Induction-heated cooking appliance using new quasi-resonant ZVS-PWMinverter with power factor correction

This paper presents a new prototype of a voltage-fed quasi-load resonant inverter with a constant-frequency variable-power (CFVP) regulation scheme, which is developed for the next-generation high-frequency high-power induction-heated (IH) cooking appliances in household applications. This application-specific high-frequency single-ended push-pull inverter using new-generation specially designed insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) can efficiently operate under a principle of zero-voltage switching pulsewidth modulation (ZVS-PWM) strategy. This low-cost soft-switching inverter using reverse-conducting and reverse-blocking IGBTs is more suitable for multiple-burner-type induction-heating cooking appliances. The operating principle and unique features of a new resonant ZVS-PWM inverter circuit topology is originally described, together with its steady-state power regulation characteristics, which are illustrated on the basis of its computer-aided simulation and experimental results. The ZVS operation condition on power regulation, loss analysis of new IGBTs incorporated into this inverter, and its active filtering performance are discussed for IH cooking appliances     

Development of thin film based flexible current clamp sensor using screen-printed coil

This paper reports a novel flexible current clamp sensor with 480 turns silver paste coil (line/space = 50/50 μm) formed by through-holes and screen-printing technologies. Using screen-printing techniques, fine stripe patterns could be formed on a 50-mm-long and 10-mm-wide polyimide film in few seconds. Coil resistance between their contact pads is about 2.3 kΩ. When the value of a primary current was 20 A, the output voltage was 22.6 mV. Furthermore, the output voltage changed linearly with the changing of the primary current in the 0–20 A range. The sensor is developed using only coating, through-holes laser drilling, and screen-printing technologies. Therefore it can be fabricated by a reel-to-reel continuous film processing system.     

Man-machine interface for modular robot systems

A modular robot is composed of multiple modules, each comprising a sensor, an actuator, and a control system. Each module accumulates information about its own sensor, actuator, and connections to other modules, as well as communication information between adjoining modules. The user obtains this information via an interface, and can thus recognize the state of the robot and issue commands. However, when the number of modules becomes large, the amount of information sent from the modules becomes too much for the user to deal with effectively. Naturally, it also becomes more difficult for the user to issue commands to the modular robot as the number of modules increases. In this study, we developed an interface to present, in a simple manner, information aggregated in a certain module from other modules, and we examined its effectiveness in a modular robot composed of these modules.     

Autonomous reconfiguration of robot shape by using Q-learning

A modular robot can be built with a shape and function that matches the working environment. We developed a four-arm modular robot system which can be configured in a planar structure. A learning mechanism is incorporated in each module constituting the robot. We aim to control the overall shape of the robot by an accumulation of the autonomous actions resulting from the individual learning functions. Considering that the overall shape of a modular robot depends on the learning conditions in each module, this control method can be treated as a dispersion control learning method. The learning object is cooperative motion between adjacent modules. The learning process proceeds based on Q-learning by trial and error. We confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed technique by computer simulation.     

Distributed View Divergence Control of Data Freshness in Replicated Database Systems

In this paper, we propose a distributed method to control the view divergence of data freshness for clients in replicated database systems whose facilitating or administrative roles are equal. Our method provides data with statistically defined freshness to clients when updates are initially accepted by any of the replicas, and then, asynchronously propagated among the replicas that are connected in a tree structure. To provide data with freshness specified by clients, our method selects multiple replicas using a distributed algorithm so that they statistically receive all updates issued up to a specified time before the present time. We evaluated by simulation the distributed algorithm to select replicas for the view divergence control in terms of controlled data freshness, time, message, and computation complexity. The simulation showed that our method achieves more than 36.9 percent improvement in data freshness compared with epidemic-style update propagation.     

Tracking in low frame rate video: a cascade particle filter with discriminative observers of different life spans

Tracking object in low frame rate video or with abrupt motion poses two main difficulties which most conventional tracking methods can hardly handle: 1) poor motion continuity and increased search space; 2) fast appearance variation of target and more background clutter due to increased search space. In this paper, we address the problem from a view which integrates conventional tracking and detection, and present a temporal probabilistic combination of discriminative observers of different lifespans. Each observer is learned from different ranges of samples, with different subsets of features, to achieve varying level of discriminative power at varying cost. An efficient fusion and temporal inference is then done by a cascade particle filter which consists of multiple stages of importance sampling. Experiments show significantly improved accuracy of the proposed approach in comparison with existing tracking methods, under the condition of low frame rate data and abrupt motion of both target and camera.     

FFS‐mode OS‐LCD for reducing eye strain

In order to reduce eye strain, a driving method for reducing flickers of liquid crystal display (LCD) is devised. For this driving, an oxide semiconductor (OS) is used in a backplane, liquid crystal and alignment layer materials are optimized, and a fringe field switching (FFS) mode with a structurally formed storage capacitor is used. This work reveals that suitable usages of positive and negative liquid crystals differ from each other according to their characteristics. This work also describes an OS‐LCD with a touch sensor we fabricated for mobile devices, which proves the possibility of reducing‐eye‐strain technology (REST) with reduced flickers.     

Tip-sample distance control using photothermal actuation of a small cantilever for high-speed atomic force microscopy

We have applied photothermal bending of a cantilever induced by an intensity-modulated infrared laser to control the tip-surface distance in atomic force microscopy. The slow response of the photothermal expansion effect is eliminated by inverse transfer function compensation. By regulating the laser power and regulating the cantilever deflection, the tip-sample distance is controlled; this enables much faster imaging than that in the conventional piezoactuator-based z scanners because of the considerably higher resonant frequency of small cantilevers. Using this control together with other devices optimized for high-speed scanning, video-rate imaging of protein molecules in liquids is achieved.     

Synthesis of a new molecular sieve using DABCO-based structure-directing agent

A new 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane (DABCO)-based quaternary ammonium compound is designed, synthesized, and used as structure-directing agent (SDA) for molecular sieve synthesis. Several 1,1′-alkylenedi(4-aza-1-azonia-2,5-dimethylbicyclo[2.2.2]octane) type SDAs are used in all-silica synthesis mixtures. Among the SDAs tested, the use of 1,1′-butylenedi(4-aza-1-azonia-2,5-dimethylbicyclo[2.2.2]octane) gives a new phase (GUS-1), whereas the use of other SDAs gives zeolite beta (^*BEA), ZSM-12 (MTW), and ZSM-5 (MFI). The GUS-1 is indexed in the orthorhombic crystal class with refined lattice constants a=16.4206(4) Å, b=20.0540(4) Å and c=5.0464(1) Å. The crystalline architecture of GUS-1 shows the same [0 0 1] projection of the framework as that of mordenite (MOR), and is characterized by a one-dimensional 12-membered ring channel system that is closely related to the channels of ZSM-12. The GUS-1 is stable to heat upon calcination at 700 °C in air. The calcined material exhibits adsorption capacity that is comparable to typical large-pore one-dimensional microporous silicates. The behavior of the SDA during synthesis is also discussed.