Constrained minimum-time path planning for robot manipulators viavirtual knots of the cubic B-spline functions

The B-spline functions are used to generate the constrained minimum-time path for a robot manipulator. The interpolated path via B-spline functions is determined via a unique set of virtual knots so that the robot path can pass every intermediate knot and satisfy the boundary conditions. The local control property of the B-spline functions can also be utilized to simplify the involved computational complexities. The flexible polyhedron search algorithm is used to generate the near minimum-time path with velocity, acceleration, and jerk constraints on every intermediate point. This approach can simplify the formulation and procedures for generating the near minimum-time cubic B-spline path. The use of this method to generate the constrained minimum-time joint trajectories for a PUMA 560 robot is discussed as an example     

All-solution-processed blue small molecular organic light-emitting diodes with multilayer device structure

All-solution-processed multilayer blue small molecular organic light-emitting diodes are fabricated by blade coating method. Fluorescent blue host,1-(7-(9,9′-bianthracen-10-yl)- 9,9-dioctyl-9H-fluoren-2-yl)pyrene, and blue dopant, 4,4′-(1E,1′E)-2,2′-(naphthalene-2,6-diyl)bis(ethene-2,1-diyl)bis(N,N-bis(4-hexylphenyl)aniline), are used to achieve good solubility and pinhole-free thin film by solution process. The multilayer device structure with hole/electron transport layer is achieved by blade coating method without the dissolution problem between layers. The efficiency of the all-solution-processed device is 4.8 cd/A at 1200 cd/m², close to that by thermal deposition in high vacuum chamber. The device performance is optimized with the annealing temperature of TPBi layer at 50 °C.     

Thermal Stability Improvement of Vertical Conducting Green Resonant-Cavity Light-Emitting Diodes on Copper Substrates

Green light vertical-conducting resonant-cavity light-emitting diodes (RCLEDs) have been fabricated on a Cu substrate by the combination of laser lift-off and plating techniques. The structure of the RCLED/Cu is consisted of the InGaN-GaN multiple-quantum-well active layer between three layers of the dielectric TiO-SiO distributed Bragg reflector as a top mirror and an Al metal layer as a bottom mirror. It was found that the RCLED with Cu substrate presents superior thermal dissipation and a stable electroluminescence emission peak wavelength (507 nm) under a high injection current. It is attributed to the Cu substrate providing a good heat sink and effectively reducing the junction temperature.     

Catalytic Incineration of C2H5SH and Its Mixture with CH3SH over a Pt/Al2O3 Catalyst

Catalytic incineration is one of the cost-effective technologies to solve troublesome volatile organic compounds. However, some sulfur containing volatile organic compounds, such as ethyl mercaptan, may deactivate the Pt catalyst that is commonly used in the catalytic incineration process. This paper provides information on the poisoning effect of ethyl mercaptan. The catalytic incineration of ethyl mercaptan, typically emitted from the petrochemical industry, over a Pt/Al2O3 fixed-bed catalytic reactor was studied. The effects of operating parameters including inlet temperature, space velocity, C2H5SH concentration, O2 concentration, and catalyst size were characterized. Catalytic incineration on a mixture of C2H5SH with CH3SH was also tested. The results show that the conversions of C2H5SH increase as the inlet temperature increases and the space velocity decreases. For the temperature from 200–260°C, the higher the C2H5SH concentration is, the lower its conversion. The O2 concentration has a positive effect on the conversion of C2H5SH. C2H5SH has a poisoning effect on the Pt/Al2O3 catalyst, especially at lower temperature. The existence of CH3SH has no effects on the conversion of C2H5SH.     

Using Ontology and RFID Technology to Develop an Agent-Based System for Campus-Safety Management

This study proposes a distributed multi-agent system combining radio-frequency identification press technology with an ontology for special-education students in support of dynamic campus-safety management. Safety management on campus typically involves relevant supporting measures and manuals, but serious safety-related incidents continue to take place on campuses. The goal of campus security should be to identify an incident and resolve it effectively and in real time before the incident evolves into an actual crisis. Our purpose here is to improve the traceability of students involving in campus activities—that is, to identify students’ whereabouts throughout the entire school day. When an incident occurs, our system will notify the relevant parties immediately. In the present study, the agents real-time event processing increases their situational awareness and reduces the likelihood and the severity of unwanted outcomes. Basically, in this paper, we aim to demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of utilizing agent-based technologies to the special-education students.     

