As a result of our strong presence in the Subsea Industry we have been asked to conduct a conceptual study for one of our client with the main aim to design the lighter version of their existing junction box for one of their latest Renewable Energy project. The main purpose of the junction box was to provide dry electrical and Fiber Optic connections between distribution seabed armor cable and 6 off flexible, smaller diameter cables connected to the energy generator devices (both wave and tidal generation based).

The main addition to the initial scope of work was to design a pressure compensation system allowing to vastly reduce the metal work thickness and the weight. As you can see on the pictures we have created 3D models of this system and deliver to the client the full FEED (Front End Engineering Design) along with other points for consideration and full costing report.

As a result of our strong presence in the Software & Simulation Industry we have been asked to solve a complex counting problem.  

Counting as operation always has been an integral part of any estimation. Correct estimation of passenger flow, number of operations per staff, number of bags per passenger and number of passengers per hour are day to day operations. 
Most of these counting operations are embedded in various hardware systems and part of these are automatically collected by computerised systems. 

However, there are number of measurements which any airport need to conduct manually or deduct them from another measurement. In some places installing hardware to count is physically impossible or expensive if the measurement is performed only once a week or month. 

Very often in order to adjust mathematical model or collect data for new parameter,  counting at specific time and point in the security checkpoint is needed. In most cases this is done by observers and manual counters are used. 
This approach would work if the number of counts are not too much and the time is not too long for manual operation. 
However there are many cases where manual counting does not work due to errors caused by human factors or inappropriate working conditions. For example:
–           Time overlapping operations
–           High repetitiveness of the operations
–           Measuring for long period of time
–           High level of noise,  vibrations, poor lighting etc.
Have you ever wanted to have simple software solution to resolve the above challenges with no drilling halls and installing expensive software, without interrupting the current flow of people and bags and without stopping the conveyors?
This is exactly what Advanced Counter Software offers to you.

About the software package

Advanced Counter is software package capable of replacing the observers in counting operations by using image processing from Webcam.  The hardware requirements are minimal, which reflects in affordable cost solution. 
The software uses 10 simultaneous counters where each of them can be separately tuned to count different types of objects. You can set the software ready for operation in three simple steps:
–          Adjust the camera position and lighting
–          Draw ‘light barrier(s) ‘on the screen. Construct the model and perform system learning by pressing buttons.
–          Tune your counters based on sensitivity of the calculated output.

This does not sound complex, but the actual software performs complex operations in order to reduce false counting. 
The software also includes option for sound indication while counting. The following two screens show the GUI of the system in action:

Fig 1) Advanced counting GUI (position the camera and draw light barrier on top of the image – the Dark Red line on the conveyor belt).

Fig 2) The system in action (8 bags are shown already on the first (dark red) counter )

The system design

Most image processing systems for counting object are based on the principle of object recognition. This creates robust to noise approach. 
Unfortunately we would not be able to use this approach due to the fact that our foreground (counting objects) and background are unknown in advance. The principle used in our case is based on the fact that most of the objects we would count are in motion in comparison to the background.  Based on this, a learning algorithm would separate the background form the foreground and would perform the counting operation for specific zones (drawn from the user). 
 
Flexibility and estimation of error.

While counting by observers is very human factor related operation, the usage of this software package relays on human intervention only during the initial setup. The only operation after that is monitoring the system to perform a correction in the settings if necessary (the light is changed or the camera is accidently moved/shaken).

The following example demonstrates how robust the algorithm is. To perform this test we used a YouTube clip of a conveyor and also used a Webcam to capture the movie from the screen of the monitor. This introduces sufficient noise to prove the system is capable of performing in very harsh environment (visuals noise).

As a result of our strong presence in the Subsea Industry we have been asked to look into design a subsea electrical connector in a modular way so it can be optimise from the point of view of three initial parameters: Voltage and Current operating range, number of electrical contacts and its size combination, overall size of the body of the connector.

As the output of this very interesting exercise we have come up with the following parameters:  

Voltage & Current operating range:

U/I:   U=500V, I=10A      U=0.6/1(1.2)kV, I=50A      U=1.8/3(3.6)kV, I=100A      U=3.6/6(7.2)kV, I=250A   

Contacts configurations: 1, 4, 7, 19, 37, 61

Overall size of the connector inserts:

diameter = 20mm, 30mm, 40mm, 50mm, 60mm, 70mm, 80mm, 90mm 

The first picture below shows the difference between the biggest (90mm diameter insert) and the smallest (20mm diameter insert) un-terminated/mated connector.

