The following discussion concerns the use of innovative smart materials called vacuum-packed particles (VPPs) as active energy absorbers. VPP, also known as a granular jamming system, is a structure composed of granular media contained within an elastomer coating. By changing the vacuum pressure inside the coating, it is possible to control the mechanical properties of the structure. VPPs have many applications, e.g. in medicine, robotics, and vibration damping. No attempts have yet been made to use VPPs to absorb the energy of a collision, although, given their properties, this could very well be an interesting application. In the first part of the paper, the general concept of the absorber is presented. Then a prototype and the empirical tests conducted are precisely described. The middle part of the paper considers the basic properties of VPP and modeling methodology. A proposal for a constitutive equation is presented, and a numerical simulation using LS-Dyna was performed. In the final section, the concept of a smart parking post is presented..

This article presents a consistent solution of Transmit Power Control in centralized (clustered) wireless network with and without jamming. Depending on the policy assumed, appropriate solutions are applied to minimize the power used in a system or to satisfy expected Quality of Service. Because of specific nature of the system there is no optimal solution which can be applied in practice. Correctness and effectiveness of four proposed Transmit Power Control algorithms was presented in the form of computer simulation results in which the system capacity, mean power used and the number of successful links were described.

This paper proposes data-based fault detection methods for an electromechanical actuator (EMA) with a brushed DC motor. The jam and winding short faults are considered in the study as the most prominent EMA faults. The fault detection is based on evaluating the properties of the motor current, considering the basic electromechanical parameters of EMAs. The main advantages are a non-intrusive approach utilising a commonly accessible motor current measurement, simple configurability, and the ability to detect faults under varying operation modes of EMA, including changes of speed, load, or movement profiles. The proposed methods have been evaluated with a custom testing system, and the results have proven the performance of the proposed approach to detect faults under varying operating conditions in industrial applications.