4 research outputs found
AdaHeat: A general adaptive intelligent agent for domestic heating control
No full textCopyright © 2015, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (www.ifaamas.org). All rights reserved.Improving the energy efficiency of domestic heating systems can lead to a major reduction in energy consumption and the corresponding CO2 emissions. To this end, intelligent domestic heating agents (IDHAs) aim to operate domestic heating systems more efficiently with minimum user input. In this work, we propose a new general IDHA that balances heating cost and thermal discomfort in an infinite horizon optimization manner, learns an adaptive thermal model of the system under control on-line and plans a heating schedule that fully exploits the probabilistic occupancy estimates. Importantly, our agent adapts to the user preferences in balancing heating cost and thermal discomfort, as it relies on a single parametrization variable that is learned on-line, and is able to consider a wide range of heating systems typically employed in domestic settings. The backbone of our IDHA is an adaptive model predictive control approach along with a new general planning algorithm that utilizes dynamic programming. We present a thorough evaluation of our approach, and show its effectiveness in terms of Pareto efficiency and usability criteria against state-of-the-art IDHAs. By so doing, we also conduct a comprehensive characterization of existing IDHAs to provide significant insights about their performance in different operational settings
A study of the ring opening metathesis polymerization of polycyclic aromatic monomers and cyclopentenes with well defined initiators
No full textThis thesis describes studies into the ring opening metathesis polymerisation (ROMP) of polycyclic aromatic monomers and cyclopentenes. Chapter 1 reviews general aspects of ring opening metathesis polymerisation of relevance to the themes of this thesis. Chapter 2 describes the synthesis of polycyclic aromatic monomers, the endo and the exo Diels-Alder adducts of acenaphthylene and cyclopentadiene. Chapter 3 reports a study on the polymerisation of these monomers using well defined initiators and classical catalyst systems. Chapter 4 describes the synthesis of a substituted cyclopentene. Chapter 5 reports an investigation of polymerisation of cyclopentene using a variety of well defined initiators of general formula M(=NAr)(- OR)(_2)(=CHR) where M=Mo or W. Chapter 6 presents a study on the polymerisation of a substituted cyclopentene, 4-methylcyclopentene, using a series of well defined initiators, and the characterisations of the polymers obtained using infrared, (^1)H, and (^13)C n.m.r. spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and gel permeation chromatography and an analysis of detailed microstructure with respect to meso/racemic configurations in the polymer chain. Finally, Chapter 7 summarises the conclusions and makes some suggestions for future work
