Now showing 1 - 10 of 27
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Development of multichannel artificial lipid-polymer membrane sensor for phytomedicine application

2006 , Mohd Noor Ahmad , Zhari Ismail , Oon–Sim Chew , AKM Islam , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff

Quality control of herbal medicines remain a challenging issue towards integrating phytomedicine into the primary health care system. As medicinal plants is a complicated system of mixtures, a rapid and cost-effective evaluation method to characterize the chemical fingerprint of the plant without performing laborious sample preparation procedure is reported. A novel research methodology based on an in-house fabricated multichannel sensor incorporating an array of artificial lipid-polymer membrane as a fingerprinting device for quality evaluation of a highly sought after herbal medicine in the Asean Region namely Eurycoma longifolia (Tongkat Ali). The sensor array is based on the principle of the bioelectronic tongue that mimics the human gustatory system through the incorporation of artificial lipid material as sensing element. The eight non-specific sensors have partially overlapping selectivity and cross-sensitivity towards the targeted analyte. Hence, electrical potential response represented by radar plot is used to characterize extracts from different parts of plant, age, batch-to-batch variation and mode of extraction of E. longifolia through the obtained potentiometric fingerprint profile. Classification model was also developed classifying various E. longifolia extracts with the aid of chemometric pattern recognition tools namely hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA). The sensor seems to be a promising analytical device for quality control based on potentiometric fingerprint analysis of phytomedicine.

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A Bio-Inspired herbal tea flavour assessment technique

2014 , Nur Zatul 'Iffah Zakaria , Masnan, Maz Jamilah , Ammar Zakaria , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff

Herbal-based products are becoming a widespread production trend among manufacturers for the domestic and international markets. As the production increases to meet the market demand, it is very crucial for the manufacturer to ensure that their products have met specific criteria and fulfil the intended quality determined by the quality controller. One famous herbal-based product is herbal tea. This paper investigates bio-inspired flavour assessments in a data fusion framework involving an e-nose and e-tongue. The objectives are to attain good classification of different types and brands of herbal tea, classification of different flavour masking effects and finally classification of different concentrations of herbal tea. Two data fusion levels were employed in this research, low level data fusion and intermediate level data fusion. Four classification approaches; LDA, SVM, KNN and PNN were examined in search of the best classifier to achieve the research objectives. In order to evaluate the classifiers' performance, an error estimator based on k-fold cross validation and leave-one-out were applied. Classification based on GC-MS TIC data was also included as a comparison to the classification performance using fusion approaches. Generally, KNN outperformed the other classification techniques for the three flavour assessments in the low level data fusion and intermediate level data fusion. However, the classification results based on GC-MS TIC data are varied.

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Signal propagation analysis for low data rate wireless sensor network applications in sport grounds and on roads

2012 , David L. Ndzi , M. A. Mohd Arif , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Mohd Noor Ahmad , Azizi Harun , Latifah Munirah Kamarudin , Ammar Zakaria , Mohd F. Ramli , Mohammad Shahrazel Razalli

This paper presents results of a study to characterise wire- less point-to-point channel for wireless sensor networks applications in sport hard court arenas, grass fields and on roads. Antenna height and orientation effects on coverage are also studied and results show that for omni-directional patch antenna, node range is reduced by a factor of 2 when the antenna orientation is changed from vertical to horizontal. The maximum range for a wireless node on a hard court sport arena has been determined to be 70m for 0dBm transmission but this reduces to 60m on a road surface and to 50m on a grass field. For horizontal antenna orientation the range on the road is longer than on the sport court which shows that scattered signal components from the rougher road surface combine to extend the communication range. The channels investigated showed that packet error ratio (PER) is dominated by large-scale, rather than small-scale, channel fading with an abrupt transition from low PER to 100% PER. Results also show that large-scale received signal power can be modeled with a 2nd or der log-distance polynomial equation on the sport court and road, but a 1st order model is sufficient for the grassfield. Small-scale signal variations have been found to have a Rice distribution for signal to noise ratio levels greater than 10 dB but the Rice K-factor exhibits significant variations at short distances which can be attributed to the influence of strong ground reflections.

