Self-produced seismic vibrations have been found for some subterranean rodents but have not been reported for any Insectivora species, although seismic sensitivity has been confirmed for blind sand-dwelling chrysochlorid golden moles. Studying the vocal behaviour of captive piebald shrews, Diplomesodon pulchellum, we documented vibrations, apparently generated by the whole-body wall muscles, fr...

The goal of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) research is to improve the quality of life of the elderly and handicapped people and help them maintain an independent lifestyle with the use of sensors, signal processing and telecommunications infrastructure. Unusual human activity detection such as fall detection has important applications. In this paper, a fall detection algorithm for a low cost AAL...

Self-powered microsystems like wireless microsensors and biomedical implants derive power from in-package minibatteries that can only store sufficient energy to sustain the system for a short life. The environment, however, is a rich source of energy that, when harnessed, can replenish the otherwise exhausted battery. The problem is harvesters generate low power levels and the electronics requi...

An integrated hardware and software system for a scalable wireless sensor network WSN is designed and developed for structural health monitoring. An accelerometer sensor node is designed, developed, and calibrated to meet the requirements for structural vibration monitoring and modal identification. The nodes have four channels of accelerometers in two directions and a microcontroller for proce...

In this paper, we demonstrate a miniature magnetic-force-based, three-axis, AC magnetic sensor with piezoelectric/vibrational energy-harvesting functions. For magnetic sensing, the sensor employs a magnetic-mechanical-piezoelectric configuration (which uses magnetic force and torque, a compact, single, mechanical mechanism, and the piezoelectric effect) to convert x-axis and y-axis in-plane and...

Abstract Ambient vibration tests and operational modal analysis are commonly adopted worldwide to identify the dynamic behaviour of structures because they offer several advantages such as use portable light equipment, possibility be performed without interruptions structure serviceability, ambient noise globally excite construction. also usually in structural health monitoring systems control ...