In this paper, we design a terminal sliding mode controller based on self-recurrent wavelet neural network (SRWNN) for the second-order nonlinear systems with model uncertainties. The terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) method can drive the tracking errors to zero within finite time in comparison with the classical sliding mode control (CSMC) method. In addition, the TSMC method has advantages such as the improved performance, robustness, reliability and precision. We employ the SRWNN to approximate model uncertainties. The weights of SRWNN are trained by adaptation laws induced from Lyapunov stability theorem. Finally, we carry out simulations for Duffing system and the wing rock phenomena to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.

This paper presents ripple-free method that can occur in multirate controller design. The conventional multirate input controller has the problem that the ripple occurs in track-following because of chattering phenomenon in control input signal. In order to resolve the problem of rippling, it was proposed to eliminate the ripple phenomenon using feedforward compensator. This paper makes explains problems in conventional ripple-tree multirate controller and introduces a multirate controller design method applying lifting technique based on current estimators in condition space. Using the ripple-tree multirate controller, we show that chattering does not occur in the control input signal through applying the final value theorem from the viewpoint of discrete-time transformation. Also, this study proves that the ripple of the proposed controller decreases with the increase of this sampling frequency and, when sampling frequency is fixed, it decreases with the increase of the control input period.

This paper presents a rank-constrained linear matrix inequality(LMI) approach to simultaneous linear-quadratic(LQ) optimal control by static output feedback. Simultaneous LQ optimal control is formulated as an LMI optimization problem with a nonconvex rank condition. An iterative penalty method recently developed is applied to solve this rank-constrained LMI optimization problem. Numerical experiments are performed to illustrate the proposed method, and the results are compared with those of previous work.

This paper presents a target sate estimator(TSE) with low pass filter for improving the gun driving command. The ballistic computer uses target information such as predicted range, velocity, acceleration of a target to generate the gun command. We adopt the finite impulse response(FIR) filter as our TSE to shorten calculation time for the driving command and due to its inherent stability property. We also introduce a post-processing filter to reduce the high frequency components in the output signal of a TSE which may cause instability of gun driving. The first order low pass filter has been designed based on $H{\infty}$ criteria considering the noise characteristics. To show the validity of the present scheme, simulation results are given for the overall gun driving system including aircraft target information.

When a high-energy ultrasound propagates through a solid body that contains a crack or a delamination, the two faces of the defect do not ordinarily vibrate in unison, and dissipative phenomena such as friction, rubbing and clapping between the faces will convert some of the vibrational energy to heat. By combining this heating effect with infrared imaging, one can detect a subsurface defect in material efficiently. In this paper a detection of the welding defect of thin SUS 304 plates using the UIR (ultrasonic infrared imaging) technology is described. A low frequency (20kHz) ultrasonic transducer was used to infuse the welded thin SUS 304 plates with a short pulse of sound for 280ms. The ultrasonic source has a maximum power of 2kW. The surface temperature of the area under inspection is imaged by a thermal infrared camera that is coupled to a fast frame grabber in a computer. The hot spots, which are a small area around the defect tip and heated up highly, are observed. From the sequence of the thermosonic images, the location of defective or inhomogeneous regions in the welded thin SUS 304 plates can be detected easily.

This paper presents development of an special metal hydride(SMH) actuator system using a peltier module. The newly developed simple SMH actuator, consisting of the plated hydrogen-absorbing alloy as a power source, Peltier elements as a heat source and a cylinder with metal bellows as a functioning part, has been developed. The SMH actuator is characterized by its small size, low weight, noiseless operation and a compliance similar to that of human body. A new SMH actuator that uses reversible reactions between the heat energy and mechanical energy of a hydrogen absorbing alloy. It is well known that hydrogen-absorbing alloys can reversibly absorb and desorb a large amount of hydrogen, more than about 1000 times of their own volume. To improve the thermal conductivity of the hydrogen-absorbing alloy, an electro-less copper plating has been carried out. For this purpose, the effects of the electro-less copper plating and the dynamic characteristics of the SMH actuator have been studied. The hydrogen equilibrium pressure increases and hydrogen is desorbed by heating the hydrogen-absorbing alloys, whereas by cooling the alloys, the hydrogen equilibrium pressure decreases and hydrogen is absorbed. The SMH actuator has the characteristic of being light and easy to use. Therefore, it is suitable for medical and rehabilitation applications.

This paper presents a method for real-time face detection and tracking which combined Adaboost and Camshift algorithm. Adaboost algorithm is a method which selects an important feature called weak classifier among many possible image features by tuning weight of each feature from learning candidates. Even though excellent performance extracting the object, computing time of the algorithm is very high with window size of multi-scale to search image region. So direct application of the method is not easy for real-time tasks such as multi-task OS, robot, and mobile environment. But CAMshift method is an improvement of Mean-shift algorithm for the video streaming environment and track the interesting object at high speed based on hue value of the target region. The detection efficiency of the method is not good for environment of dynamic illumination. We propose a combined method of Adaboost and CAMshift to improve the computing speed with good face detection performance. The method was proved for real image sequences including single and more faces.

