Design of an H ∞ PID controller using particle swarm optimization

This paper proposes a novel method to designing an H _∞ PID controller with robust stability and disturbance attenuation. This method uses particle swarm optimization algorithm to minimize a cost function subject to H _∞-norm to design robust performance PID controller. We propose two cost functions to design of a multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) and single-input, single-output (SISO) robust performance PID controller. We apply this method to a SISO flexible-link manipulator and a MIMO super maneuverable F18/HARV fighter aircraft system as two challenging examples to illustrate the design procedure and to verify performance of the proposed PID controller design methodology. It is shown with the MIMO super maneuverable F18/HARV fighter system that PSO performs well for parametric optimization functions and performance of the PSO-based method without prior domain knowledge is superior to those of existing GA-based and OSA-based methods for designing H _∞ PID controllers. Recommended by Editorial Board member Jietae Lee under the direction of Editor Young-Hoon Joo. This work was supported by the Iranian Telecommunication Research Center (ITRC) under Grant T500-11629. Majid Zamani received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 2005 and 2007 from Isfahan University of Technology, and Sharif University of Technology, Iran, respectively. Currently, He is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineer-ing Department of University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A. Nasser Sadati was born in Iran in 1960. He received the B.S. degree from Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA, in 1985 and 1989, respectively, all in Electrical Engineering. From 1986 to 1987, he was with the NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, to study the albedo effects on space station solar array. In 1989, he conducted postgraduate research at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH. Since 1990, he has been with the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, where he is currently a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, the Head of Control Group, and the Director of the Intelligent Systems Laboratory and the Co-Director of Robotics and Machine Vision Laboratory. He was the first to introduce the subject of fuzzy logic and intelligent control as course work in the universities engineering program in Iran. He has published two books in Persian and over 200 technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and is currently working on two more books in English (Intelligent Control of Large-Scale Systems) and Persian (Neural Networks). His research interests include intelligent control and soft computing, large-scale systems, robotics and pattern recognition. Dr. Sadati was the recipient of the Academic Excellence Award for 1998–1999 from the Sharif University of Technology. He is a Founding Member of the Iranian Journal of Fuzzy Systems (IJFS). He is the Founder and Chairman of the First Symposiums on Fuzzy Logic, and Intelligent Control and Soft Computing in Iran. He is the editorial board members of International Journal of Advances in Fuzzy Mathematics (AFM) and the Journal of Iranian Association of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IAEEE). He also has served as the Co-Chair of the First International Conference on Intelligent and Cognitive Systems (ICICS’96). Dr. Sadati is a Founding Member of the Center of Excellence in Power System Management and Control (CEPSMC), Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran and the Foreign Member of the Institute of Control, Robotics, and Systems (ICROS), Korea. Masoud Karimi Ghartemani received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering in 1993 and 1995 from Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, where he continued to work as a Teaching and Research Assistant until 1998. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Toronto in 2004. He was a Research Associate and a Post-doctoral Researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Toronto from 1998 to 2001 and from 2004 to 2005, respectively. He joined Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2005 as a Faculty Member. His research topics include nonlinear and optimal control, novel control and signal processing techniques/algorithms for control and protection of modern power systems, power electronics, power system stability and control, and power quality.     

Swing-up control for an inverted pendulum with restricted cart rail length

In this paper, we propose a new swing-up strategy for cart inverted pendulums with restricted rail length. The proposed swing-up strategy is derived from a new Lyapunov function. The Lyapunov function is defined as the sum of the square of the pendulum energy and the weighted square of the cart’s velocity. The resulting swing-up strategy is represented in a compact form and has two design parameters. By adjusting these design parameters, we can affect the swing-up strategy such that the restriction on the rail length is satisfied. We also provide a state-dependent transformation to obtain voltage input to a DC motor required to generate the cart’s acceleration obtained from the proposed swing-up strategy. Finally, we illustrate the performance of the proposed swing-up law through simulation and experiments. It is shown that there is quite good correspondence between theory and experiments. Recommended by Editorial Board member Duk-Sun Shim under the direction of Editor Jae Weon Choi. This work was supported by an Inha Research Grant. Ji-Hyuk Yang received the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Inha University, Inchon, Korea, in 2008. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at Inha University, Inchon, Korea. His primary research interest lies in the development of rapid control prototyping environment. Su-Yong Shim received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Inha University, Inchon, Korea, in 2008. He is currently pursuing his M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering at Inha University, Inchon, Korea. His research interests are mechatronics and embedded systems. Jung-Hun Seo received the B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Inha University, Inchon, Korea, in 2008. He is currently pursuing his M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering at Inha University, Inchon, Korea. His research interests are mechatronics, embedded systems, and control applications. Young Sam Lee received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Inha University, Inchon, Korea in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He received the Ph.D. at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 2003. His research interests include time delay systems, receding horizon control, signal processing, and embedded systems. He is currently with the School of Electrical Engineering, Inha University, Incheon, Korea.     

