arXiv subjects

Peter Wilson

Publications and source records attributed to Peter Wilson.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Towards Ethical AI in Power Electronics: How Engineering Practice and Roles Must Adapt

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming power electronics, with AI-related publications in IEEE Power Electronics Society selected journals increasing more than fourfold from 2020 to 2025. However, the ethical dimensions of this transformation have received limited attention. This article underscores the urgent need for an ethical framework to guide responsible AI integration in power electronics, not only to prevent AI-related incidents but also to comply with legal and regulatory responsibilities. In this context, this article identifies four core pillars of AI ethics in power electronics: Security & Safety, Explainability & Transparency, Energy Sustainability, and Evolving Roles of Engineers. Each pillar is supported by practical and actionable insights to ensure that ethical principles are embedded in algorithm design, system deployment, and the preparation of an AI-ready engineering workforce. The authors advocate for power electronics engineers to lead the ethical discourse, given their deep technical understanding of both AI systems and power conversion technologies. The paper concludes by calling on the IEEE Power Electronics Society to spearhead the establishment of ethical standards, talent development initiatives, and best practices that ensure AI innovations are not only technically advanced but also oriented toward human and societal benefit.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Lessons from commissioning of the cryogenic system for the Short-Baseline Neutrino Detector at Fermilab

Results from commissioning and first year of operations of the cryogenic system of the Short-Baseline Neutrino Detector (SBND) and its membrane cryostat installed at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are described. The SBND detector is installed in a 200 m$^3$ membrane cryostat filled with liquid argon, which serves both as target and as active media. For the correct operation of the detector, the liquid argon must be kept in very stable thermal conditions while the contamination of electronegative impurities must be consistently kept at the level of small fractions of parts per billion. The detector is operated in Booster Neutrino Beams (BNB) at Fermilab for the search of sterile neutrinos and measurements of neutrino-argon cross sections. The cryostat and the cryogenic systems also serve as prototypes for the much larger equipment to be used for the LBNF/DUNE experiment. Since its installation in 2018-2023 and cooldown in spring of 2024, the cryostat and the cryogenic system have been commissioned to support the detector operations. The lessons learned through installation, testing, commissioning, cooldown, and initial operations are described.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2024

GloSIS: The Global Soil Information System Web Ontology

Established in 2012 by members of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) is a global network of stakeholders promoting sound land and soil management practices towards a sustainable world food system. However, soil survey largely remains a local or regional activity, bound to heterogeneous methods and conventions. Recognising the relevance of global and trans-national policies towards sustainable land management practices, the GSP elected data harmonisation and exchange as one of its key lines of action. Building upon international standards and previous work towards a global soil data ontology, an improved domain model was eventually developed within the GSP [54], the basis for a Global Soil Information System (GloSIS). This work also identified the Semantic Web as a possible avenue to operationalise the domain model. This article presents the GloSIS web ontology, an implementation of the GloSIS domain model with the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Thoroughly employing a host of Semantic Web standards (SOSA, SKOS, GeoSPARQL, QUDT), GloSIS lays out not only a soil data ontology but also an extensive set of ready-to-use code-lists for soil description and physio-chemical analysis. Various examples are provided on the provision and use of GloSIS-compliant linked data, showcasing the contribution of this ontology to the discovery, exploration, integration and access of soil data.

cs.IR↗

arXiv2022

Athletic Mobile Manipulator System for Robotic Wheelchair Tennis

Athletics are a quintessential and universal expression of humanity. From French monks who in the 12th century invented jeu de paume, the precursor to modern lawn tennis, back to the K'iche' people who played the Maya Ballgame as a form of religious expression over three thousand years ago, humans have sought to train their minds and bodies to excel in sporting contests. Advances in robotics are opening up the possibility of robots in sports. Yet, key challenges remain, as most prior works in robotics for sports are limited to pristine sensing environments, do not require significant force generation, or are on miniaturized scales unsuited for joint human-robot play. In this paper, we propose the first open-source, autonomous robot for playing regulation wheelchair tennis. We demonstrate the performance of our full-stack system in executing ground strokes and evaluate each of the system's hardware and software components. The goal of this paper is to (1) inspire more research in human-scale robot athletics and (2) establish the first baseline for a reproducible wheelchair tennis robot for regulation singles play. Our paper contributes to the science of systems design and poses a set of key challenges for the robotics community to address in striving towards robots that can match human capabilities in sports.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2021

Limits on Magnetized Quark-Nugget Dark Matter from Episodic Natural Events

A quark nugget is a hypothetical dark-matter candidate composed of approximately equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. Most models of quark nuggets do not include effects of their intrinsic magnetic field. However, Tatsumi used a mathematically tractable approximation of the Standard Model of Particle Physics and found that the cores of magnetar pulsars may be quark nuggets in a ferromagnetic liquid state with surface magnetic field Bo between $10^{ 11}$ T and $10^{ 13}$ T. We have applied that result to quark-nugget dark matter. Previous work addressed the formation and aggregation of magnetized quark nuggets (MQNs) into a broad and magnetically stabilized mass distribution before they could decay and addressed their interaction with normal matter through their magnetopause, losing translational velocity while gaining rotational velocity and radiating electromagnetic energy. The two orders of magnitude uncertainty in Tatsumi estimate for Bo precludes the practical design of systematic experiments to detect MQNs through their predicted interaction with matter. In this paper, we examine episodic events consistent with a unique signature of MQNs. If they are indeed caused by MQNs, they constrain the most likely values of Bo to $1.65 x 10^{ 12}$ T $+/-$ $21\%$ and support the design of definitive tests of the MQN dark-matter hypothesis.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2020

