Development of a muscle suit for the upper body—realization of abduction motion

A 'muscle suit' that will provide muscular support for the paralyzed or those otherwise unable to move unaided is being developed. The muscle suit is a garment without a metal frame that uses McKibben actuators driven by compressed air to produce motion. Because the actuators are sewn into the garment, no metal frame is needed, making the muscle suit very light and cheap. These features are completely different from conventional methods for supporting humans. In this paper, the basic concept and advantages of the muscle suit are first described. In order to verify the feasibility of the basic concept, a prototype system is mounted on a life-size doll. This allows for the limitations of the original design to be identified. Next, an armor-type muscle suit is proposed in order to overcome some of the prototype's limitations. A full-range abduction motion, which is determined to be the most difficult upper body motion, is realized through geometric analysis and experimentation. In the future, the remaining arm motions will be investigated and implemented.     

Band formulas for calculating the numerator’s coefficients of the transfer function of a single-input system

Based on band matrices, a new formula for finding polynomial coefficients of the numerator of the transfer function for a linear single-input single-output system is derived. Its properties are studied for analyzing and synthesizing linear systems with many outputs, as a result of which a method is developed for the synthesis of the specified polynomial of zero dynamics (specified output) for a linear system with many outputs.     

Design of a hardware preprocessor for the ‘DIAS’ multilevel picture information system

DIAS is a multilevel-multiprocessor picture information system architecture. It receives many pictures simultaneously from its environment and ‘decides’ how to process them according to its built up experience.This paper deals with the hardware design of the image preprocessor for the DIAS system. Several details concerning the image acquisition are discussed, including a unique photoarray camera and a hardware preprocessor which act to acquire and reduce the amount of data provided to the Master-Planner processor of the DIAS structure. In particular, the image preprocessor receives the image data in parallel and generates a number of critical image parameters, such as average intensities of various picture regions, geographic locations of the informative picture regions, number of pixels, etc., appropriate for fast decision making by the Master-Planner processor. The internal circuitry and functions of the image preprocessor are presented as well as a simple VLSI realization.     

Comments on ‘ Properties of the system matrix of a generalized state-space system’†

The purpose of this correspondence is to draw attention to significant extensions of the results presented by Verghese, et al. (1979). These extensions were obtained after the above paper was written, and are described in more detail in Verghese (1978) and Verghese and Kailath (1979).     

Design of 22-DOF pneumatically actuated upper body for child android ‘Affetto’

Child robots have been used in a lot of studies on human–robot social/physical interaction because they are suitable for safe and casual experiments. However, providing many compliant joints and lifelike exteriors to enhance their interaction potential is difficult because of the limited space available inside their bodies. In this paper, we propose an upper body structure that consists of slider crank and parallel mechanisms for linear actuators and serial mechanisms for rotary actuators. Such combinations of several joint mechanisms efficiently utilize the body space; in total, 22 degrees of freedoms were realized in an upper body space equivalent to that of an 80cm tall child. A pneumatic drive system was adopted in order to fully verify the behavioral performance of the body mechanism. The proposed redundant and compact upper body mechanism can be a platform for testing the effectiveness of future exteriors for the little child android ‘Affetto’, which was developed in order to integrate several key characteristics for achieving advanced human–robot interaction.     

Development and application of a model for analysis and design phases of Web-based system development

The major characteristics of Web systems that shall be taken into account can be summarized as follows: First, the implementation of Web systems shall have a beneficial effect. To meet the requirements of Internet business system, the Web systems shall enable businesses to provide customers with something valuable through the Internet and profit from this process in return[1]. Second, the way to express the contents on the Web matters. To express the contents, Web systems shall introduce mu…     

Effects of a computer-based process planning system on an ‘intercompany transport’ work system

Abstract

A computer based disposition system for the organisation of interfactory transport is presented. Based on a travelling salesman algorithm and further modules, it reduces the distances between following transport orders significantly. The effects on the work and in particular on stress and strain of the employees in this system are compared with other results in the literature and field studies by work analysis and their clusters. The manual transshipment (better stowing) of cargo is identified as critical in the sense of a possible violation of tolerable boundaries. Using an approach for the determination of marginal values, first it is shown, that the increase of heart rate during work depends on the mass of transshipped cargo as well as on the handling rate and can be predicted according to these stressors. Possibilities for the determination of required relaxation allowances are shown. On the basis of the results of these studies an ergonomic work area is defined, in which the demand for maximum performance and recognition of steady state are fulfilled. The planning parameters for handling of cargo of a chemical factory are determined as standard times, regarding the overlapping of static and dynamic muscular work, which is often found in the reported manual operations.     