Two fusion predictors for discrete-time linear systems with different types of observations

New fusion predictors for linear dynamic systems with different types of observations are proposed. The fusion predictors are formed by summation of the local Kalman filters/predictors with matrix weights depending only on time instants. The relationship between fusion predictors is established. Then, the accuracy and computational efficiency of the fusion predictors are demonstrated on the first-order Markov process and the GMTI model with multisensor environment. Recommended by Editorial Board member Lucy Y. Pao under the direction of Editor Young Il Lee. This work was partially supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) grant funded by the Korean government (MOST), No. R01-2007-000-20227-0 and the Center for Distributed Sensor Network at GIST. Ha-Ryong Song received the B.S. degree in Control and Instrumentation Engineering from the Chosun University, Korea, in 2006, the M.S. degree in School of Information and Mechatronics from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea, in 2007. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology. His research interests include estimation, target tracking systems, data fusion, nonlinear filtering. Moon-Gu Jeon received the B.S. degree in architectural engineering from the Korea University, Korea in 1988. He then received both the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science and scientific computation from the University of Minnesota in 1999 and 2001, respectively. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the School of Information and Mechatronics of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST). His current research interests are in machine learning and pattern recognition and evolutionary computation. Tae-Sun Choi received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1976, the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea, in 1979, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in 1993. He is currently a Professor in the School of Information and Mechatronics at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea. His research interests include image processing, machine/robot vision, and visual communications. Vladimir Shin received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Applied Mathematics from Moscow State Aviation Institute, in 1977 and 1979, respectively. In 1985 he received the Ph.D. degree in Mathematics at the Institute of Control Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. He is currently an Associate Professor at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea. His research interests include estimation, filtering, tracking, data fusion, stochastic control, identification, and other multidimensional data processing methods.     

Oscillation amplitude-controlled resonant accelerometer design using a reference tracking automatic gain control

In this paper, it is presented a novel approach for the self-sustained resonant accelerometer design, which takes advantages of an automatic gain control in achieving stabilized oscillation dynamics. Through the proposed system modeling and loop transformation, the feedback controller is designed to maintain uniform oscillation amplitude under dynamic input accelerations. The fabrication process for the mechanical structure is illustrated in brief. Computer simulation and experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed accelerometer design, which is applicable to a control grade inertial sense system. Recommended by Editorial Board member Dong Hwan Kim under the direction of Editor Hyun Seok Yang. This work was supported by the BK21 Project ST·IT Fusion Engineering program in Konkuk University, 2008. This work was supported by the Korea Foundation for International Cooperation of Science & Technology(KICOS) through a grant provided by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science & Technology(MEST) in 2008 (No. K20601000001). Authors also thank to Dr. B.-L. Lee for the help in structure manufacturing. Sangkyung Sung is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Konkuk University, Korea. He received the M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1998 and 2003, respectively. His research interests include inertial sensors, avionic system hardware, navigation filter, and intelligent vehicle systems. Chang-Joo Kim is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Konkuk University, Korea. He received the Ph.D. degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1991. His research interests include nonlinear optimal control, helicopter flight mechanics, and helicopter system design. Young Jae Lee is a Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Konkuk University, Korea. He received the Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990. His research interests include integrity monitoring of GNSS signal, GBAS, RTK, attitude determination, orbit determination, and GNSS related engineering problems. Jungkeun Park is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Konkuk University. Dr. Park received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Seoul National University in 2004. His current research interests include embedded real-time systems design, real-time operating systems, distributed embedded real-time systems and multimedia systems. Joon Goo Park is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Electronic Engineering at Gyung Book National University, Korea. He received the Ph.D. degree in School of Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2001. His research interests include mobile navigation and adaptive control.     

Gain-scheduled H ∞ filtering of parameter-varying discrete-time systems via parameter-dependent Lyapunov functions

This paper is concerned with the problem of gain-scheduled H _∞ filter design for a class of parameter-varying discrete-time systems. A new LMI-based design approach is proposed by using parameter-dependent Lyapunov functions. Recommended by Editorial Board member Huanshui Zhang under the direction of Editor Jae Weon Choi. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of P. R. China under Grants 60874058, by 973 program No 2009CB320600, but also the National Natural Science Foundation of Province of Zhejiang under Grants Y107056, and in part by a Research Grant from the Australian Research Council. Shaosheng Zhou received the B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering, in January 1992, July 1996 and October 2001, from Qufu Normal University and Southeast University. His research interests include nonlinear control and stochastic systems. Baoyong Zhang received the B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in Applied Mathematics, in July 2003 and July 2006, all from Qufu Normal University. His research interests include and nonlinear systems, robust control and filtering. Wei Xing Zheng received the B.Sc. degree in Applied Mathematics and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering, in January 1982, July 1984 and February 1989, respectively, all from the Southeast University, Nanjing, China. His research interests include signal processing and system identification.     

