Fabrication of X-rays mask with carbon membrane for diffraction gratings

We have produced diffraction gratings for obtaining high resolution X-ray phase imaging, such as X-ray Talbot interferometer. These diffraction gratings were required to have a fine, high accuracy, high aspect ratio structure. Therefore, we decided to use the X-rays lithography technique that used synchrotron radiation of the directivity for a manufacture process. The accuracy of the completed structure depends largely on the accuracy of the X-ray mask. In our group, a resin material is conventionally used for the membrane of large X-ray masks. However, X-ray masks comprising a resin membrane have the disadvantage that, after several cycles of X-ray exposure, they crease and sag due to X-ray-derived heat. As a substitute for the conventional resin membrane, we experimentally fabricated a new X-ray mask using a carbon wafer membrane. The newly fabricated X-ray mask was subjected to X-ray exposure experiment. We succeeded in making the structure body which was almost shape. And the experimental results verified that the new mask did not deteriorate even when used repeatedly, demonstrating that it was highly durable.     

Fabrication of high hardness Ni mold with electroless nickel–boron thin layer

The nickel electroforming method using a high-concentration nickel sulfamate bath is commonly used to fabricate micro metal molds in the LIGA process; however, this method does not produce micro metal molds of sufficient hardness. One means of improving the hardness of micro metal molds made using the nickel electroforming method is to include additives in the nickel plating solution. Another method is nickel alloy plating or a similar technique. In this research, we used a nickel–boron (Ni–B) electroless alloy plating method to obtain a hard nickel plated film having hardness of 832 Hv. It was also ascertained that Ni–B electroless alloy plated film retains its high hardness even during heat treatment in conditions of 250°C for 1 h. To deal with the high stresses developed in high-hardness plated films, we proposed double-layer nickel electroforming. This method is covered and used on conventional nickel electroforming layer by high hardness micro mold. High hardness micro metal mold using double-layer was fabricated by nickel electroforming and Ni–B electroless alloy plating method.     

Trends in highly scalable crossbar-based packet switch architecture

A combined input and crosspoint queued (CICQ) switch is receiving significant attention to be the next generation high speed packet switch for its scalability; however, a multi-cabinet implementation of a combined input and crosspoint queued (CICQ) switch unavoidably introduces a large round-trip time (RTT) latency between the line cards and switch fabric, resulting a large crosspoint (CP) buffer requirement. In this paper, virtual crosspoint queues (VCQs) that significantly reduces the CP buffer requirement of the CICQ switch is investigated. The VCQs unit resides inside the switch fabric, is dynamically shared among virtual output queues (VOQ) from the same source port, and is operated at the line rate, making the implementation practical. A threshold-based exhaustive round-robin (T-ERR) arbitration is employed to reduce buffer hogging at VCQ. The T-ERR at VCQ and CP arbiters serves packets residing in a longer queue more frequently than packet residing in a shorter queue. Consequently, the T-ERR, drastically increases the throughput of the CICQ switch with small CP buffers. A multi-cabinet implementation of CICQ switch do not support multicasting traffic well since a combination of small CP buffer in the switch fabric and a large RTT latency between the line cards and switch fabric results in non-work conservation of the intra-switch link. Deployment of multicast FIFO buffer between the input buffer and CP buffer shows a promise. With its ability to achieve high throughput independent of RTT and switch port size, the integration of the VCQ architecture and T-ERR scheduler to the CICQ switch is ideal for supporting ever-increasing Internet traffic that requires higher data rate, larger switch size, and efficient multicasting.     

Multi-contact vertical ladder climbing with an HRP-2 humanoid

We describe the research and the integration methods we developed to make the HRP-2 humanoid robot climb vertical industrial-norm ladders. We use our multi-contact planner and multi-objective closed-loop control formulated as a QP (quadratic program). First, a set of contacts to climb the ladder is planned off-line (automatically or by the user). These contacts are provided as an input for a finite state machine. The latter builds supplementary tasks that account for geometric uncertainties and specific grasps procedures to be added to the QP controller. The latter provides instant desired states in terms of joint accelerations and contact forces to be tracked by the embedded low-level motor controllers. Our trials revealed that hardware changes are necessary, and parts of software must be made more robust. Yet, we confirmed that HRP-2 has the kinematic and power capabilities to climb real industrial ladders, such as those found in nuclear power plants and large scale manufacturing factories (e.g. aircraft, shipyard) and construction sites.     

