Facing target sputtered iron-silicide thin film

The FeSi_x thin films with the flatness to an atomic scale for mechanical and optical applications can be grown by a facing target sputtering method. Optical properties indicate the films contain nano-crystalline FeSi₂. The nano-indentation hardness of 10 GPa was obtained. An interesting point is that Young's modulus is larger than that of the carbon-based materials with the same hardness. This means that the FeSi_x is more elastic, which could be characteristic of the chemical bonding of the FeSi₂ with the large contribution of d-electrons. Furthermore, results of the Hall measurement at room temperature shows that the films have p-type conductivity, a carrier concentration of p = 2.49 × 10²⁰ cm^− 3 and a Hall mobility of μ = 6.42 cm² V^− 1 s^− 1.     

Multi-tasking arbitration and behaviour design for human-interactive robots

Robots that interact with humans in household environments are required to handle multiple real-time tasks simultaneously, such as carrying objects, collision avoidance and conversation with human. This article presents a design framework for the control and recognition processes to meet these requirements taking into account stochastic human behaviour. The proposed design method first introduces a Petri net for synchronisation of multiple tasks. The Petri net formulation is converted to Markov decision processes and processed in an optimal control framework. Three tasks (safety confirmation, object conveyance and conversation) interact and are expressed by the Petri net. Using the proposed framework, tasks that normally tend to be designed by integrating many if–then rules can be designed in a systematic manner in a state estimation and optimisation framework from the viewpoint of the shortest time optimal control. The proposed arbitration method was verified by simulations and experiments using RI-MAN, which was developed for interactive tasks with humans.     

The effects of external stress on the cubic-tetragonal transformation in rapidly quenched ZrO2-Y2O3

The effects of the external stress on the displacive cubic (c) to tetragonal (t) transformation, taking place during rapid quenching of ZrO₂-Y₂O₃ alloys by a hammer-anvil unit, were examined through the statistical analysis of the crystallography of the product phases. The initially formed c-phase had no strong texture with respect to the stress direction. However, specific t variants among crystallographically equivalent ones were formed preferentially. From these observations, it is concluded that the applied stress plays an important role on the deformation to change the lattice during the c t transformation.     

Planning-Space Shift Motion Generation: Variable-space Motion Planning Toward Flexible Extension of Body Schema

To improve the flexibility of robotic learning, it is important to realize an ability to generate a hierarchical structure. This paper proposes a learning framework which can dynamically change the planning space depending on the structure of tasks. Synchronous motion information is utilized to generate ??modes?? and hierarchical structure of the controller is constructed based on the modes. This enables efficient planning and control in low-dimensional planning space, though the dimension of the total state space is in general very high. Three types of object manipulation tasks are tested as applications, where an object is found and used as a tool (or as a part of the body) to extend the ability of the robot. The proposed framework is expected to be a basic learning model to account for body schema acquisition including tool affordances.     

Representation of human preference using folksonomy and the idea called concept

This paper presents an application of the idea called concept for realizing more appropriate representation of human preferences. In the previous study, we proposed the new information recommendation method. Concretely, items for recommendation were selected using the idea of concept, which are impressions of users on items inferred using tagging data of a folksonomy. In the method, characteristics of items were represented by concepts, and it is expected that preferences of users can be represented by concepts as well. However, accuracy of concepts is influential in this approach. In this study, we investigated the validity of the obtained concepts using the previous proposed method, and proposed the improved derivation method of concepts. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified trough comparison experiments with the previous method.     

A mixed logic dynamical modeling formulation and optimal control of intelligent robots

By considering the dexterous hand manipulation problem as a hybrid system, we propose a mixed logic dynamical (MLD) modeling formulation which encapsulates phases of continuous motion, switching between types of motion, and occurrence of impacts. We first formulates the multi-contact manipulation system into a general nonlinear dynamical equation subject to (in)equality and complementarity constraints, then transform the constrained system to a MLD system model. Based on the derived MLD model, dexterous hand manipulation can be realized optimally via mixed integer quadric programming (MIQP) algorithm. This modeling formulation and an optimization approach are applied to a whole body manipulation task as an example.     

