Standardizing signs on bublic information in the New Coastal Area

The public information signs ( The term public information signs will be abbreviated to public signs in the following text.)in the urban areas not only offer convenience for people to move around, but also reflect the level of development and progress of those areas. It is essential to the creative development and uplifting of the New Costal Area (thereafter, NCA) to have a good understanding of its present situation with regard to its public signs, to discuss the related issues in the development, to work out a system that is up to international standard and develop its own standards in the course of implementing the national strategies on standardizing public signs.     

Connectivity Infrastructure and Components for POCT Environments - Overall Infrastructure

Connectivity infrastructure, hardware and software components for point-of-care testing (POCT) environments at medium-to-large sized hospitals with expected number of POCT instruments in the order of hundreds or thousands are described. The instruments include both network-ready and non-network-ready devices. The latter are connected to the network by means of a hardware-based Instrument Network Adapter. Instrument messages are converted to standardized form and, depending on message content, are routed and delivered to appropriate destinations by a software-based Message Routing System consisting of a Message Router and a Delivery Agent. Target information systems consist of departmental and central information systems.     

ROBUST CONTROL OF GAS TUNGSTEN ARC WELDING SYSTEM

The robust control law for gas tungsten arc welding dynamic process, which is a typical sampled-data system and full of uncertainties, is presented. By using the Lyapunov second method, the robust control and robust optimal control for a class of sampled-data systems whose underlying continuous-time systems are subjected to structured uncertainties are discussed in time-domain. As a result, some sufficient conditions of robust stability and the corresponding robust control laws are derived. All these results are designed by solving a class of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and a class of dynamic optimization problem with LMIs constraints respectively. An example adapted under some experimental conditions in the dynamic process of gas tungsten arc welding system in which the controlled variable is the backside width of weld pool and controlling variable pulse duty ratio, is worked out to illustrate the proposed results, it is shown that the sampling period is the crucial design parameter.     

The development and control of a flexible-spine for a human-form robot

In this paper, the development of a robot which has a flexible spine is presented. By embedding a multi-d.o.f. soft structure into a robot body as a spine, the robot can increase its ability to absorb shock and to work in various environment such as narrow places. As a result of these abilities, the robot can expand its opportunity to work in the human environment. Moreover, its motion could be more natural. The developed full-body human-form robot has a five-jointed flexible spine. Each joint (vertebra) has 3 d.o.f. Between each vertebrae is a 'disk' made of silicone rubber. The spine is controlled by eight tendons, whose tensions can be controlled using tension sensors and locally distributed microcontrollers. This paper describes the development of the flexible spine and the control of the posture of the spine and body.     

Simplified GIS based methodology to quantify risk factors for alternative route evaluation for transport of radioactive materials

Abstract

The risk associated with the transport of radioactive materials can be impacted by many factors of the transport system, as well as by the area through which the materials may travel. Informed decision making requires a quantitative evaluation of pertinent information or conditions. Geographic information systems are often used to display spatial information. The authors have developed a simplified methodology that can be used to quantify the conditions that impact risk over a segment of a transport route. The methodology aggregates the impact of a condition based on the magnitude of the impacting condition and its location with respect to the transport corridor. This paper is a proof-of-concept demonstration for the methodology for the factors of the population in the vicinity of the roadway and the highway design criteria with respect to access ramps and medians. The methodology is particularly suited to a comparison of alternative routes for decision making, where an easily implemented methodology is needed to narrow down multiple alternatives to those few requiring a more detailed analysis.     

Improved design methodology for an existing automated transportation system with automated guided vehicles in a seaport container terminal

In this paper, we propose an improved design methodology to meet the changing demands of an existing automated container transportation system in which automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are used. This system is called an AGV transportation system. To achieve an improved design, it is essential to detect and correct any occurring bottlenecks. For this purpose, we exhaustively enumerate design proposals by constructing a logic tree. As a case study to verify the proposed methodology, we apply the methodology to an existing AGV transportation system. From the enumerated design proposals, we suggest design policies by considering the actual constraints of the transportation system. Finally, we redesign the transportation system as rapidly as possible. On the other hand, we keep system balancing into account; then, we derive a suitable demand and input number of AGVs under given specifications for a transportation system.     

Basic Behavior Acquisition with Multisensor Integration for a Robot System

A robot system generally has several degrees of freedom of motions as well as different kinds of sensors. Basic behaviors are planned based on these sensors' feedback. We take advantage of the Jacobian matrix to describe the differential relations between the sensor feedback and the motor motions. Hence, the relation between two sensors could be formulated by the two respective Jacobian matrices of both sensors to motors. Multisensor integration can, thus, be employed for better performance of the robot system. Experiments of basic behavior acquisition like gazing and posture control of a robot head are conducted. The performances of the two basic behaviors before and after multisensor integration are compared, which demonstrate the performance and robustness of the proposed multisensor integration method.     

An inertial navigation system for small autonomous underwater vehicles

A Small AUV Navigation System (SANS) is being developed at the Naval Postgraduate School. The SANS is an integrated GPS/inertial navigation system composed of low-cost, small-size components. It is designed to demonstrate the feasibility of using a low-cost inertial measurement unit to navigate between intermittent GPS fixes. This paper reports recent improvements to the SANS hardware, latest testing results and development of an asynchronous Kalman filter for improved position estimation.     

Two Tendon-Driven Systems Using Pneumatic Balloons

In recent years, Japanese society has been aging, creating a shortage of young workers. Robots are expected to be useful to perform tasks such as rehabilitation therapy, nursing elderly people and day-to-day work support for elderly people. In particular, robots that are designed for use in the fields of medical care and welfare must be safe for the human environment because they often come into contact with humans. Furthermore, robots must have dexterity that is similar to that of humans. Under these circumstances, tendon-driven systems of two types using flexible silicone rubber materials have been developed. They are lightweight and have characteristics resembling those of human muscle. This paper describes the basic features and mechanisms of two tendon-driven systems that we have developed as a soft actuator. Furthermore, basic properties of the system are evaluated and compared with those of human muscles.