Improved Controller Design with Two Gain-scaling Factors for Global Asymptotic Stabilization of Nonlinear Systems via Matrix Inequality Approach

In this paper, we consider a problem of global asymptotic stabilization for nonlinear systems with the perturbed nonlinearity. We provide a stabilizing controller with two gain-scaling factors and a new controller design method with matrix inequality approach. In particular, we provide a new procedure for selecting gain-scaling factors which are associated with stabilizing the closed-loop system. As a result, our proposed control method widens the class of considered nonlinear systems and yields better control performance over the existing methods. Via several comparison examples, we illustrate the improved features of the proposed control method over the existing ones.

     

A timing controller embedded driver IC with 3.24‐Gbps eDP interface for chip‐on‐glass TFT‐LCD applications

This paper presents a timing controller embedded driver (TED) IC with 3.24‐Gbps embedded display port (eDP), which is implemented using a 45‐nm high‐voltage CMOS process for the chip‐on‐glass (COG) TFT‐LCD applications. The proposed TED‐IC employs the input offset calibration scheme, the zero‐adjustable equalizer, and the phase locked loop‐based bang‐bang clock and data recovery to enhance the maximum data rate. Also, the proposed TED‐IC provides efficient power management by supporting advanced link power management feature of eDP standard v1.4. Additionally, the smart charge sharing is proposed to reduce the dynamic power consumption of output buffers. Measured result demonstrates the maximum data rate of 3.24 Gbps from a 1.1 V supply voltage with a 7.9‐inch QXGA 60‐Hz COG‐LCD prototype panel and 44% power saving from the display system.     

Analysis of TRIPS Agreement and the justification of international IP rights protection in the WTO's multilateral trading system,with particular reference to pharmaceutical patents

The entry of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement has seen the developing countries and the least developed countries (LDCs) suffer from the excessive burden of obligations imposed under the Agreement to embrace and implement a higher standard of intellectual property (IP) protection. One of the areas where the impact of the measures is most felt is on accessibility to affordable medicines for frontline treatment of diseases in developing countries and LDCs, where the majority of the HIV/AIDS sufferers come from. This inevitable plight, although well known, and posited by the developing countries and LDCs during the Uruguay round of negotiations, was overlooked. This also necessitated the Doha Deceleration, which does not seem to have addressed the problem. The developed countries have also successfully utilised the TRIPS Agreement's IP rights protection criteria as a benchmark, to develop a much higher IP rights protection agenda through the introduction of TRIPS-plus provisions in bilateral and other multilateral agreements entered into with developing countries. The winners in the game are the patent-holding pharmaceutical corporations, software corporations, media corporations, and the developed countries where they are incorporated. The ones at the receiving end are the developing countries and the LDCs who were promised technology transfer to build a modern economy by the developed countries, but are faced with multiple problems of non-availability of affordable medicines for health care, besides others. This article seeks to study the justification for an extended IP rights protection under the TRIPS Agreement through an analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of the IP rights and the patent regime. It will be argued that the TRIPS Agreement is a major obstacle that the developing countries and the LDCs have been made to face as Members of the WTO (World Trade Organisation), with no end in sight for their miseries, and that the only possible solution is a review or an amendment of the TRIPS Agreement.     

An online fault tolerant actor-critic neuro-control for a class of nonlinear systems using neural network HJB approach

In this paper, we propose an actor-critic neuro-control for a class of continuous-time nonlinear systems under nonlinear abrupt faults, which is combined with an adaptive fault diagnosis observer (AFDO). Together with its estimation laws, an AFDO scheme, which estimates the faults in real time, is designed based on Lyapunov analysis. Then, based on the designed AFDO, a fault tolerant actor- critic control scheme is proposed where the critic neural network (NN) is used to approximate the value function and the actor NN updates the fault tolerant policy based on the approximated value function in the critic NN. The weight update laws for critic NN and actor NN are designed using the gradient descent method. By Lyapunov analysis, we prove the uniform ultimately boundedness (UUB) of all the states, their estimation errors, and NN weights of the fault tolerant system under the unpredictable faults. Finally, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed method through numerical simulations.     

A novel part-based approach to mean-shift algorithm for visual tracking

Visual tracking is one of the most important problems considered in computer vision. To improve the performance of the visual tracking, a part-based approach will be a good solution. In this paper, a novel method of visual tracking algorithm named part-based mean-shift (PBMS) algorithm is presented. In the proposed PBMS, unlike the standard mean-shift (MS), the target object is divided into multiple parts and the target is tracked by tracking each individual part and combining the results. For the part-based visual tracking, the objective function in the MS is modified such that the target object is represented as a combination of the parts and iterative optimization solution is presented. Further, the proposed PBMS provides a systematic and analytic way to determine the scale of the bounding box for the target from the perspective of the objective function optimization. Simulation is conducted with several benchmark problems and the result shows that the proposed PBMS outperforms the standard MS.