Database to dynamically aid probe design for virus identification.

Viral infection poses a major problem for public health, horticulture, and animal husbandry, possibly causing severe health crises and economic losses. Viral infections can be identified by the specific detection of viral sequences in many ways. The microarray approach not only tolerates sequence variations of newly evolved virus strains, but can also simultaneously diagnose many viral sequences. Many chips have so far been designed for clinical use. Most are designed for special purposes, such as typing enterovirus infection, and compare fewer than 30 different viral sequences. None considers primer design, increasing the likelihood of cross hybridization to similar sequences from other viruses. To prevent this possibility, this work establishes a platform and database that provides users with specific probes of all known viral genome sequences to facilitate the design of diagnostic chips. This work develops a system for designing probes online. A user can select any number of different viruses and set the experimental conditions such as melting temperature and length of probe. The system then returns the optimal sequences from the database. We have also developed a heuristic algorithm to calculate the probe correctness and show the correctness of the algorithm. (The system that supports probe design for identifying viruses has been published on our web page http://bioinfo.csie.ncu.edu.tw/.)     

A model to simulate surface roughness in the pad dressing process

Pad dressing, which is one of the most important planarization processes, is widely used in CMP. The estimation of surface roughness under various machining parameters (such as dressing force, diamond density of the dresser, rotational speed of the dresser, different machining paths, etc.) is essential to the pad dressing process. In this study, elastic-plastic theory and the wear model are used to construct the expression for the magnitude of material removal as a function of the indentation depth. The deformation of the pad is obtained by using elastic-plastic theory, and the material removal caused by individual micro-contacts is calculated with the help of wear theory. Finally, the macroscopic wear volume is found by summing the volumetric wear of each individual micro-contact. A parametric study is conducted to explore the influence on the surface roughness results and the pad dressing interfacial phenomena of operational parameters. The results reveal that a rapid initial improvement followed by a leveling off, manifesting a saturation effect. Moreover, the model shows that a higher dressing force with a dresser speed close to the pad speed and a moderate translation speed increase the material removal rate corresponding with a lower surface roughness dressing.     

Model reduction of digital systems using discrete Walsh series

This study discusses the application of discrete Walsh series expansion to reduce the order of a linear time-invariant digital system described byz-transfer function. The approach is based on matching the discrete Walsh spectra to determine both the coefficients of the denominator and numerator of the reduced model. The proposed method is simple for computation, can preserve the dynamic characteristic of the original model satisfactorily, and guarantees to have the same zero initial response as the original system.     

The Economical PAPR Minization Scheme for Combinative Coding Technique Applied OFDM Communication System

In this paper, we propose a new combinative scheme to combine with parity check and block coding methods for the reduction of the peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. In the proposed schemes, the simulation results shown that Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) can be reduced by 3.502 dB. The results of this mapped can be shown that PAPR is reduced. The principle of the scheme is illustrated with the specific example of an eight-carriers signal and its computer simulation results. All simulation results have compare with ideal channel case and AWGN case separately; both of cases are shown the PAPR reduced indeed. Do Horng Guo received his B.S. Degree in Electronic Engineering from National Taiwan Marine Science University, Keelung, Taiwan, in 1983, and M.S. Degree in Computer Communication from Northrop University, Los Angeles, USA, in 1986. He is enrolled in Ph.D program in Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering of Tatung University from 2001. His current interest includes wireless communication system and digital signal processing. Chau-Yun Hsu received his B.S. degree M.S. and Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Tatung Institute of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1981, 1983 and 1988, respectively. He was the lecturer in Department of Electrical Engineering of Tatung University from 1983 to 1985. From 1988 to 1997, he served as the Associate professor of Tatung University. Since 1998, he has been the Chair Professor of Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering of Tatung University. Now he is also the chair of department of Electrical Engineering of Tatung University. His current interest includes Wireless Channel Model and Estimation, Machine Learning, Digital Signal Processing and Image Processing.