On the dynamic version of the minimum hand jerk criterion

This paper is concerned with the problem of trajectory formation of humanlike reaching movements. First, we review conventional criteria of optimality adopted in robotics and computational neuroscience for the prediction of reaching movements and formulate a dynamic version of the minimum hand jerk criteria. We call it a minimum driving force change criterion and check its performance for the free‐space movements. Next, we test the performance of the new criterion for the movements where the human hand is geometrically constrained by the external environment, and for the movements with flexible objects. The main feature of these movements is that the hand velocity profiles are not always bell shaped. Our simulations and initial experimental results show that the minimum driving force change criterion can roughly capture this feature and, therefore, can be a reasonable candidate for modeling of humanlike reaching movements. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Performance evaluation of compromised synchronization control mechanism for distributed virtual environment (DVE)

Synchronization in a distributed virtual environment (DVE) involves mechanisms to ensure a consistent view of a virtual world for all participants. Most applications in the DVE are related to collaborative activities that include non-contention and contention cases. Using transmission of update messages is suitable enough to support synchronization for only non-contention activity. The contention activity requires an additional mechanism to control accessing a common object for synchronization. In this paper, we present the compromised synchronization control mechanism to support both non-contention and contention activities. The mechanism employs frequent update event and multiple-lock checking to control the synchronization. Frequent update event is used to support a dynamic virtual world for non-contention activity. Multiple-lock checking is embedded to ensure consistency when accessing the common object is required simultaneously for the contention event. Performance measurement of the compromised synchronization is provided by simulation in terms of locking time, sampling event, number of logical processes, and traffic tolerance. Prototype application is also implemented to compare the result in a small scale level. Based on the simulation and experimental results, the compromised sychronization control mechanism is capable to support up to 100 participants for the non-contention activity. It provides a good performance of supporting the contention activity in a small scale. The mechanism is considered suitable for collaborative application where contention is considered a critical event.     

On a serendipity-oriented recommender system based on folksonomy

This paper proposes a recommendation method that focuses on not only predictive accuracy but also serendipity. On many of the conventional recommendation methods, items are categorized according to their attributes (a genre, an authors, etc.) by the recommender in advance, and recommendation is made using the results of the categorization. In this study, impressions of users to items are adopted as a feature of the items, and each item is categorized according to the feature. Impressions used in such categorization are prepared using folksonomy, which classifies items using tags given by users. Next, the idea of “concepts” was introduced to avoid synonym and polysemy problems of tags. “Concepts” are impressions of users on items inferred from attached tags of folksonomy. The inferring method was also devised. A recommender system based on the method was developed in java language, and the effectiveness of the proposed method was verified through recommender experiments.     

Modeling of driver's collision avoidance maneuver based on controller switching model.

This paper presents a modeling strategy of human driving behavior based on the controller switching model focusing on the driver's collision avoidance maneuver. The driving data are collected by using the three-dimensional (3-D) driving simulator based on the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE), which provides stereoscopic immersive virtual environment. In our modeling, the control scenario of the human driver, that is, the mapping from the driver's sensory information to the operation of the driver such as acceleration, braking, and steering, is expressed by Piecewise Polynomial (PWP) model. Since the PWP model includes both continuous behaviors given by polynomials and discrete logical conditions, it can be regarded as a class of Hybrid Dynamical System (HDS). The identification problem for the PWP model is formulated as the Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) by transforming the switching conditions into binary variables. From the obtained results, it is found that the driver appropriately switches the "control law" according to the sensory information. In addition, the driving characteristics of the beginner driver and the expert driver are compared and discussed. These results enable us to capture not only the physical meaning of the driving skill but the decision-making aspect (switching conditions) in the driver's collision avoidance maneuver as well.