Highly ordered anodic alumina nanotemplate with about 14 nm diameter

A novel method for the fabrication of highly ordered nanopore arrays with very small diameter of 14 nm was demonstrated by using low-temperature anodization. Two-step anodization was carried out at 25 V, sulfuric acid concentration of 0.3 M, and electrolyte temperature of −15 °C. After anodization, a regular pore array with mean diameter of 14 nm and interpore distance of 65 nm was formed. The pore diameter and regular arrangement were confirmed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and fast Fourier transformation (FFT), respectively. The present results strongly suggest that the diameter of pores in a highly ordered alumina template can be reduced by lowering the anodization temperature.     

Impact of Elaboration on Socially Desirable Responding and the Validity of Biodata Measures.

The current study investigated the impact of requiring respondents to elaborate on their answers to a biodata measure on mean scores, the validity of the biodata item composites, subgroup mean differences, and correlations with social desirability. Results of this study indicate that elaborated responses result in scores that are much lower than nonelaborated responses to the same items by an independent sample. Despite the lower mean score on elaborated items, it does not appear that elaboration affects the size of the correlation between social desirability and responses to biodata items or that it affects criterion-related validity or subgroup mean differences in a practically significant way. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Virtual target tracking of mobile robot and its application to formation control

A virtual target tracking approach is proposed for kinematic control of mobile robot. In the controller, linear and angular velocity inputs are generated by using the local data of robot position and orientation along with the estimated velocity of target object. Applying the proposed approach to a cooperative robot group with arbitrary number of multiple mobile robots, it is possible to create various robot formations for cooperative navigation and tracking of moving object. The developed controller is shown to be stable and convergent through theoretical proof and a series of experiments.     

A hybrid SOF-PID controller for a MIMO biped robot

The application of the hybrid self-organizing fuzzy (SOF) PID controller to a multiinput multioutput nonlinear biped robot is studied in this article. The SOF-PID controller was initially studied by H.B. Kazemian in 1998. Actually, his SOF-PID controller has limits. The supervisory capacity of the SOF-PID controller can adjust only certain kinds of parameters. Here the hybrid SOF-PID controller is introduced to tune some kinds of parameters, and it was tested on a MIMO biped robot. In the experiment, the hybrid SOF-PID controller shows a better performance than the SOF-PID. This work was presented in part at the 10th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, February 4–6, 2005     

Sliding mode cutting force regulator for turning processes

Continuous sliding mode control is applied to turning processes for cutting force regulation. The motivation of the use of the slide mode control scheme is to solve the nonlinearity problem caused by the feedrate override command element in the commercial CNC machine tool. When the adaptive control algorithm is applied to the commercial CNC machine tool, it is one of the practical methods that the programmed feedrate is overridden after the control algorithm is carried out. However, most CNC lathe manufacturers offer limited number of data bits for feedrate override, thus resulting in nonlinear behavior of the machine tools. Such nonlinearity brings ‘quantized' or discrete effect so that the optimal feedrate is rounded off before being fed into the CNC system. To compensate for this problem, continuous sliding mode control is applied. Simulation and experimental results are presented in comparison with those obtained from applying adaptive control which is a widely used approach in cutting force regulation. Adaptive control loses its effectiveness in the presence of nonlinearity since it generally requires linear parametrization of the control law or the system dynamics. Experiments are conducted under various machining conditions, subject to changes in spindle speed, material of work-piece, and type of machining process. The suggested slide mode controller shows smoother cutting force fluctuation, which cannot be achieved by the conventional adaptive controller. The experimental set-up reflects the emphasis on the practicality of the sliding mode controller. In order to avoid the use of a dynamometer in the course of measuring the cutting force, the indirect cutting force measuring system is used by means of feed drive servo-motor current sensing.     

Variable block-based deblocking filter for H.264/AVC on low-end and low-bit rates terminals

H.264/AVC supports variable block motion compensation, multiple reference frames, 1/4-pixel motion vector accuracy, and in-loop deblocking filter, compared with previous video coding standards. While these coding techniques are major functions for video compression improvement, they lead to high computational complexity at the same time. For the H.264 video coding techniques to be actually applied on low-end/low-bit rates terminals more extensively, it is essential to improve the coding efficiency. Currently the H.264 deblocking filter, which can improve the subjective quality of video, is hardly used on low-end terminals due to computational complexity.In this paper, we propose an enhanced method of deblocking filter that efficiently reduces the blocking artifacts occurring during the low-bit rates video coding. In the ‘variable block-based deblocking filter (VBDF)’ proposed in this paper, the temporal and spatial characteristics of moving pictures are extracted using the variable block-size information of motion compensation, the filter mode is classified into four different modes according to the moving-picture characteristics, and the adaptive filtering is executed in the separate modes. The proposed VBDF can reduce the blocking artifacts, prevent excessive blurring effects, and achieve about 30–40% computational speedup at about the same PSNR compared with the existing methods.     

An iterative learning control theory for a class of nonlinear dynamic systems

An iterative learning control scheme is presented for a class of nonlinear dynamic systems which includes holonomic systems as its subset. The control scheme is composed of two types of control methodology: a linear feedback mechanism and a feedforward learning strategy. At each iteration, the linear feedback provides stability of the system and keeps its state errors within uniform bounds. The iterative learning rule, on the other hand, tracks the entire span of a reference input over a sequence of iterations. The proposed learning control scheme takes into account the dominant system dynamics in its update algorithm in the form of scaled feedback errors. In contrast to many other learning control techniques, the proposed learning algorithm neither uses derivative terms of feedback errors nor assumes external input perturbations as a prerequisite. The convergence proof of the proposed learning scheme is given under minor conditions on the system parameters.     

Development of a robotic system for the bed-ridden

The ability to live without the help of a caretaker enhances the quality of life of those who are bed-ridden or confined to a wheel-chair. A lot of systems have been proposed to support the daily life of bed-ridden. A smart home, especially a bed-type robot system, can help the movement and action of patients.This paper discusses the development of an intelligent bed robot system (IBRS), which can help the elderly and the disabled have independent life in bed. The IBRS is a special bed equipped with two robot arms and an array of pressure sensors attached to the mattress. The pressure distribution on the mattress is used to estimate the pose of the patient, and an appropriate assistance is provided by the robot arms. The proposed system has been tested experimentally for its effectiveness while maximizing the therapeutic outcome.     

An experimental study on heat transfer characteristics for a horizontal tubular array in a high-temperature fluidized bed

Experiments were performed with an array of horizontal tubes, arranged in a regular equilateral triangular pattern, immersed in a fluidized bed. Three different bed operating temperatures were used, these being 705, 761 and 812 K. Data are reported for heat transfer between the bed and a centrally-located tube in the array. Both total and radiative heat transfer rates were measured for three different sizes of particles and for superficial velocities spanning the range from packed bed conditions to over twice the minimum fluidization velocity. Local heat transfer values, measured around the tube periphery, and integrated averages are reported for all test conditions.