Derivation of a ‘designer's guide’ for interactive ‘grey-box’ identification of nonlinear stochastic objects

The problem of using an ‘identification tool box’ for the design of ‘grey-box’ models for nonlinear dynamic objects is non-trivial. The design is an interactive process, and it is not given a priori in what order to execute the various subtasks that the tool box supports what design parameters to manipulate and how to interpret the intermediate results. The difficulties are enhanced when the uncertainty of the designer's a-priori information and the quality of the experiment are such that a model contains other stochastic elements than measurement error.

This paper derives a systematic procedure for design of such models, assuming a generic tool box. The origin is the basic procedure commonly used in natural sciences, namely that of repeated refinement and falsification of hypotheses. The derivation is based on statistical decision theory and leads to the specification of a ‘designer's guide’ for grey-box identification. The procedure has been tested on two industrial processes, using the IdKit tool box, and a prototype of the guide has been implemented as a Unix shell. A simulated example illustrates the procedure.     

Comments on ‘New algorithm for minimal balanced realization of transfer function matrix’

Gonzalez and Munro (1990) presented a new algorithm for the minimal balanced realization of a transfer function matrix. We point out that their algorithm fails generically. We also give an alternative algorithm which is both more general and computationally efficient.     

Cryptanalysis and improvement of ‘a secure authentication scheme for telecare medical information system’ with nonce verification

In 2009, Xu et al. presented an improved smartcard based authentication scheme while using a security model previously applied by Bellare et al. to prove the security of their authentication methods. Later on, in 2012, Wu et al. pointed out number of authentication attacks in Xu et al. scheme. To address these issues, Wu et al. presented a Smartcard based Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) scheme for Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) facility. In this study, we prove that authentication scheme of Wu et al. is still vulnerable to impersonation attack, offline password guessing attack, forgery attack and many other attacks. Moreover, number of performance and verification issues are also outlined in the authentication scheme of Wu et al. To overcome these issues, an improved and enhanced 3FA Smartphone based authentication method is proposed on a Cloud Computing environment. The proposed scheme is further corroborated using Burrows-Abadi-Needham logic (BAN logic) nonce verification. The detailed BAN logic verification and further security analysis shows that the proposed authentication protocol is highly reliable and secure in terms of message verifications, message freshness and trustworthiness of its origin. Moreover, the comparative security, performance and feature analysis shows that the proposed work yields an even more improved and enhanced authentication framework as compared to Wu et al. authentication scheme.     

Use of machine learning techniques for educational proposes: a decision support system for forecasting students’ grades

Use of machine learning techniques for educational proposes (or educational data mining) is an emerging field aimed at developing methods of exploring data from computational educational settings and discovering meaningful patterns. The stored data (virtual courses, e-learning log file, demographic and academic data of students, admissions/registration info, and so on) can be useful for machine learning algorithms. In this article, we cite the most current articles that use machine learning techniques for educational proposes and we present a case study for predicting students’ marks. Students’ key demographic characteristics and their marks in a small number of written assignments can constitute the training set for a regression method in order to predict the student’s performance. Finally, a prototype version of software support tool for tutors has been constructed.     

Tuning of a decoupling controller for a 2×2 system using iterative feedback tuning

Iterative feedback tuning is used to tune a decoupling controller for a 2×2 multivariable system. The tuning is carried out in two steps. In the first step the coefficients of two proportional decoupling controllers are tuned, and in the second step two PD-controllers are tuned. The approach is evaluated on a nonlinear simulation model of a two-link manipulator. The evaluation is carried out using two different reference trajectories and also in the presence of friction. The resulting closed loop systems show satisfactory behavior in all three cases.     

Requiem for a theory: the ‘ story grammar’ story

Abstract

Story grammar was a fairly hot topic in artificial intelligence (AI) from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Now, however, it has virtually disappeared as a research issue in AI. The process of science is one where theories are proposed, experiments are conducted, hypotheses are tested, theories are revised and, ultimately, theories are either accepted or rejected. The story grammar story is surveyed with a view towards describing what it was, and explaining what happened to it, from the perspective of the scientific process.     