RHiNET-2/SW: a high-throughput, compact network-switch using 8.8-gbit/s optical interconnection

We have developed a high-throughput, compact network switch (the RHiNET-2/SW) for a distributed parallel computing system. Eight pairs of 800-Mbit/s×12-channel optical interconnection modules and a CMOS ASIC switch are integrated on a compact circuit board. To realize high-throughput (64 Gbit/s) and low-latency network, the SW-LSI has a customized high-speed LVDS I/O interface, and a high-speed internal SRAM memory in a 784-pin BGA one-chip package. We have also developed device implementation technologies to overcome the electrical problems (loss and crosstalk) caused by such high integration. The RHiNET-2/SW system enables high-performance parallel processing in a distributed computing environment. Shinji Nishimura: He is a researcher in the Department of Network System at the Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi Ltd., at Tokyo. He obtained his bachelors degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1989, and his M.E. from the University of Tokyo in 1991. He joined a member of the Optical Interconnection Hitachi Laboratory from 1992. His research interests are in hardware technology for the optical interconnection technologies in the computer and communication systems. Katsuyoshi Harasawa: He is a Senior Enginner of Hitachi Communication Systems Inc. He obtained his bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Tokyo Denki University. He is a chief of development of the devices and systems for the optical telecommunication. He was engaged in Development of Optical Reciever and Transmitter module. He joined RWCP project from 1997. His research interests are in hardward technology for optical interconnection in distributed parallel computing system (RHiNET). Nobuhiro Matsudaira: He is a engineer in the Hitachi Communication Systems, Inc. He obtained his bachelors degree in Mercantile Marine Engineering from the Kobe University of Mercantile Marine in 1986. He was engaged in Development of Optical Reciever and Transmitter module at 2.4 Gbit/s to 10Gbit/s. He joined RWCP project from 1998. His reserch interests are in hardware technology for the optical interconnection technology in the computer and communication systems. Shigeto Akutsu: He is a staff in Hitachi Communication Systems Inc. He obtained his bachelors degree in Electronics from Kanagawa University, Japan in 1998. His research interests are hardware technology for the optical interconnection technology in the computer and communication systems. Tomohiro Kudoh, Ph.D.: He received Ph.D. degree from Keio University, Japan in 1992. He has been chief of the parallel and distributed architecture laboratory, Real World Computing Partnership since 1997. His research interests include the area of parallel processing and network for high performance computing. Hiroaki Nishi: He received B.E., M.E. from Keio University, Japan, in 1994, 1996, respectively. He joined Parallel & Distributed Architecture Laboratory, Real World Computing Partnership in 1999. He is currently working on his Ph.D. His research interests include area of interconnection networks. Hideharu Amano, Ph.D.: He received Ph.D. degree from Keio University, Japan in 1986. He is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science, Keio University. His research interests include the area of parallel processing and reconfigurable computing.     

Development of cleaning robot system for live-line suspension insulator strings

A new cleaning robot system for suspension insulator strings was developed to prevent a power failure, which can have severe effects on the national industry and economy. Compared with existing cleaning robots using jets of water or water/air, this robot mechanism is superior in insulation as it uses a porcelain-clamping method, and is more useful in mountainous or salt damage areas by adopting a dry cleaning method without water. In addition, in order to increase its cleaning efficiency and to prevent arc generation under live-line conditions, a set of mechanized brush bristles and a voltage-balancing contactor are devised, respectively. Moreover, a manual device for its installation and removal is presented. We confirmed its effectiveness through experiments. Recommended by Editorial Board member Hyoukryeol Choi under the direction of Editor Jae-Bok Song. This work was supported by Electric Power Industry R&D Project performed by Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy in Korea. Joon-Young Park received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1995, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1997 and 2004, respectively. He is now a Senior Researcher at the Strategic Technology Laboratory in Korea Electric Power Research Institute (KEPRI). His research interests include the robust control of nonlinear systems, the optimum kinematic design of robot manipulators as well as robot systems for the electric power industry. Byung-Hak Cho received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Nuclear Engineering from KAIST, Daejeon, Korea, in 1986 and 1996, respectively. He is now a Chief Researcher at the Strategic Tech-nology Laboratory in KEPRI, Daejeon, Korea. His research interests include robot systems for the electric power industry. Seung-Hyun Byun received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 1992, and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from KAIST, Daejeon, Korea, in 1994. He is now a Senior Researcher at the Power Generation Laboratory in KEPRI, Daejeon, Korea. His research interests include control system design, signal processing and artificial intelligence. Jae-Kyung Lee received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea, in 2002, and M.S. the degree in Electrical Engineering from KAIST, Daejeon, Korea, in 2004. He is now a Researcher at the Strategic Technology Laboratory in KEPRI, Daejeon, Korea. His research interests include the development of high-performance robot control and hazardous robot systems.     

