this paper, expression for calculating hysteresis width is derived by neglecting viscous element, and dynamic design method of MR dampers is proposed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The research on architectural design has been developed on ecology, system science and psychology. In the first part of this article, it analyzes targets and types of general design. On the basis of this, it discusses the developing process and the features of architectural design. Philosophic ideas of contemporary architectural design are the organic combination and highly unification of ecological design, dynamic design and psychological design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic design principles have been found to be useful in designing a variety of educational applications. Type II applications have been widely used to assist teaching and learning. In this article, the authors discuss a way of using dynamic design in the integration of Type II applications in education. The article first reviews the features of Type II applications, and introduces an approach that characterizes design as static design or dynamic design. An exploratory study is reported that examines the effectiveness of using a Type II, dynamic design to improve the design of online computer based instructions. Examples using this design approach to improve the quality of learning in different areas will be presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new methodology for dynamic design of a planar free-flying manipulator with the objective of simplifying the non-holonomic motion planning problem is proposed. As has been proposed in the past, the dynamic singularity point can be effectively used for non-holonomic motion planning of space robots. The proposed design imparts special properties to the dynamic singularity point, which are useful for the motion planning problem. Making use of the dynamic singularity of the manipulator, the motion planning problem can then be solved on-line. Example of a two-link planar manipulator mounted on a satellite base is used to present the proposed theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]