The BLEND system Programme for the study of some ‘electronic journals’∗

The paper describes a 3-year experimental programme organized jointly by the two universities as the Birmingham and Loughborough Electronic Network Development (BLEND). The aims are to assess the cost, efficiency and subjective impact of such a system, and to explore and evaluate alternative forms of user communication through an eletronic journal and information network. Using a host computer at Birmingham University, a community of initially about 50 scientists (Loughborough Information Network Community (LINC)) will be connnected through the public telephone network to explore various types of electronic journal. The concept of the electronic journal involves using a computer to aid the normal procedures whereby an article is written, refereed, accepted and ‘published’. The subject of this experimental programme will be ‘Computer Human Factors’. Each member will contribute at least one research article and one shorter note in each year of the project, and will also use other forms of communication such as newsletter, annotated abstracts, workshop conferences, co-operative authorship, etc. Throughout the project relevant data will be gathered to enable the assessment of system and user performance, cost, usefulness and acceptability? ? This paper has been referred, accepted and archived (in electronic form only) in the BL R&DD experimental electronic journal Computer Human Factors. .     

Development of a simple model for batch and boundary information updation for a similar ship’s block model

In early 2000,large domestic shipyards introduced shipbuilding 3D computer-aided design (CAD) to the hull production design process to define manufacturing and assembly information.The production design process accounts for most of the man-hours (M/H) of the entire design process and is closely connected to yard production because designs must take into account the production schedule of the shipyard,the current state of the dock needed to mount the ship’s block,and supply information.Therefore,many shipyards are investigating the complete automation of the production design process to reduce the M/H for designers.However,these problems are still currently unresolved,and a clear direction is needed for research on the automatic design base of manufacturing rules,batches reflecting changed building specifications,batch updates of boundary information for hull members,and management of the hull model change history to automate the production design process.In this study,a process was developed to aid production design engineers in designing a new ship’s hull block model from that of a similar ship previously built,based on AVEVA Marine.An automation system that uses the similar ship’s hull block model is proposed to reduce M/H and human errors by the production design engineer.First,scheme files holding important information were constructed in a database to automatically update hull block model modifications.Second,for batch updates,the database’s table,including building specifications and the referential integrity of a relational database were compared.In particular,this study focused on reflecting the frequent modification of building specifications and regeneration of boundary information of the adjacent panel due to changes in a specific panel.Third,the rollback function is proposed in which the database (DB) is used to return to the previously designed panels.     

Development of a novel system to quantify the spatial–temporal parameters for crutch-assisted quadrupedal gait

Abstract

Patients with gait disorders often use bilateral crutches along with their own two legs. It is a kind of quadrupedalism. Crutch-assisted gait is usually described and evaluated qualitatively. In this study, we developed a system to quantify the spatial and temporal parameters for crutch-assisted quadrupedalism. Our system consists of walkway hardware and our originally developed software. We specifically extended the measurable area to 1200 mm × 4800 mm, large enough to measure crutch gait. Using our system, we could describe crutch gait precisely. Our system has a capability to evaluate differences between patients and changes within a patient.     

Development of a sensory gate–ball game system for the aged people

Recently, medical advances have been increasing the size of the aged population. With rapidly developing technology, computers are now essential parts in our daily life, and the number of the aged people using computers is also increasing continuously. But user interfaces and contents for the aged people have not been developed actively yet. In this paper, we present a 3D sensory gate–ball game system which can be played by the aged people easily. This game system is based on 3D graphics and uses a realistic gate–ball stick and balls as interfaces, so it can improve both physical and mental health of the aged people. Because our game is a sensory game, it is easy to play at home without an outdoor playground. Finally, we made a survey about an experiment after users played the game and show results of the survey.     

Development of a Variational Multiscale Large-Eddy Simulation Code ‘MISTRAL’ Using Double-Scale Finite Elements

A variational multiscale large-eddy simulation (VMS-LES) code, named MISTRAL, has been developed based upon the finite element method (FEM) for accurate and practical computation of geometrically complicated turbulent flow problems. The numerical strategy of the FEM-based VMS-LES is explained, especially focusing on the double-scale approximation for velocity and pressure in the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, a pressure stabilization technique and a multiscale turbulence modeling. A unique technique is also employed in the time integration to realize an efficient inversion of the multiscale mass matrix and to form the multiscale pressure Poisson equation used in the approximate projection method for divergence-free constraint of velocity. As a numerical demonstration, a 2D driven cavity flow problem has been solved with the MISTRAL code in a wide range of Reynolds number (Re=1000 to 50000). The results are compared with reference data to quantitatively estimate the accuracy (magnitude of errors in terms of L ² norms) of the proposed VMS-LES method.