A novel control loop design and its application to the force balance of vibratory rate sensor

This paper investigates a new loop design approach of force balance control for the vibratory rate sensor application. The proposed force balance control design takes advantages of the modified automatic gain control configuration in controlling the system’s oscillating dynamics at the sense mode. The adapted automatic gain control scheme and force balance strategy, which maintains a constant oscillation magnitude in the sense mode, have several advantages. First it is possible to analyze a complicated nonlinear feedback system using a linear control theory, which resulted in straightforward prediction of closed loop performance. Moreover the control system to achieve the design goals can be implemented using a relatively simple feedback configuration. An application to the vibratory rate sensor using the proposed automatic gain control configuration witnessed that the force balance control can be validated in a practical design process. Experiments using an actual micromachined rate sensor verified the feasibility of the proposed control scheme with demonstration of enhanced performance. Recommended by Editorial Board member Dong Hwan Kim under the direction of Editor Hyun Seok Yang. This work was supported by the BK21 Project, ST-IT Fusion Engineering program in Konkuk University, 2008. This work was supported by the KICOS through a grant provided by the Korean Ministry of Education, Science & Technology in 2008 (No. K20601000001). Sangkyung Sung is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Konkuk University, Korea. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1998 and 2003, respectively. His research interests include inertial sensors, avionic system hardware, integrated navigation, and intelligent vehicle technologies. Sukchang Yun is a Ph.D. course student of the Department of Aerospace Information Engineering at Konkuk University, Korea. He received the M.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from Konkuk University in 2009. His research interests include MEMS mechatronics and control, INS/GPS integration, and instrumentation. Woon-Tahk Sung is an Senior Engineer of the Communication Reserarch Center, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. He received the Ph.D. degree in School of Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University in 2007. His research interests include analog and digital control algorithm, MEMS piezo actuator, circuit design for microsystems using VCM. Chang Joo Kim is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Konkuk University, Korea. He received the Ph.D. degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1991. His research interests include nonlinear optimal control, helicopter flight mechanics, and helicopter system design. Young Jae Lee is a Professor of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Konkuk University, Korea. He received the Ph.D. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1990. His research interests include integrity monitoring of GNSS signal, GBAS, RTK, attitude determination, orbit determination, and GNSS related engineering problems.     

Trajectory tracking with a 6R serial industrial robot with ordinary and non-ordinary singularities

This work presents a trajectory control for non-redundant serial-link manipulators that is valid for trajectories with ordinary singularities of codimension one and non-ordinary singularities of any codimension. For this purpose, several singularity classifications are considered and a procedure is developed in order to solve the indeterminate motion of non-ordinary singularities. The proposed trajectory control is validated by simulation and by experiments with the six-revolute (6R) industrial robot KUKA KR 15/2. Recommended by Editor Jae-Bok Song. This work was supported by the Spanish Government: Research Project BIA2005-09377-C03-02. The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their time and valuable comments that helped us to improve the quality of this paper. Luis Gracia received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Control Systems Engineering, from the Technical University of Valencia (UPV), Spain, in 1998, 2000, and 2006, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor at Department of Systems Engineering and Control (DISA) of the UPV. His research interests include wheeled mobile robots, robotic manipulators, system modeling and control. Javier Andres received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the UPV in 2003 and 2006, respectively. He is currently working on his Ph.D. His research interests include CAD/CAM/Robotics integration and robot post-processing. Josep Tornero received the M.S. Degree in Systems and Control from the University of Manchester in 1982, and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the UPV in 1985. He is currently a Professor at the DISA of the UPV and responsible for the ‘Automation in Manufacture and Mobile Robotics’ Group and the ‘Design Institute for the Manufacture and Automated Production’, both at the UPV. He is interested in modeling, control and simulation of auto-guided vehicles, robot arms, and multirate sampled data systems.     

