Research | Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics at the Gdańsk University of Technology

The Department is a well-known centre of research in the field of adaptive and predictive control and diagnostics of industrial processes. The research concentrates in particular on modelling and identification of processes (including non-stationary processes), controlling mobile robots, digital filtering and reconstruction of audio signals, estimation of dynamic objects, selected problems of optimization and diagnostics of industrial objects and building automation.

Professor Maciej Niedźwiecki is a world-renowned authority on the identification of non-stationary systems. His monograph “Identification of Time-Varying Processes” (2000) and its second edition (2001) published by Wiley remains an essential scientific publication in this field and has been cited over one hundred times. In the last five years, Professor Niedźwiecki has published seventeen articles in journals on the Philadelphia List and over thirty papers at conferences abroad.

One of the most outstanding achievements of the team directed by Professor Niedźwiecki (Krzysztof Cisowski, Ph.D., Michał Meller, Ph.D., D.Sc., Piotr Kaczmarek, Ph.D., Paweł Raczyński, Ph.D.) in recent years has been devising a novel method of active noise and vibration control. Because of the built-in self-stabilization and self-optimization mechanisms, this method is more efficient at noise and vibration control than standard methods.

New algorithms have been proposed: the SONIC (Self-Optimizing Narrowband Interference Canceller) cancels narrowband interference of constant and known frequency, and the xSONIC (Extended SONIC), an extension of the SONIC algorithm, cancels narrowband interference of unknown and varying instantaneous frequency.

The research has been conducted under a development grant awarded by the National Centre for Research and Development, and a research grant awarded by the Ministry of Science and  Higher  Education.  A  patent application:  “Hybrid  Active Canceller of  Non-Stationary Acoustic Narrowband Interference” was taken out on the research and submitted in 2011.

The Department is conducting building automation research into optimizing the use of energy in modern buildings  (Piotr  Kaczmarek,  Ph.D.,  Piotr  Fiertek,  Ph.D.).  Air-conditioning and heating systems controlled with adaptive algorithms are being investigated. The adopted approach allows to achieve the set control target which is the user’s comfort at the lowest possible cost: the developed algorithms determine the models of the controlled objects and immediately select an optimal control strategy.

Another field of study at the department is technical diagnostics focusing on pipelines and steel tanks (Paweł Raczyński, Ph.D., Associate Professor at GUT). Diagnostics of such systems is fully justified economically and ecologically. Current research concentrates on the use of intelligent inspection robots examining pipelines and tanks while they are being used. The diagnostics concern the parameters of cross-sectional geometry of the pipeline wall, evaluation of its quality with special attention to material losses, and precise spatial location of the pipeline within a GIS system. Ultrasonic testing (UT) and magnetic flux leakage (MFL) techniques are used for this purpose. Special attention is being paid to creating algorithms for fault and damage detection, as well as to estimating geometric parameters of the defects and assessing their impact on the safe operation of the pipelines.

The Department staff also carry out research into applications of technology in medicine to support the disabled. Over the last few years, Marcin Pazio, Ph.D., has been working on his doctoral thesis “Natural Image Processing for the Blind and Visually Impaired” and Szymon Ceranka, Ph.D., has completed a thesis “Satellite Navigation and Dead Reckoning Location System for the Blind”. It was rewarded with a distinction from the National Rehabilitation Fund for the Disabled in the Open Doors competition in 2008 for best doctoral thesis concerning health, professional life and social aspects of disability.

In 2011, a new research issue in the field of medicine and automatic control was taken up. It is to develop an adaptive algorithm to control a device for preventing obstructive sleep apnea episodes (Stefan Sieklicki, Ph.D., Marcin Ciołek, Ph.D.). The research has been conducted under a grant from the National Science Centre. The aforementioned problem is very important as about 25% of males and 20% of females in the age group of 40 to 60 suffer from this breathing disorder. When the episodes occur, brain, heart, liver and kidney hypoxia develops,  resulting in severe complications.  Therefore,  prompt diagnosis and classification of the episodes is extremely important as well as supporting the patients with efficient apparatus.

Over the past five years, the following projects have been carried out due to grants:

1. Research grant OPUS: "Generalized Savitzky-Golay filters for identification and smoothing of nonstationary processes", supervised by Professor Maciej Niedźwiecki D.Sc., Ph.D., carried out by Marcin Ciołek, Ph.D.
2. Research grant OPUS: "Estimation of covariance and spectral characteristics of locally stationary stochastic processes", supervised by Professor Maciej Niedźwiecki D.Sc., Ph.D.
3. University of Young Inventor Programme: "Visual monitoring of cyanobacterial bloom with a drone", supervised by Stanisław Raczyński, Ph.D.

An innovative solution: ”Hybrid Active Canceller of Non-Stationary Acoustic Narrowband Interference” has been submitted at the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland. In the last ten years, six promotions to the position of a Ph.D. in Technical Sciences have taken place at the Department. All the theses have been supervised by Professor Maciej Niedźwiecki. They are:

1. Damian Chojnacki, "Estimation of covariance and spectral characteristics of locally stationary stochastic processes".
2. Marcin Ciołek, "Elimination of impulsive disturbances from audio signals".
3. Szymon Ceranka, “Satellite Navigation and Dead Reckoning Location System for the Blind” - awarded distinctions by the Department Council and additionally rewarded by the National Rehabilitation Fund for the Disabled.
4. Piotr Kaczmarek, “Identification of Quasi-Periodically Varying Systems” - awarded distinctions by the Department Council.
5. Marcin Kuropatwiński, “Integration of Source Coding and Speech Smoothing Methods” - awarded distinctions by the Department Council.
6. Michał Meller, “Self-Optimizing Adaptive Narrowband Interference Cancelling” - awarded distinctions by the Department Council.