Results of search for magnetized quark-nugget dark matter from radial impacts on Earth

Magnetized Quark Nuggets (MQNs) are a recently proposed dark-matter candidate consistent with the Standard Model and with Tatsumi's theory of quark-nugget cores in magnetars. Previous publications have covered their formation in the early universe, aggregation into a broad mass distribution before they can decay by the weak force, interaction with normal matter through their magnetopause, and first observation consistent MQNs, i.e. a nearly tangential impact limiting their surface-magnetic-field parameter B_o from Tatsumi's values of 0.1 to 10.0 TT to new value of 1.65 TT +/- 21%. The MQN mass distribution and interaction cross section depend strongly on B_o. Their magnetopause is much larger than their geometric dimensions and can cause sufficient energy deposition to form non-meteorite craters, which are reported approximately annually. We report computer simulations of the MQN energy deposition in water-saturated peat, soft sediments, and granite and report results from excavating such a crater. Five points of agreement between observations and hydrodynamic simulations of an MQN impact support this second observation consistent with MQN dark matter and suggest a method for qualifying additional MQN events. The results also redundantly constrain B_o to greater than 0.4 TT.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2018

Agricultural Robotics: The Future of Robotic Agriculture

Agri-Food is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. It supports a food chain that generates over {\pounds}108bn p.a., with 3.9m employees in a truly international industry and exports {\pounds}20bn of UK manufactured goods. However, the global food chain is under pressure from population growth, climate change, political pressures affecting migration, population drift from rural to urban regions and the demographics of an aging global population. These challenges are recognised in the UK Industrial Strategy white paper and backed by significant investment via a Wave 2 Industrial Challenge Fund Investment ("Transforming Food Production: from Farm to Fork"). Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) and associated digital technologies are now seen as enablers of this critical food chain transformation. To meet these challenges, this white paper reviews the state of the art in the application of RAS in Agri-Food production and explores research and innovation needs to ensure these technologies reach their full potential and deliver the necessary impacts in the Agri-Food sector.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2017

Detection of magnetized quark-nuggets, a candidate for dark matter

Quark nuggets are theoretical objects composed of approximately equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks and are also called strangelets and nuclearites. They have been proposed as a candidate for dark matter, which constitutes about 85% of the universe's mass and which has been a mystery for decades. Previous efforts to detect quark nuggets assumed that the nuclear-density core interacts directly with the surrounding matter so the stopping power is minimal. Tatsumi found that quark nuggets could well exist as a ferromagnetic liquid with an approximately 10 trillion Tesla magnetic field. We find that the magnetic field produces a magnetopause with surrounding plasma, as the earth's magnetic field produces a magnetopause with the solar wind, and substantially increases their energy deposition rate in matter. We use the magnetopause model to compute the energy deposition as a function of quark-nugget mass and to analyze testing the quark-nugget hypothesis for dark matter by observations in the air, water, and land. We conclude the water option is most promising.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2015

Anisotropy, band-to-band transitions, phonon modes, and oxidation properties of cobalt-oxide core-shell slanted columnar thin films

Highly-ordered and spatially-coherent cobalt slanted columnar thin films were deposited by glancing angle deposition onto silicon substrates, and subsequently oxidized by annealing at 475 $^{\circ}$C. Scanning electron microscopy, Raman scattering, generalized ellipsometry, and density functional theory investigations reveal shape-invariant transformation of the slanted nanocolumns from metallic to transparent metal-oxide core-shell structures with properties characteristic of spinel cobalt oxide. We find passivation of Co-SCTFs yielding CoAl$_2$O$_3$ core-shell structures produced by conformal deposition of a few nanometers of alumina using atomic layer deposition fully prevents cobalt oxidation in ambient and from annealing up to 475 $^{\circ}$C.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2005

A 96-Channel FPGA-based Time-to-Digital Converter

We describe an FPGA-based, 96-channel, time-to-digital converter (TDC) intended for use with the Central Outer Tracker (COT) in the CDF Experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron. The COT system is digitized and read out by 315 TDC cards, each serving 96 wires of the chamber. The TDC is physically configured as a 9U VME card. The functionality is almost entirely programmed in firmware in two Altera Stratix FPGA's. The special capabilities of this device are the availability of 840 MHz LVDS inputs, multiple phase-locked clock modules, and abundant memory. The TDC system operates with an input resolution of 1.2 ns. Each input can accept up to 7 hits per collision. The time-to-digital conversion is done by first sampling each of the 96 inputs in 1.2-ns bins and filling a circular memory; the memory addresses of logical transitions (edges) in the input data are then translated into the time of arrival and width of the COT pulses. Memory pipelines with a depth of 5.5 $μ$s allow deadtime-less operation in the first-level trigger. The TDC VME interface allows a 64-bit Chain Block Transfer of multiple boards in a crate with transfer-rates up to 47 Mbytes/sec. The TDC also contains a separately-programmed data path that produces prompt trigger data every Tevatron crossing. The full TDC design and multi-card test results are described. The physical simplicity ensures low-maintenance; the functionality being in firmware allows reprogramming for other applications.

physics.ins-det↗