Robust control design of a class of nonlinear systems in polynomial lower-triangular form

This paper investigates the problem of global robust stabilization for a wide class of nonlinear systems, called polynomial lower-triangular form (pLTF), which expands LTF to a more general case. The aim is explicitly constructing the smooth controller for the class of systems with static uncertainties, by adding and modifying a power integrator in a recursive manner. The pLTF relaxes the restrictions on the structure of the normal LTF and enlarges the family of systems that are stabilizable. Examples are also provided to show the practical usage of this class of systems and the effectiveness of the design method. Recommended by Editorial Board member Hyungbo Shim under the direction of Editor Jae Weon Choi. Bing Wang received the B.S. degree from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Science and Technology of China, in 1998 and 2006, respectively. He is currently working in College of Electrical Engineering, Hohai University. His research interests include robust control, nonlinear control and power systems. Haibo Ji received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from ZheJiang University and Beijing University in 1984 and 1990 respectively. He is currently a Professor in the Dept. of Automation, USTC. His research interests include nonlinear control and adaptive control. Jin Zhu received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Control Science and Engineering from University of Science & Technology of Chinain 2001 and 2006 respectively. He is currently a Post-doc in Han-Yang University, Korea. His research interests include Markovian jump systems and nonlinear control.     

Deterioration of visual information in face classification using Eigenfaces and Fisherfaces

In the area of biometrics, face classification becomes one of the most appealing and commonly used approaches for personal identification. There has been an ongoing quest for designing systems that exhibit high classification rates and portray significant robustness. This feature becomes of paramount relevance when dealing with noisy and uncertain images. The design of face recognition classifiers capable of operating in presence of deteriorated (noise affected) face images requires a careful quantification of deterioration of the existing approaches vis-à-vis anticipated form and levels of image distortion. The objective of this experimental study is to reveal some general relationships characterizing the performance of two commonly used face classifiers (that is Eigenfaces and Fisherfaces) in presence of deteriorated visual information. The findings obtained in our study are crucial to identify at which levels of noise the face classifiers can still be considered valid. Prior knowledge helps us develop adequate face recognition systems. We investigate several typical models of image distortion such as Gaussian noise, salt and pepper, and blurring effect and demonstrate their impact on the performance of the two main types of the classifiers. Several distance models derived from the Minkowski family of distances are investigated with respect to the produced classification rates. The experimental environment concerns a well-known standard in this area of face biometrics such as the FERET database. The study reports on the performance of the classifiers, which is based on a comprehensive suite of experiments and delivers several design hints supporting further developments of face classifiers. Gabriel Jarillo Alvarado obtained his B.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico. In 2003 he obtained his M.Sc. degree from the University of Alberta at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he is currently enrolled in the Ph.D. program at the same University. His research interests involve machine learning, pattern recognition, and evolutionary computation with particular interest to biometrics for personal identification. Witold Pedrycz is a Professor and Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Computational Intelligence) in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. His research interests involve Computational Intelligence, fuzzy modeling, knowledge discovery and data mining, fuzzy control including fuzzy controllers, pattern recognition, knowledge-based neural networks, relational computing, and Software Engineering. He has published numerous papers in this area. He is also an author of 9 research monographs. Witold Pedrycz has been a member of numerous program committees of conferences in the area of fuzzy sets and neurocomputing. He currently serves on editorial board of numereous journals including IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics, Pattern Recognition Letters, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, Fuzzy Sets & Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. He is an Editor-in-Chief of Information Sciences. Marek Reformat received his M.Sc. degree from Technical University of Poznan, Poland, and his Ph.D. from University of Manitoba, Canada. His interests were related to simulation and modeling in time-domain, as well as evolutionary computing and its application to optimization problems For three years he worked for the Manitoba HVDC Research Centre, Canada, where he was a member of a simulation software development team. Currently, Marek Reformat is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Alberta. His research interests lay in the areas of application of Computational Intelligence techniques, such as neuro-fuzzy systems and evolutionary computing, as well as probabilistic and evidence theories to intelligent data analysis leading to translating data into knowledge. He applies these methods to conduct research in the areas of Software and Knowledge Engineering. He has been a member of program committees of several conferences related to Computational Intelligence and evolutionary computing. Keun-Chang Kwak received B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in the Department of Electrical Engineering from Chungbuk National University, Cheongju, South Korea, in 1996, 1998, and 2002, respectively. During 2002–2003, he worked as a researcher in the Brain Korea 21 Project Group, Chungbuk National University. His research interests include biometrics, computational intelligence, pattern recognition, and intelligent control.     