Molecular dynamics simulations of diffusion of submonolayer polar liquid lubricant films on solid surfaces

A fundamental understanding of the diffusion phenomena of submonolayer polar liquid films is important for achieving reliable lubrication between moving mechanical parts separated by a nanometer-sized gap. To acquire this understanding, we conducted molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of diffusion phenomena of submonolayer polar perfluoropolyether (PFPE) Zdol films on solid surfaces. To improve the accuracy of these simulations, we developed an all-atom model that includes hydrogen-bond potential and refined atomic charges for Zdol molecules and tested it through MD simulations of spreading of step-shaped submonolayer PFPE films. Our MD simulations reproduced the experimentally observed effects of polar end groups on the diffusion speed and molecular conformation of Zdol. We then conducted MD simulations of self-diffusion of submonolayer Zdol films; these simulations demonstrated that as the thickness of the submonolayer Zdol films decreases, molecular conformation becomes flatter and the self-diffusion coefficient decreases. These changes in molecular conformation partially explain our experimental finding that the spreading of step-shaped submonolayer polar PFPE films slows down with decreasing initial thickness.     

A design of high optical efficiency wedge type light guide plate adopting twin inclined cylindrical surface

We propose wedge type light guide plate (LGP) adopting twin inclined cylindrical surfaces (TICS) at the incident part of a LGP. It has higher optical efficiency than conventional wedge type LGP. In dimension of LGP which the thickness of incident part is 1.5 mm and that of luminance part is 0.7 mm, the optical efficiency of wedge type LGP adopting TICS is expected to be 96% in comparison with a normal flat LGP. In addition, there is an advantage to reduce the non‐uniformity of vicinity of light emitted diodes (LEDs) by TICS reflecting light laterally. However, it is necessary that the LED centers are aligned with the intersections of TICS. The misalignment of LED causes non‐uniformity of optical profile that is slightly larger than a normal LGP.     

Iterative Path Integral Approach to Nonlinear Stochastic Optimal Control Under Compound Poisson Noise

Nonlinear stochastic optimal control theory has played an important role in many fields. In this theory, uncertainties of dynamics have usually been represented by Brownian motion, which is Gaussian white noise. However, there are many stochastic phenomena whose probability density has a long tail, which suggests the necessity to study the effect of non‐Gaussianity. This paper employs Lévy processes, which cause outliers with a significantly higher probability than Brownian motion, to describe such uncertainties. In general, the optimal control law is obtained by solving the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation. This paper shows that the path‐integral approach combined with the policy iteration method is efficiently applicable to solve the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman equation in the Lévy problem setting. Finally, numerical simulations illustrate the usefulness of this method.     

Design of a memory‐based prefilter supplementing a robust PID control system

For systems with uncertainties, lots of PID parameter tuning methods have been proposed from the view point of the robust stability theory. However, the control performance becomes conservative using robust PID controllers. In this paper, a new two‐degree‐of‐freedom (2DOF) controller, which can improve the tracking properties, is proposed for nonlinear systems. According to the proposed method, the prefilter is designed as the PD compensator whose control parameters are tuned by the idea of a memory‐based modeling (MBM) method. Since the MBM method is a type of local modeling methods for nonlinear systems, PD parameters can be tuned adequately in an online manner corresponding to nonlinear properties. Finally, the effectiveness of the newly proposed control scheme is numerically evaluated on a simulation example. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

Achieving evenhandedness in certified email system for contract signing

Certified email is a system which enables a sender to prove a receiver’s receipt of email. Such a system can be used for applications related to electronic commerce on the Internet. This paper considers a situation where a sender or a receiver wants to change his/her mind due to the change of mail content value (e.g., stock, auction, gambling) during the transaction. We point out that no traditional certified email systems have been designed for such a case, thus one of the participants can be at a disadvantage. To avoid this problem, we propose an evenhanded certified email system in which each participant can change his/her choice, either cancel or finish the transaction, at any time during the transaction.