ABSTRACT
This article emanates from the pilot phase of a qualitative study of the impact on academic fatigue and retention for The Determined Ones (TDO) students, studying at the Higher Colleges of Technology Campuses, UAE. The purpose of the study was to identify effective strategies for online learning that will be enhanced for the TDO students, thereby reduce academic fatigue and increase retention. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a remarkable influence on approaches to the day to day activities around the world, an influence which had led to a 'new normal'. In the spring of 2020, with the abrupt and essential transition from on-campus learning to distance learning, students and educators had limited time to prepare for such a massive shift in teaching and learning. Not many could have been prepared for such a shift, and new approach in teaching and learning. The impact has been felt more by students with disabilities, because their normal routines have been abandoned, leading to anxiety and stress resulting from the unknown. The move to online learning was a reactive than a proactive approach because no one apparently saw the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent impact on lifestyles coming. By summer 2020, as a result of online learning, key issues relating to academic fatigue and retention in students were widely identified through surveys and other data. This study emanated from these concerns to provide the opportunity to address the issues from a reactive approach into a proactive one, including the use of methods that will enhance student retention. Although digital technologies are a regular part of learning in the 21st Century, it cannot be denied that the sudden change to online learning platforms has affected both students and educators. Institutions went digital, relying on video conferencing programs like Zoom and Microsoft Teams for individuals to carry on working in isolation from their homes. Therefore, as the majority of interactions moved to this virtual realm, with the most widely used software being Zoom, it has come to be commonly referred to as 'zoom academic fatigue' as stated by [1]. Consequently, combating this new form of exhaustion has directly impacted on students' learning, especially for students with disabilities in higher education institutions. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), The Determined Ones (TDOs) is the official appellation given to people with disabilities. This study will therefore be referring to students with disabilities at The Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), in Abu Dhabi, the higher education institution where this study is taking place. Reports from surveys conducted at HCT in the summer of 2020 when the Covid 19 pandemic was raging revealed that the transition to an online learning platform left students feeling tired, anxious and stressed out as they waited for the next video call lesson. Their normal routines no longer applied. The effects of this academic fatigue within online classrooms requires attention and solutions to combat it. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Currently, the quadcopter Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are playing a significant role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, which induced the researchers to design robust control techniques. In this paper, a fuzzy PID controller is designed to stabilize and/or track the desired trajectory of the quadcopter UAV. The mathematical model of the quadcopter UAV has been briefly presented, where it has been divided into two portions, the position dynamic and the attitude dynamic subsystems. Subsequently, a robust fuzzy PID controller has been designed for both the inner loop and outer loop to control and stabilize the position and the attitude of the quadcopter, which adaptively manipulate the system's input based on the tracking error. The proposed controller is benchmarked with the conventional PID controller to show the robustness of the fuzzy PID controller. Fuzzy PID controller has been verified through simulation work utilizing Matlab/Simulink, where better performance is achieved compared with the conventional PID controller. It is found that the errors in the quadcopter's attitude and position have been significantly reduced through using fuzzy PID controller by 70% and 87%, respectively. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Quadcopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) systems are receiving remarkable attention from researchers due to their daily use in numerous applications, particularly at the current time where UAVs are playing a significant role in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper is concerned with the problem of UAV navigation and control in the presence of uncertainty and external disturbances. It addresses this issue by proposing an improved adaptive sliding mode control (IASMC). Improved control law generates an adaptive switching gain achieving fast adaptation and robustness against both parameter uncertainties and external disturbances. Simultaneously, the control law allows for maintaining robust trajectory tracking with chattering attenuation. The performance of the proposed IASMC controller has been evaluated using a Matlab/Simulink platform. The obtained simulation results showed that the proposed IASMC control scheme as an inner loop controller is robust when dealing with uncertainties and can effectively track the desired trajectories while significantly attenuating the well-known chattering introduced by the SMC controller. © 2013 IEEE.