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Improved maturity and ripeness classifications of magnifera indica cv. Harumanis mangoes through sensor fusion of an electronic nose and acoustic sensor

2012 , Ammar Zakaria , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Masnan, Maz Jamilah , Fathinul Syahir Ahmad Sa'ad , Abdul Hamid Adom , Mohd Noor Ahmad , Mahmad Nor Jaafar , Abu Hassan Abdullah , Latifah Munirah Kamarudin

In recent years, there have been a number of reported studies on the use of non-destructive techniques to evaluate and determine mango maturity and ripeness levels. However, most of these reported works were conducted using single-modality sensing systems, either using an electronic nose, acoustics or other non-destructive measurements. This paper presents the work on the classification of mangoes (Magnifera Indica cv. Harumanis) maturity and ripeness levels using fusion of the data of an electronic nose and an acoustic sensor. Three groups of samples each from two different harvesting times (week 7 and week 8) were evaluated by the e-nose and then followed by the acoustic sensor. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) were able to discriminate the mango harvested at week 7 and week 8 based solely on the aroma and volatile gases released from the mangoes. However, when six different groups of different maturity and ripeness levels were combined in one classification analysis, both PCA and LDA were unable to discriminate the age difference of the Harumanis mangoes. Instead of six different groups, only four were observed using the LDA, while PCA showed only two distinct groups. By applying a low level data fusion technique on the e-nose and acoustic data, the classification for maturity and ripeness levels using LDA was improved. However, no significant improvement was observed using PCA with data fusion technique. Further work using a hybrid LDA-Competitive Learning Neural Network was performed to validate the fusion technique and classify the samples. It was found that the LDA-CLNN was also improved significantly when data fusion was applied.

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Pollutant recognition based on supervised machine learning for Indoor air quality monitoring systems

2017 , Shaharil Mad Saad , Allan Melvin Andrew , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Mohd Mat Dzahir , Mohamed Hussein , Maziah Mohamad , Zair Ahmad

Indoor air may be polluted by various types of pollutants which may come from cleaning products, construction activities, perfumes, cigarette smoke, water-damaged building materials and outdoor pollutants. Although these gases are usually safe for humans, they could be hazardous if their amount exceeded certain limits of exposure for human health. A sophisticated indoor air quality (IAQ) monitoring system which could classify the specific type of pollutants is very helpful. This study proposes an enhanced indoor air quality monitoring system (IAQMS) which could recognize the pollutants by utilizing supervised machine learning algorithms: multilayer perceptron (MLP), K-nearest neighbour (KNN) and linear discrimination analysis (LDA). Five sources of indoor air pollutants have been tested: ambient air, combustion activity, presence of chemicals, presence of fragrances and presence of food and beverages. The results showed that the three algorithms successfully classify the five sources of indoor air pollution (IAP) with a classification rate of up to 100 percent. An MLP classifier with a model structure of 9-3-5 has been chosen to be embedded into the IAQMS. The system has also been tested with all sources of IAP presented together. The result shows that the system is able to classify when single and two mixed sources are presented together. However, when more than two sources of IAP are presented at the same period, the system will classify the sources as ‘unknown’, because the system cannot recognize the input of the new pattern.

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Improved classification of orthosiphon stamineus by data fusion of electronic nose and tongue sensors

2010 , Ammar Zakaria , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Abdul Hamid Adom , Mohd Noor Ahmad , Masnan, Maz Jamilah , Abdul Hallis Abdul Aziz , Nazifah Ahmad Fikri , Abu Hassan Abdullah , Latifah Munirah Kamarudin

An improved classification of Orthosiphon stamineus using a data fusion technique is presented. Five different commercial sources along with freshly prepared samples were discriminated using an electronic nose (e-nose) and an electronic tongue (e-tongue). Samples from the different commercial brands were evaluated by the e-tongue and then followed by the e-nose. Applying Principal Component Analysis (PCA) separately on the respective e-tongue and e-nose data, only five distinct groups were projected. However, by employing a low level data fusion technique, six distinct groupings were achieved. Hence, this technique can enhance the ability of PCA to analyze the complex samples of Orthosiphon stamineus. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) was then used to further validate and classify the samples. It was found that the LDA performance was also improved when the responses from the e-nose and e-tongue were fused together.