Temporal disjunctive logic programming

In this paper we introduce the logic programming languageDisjunctive Chronolog which combines the programming paradigms of temporal and disjunctive logic programming. Disjunctive Chronolog is capable of expressing dynamic behaviour as well as uncertainty, two notions that are very common in a variety of real systems. We present the minimal temporal model semantics and the fixpoint semantics for the new programming language and demonstrate their equivalence. We also show how proof procedures developed for disjunctive logic programs can be easily extended to apply to Disjunctive Chronolog programs. Manolis Gergatsoulis, Ph.D.: He received his B.Sc. in Physics in 1983, the M.Sc. and the Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science in 1986 and 1995 respectively all from the University of Athens, Greece. Since 1996 he is a Research Associate in the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications, NCSR ‘Demokritos’, Athens. His research interests include logic and temporal programming, program transformations and synthesis, as well as theory of programming languages. Panagiotis Rondogiannis, Ph.D.: He received his B.Sc. from the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, Greece, in 1989, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, Canada, in 1991 and 1994 respectively. From 1995 to 1996 he served in the Greek army. From 1996 to 1997 he was a visiting professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Ioannina, Greece, and since 1997 he is a Lecturer in the same Department. In January 2000 he was elected Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Athens. His research interests include functional, logic and temporal programming, as well as theory of programming languages. Themis Panayiotopoulos, Ph.D.: He received his Diploma on Electrical Engineering from the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Technical Univesity of Athens, in 1984, and his Ph.D. on Artificial Intelligence from the above mentioned department in 1989. From 1991 to 1994 he was a visiting professor at the Department of Mathematics, University of the Aegean, Samos, Greece and a Research Associate at the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of “Democritos” National Research Center. Since 1995 he is an Assistant Prof. at the Department of Computer Science, University of Piraeus. His research interests include temporal programming, logic programming, expert systems and intelligent agent architectures.     

A grid-oriented genetic algorithm framework for bioinformatics

In this paper, we propose a framework for enabling for researchers of genetic algorithms (GAs) to easily develop GAs running on the Grid, named “Grid-Oriented Genetic algorithms (GOGAs)”, and actually “Gridify” a GA for estimating genetic networks, which is being developed by our group, in order to examine the usability of the proposed GOGA framework. We also evaluate the scalability of the “Gridified” GA by applying it to a five-gene genetic network estimation problem on a grid testbed constructed in our laboratory. Hiroaki Imade: He received his B.S. degree in the department of engineering from The University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan, in 2001. He received the M.S. degree in information systems from the Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokushima in 2003. He is now in Doctoral Course of Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokushima. His research interests include evolutionary computation. He currently researches a framework to easily develop the GOGA models which efficiently work on the grid. Ryohei Morishita: He received his B.S. degree in the department of engineering from The University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan, in 2002. He is now in Master Course of Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokushima, Tokushima. His research interest is evolutionary computation. He currently researches GA for estimating genetic networks. Isao Ono, Ph.D.: He received his B.S. degree from the Department of Control Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1994. He received Ph.D. of Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, in 1997. He worked as a Research Fellow from 1997 to 1998 at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and at University of Tokushima, Tokushima, Japan, in 1998. He worked as a Lecturer from 1998 to 2001 at University of Tokushima. He is now Associate Professor at University of Tokushima. His research interests include evolutionary computation, scheduling, function optimization, optical design and bioinformatics. He is a member of JSAI, SCI, IPSJ and OSJ. Norihiko Ono, Ph.D.: He received his B.S. M.S. and Ph.D. of Engineering in 1979, 1981 and 1986, respectively, from Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 1986 to 1989, he was Research Associate at Faculty of Engineering, Hiroshima University. From 1989 to 1997, he was an associate professor at Faculty of Engineering, University of Tokushima. He was promoted to Professor in the Department of Information Science and Intelligent Systems in 1997. His current research interests include learning in multi-agent systems, autonomous agents, reinforcement learning and evolutionary algorithms. Masahiro Okamoto, Ph.D.: He is currently Professor of Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry from Kyushu University in 1981. His major research field is nonlinear numerical optimization and systems biology. His current research interests cover system identification of nonlinear complex systems by using evolutional computer algorithm of optimization, development of integrated simulator for analyzing nonlinear dynamics and design of fault-tolerant routing network by mimicking metabolic control system. He has more than 90 peer reviewed publications.     

LMI-based robust iterative learning controller design for discrete linear uncertain systems

This paper addresses the design problem of robust iterative learning controllers for a class of linear discrete-time systems with norm-bounded parameter uncertainties. An iterative learning algorithm with current cycle feedback is proposed to achieve both robust convergence and robust stability. The synthesis problem of the proposed iterative learmng control （ILC） system is reformulated as a γ-suboptimal H-infinity control problem via the linear fractional transformation （LFT）. A sufficient condition for the convergence of the ILC algorithm is presented in terms of linear matrix inequalities （LMIs）. Furthermore, the linear wansfer operators of the ILC algorithm with high convergence speed are obtained by using existing convex optimization techniques. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Sliding mode control for trajectory tracking of mobile robot in the RFID sensor space

