Socializing artifacts as a half mirror of the mind

In the near future, our life will normally be surrounded with fairly complicated artifacts, enabled by the autonomous robot and brain–machine interface technologies. In this paper, we argue that what we call the responsibility flaw problem and the inappropriate use problem need to be overcome in order for us to benefit from complicated artifacts. In order to solve these problems, we propose an approach to endowing artifacts with an ability of socially communicating with other agents based on the artifact-as-a-half-mirror metaphor. The idea is to have future artifacts behave according to the hybrid intention composed of the owner’s intention and the social rules. We outline the approach and discuss its feasibility together with preliminary work.

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Finding division points for a time series corpus based on structural change point detection

This paper describes a method of finding the proper points for dividing a corpus with time series information to extract local and frequent keywords. Previous works have proposed the corpus separating method for extracting keywords from a corpus. However, this method divides a corpus at equal intervals so that it cannot consider the topic changes. The present paper utilizes the idea of the topic model and the topic extracted through latent Dirichlet allocation to consider the topic change. This paper identifies the points at which large topic changes occur to divide the corpus using structural change detection method. An experiment involving newspaper articles with 5-year topics confirm that the points at which the topics of each document change are detected to find the division points based on the idea of structural change point detection and our method is better than previous methods based on recall measure.     

Torsional impact response of a penny-shaped interface crack in a layered composite

The torsional impact response of a penny-shaped interface crack in a layered composite is considered in this study. The geometry of the composite consists of two bonded dissimilar elastic layers which are sandwiched between two half-spaces made of a different material. Laplace and Hankel transforms are used to reduce the problem to the solution of a pair of dual integral equations. These equations are solved by using an integral transform technique and the result is expressed in terms of a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind. A numerical Laplace inversion routine is used to recover the time dependence of the solution. The dynamic stress intensity factor is determined and its dependence on time, the material properties and the geometry parameters is discussed.     

Development of insertion-type peristalsis pump using pneumatic artificial muscles

This study aims to develop a new type of peristaltic pump that transports high-viscosity and solid–liquid mixture fluids. Pumps capable of transporting such fluids are essential in various situations such as factory transportation, outdoors, and emergencies. These fluids are conventionally transported by positive-displacement and rotodynamic pumps. However, solid–liquid fluids could collide with the impeller of the rotodynamic pump and thereby damage the pump, whereas the positive-displacement pump must be sufficiently large to apply high pressure to the transported fluid. A small pump that can transport these fluids would save factory space and enable outdoor applications such as dredging operations. Thus, we adopted earthworm peristalsis as a model mechanism of fluid transport within a standard plumbing infrastructure. The insertion-type peristaltic pump developed in this study uses an artificial rubber muscle to achieve an earthworm-like mechanism. The capability and energy efficiency of the mechanism is evaluated in water transportation experiments.     

Tracking topic evolution via salient keyword matching with consideration of semantic broadness for Web video discovery

A method to track topic evolution via salient keyword matching with consideration of semantic broadness for Web video discovery is presented in this paper. The proposed method enables users to understand the evolution of topics over time for discovering Web videos in which they are interested. A framework that enables extraction and tracking of the hierarchical structure, which contains Web video groups with various degrees of semantic broadness, is newly derived as follows: Based on network analysis using multimodal features, i.e., features of video contents and metadata, our method extracts the hierarchical structure and salient keywords that represent contents of each Web video group. Moreover, salient keyword matching, which is newly developed by considering salient keyword distribution, semantic broadness of each Web video group and initial topic relevance, is applied to each hierarchical structure obtained in different time stamps. Unlike methods in previous works, by considering the semantic broadness as well as the salient keyword distribution, our method can overcome the problem of the desired semantic broadness of topics being different depending on each user. Also, the initial topic relevance enables correction of the gap from an initial topic at the start of tracking. Consequently, it becomes feasible to track the evolution of topics over time for finding Web videos in which the users are interested. Experimental results for real-world datasets containing YouTube videos verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Selection of manipulator system for multiple-goal task by evaluating task completion time and cost with computational time constraints

The focus of this study is on the problem of manipulator system selection for a multiple-goal task by evaluating task completion time and cost with computational time constraints. An approach integrating system selection, structural configuration design, layout design, motion planning, and relative cost calculation is proposed to solve this problem within a reasonable computational time. In the proposed approach, multiple-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) is utilized to search for the appropriate manipulator system with appropriate structural configuration from a set of candidate systems. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) and the nearest neighborhood algorithm are employed in layout design and motion planning due to their high convergence speed. Three methods involving a random search algorithm are compared to the proposed approach through a simulation. The simulation is done with a set of tasks and the result shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Wordline voltage generating system for low-power low-voltage flashmemories

A low-power wordline voltage generating system is developed for low-voltage flash memories. The limit for the stand-by current including the operation current for the band-gap reference and the stand-by wordline voltage generator is discussed. The system was implemented on a 1.8-V 32-Mb flash memory fabricated with a 0.25-μm flash memory process and achieved with very low stand-by current of 2 μA typically, and high operating frequency of 25 MHz in read operation at 1.8 V. A low-voltage level shifter with high-speed switching is also proposed     

Large Magnetovolume Effect Induced by Embedding Ferromagnetic Clusters into Antiferromagnetic Matrix of Cobaltite Perovskite

Materials that show negative thermal expansion (NTE) have significant industrial merit because they can be used to fabricate composites whose dimensions remain invariant upon heating. In some materials, NTE is concomitant with the spontaneous magnetization due to the magnetovolume effect (MVE). Here the authors report a new class of MVE material; namely, a layered perovskite PrBaCo₂O_5.5+x (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.41), in which strong NTE [β ≈ ?3.6 × 10^?5 K^?1 (90–110 K) at x = 0.24] is triggered by embedding ferromagnetic (F) clusters into the antiferromagnetic (AF) matrix. The strongest MVE is found near the boundary between F and AF phases in the phase diagram, indicating the essential role of competition between the F‐clusters and the AF‐matrix. Furthermore, the MVE is not limited to the PrBaCo₂O_5.5+x but is also observed in the NdBaCo₂O_5.5+x . The present study provides a new approach to obtaining MVE and offers a path to the design of NTE materials.     

Development of localization system using ultrasonic sensor for an underwater robot to survey narrow environment

This paper describes a localization system for a swimming robot to survey underwater narrow environments. In that environment, external sensors cannot be set up to localize the robot position, as there are many structures and the robot moves three-dimensionally. Therefore, the position needs to be calculated only by internal sensors. In this work, a new localization method based on map-matching is proposed, referring to cross-sectional shape data cut from a three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) data as an environmental map and structural shapes measured by a range sensor. As a range sensor, an ultrasonic sensor which is two-dimensional scanning-type was developed. The reflected signals of the ultrasonic sensor have some noise. Only structural shape data are extracted from the reflected signals. The image correlation is used as the matching method. Experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed system were implemented at a mock-up environment. As a result, it was confirmed that the position was detected with an accuracy of 100 mm. The error is mainly caused by measurement error of the ultrasonic sensor that is used to calculate structural shapes. We concluded to improve the measurement accuracy of the ultrasonic sensor to reduce localization error.