     

Note: Interpolation for evaluation of a two-dimensional spatial profile of plasma densities at low gas pressures

An interpolation algorithm for the evaluation of the spatial profile of plasma densities in a cylindrical reactor was developed for low gas pressures. The algorithm is based on a collisionless two-dimensional fluid model. Contrary to the collisional case, i.e., diffusion fluid model, the fitting algorithm depends on the aspect ratio of the cylindrical reactor. The spatial density profile of the collisionless fitting algorithm is presented in two-dimensional images and compared with the results of the diffusion fluid model.     

Understanding Usability and User Experience of Web-Based 3D Graphics Technology

As Web-based interactive 3D graphics (Web 3D), popularly referred to as Virtual Reality, continue to become more affordable, research and development groups in various fields have been adopting Web 3D technology. In addition to simulation of 3D content, the ability to instantly display alternative looks has been recognized as an innovative way to improve communication in such fields as product design, architecture, and e-commerce. Despite substantial adoption of Web 3D, how and how much the technology benefits target users as well as the providers who choose to adapt the Web 3D technology are not well understood. Previous research has established that interactive 3D graphics provide users with unique human–computer interaction (HCI). However, little is known about how users experience the Web 3D graphics technology and how user–system interaction contributes to system usability. The purpose of this study is to build new knowledge of the user experience with interactive-3D graphics systems used for product demonstration. By testing the impact of the technology on the user–system interaction and usability and comparing this impact with that of conventional two-dimensional (2D) graphics, this study tries to better understand the Web 3D technology from an interdisciplinary view of technology acceptance, sense of presence, and HCI. The study investigated how system usability is affected by HCI in the context of a furniture-style preference survey. The results of the study display the clear advantage for Web 3D for usability and show that perceived usefulness and sense of presence both mediate the effect of the technology treatment on the usability outcomes. The contribution of this study is that it includes empirical data to show how Web 3D benefits users when adopted in the context of a product demonstration and how the advantage is obtained through the user's interaction with the Web 3D technology.     

Key-dependent 3D model hashing for authentication using heat kernel signature

Multimedia-based hashing is considered an important technique for achieving authentication and copy detection in digital contents. However, 3D model hashing has not been as widely used as image or video hashing. In this study, we develop a robust 3D mesh-model hashing scheme based on a heat kernel signature (HKS) that can describe a multi-scale shape curve and is robust against isometric modifications. We further discuss the robustness, uniqueness, security, and spaciousness of the method for 3D model hashing. In the proposed hashing scheme, we calculate the local and global HKS coefficients of vertices through time scales and 2D cell coefficients by clustering HKS coefficients with variable bin sizes based on an estimated L² risk function, and generate the binary hash through binarization of the intermediate hash values by combining the cell values and the random values. In addition, we use two parameters, bin center points and cell amplitudes, which are obtained through an iterative refinement process, to improve the robustness, uniqueness, security, and spaciousness further, and combine them in a hash with a key. By evaluating the robustness, uniqueness, and spaciousness experimentally, and through a security analysis based on the differential entropy, we verify that our hashing scheme outperforms conventional hashing schemes.     

EM-GPA: Generalized Procrustes analysis with hidden variables for 3D shape modeling

Aligning shapes is essential in many computer vision problems and generalized Procrustes analysis (GPA) is one of the most popular algorithms to align shapes. However, if some of the shape data are missing, GPA cannot be applied. In this paper, we propose EM-GPA, which extends GPA to handle shapes with hidden (missing) variables by using the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. For example, 2D shapes can be considered as 3D shapes with missing depth information due to the projection of 3D shapes into the image plane. For a set of 2D shapes, EM-GPA finds scales, rotations and 3D shapes along with their mean and covariance matrix for 3D shape modeling. A distinctive characteristic of EM-GPA is that it does not enforce any rank constraint often appeared in other work and instead uses GPA constraints to resolve the ambiguity in finding scales, rotations, and 3D shapes. The experimental results show that EM-GPA can recover depth information accurately even when the noise level is high and there are a large number of missing variables. By using the images from the FRGC database, we show that EM-GPA can successfully align 2D shapes by taking the missing information into consideration. We also demonstrate that the 3D mean shape and its covariance matrix are accurately estimated. As an application of EM-GPA, we construct a 2D + 3D AAM (active appearance model) using the 3D shapes obtained by EM-GPA, and it gives a similar success rate in model fitting compared to the method using real 3D shapes. EM-GPA is not limited to the case of missing depth information, but it can be easily extended to more general cases.