This paper presents a sliding mode control method for wheeled mobile robots. Because of the nonlinear and nonholonomic properties, it is difficult to establish an appropriate model of the mobile robot system for trajectory tracking. A robust control law which is called sliding mode control is proposed for asymptotically stabilizing the mobile robot to a desired trajectory. The posture of the mobile robot (including the position and heading direction) is presented and the kinematics equations are established in the two-dimensional coordinates. According to the kinematics equations, the controller is designed to find an acceptable control law so that the tracking error will approximate 0 as the time approaches infinity with an initial error. The RFID sensor space is used to estimate the real posture of the mobile robot. Simulation and experiment demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed system for robust tracking of mobile robots. Recommended by Sooyong Lee under the direction of Editor Jae-Bok Song. This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering (KOSEF) grant funded by the Korea government (MOST) (No. R01-2007-000-10171-0). Jun Ho Lee received the M.S degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pusan National University. His research interests include factory automation and sliding mode control. Cong Lin received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Jilin University and the M.S degree in Electrical Engineering from Pusan National University. His research interests include neural network and sliding mode control. Hoon Lim is currently a M.S student in Electrical Engineering of Pusan National University. His research interests include mobile manipulator and sliding mode control. Jang Myung Lee received the B.S. and M.S degrees in Electronics Engineering from Seoul National University, Korea. He received the Ph.D. degree in Computer from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Now, he is a Professor in Pusan National University. His research interests include integrated manufacturing systems and intelligent control.     

Development of a digital turbine control system in a nuclear power plant

A digital turbine control system (TCS) has been developed for retrofitting an old analog TCS in a nuclear power plant. The developed TCS, which controls the speed of a turbine and the power load of a generator, is based on a triple modular redundant structure to ensure the system reliability. In addition, a turbine simulator has been developed to verify the perfection of the TCS prior to its actual installation. The simulator is composed of a graphic editor, a component model builder, and a system simulation solver. The tested TCS has been successfully applied to a CANDU type nuclear power plant. This paper describes major features of the developed TCS and the turbine simulator including thermal-hydraulic models. Also, the simulation result in a laboratory is compared with the pre startup simulation and the actual operation result. Recommended by Editor Hyun Seok Yang. In-Kyu Choi was born in Jeonjoo, Korea in 1967. He obtained his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Chungnam National University in 2004. His research interests include control in power plant machines such as boilers, drums, turbines, and generators. He is now a Senior Member of the KEPCO Research Institute. Jong-An Kim received the B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from Won-Kwang University, Ik-San, Korea in 1985. He joined the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) in 1976, and has mainly worked in the control systems engineering areas of power plants. He is now a Principal Engineer in the Korea Electric Power Research Institute (KEPRI) and his research interests include the design of power plant control systems as well as new technology development. Chang-Ki Jeong was born in Daejeon, Korea in 1956. He obtained his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Daejeon Industry College in 1998. His research interests include control in power plant machines such as boilers, drums, turbines, and generators. He is a Principal Member of the KEPCO Research Institute. Joo-Hee Woo was born in Sangjoo, Korea in 1970. He obtained his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Kyungbook National University in 1995. His research interests include control in power plant machines such as boilers, drums, turbines, and generators. He is now a Senior Member of the KEPCO Research Institute. Ji-Young Choi received the B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Sogang University in 2005. He is a graduate student of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea. Choi’s research interests are in the areas of heat transfer, PEM fuel cells, and microfluidics. Gihun Son received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He obtained the Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA in 1996. Dr. Son is currently a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea. His research interests are in the areas of multiphase dynamics, heat transfer, and power system simulation.     

Self-stabilization over unreliable communication media

Summary A self-stabilizing system has the property that it will converge to a desirable state when started from any state. Most previous researchers assumed that processes in self-stabilizing systems may communicate through shared variables while those that studied meassage passing systems allowed messages with unbounded size. This paper discusses the development of self-stabilizing systems which communicate through message passing, and in which messages may be lost in transit. The systems presented all use fixed size message headers. First, a selfstabilizing version of theAlternating Bit Protocol, a fundamental communication protocol for transmitting data across an unreliable communication medium, is presented. Secondly, the alternating-bit protocol is used to construct a self-stabilizing token ring. Yehuda Afek received a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1985 he joined the Distributed Systems research Department in AT&T Bell Laboratories and in 1988 he joined the Department of Computer Science in Tel-Aviv University. His interests include communication protocols, distributed systems, and asynchronous shared memories. Geoffrey M. Brown received the BS degree in Engineering from Swarthmore College in 1982, the MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1983, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1987. From 1983 to 1984 he worked for Motorola in Austin, TX. Currently he is an Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at Cornell University. In 1990, Brown was named a Presidential Young Investigator by the National Science Foundation.This work supported in part by NSF grant CCR-9058180     