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Wireless sensor network coverage measurement and planning in mixed crop farming

2014-04-17 , David L. Ndzi , Azizi Harun , Fitri M. Ramli , Latifah Munirah Kamarudin , Ammar Zakaria , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Mahmad N. Jaafar , Shikun Zhou , Rohani S Mohamed Farook

Wireless sensor network technology holds great promise for application in a wide range of areas, both to monitor and control a variety of systems. Whilst the use of sensors has found natural applications within the manufacturing sector, application in agriculture is still in its infancy and has been used largely to only monitor the environment. The use of technology in the agricultural sector to improve crop yield, quality and to foster sustainable agriculture can be regarded as one of the areas that will provide food security to the expanding global population and to mitigate food shortage precipitated by unpredictable weather patterns. This paper presents a Wireless Sensor Network coverage measurements in a mixed crop farming, modeling and deployment architecture taking into account the different signal propagation scenarios and attenuation factor of different crops. Most importantly, the paper presents wireless sensor network deployment architecture for a mixed crop trial field over an area of 54,432m2 , which is 4% of the total area to be covered by the final network.

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Performance analysis of the microsoft kinect sensor for 2D Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) techniques

2014 , Kamarulzaman Kamarudin , Syed Muhammad Mamduh Syed Zakaria , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Ammar Zakaria

This paper presents a performance analysis of two open-source, laser scanner-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) techniques (i.e., Gmapping and Hector SLAM) using a Microsoft Kinect to replace the laser sensor. Furthermore, the paper proposes a new system integration approach whereby a Linux virtual machine is used to run the open source SLAM algorithms. The experiments were conducted in two different environments; a small room with no features and a typical office corridor with desks and chairs. Using the data logged from real-time experiments, each SLAM technique was simulated and tested with different parameter settings. The results show that the system is able to achieve real time SLAM operation. The system implementation offers a simple and reliable way to compare the performance of Windows-based SLAM algorithm with the algorithms typically implemented in a Robot Operating System (ROS). The results also indicate that certain modifications to the default laser scanner-based parameters are able to improve the map accuracy. However, the limited field of view and range of Kinect's depth sensor often causes the map to be inaccurate, especially in featureless areas, therefore the Kinect sensor is not a direct replacement for a laser scanner, but rather offers a feasible alternative for 2D SLAM tasks.

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Classification of agarwood oil using an electronic nose

2010 , Wahyu Hidayat , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Mohd Noor Ahmad , Abdul Hamid Adom

Presently, the quality assurance of agarwood oil is performed by sensory panels which has significant drawbacks in terms of objectivity and repeatability. In this paper, it is shown how an electronic nose (e-nose) may be successfully utilised for the classification of agarwood oil. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA), were used to classify different types of oil. The HCA produced a dendrogram showing the separation of e-nose data into three different groups of oils. The PCA scatter plot revealed a distinct separation between the three groups. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used for a better prediction of unknown samples.

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Labviewâ„¢ for Nutra-Biostrip in Herbal Quality Assessment

2004 , Mohd Noor Ahmad , Maxsim Yap Mee Sim , Mohd Kamal Mohamed Ramly Nil , Ali Yeon Md Shakaff , Chang Chew Cheen

In this work, we introduce the approach on the development of a stand-alone laptop based data acquisition of an array sensor system, namely Nutra-BioStrip coupled with pattern recognition algorithm for herbal quality assessment. The array sensor system control program, developed in Lab View 6. 1 programming languages allow data acquired from the array sensor to be analyzed by means of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and displayed in the form of an interactive twodimensional cluster mapping with detail statistical analysis results for rapid and real-time herbal quality assessment.