The goal of total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is to replace patient's knee joint with artificial implants in order to restore normal knee joint functions. Since mismatched knee implants often cause a critical balancing problem and short durability, designing a well-fitted implant to a patient's knee joint is essential to improve surgical outcomes. We developed a software system that three-dimensionally (3D) simulates TKR surgery based upon 3D knee models reconstructed from computed tomography (CT) imaging. The main task of the system was to extract precise 3D anatomical parameters of a patient's knee that were directly used to determine a custom fit implant and to virtually perform TKR surgery. The virtual surgery was simulated by amputating a 3D knee model and positioning the determined implant components on the amputated knee. The test result shows that it is applicable to derive surgical parameters, determine individualized implant components, rehearse the whole surgical procedure, and train medical staff or students for actual TKR surgery. The feasibility and verification of the proposed system is described with examples.

Large number of part design such as for aircraft and automotive development is preceded by functional or sectional design groups for efficiency. With the assembly development of large number of parts, interferences and gaps can be found when the parts and sub-assemblies by those design groups are to be assembled. When rainwater come into the space among parts and is not be drained sufficiently, rainwater within the structure can backflow to gaps or unexpected outlets, which may cause severe problems of part corrosion and electric shock. This research has developed a method and a program to simulate backflow of rainwater within space among parts, which can find unexpected outlets and gaps as in real situation. The developed program can not only simulate up and downstream of liquid, but also the flow with multiple channels of division and joining. The developed method can also be applied to aircraft and ship design process.

High tibial osteotomy (HTO) is a widely accepted treatment for unicompartmental osteoarthritis of the knee and other lower extremity deformities, particularly for young and active patients. However, it is generally recognized as a technically demanding procedure. Thus the limitations of conventional surgical methods have been reported. Currently, the use of computer-aided surgery (CAS) system for successful surgery was increased. However it has been reported many problems such as expensive equipment, infection or fracture caused by inserting half-pin and delaying surgery. Therefore we propose a novel method which can be tracked by using tracking-pin inserted in arbitrary locations of the femur and tibia, and fluoroscopic images obtained from G-arm of antero-posterior and lateral-medial.

In injection molding industries, CAE analyses are generally used to find out problems predicted during the process of manufacturing. The results of CAE analyses consist of much in formation such as meshes and stress, so that the size of data is pretty large. To reduce the size of the data and to make it easy to share, the CAE result to JT translator is proposed in this paper. The translator consists of three modules to translate CAE result to JT format; Extracting module gets ASCII data of product shape and the result values of CAE analysis. Sorting module and mapping module make an element data set and JT file with the data extracted from Extracting module respectively. To the JT files, engineers are able to append product properties and their comments, so that they can share the whole history of the analysis process. In addition, our case study shows that the size of JT format is reduced by almost 90% of its original data format.

Product systems are quickly and frequently changed because Product Life Cycle is continuously reduced and adopting new product is steadily fast. Thus, various studies are progressed using simulation which is one of digital manufacturing. The research that is concerning simulation of control verification for shorten the commissioning which has a lot of trial and error is in progress. Also, simulation of control verification has strength that it can catch the errors in advance. However, a control program in simulation needs virtual factory for representation of control information. For this reason, excessive time and energy is put into controlling the virtual factory. So, in this paper, we construct library which is using exist data, in order to overcome limitation of these problems. Furthermore, we suggest methodology which can model and verify the process more speedy using library. Especially, we give body to the BB/BR Line process which has many altering equipment and need high technology effectively using physical and logical modeling. We can set up a control simulation environment very rapidly, as well as cut process time down using our suggestion.

As smartphones came into wide use recently, it has become increasingly popular not only among young people, but middle-aged people as well. Most smartphones use capacitive full touch screen, so touch commands are made by fingers unlike the PDAs in the past that use touch pens. In this case, a significant portion of the smartphone's screen is blocked by the finger so it is impossible to see the screens around the finger touching the screen, and difficulty occurs in precise control used for small buttons such as qwerty keyboard. To solve this problem, this research proposes a method of using simple AR markers to improve the interface of smartphones. Sticker-form marker is attached to fingernails and placed in front of the smartphone camera Then, the camera image of the marker is analyzed to determine the orientation of the marker to perceive as onRelease() or onPress() of the mouse depending on the marker's angle of rotation, and use its position as the position of the mouse cursor. This method can enable click, double-click, drag-and-drop used in PCs as well as touch, slide, long-touch-input in smartphones. Through this research, smartphone inputs can be made more precise and simple, and show the possibility of the application of a new concept of smartphone interface.

The increasing complexity of complex buildings, such as high-rise buildings and underground subway stations, presents new challenges to firefighters. In a fire in complex buildings, the importance of the collaboration between firefighters is clear. The increased demand on firefighter training for such environment is now evident. Due to cost, time, and safety issues, it is impossible to experience a real fire in such environments for training. In addition, the use of real fire for training does not enable repeatable training and the evaluation of the training is difficult. We developed a team-based firefighter training simulator for complex buildings using the virtual reality technology. It provides the training and evaluation of firefighting and mission-based team training. To model real fire phenomena in virtual space, a numerical analysis method based on fire dynamics is used. To achieve an immersive virtual environment, an augmented reality technique for the compensation of real world image and a haptic technique for heat experience are adopted. The developed training simulator can help the firefighter to respond to large and complex firefighting scenarios, while maintaining the safety of the trainees.

Esthetic appeal of a product is often affected by the appearance quality of seams forming between components of the product. The appearance quality of seams is, however, assessed in a very subjective and qualitative manner that heavily depends on the evaluator. This paper presents a preliminary study to quantify such assessment by formulating a quantitative index which is a linear function of the seam gap sizes, seam gap ranges, and the size uniformity of seam gaps. By considering a highly simplified problem of a drawer system and utilizing subjective assessments by twenty evaluators, the index has been formulated. The validity of this index has been confirmed by observing its behavior with changes of the component tolerances. Also, the utility of this index has been demonstrated through a selective assembly scheme applied to the drawer system problem. Though the index formulated in this study for seam appearance quality may be useful, future studies are necessary to make the model readily applicable to real problems.