Robust Quality Adaptation for Internet Video Streaming

Internet video streaming is a widely popular application however, in many cases, congestion control facilities are not well integrated into such applications. In order to be fair to other users that do not stream video, rate adaptation should be performed to respond to congestion. On the other hand, the effect of rate adaptation on the viewer should be minimized and this extra mechanism should not overload the client and the server. In this paper, we develop a heuristic approach for unicast congestion control. The primary feature of our approach is the two level adaptation algorithm that utilizes packet loss rate as well as receiver buffer data to maintain satisfactory buffer levels at the receiver. This is particularly important if receiver has limited buffer such as in mobile devices. When there is no congestion, to maintain best buffer levels, fine grain adjustments are carried out at the packet level. Depending on the level of congestion and receiver buffer level, rate shaping that involves frame discard and finally rate adaptation by switching to a different pre-encoded video stream are carried out. Additive increase multiplicative decrease policy is maintained to respond to congestion in a TCP- friendly manner. The algorithm is implemented and performance results show that it has adaptation ability that is suitable for both local area and wide area networks. E. Turhan Tunali received B.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering from Middle East Technical University and M.Sc. Degree in Applied Statistics from Ege University, both in Turkey. He then received D.Sc. Degree in Systems Science and Mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis, U.S.A. in 1985. After his doctorate study, he joined Computer Engineering Department of Ege University as an assistant professor where he became an associate professor in 1988. During the period of 1992–1994, he worked in Department of Computer Technology of Nanyang Technological University of Singapore as a Visiting Senior Fellow. He then joined International Computer Institute of Ege University as a Professor where he is currently the director. In the period of 2000–2001 he worked in Department of Computer Science of Loyola University of Chicago as a Visiting Professor. His current research interests include adaptive video streaming and Internet performance measurements. Dr. Tunali is married with an eighteen year old son. Aylin Kantarci received B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees all from Computer Engineering Department of Ege University, Izmir, Turkey, in 1992, 1994 and 2000, respectively. She then joined the same department as an assistant professor. Her current research interests include adaptive video streaming, video coding, operating systems, multimedia systems and distributed systems. Nukhet Ozbek received B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from School of Engineering and M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from International Computer Institute both in Ege University, Izmir, Turkey. From 1998 to 2003 she worked in the DVB team of Digital R&D at Vestel Corporation, Izmir-Turkey that produces telecommunication and consumer electronics devices. She is currently a Ph.D. student and a research assistant at International Computer Institute of Ege University. Her research areas include video coding and streaming, multimedia systems and set top box architectures.     

Zikimi: A Case Study in Micro Kernel Design for Multimedia Applications

Due to recent rapid deployment of Internet Appliances and PostPC products, the importance of developing lightweight embedded operating system is being emphasized more. In this article, we like to present the details of design and implementation experience of low cost embedded system, Zikimi, for multimedia data processing. We use the skeleton of existing Linux operating system and develop a micro-kernel to perform a number of specific tasks efficiently and effectively. Internet Appliances and PostPC products usually have very limited amount of hardware resources to execute very specific tasks. We carefully analyze the system requirement of multimedia processing device. Weremove the unnecessary features, e.g. virtual memory, multitasking, a number of different file systems, and etc. The salient features of Zikimi micro kernel are (i) linear memory system and (ii) user level control of I/O device. The result of performance experiment shows that LMS (linear memory system) of Zikimi micro kernel achieves significant performance improvement on memory allocationagainst legacy virtual memory management system of Linux. By exploiting the computational capability of graphics processor and its local memory, we achieve 2.5 times increase in video processing speed. Supported by KOSEF through Statistical Research Center for Complex Systems at Seoul National University. Funded by Faculty Research Institute Program 2001, Sahmyook University, Korea. Sang-Yeob Lee received his B.S. and M.S degree from Hanyang University, seoul, Korea in 1995. He is currently working towards the Ph.D. degree in Devision of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. Since 1998, he has been on the faculty of Information Management System at Sahmyook university, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include robot vision systems, pattern recognition, Multimedia systems. He is a member of IEEE. Youjip Won received the B.S and M.S degree in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea in 1990 and 1992, respectively and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 1997. After finishing his Ph.D., He worked as Server Performance Analysts at Server Architecture Lab., Intel Corp. Since 1999, he has been on the board of faculty members in Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. His current research interests include Multimedia Systems, Internet Technology, Database and Performance Modeling and Analysis. He is a member of ACM and IEEE. Whoi-Yul Kim received his B.S. degree in Electronic Engineering from Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea in 1980. He received his M.S. from Pennsylvania State University, University Park, in 1983 and his Ph.D. from Purdue University, West Lafayette, in 1989, both in Electrical Engineering. From 1989 to 1994, he was with the Erick Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Since 1994, he has been on the faculty of Electronic Engineering at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. He has been involved with research development of various range sensors and their use in robot vision systems. Recently, his work has focused on content-based image retrieval system. He is a member of IEEE.