Design of nonlinear controllers for active vehicle suspension with state constraints

Design of active vehicle suspension has tradeoffs between three main performance metrics (passenger comfort, suspension deflection and road holding ability). It has been known that each performance can be achieved by H _∞ controller and they can be gathered by LPV (Linear Parameter Varying) method. However, because the suspension deflection limit was not explicitly considered, this limit may be exceeded. In this paper, the authors propose a “reference shaping“ based method in order to improve the control performance. In this approach, a “virtual reference” signal is imposed to the system such that the suspension deflection is kept small. The effectiveness of the approach is examined by numerical simulations. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008     

Phosphonitrilic chloride: 37. Reaction of 1,1-diamino-3,3,5,5-tetrakis (2,2,2-trifluoroethoxy) cyclotriphosphazene with organosilanes

The Spiro compound N₃P₃(OCH₂CF₃)₄(NH)₂Si(CH₃)₂ formed by reaction of 1,1-diamino-3,3,5,5-tetrakis(2,2,2-trifluoroethoxy)cyclotriphosphazene N₃P₃(OCH₂CF₃)₄(NH₂)₂ and dimethyldichlorosilane Cl₂Si(CH₃)₂ is a yellow or orange coloured oil soluble in organic solvents, vapourized at 160°C without decomposition, and not hydrolysed appreciably in boiling water. Linear compounds are formed by reaction of N₃P₃(OCH₂CF₃)₄(NH₂)₂ with diphenyldichlorosilane or phenyltrichlorosilane owing to hindrance of the phenyl radical. These compounds are amorphous or tacky solids, soluble in organic solvents and stable to water.     

Gait-based human age estimation using age group-dependent manifold learning and regression

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Human age estimation from gait is expected to be an important technology for a variety of applications such as automatic customer counting for marketing research...     

Processing sodium tellurite melts in low gravity drop shaft: Part II Melt solidification and glass formation

The effect of gravity on glass formation and crystallization of the Na₂Ocdot;8TeO₂ (NT₈) and Na₂O4TeO₂ (NT₄) melts were investigated using the low gravity drop shaft at the Japan Microgravity Center (JAMIC). This drop shaft produces a low gravity of <10^–3 g for 10 s during free-fall and about 8 to 10 g for 5 s during deceleration of the capsule. The glass initially adhered to a small platinum heating coil was re-melted in low gravity. The melt detached from the heating coil during the high-g period and solidified after being splattered on a plate (substrate) located 4 cm below the heating coil. The parameters that were varied for the drop shaft experiments were the melt temperature and the substrate material on which the melt splattered. Like what was observed at 1-g (ground), the NT₈ splatters from the drop shaft experiments always formed glass, being independent of the melt temperature and the substrate material used. The splatters from the NT₄ melts partially crystallized in all the drop shaft experiments, even though this melt is an excellent glass former at 1-g. The splatter on a substrate of higher cooling ability such as copper had a smaller amount of crystals than the splatter on a substrate of smaller cooling ability such as glass or alumina. The glass transition temperature, heat capacity in the glass transition region, activation energy for crystallization and the infrared (IR) spectra for the drop shaft splatters were not significantly different from those for the similar splatters prepared at 1-g. However, the crystallization temperature of all the drop shaft splatters was 5 to 10°C lower than that of their 1-g counterparts. This result suggests that the NT₈ and NT₄ melts solidified under drop shaft conditions are less resistant to crystallization than the similar melts solidified at 1-g.     

Growth of crystallized Ge films from VHF inductively-coupled plasma of H2-diluted GeH4

We have studied the Ge crystalline nucleation and film growth on quartz substrate at 250 °C from inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) of GeH₄ diluted with H₂. The ICP was generated by supplying 60 MHz power to an external single-turn antenna which was placed on a quartz plate window of a stainless steel reactor and parallel to the substrate. We have found that the growth rate is significantly increased when the preferential growth of the (110) plane becomes pronounced after the formation of randomly-oriented crystalline network. The (110) oriented Ge films, of which average crystallinity is as high as 70%. The integrated intensity ratio of TO phonons in crystalline phase to those in disordered phase, were grown at a rate of ∼ 4.0 nm/s after the formation of amorphous incubation layer with a thickness of ∼ 0.1 μm on quartz.     

Three resected cases of pulmonary cryptococcosis

Case 1 was a 53-year-old female who had a small nodule in the right S3 segment on chest CT. As she was not diagnosed by transbronchial lung biopsy (TBLB), open thoracotomy was performed. Case 2 was a 65-year-old female who had a nodule with pleural indentation in the right S6 segment. As this nodule showed difficulty to differentiate from small lung carcinoma, thoracoscopic surgery was performed. Case 3 was a 63-year-old female who had multiple lesions with cavity in the left S4 and S5 segments, which was preoperatively diagnosed by TBLB. She was performed thoracoscopic partial resection of the lingular segment because of poor response to antimycotic agents. All cases received preventive antimycotic agents for one or two months after the operation. There was no recurrence or postoperative meningitis. Thoracoscopic surgery is the effective procedure for the diagnosis and treatment of the localized pulmonary cryptococcosis.     

A case of intrathoracic lipoma arising from the chest wall resected by video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery

We present a case of lipoma arising from the chest wall spreading into the thoracic cavity. Although asymptomatic, a 65-year-old female was pointed out an abnormal shadow on the chest X-ray film taken at the mass survey. The tumor, measuring 3.4 x 3.0 x 2.0 cm in diameter, was surgically removed under thoracoscopic visualization through a small thoracotomy incision of lt. 1st intercostal space, and the diagnosis of lipoma was confirmed postoperatively by histopathologic examination.     

Clothing-invariant gait identification using part-based clothing categorization and adaptive weight control

Variations in clothing alter an individual's appearance, making the problem of gait identification much more difficult. If the type of clothing differs between the gallery and a probe, certain parts of the silhouettes are likely to change and the ability to discriminate subjects decreases with respect to these parts. A part-based approach, therefore, has the potential of selecting the appropriate parts. This paper proposes a method for part-based gait identification in the light of substantial clothing variations. We divide the human body into eight sections, including four overlapping ones, since the larger parts have a higher discrimination capability, while the smaller parts are more likely to be unaffected by clothing variations. Furthermore, as there are certain clothes that are common to different parts, we present a categorization for items of clothing that groups similar clothes. Next, we exploit the discrimination capability as a matching weight for each part and control the weights adaptively based on the distribution of distances between the probe and all the galleries. The results of the experiments using our large-scale gait dataset with clothing variations show that the proposed method achieves far better performance than other approaches.     

Processing sodium tellurite melts in low gravity drop shaft: part I Melt evaporation and formation of solid particles from vapor

Glasses of Na₂O·8TeO₂ and Na₂O·4TeO₂ compositions adhered to a small platinum heating coil (2 to 3 mm ID, 5 to 6 mm long) were melted and evaporated in low gravity using the drop shaft at the Japan Microgravity Center (JAMIC). The gravity level attained during the 10 s free fall was in the order of 10^–3 g. The species evaporated from the melt in low gravity generally formed a spherical smoke cloud surrounding the melt, whose size depended on the melt temperature and also on the time the melt evaporated in low gravity. The shape of the cloud was found to depend on several other factors, namely, the uniformity of heating, amount of melt, and the presence of gas bubbles in the melt. The evaporating species formed nearly perfect spheres of pure TeO₂ whose diameter ranged from 0.05 to 20 m. The size of TeO₂ microspheres increased with increasing melt temperature and time in low gravity, and was 5 to 10 times larger than that of similar particles prepared at 1-g.