In this paper, we developed a new hybrid mobile robot which can climb stairs and go over thresholds by crawl gait with embedded real-time control software. This robot is also categorized into hybrid robot that has advantages of wheeled mobile robot and legged mobile robot, but adopts gait feature of crocodile named belly crawl. We imitated the belly crawl using four legs of 2 DOF, four omni-directional wheels, and embedded control software which controls legs and wheels. This software is developed using RTAI/Linux, real-time drivers. As a result, the new hybrid mobile robot has crawl gait. Using this feature, the new hybrid mobile robot can climb stairs and go over thresholds just by path planning of each leg with size of stairs and thresholds, and computing the movement distance of robot body center without considering stability. The performance of our new hybrid mobile robot is verified via experiments.

A mobile robot localization problem can be classified into following three sub-problems as an observation likelihood model, a motion model and a filtering technique. So far, we have developed the range sensor based, integrated localization scheme, which can be used in human-coexisting real environment such as a science museum and office buildings. From those experiences, we found out that there are several significant issues to be solved. In this paper, we focus on three key issues, and then illustrate our solutions to the presented problems. Three issues are listed as follows: (1) Investigation of design requirements of a desirable observation likelihood model, and performance analysis of our design (2) Performance evaluation of the localization result by computing the matching error (3) The semi-global localization scheme to deal with localization failure due to abrupt wheel slippage In this paper, we show the significance of each concept, developed solutions and the experimental results. Experiments were carried out in a typical modern building environment, and the results clearly show that the proposed solutions are useful to develop practical and integrated localization schemes.

In this paper, modified two-port time-domain passivity approach is proposed for stable bilateral control of teleoperators under time-varying communication delay. We separate input and output energy at each port of a bilateral controller, and propose a sufficient condition for satisfying the passivity of the bilateral controller including time-delay. Output energy at the master port should be less than the transmitted input energy from the slave port with time-delay, and output energy at the slave port should be less than the transmitted input energy from the master port with time-delay. For satisfying above two conditions, two passivity controllers are attached at each port of the bilateral controller. A packet reflector with wireless internet connection is used to introduce serious time-varying communication delay of teleoperators. Average amount of time-delay was about 190(msec) for round trip, and varying between 175(msec) and 275(msec). Moreover some data packet was lost during the communication due to UDP data communication. Even under the serious time-varying delay and packet loss communication condition, the proposed approach can achieve stable teleoperation in free motion and hard contact as well.

The visual inspection method that depends on human's eyes has some problem that a lot of variations happen in examination according to bodily, spiritual state of the checker. We automate remocon inspection process using CCD camera. Our developed inspection system can be used in any remocon production line without the user's big handling. Our inspection system was developed using PC, CCD Camera, Visual C++ for universal work place. The accuracy of proposed system was improved about 3.2[%] than the conventional pattern matching method and the processing time was decreased about 119[ms]. Also we showed that our inspection system is more robust to lighting circumstances.

We propose a new-focusing method for test handlers of compact camera module (CCM), The MMD (max-min difference) method is applied to calculate the focus value quickly considering the noisy output of CCM. Also, the fuzzy search method is applied to find the maximum focus value effectively. We design a fuzzy processor to control the lens position by focus values and brightness values, which improves the focusing performance in the sense of speed and processor memory. The proposed method is implemented by computer program and installed at the CCM test handler machines. The simulation results are presented to verify the usefulness of the proposed method.

This paper is concerned with a performance analysis using a wired/wireless hybrid network based on Common Industrial Protocol(CIP). For the performance analysis, the data transmission time, average end-to-end delay and throughput between DeviceNet and the wireless devices are investigated. The experimental results show the performance in terms of the polling/COS service time of CIP based hybrid network.

This paper presents an application study of a model predictive control based commercial package PCTP to real chemical processes. The first case study concerns a product purity control of a splitter process which distillates styrene from undesired component ethyl-benzene produced from ethyl-benzene dehydrogenation reaction. The second case study is about a temperature control of ethyl-benzene dehydrogenation reactor and an excess oxygen control of the fired heater. Optimum control structure for MPC application is developed for each case study. The application results show a significant improvement in control performance and stability.

Palletizing tasks are necessary to promote efficient storage and shipping of boxed products. These tasks, however, involve some of the most monotonous and physically demanding labor in the factory. Thus, many types of robot palletizing systems have been developed, although many robot motion commands still depend on the teach pendant. That is, the operator inputs the motion command lines one by one. This is very troublesome and, most importantly, the user must know how to type the code. We propose a new GUI(Graphic User Interface) for the palletizing system that is more convenient. To do this, we used the PLP "Fast Algorithm" and 3-D auto-patterning visualization. The 3-D patterning process includes the following steps. First, an operator can identify the results of the task and edit them. Second, the operator passes the position values of objects to a robot simulator. Using those positions, a palletizing operation can be simulated. We chose a widely used industrial model and analyzed the kinematics and dynamics to create a robot simulator. In this paper we propose a 3-D patterning algorithm, 3-D robot-palletizing simulator, and modified trajectory generation algorithm, an "overlapped method" to reduce the computing load.