The second picture shows fully terminated 4 way electrical connector, the receptacle and the socket side view.  

As a result of our strong presence in the Software & Simulation Industry we have been asked to deliver the Simulation Software Package. 

What is S-Lane 2D?

S-Lane 2D is material handling simulation engine targeting aviation security simulations. It has been built to facilitate non-professionals and provides unique features to minimise you learning curve and deliver simulation results with minimum effort.
The environment is targeting aviation checkpoints. Several unique selling points are:

• You don’t have to build any visual entities in order to simulate (most of them are pre-built)
• You can use sketch or picture or drawing in order to represent the background
• You don’t have to program anything (no scripting of the logic is involved)
• You can use MS Excel to interpret the statistical data and withdraw conclusions
• Very easy to modify your layout or change timing for any operation
• You can accelerate your simulation up to 10 times in order to collect statistical data for longer period of time
• You can reverse the simulation state to any condition (for example you can alter the simulation by only playing the period between 1 and 5 minutes after the start)
• You can collect statistics for any operation you like
• You only need few hours to learning how to use the simulator.

Why do you need this simulator?

If you are working under pressure, you probably will be more effective if you don’t spend extra money paying for complex 3D simulation done from an external company. Even if you are in a big organisation and you are not very concern about spending few thousand pounds, this scenario also requires from you to explain exactly what you want in a documented format, which may take time and may not reflect all scenarios you want to test.
This is the main reason we built S-Lane 2D.

If you are manager, supervisor or data analyst this product gives you quick visualisation of all test cases you need. You can demo them and extracting all necessary statistical data, produce graphs and prove you can optimise the operational performance. You don’t have to learn how to program, construct and write scripts, learn complex graphical software packages. You don’t have to spend time writing documentation. S-Lane 2D also does not require any special hardware. Any Windows system (XP and above) will be able to run this software. It is also very small and compact package, so you can store thousands of simulations on your USB memory stick.
Just grab pen and paper, sketch your layout, scan it and in 30 minutes you can have it working live inside the S-Lane 2D environment. Then you can modify your parameters and grab results for every change you do, expert all data in Excel and voilà, you have your graphs to prove your operational performance results. 

And this is not all. If you have problems with the logic of your design you can contact us and we will help (even if this involves customising the software for you).

You can reduce your design time?

This depends mainly how skilled you are and how complex is the model you want to run. S-Lane 2D only contains a minimum set of simulation fetures. It may have many options missing or not entirely completed. 
Some of the limitations are:

• No script- (most of the functions you will use will be based on pre-programmed events)
• Only uniform distribution is used (no Gaussian or triangle is available at this point)
• Main targeting environment is aviation security and some of the names of the operators are named after common security operations or materials (bag, person, bag-check, has bag, etc.)
• Only Windows OS (support for Android is on its way)
• Only two types of entities are generated (person and bags)
• Person can carry (hold bags) but not opposite. This is in case you are planning to use the system for different purpose. You can simulate entity in another entity, but you cannot do this recursively – (At least not at this moment).
• If you are intending to model complex systems, this may not be the best product for you due to the fact that most of the facilities to manipulate objects are minimal. (it is done deliberately to make the product smaller and easy to learn)
• Only two types of entities are visually different inside the simulation environment.
• It is work in progress. We will add number of different functionalities in order to increase the ability of the product to handle high complexity simulations. However, because the software is relying on pre-programmed events, there is a high chance for a command or event which you need to be missing.
• The statistical output is hard coded which requires MS Excel post operation in order to extract intelligence from the data output. We provide all events for pre-selected location. However some of the data may not be used or has to be post-processed in Excel. It depends on the model you are building.

How it looks?

S-Lane 2D in action is shown in the next picture.

As a result of our strong presence in the Oil & Gas industry, we have designed and developed the following Well Intervention Products.  

Portable Pressure Test Unit   

    Features:

As a result of our Engineering Consultancy record and reputation we have been approach by many companies and agreed to act as consultants on numerous Engineering projects. We have presented two of them below.   

This first project has been delivered to one of our client from the Oil & Gas industry. We have modeled the portable generator and created an assembly type clip. The main aim was to use this clip for their clients as a marketing tool and also give the general overview of all major sub – assemblies of the generator at any initial meetings. We have used Autodesk Inventor to create the model and the animation. Please see below one screen shot as an example. 

This second project has been delivered to one of our client from the subsea industry. We have modeled the metal fabrication parts used for heavy armor cable termination assembly. We have used Autodesk Inventor to create all the models. Please see below the flange initial model and part of the housing model.