This paper presents the development of a racing game by controlling multiple smartphones based on ad hoc communication. The proposed racing game by the smartphone-based control interface does not require any specific game console or remote controller. Thus, any multiple users who have smartphones are able to play the game in a monitor at the same time. In addition, the developed game is applicable to actual mobile robots in cases where the positions of all robots are measured, since its game unit is a mobile robot model with a differential drive. An experimental result shows that the racing game in a PC can be realized by the proposed communication interface through four iPhones based on acceleration sensors.

Many practical processes in industry have nonlinearities of some forms. One commonly encountered form is actuator saturation which can cause a detrimental effect known as integrator windup. Therefore, a strategy of attenuating the effects of integrator windup is required to guarantee the stability and performance of the overall control system. In this paper, optimal tuning of a PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) controller with an anti-windup scheme is presented to enhance the tracking performance of the PID control system in the presence of the actuator saturation. First, we investigate effective anti-windup schemes. Then, the parameters of both the PID controller and the anti-windup scheme are optimally tuned by an EA (Evolutionary Algorithm) such as the IAE (Integral of Absolute Error) is minimized. A set of simulation works on two high-order processes demonstrates the benefit of the proposed method.

An EOTS (Electro-Optical Tracking System) provides stabilized images while tracking a moving target. This paper presents a novel concept of driving the outer gimbal first for improving the maneuverability of an EOTS, contrary to the conventional inner gimbal mode. It has the advantages of faster positioning performance and stable operation in Nadir-point. Analysis of frequency responses reveal that the present scheme results in a wider control bandwidth and larger gain margin, compared to those of the previous one. The actual experimental results confirm that the maneuvering is stable although the input command has a large angular acceleration.

By performing interval analysis on the system transfer function, we propose an improved method of control loop design for a DC/DC converter. In conventional design methods, the effect of system parameter change due to the specified range of operating conditions and production tolerances in power components should be checked a posteriori, because this may result in a transfer function shift and performance degradation. In the proposed method, a possible parameter change is considered a priori in the design step in order that the desired crossover frequency and sufficient phase margin can be achieved even in the worst case condition. As an illustrative example, a buck dc/dc converter is designed by two different methods and performance comparisons are performed to verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

In this paper, a 3D coordinates acquisition method for a mechanical assembly is developed by using multiview X-ray images. The multi-view X-ray images of an object are obtained by a rotary table. From the rotation transformation, it is possible to obtain the 3D coordinates of corresponding edge points on multi-view X-ray images by triangulation. The edge detection algorithm in this paper is based on the attenuation characteristic of the X-ray. The 3D coordinates of the object points are represented on a graphic display, which is used for the inspection of a mechanical assembly.

This paper proposes the development of a new method for online analysis which measured acid concentration in a pickling line. Pickling is the most important step to remove surface scale layers and is strongly depending on the exactly controlled pickling liquor composition. Today, there is no feasible system available for the online control of pickling lines. Within this paper, new methods for online analysis of pickling liquors have been tested and implemented into an overall pickling process control tool. This method measured simultaneously the hydrochloric acid and iron ion concentration in a solution of hydrochloric acid by measuring the ultrasonic speed, the solution temperature, and the electrical conductivity. Experimental results showed excellent precision and the measurement error was ${\pm}2g/l$ compared with the neutralization titration measurement.

In this paper, we develop a dust detection sensor system capable of identifying types of dust for an improvement of a robot vacuum cleaner. The dust detection sensor system is composed of a set of infra-red sensors: a single transmitter and multiple receivers. Given the fixed amount of light transmitted from the transmitter, the amount of light coming in multiple receiver sensors varies, depending on the type and density of dust that is passing between the transmitter and the receivers. Therefore, the type of dust can be identified by means of observing the change of the amount of light from the receiver sensors. For experiments, we use two types of dust, rice and sesame, and validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Chaff is a kind of matter spreading atmosphere with the purpose of preventing aircraft from detecting by radar. The chaff is commonly composed of small aluminum pieces, metallized glass fiber, or other lightweight strips which consists of reflecting materials. The chaff usually appears on the radar images as narrow bands shape of highly reflective echoes. And the chaff echo has similar characteristics to precipitation echo, and it interrupts weather forecasting process and makes forecasting accuracy low. In this paper, the chaff echo recognizing and removing method is suggested using Bayesian network. After converting coordinates from spherical to Cartesian in UF (Universal Format) radar data file, the characteristics of echoes are extracted by spatial and temporal clustering. And using the data, as a result of spatial and temporal clustering, a classification process for analyzing is performed. Finally, the inference system using Bayesian network is applied. As a result of experiments with actual radar data in real chaff echo appearing case, it is confirmed that Bayesian network can distinguish between chaff echo and non-chaff echo.

A FastSLAM is an algorithm for SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) using a Rao-Blackwellized particle filter and its performance is known to degenerate over time due to the loss of particle diversity, mainly caused by the particle depletion problem in the resampling phase. In this paper, the GeSPIR (Geographically Stratified Particle Information-based Resampling) technique is proposed to solve the particle depletion problem. The proposed algorithm consists of the following four steps : the first step involves the grouping of particles divided into K regions, the second obtaining the normal weight of each region, the third specifying the protected areas, and the fourth resampling using regional equalization weight. Simulations show that the proposed algorithm obtains lower RMS errors in both robot and feature positions than the conventional FastSLAM algorithm.

Payload capacity and transition ability are essential for climbing robots to apply the robots to various applications such as inspection and exploration. This paper presents a new climbing robotic platform with multi-link structure of track-wheel modules to enhance payload capacity and transition ability, and its tracking controller design and experimental results. The compliances between track-wheel modules achieve stable internal and external transitions while the large adhesion area of the track-wheel module enhances the payload capacity of the robot. Kinematic model-based tracking controller is designed and implemented for autonomous internal transition, and the gains of the controller are optimized by experimental design. Experiments on the automatic internal transitions are performed and the results guarantee autonomous internal transition with little tracking error.

This paper presents a user interface for vision based indirect teaching of a robotic manipulator with Kinect and IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) sensors. The user interface system is designed to control the manipulator more easily in joint space, Cartesian space and tool frame. We use the skeleton data of the user from Kinect and Wrist-mounted IMU sensors to calculate the user's joint angles and wrist movement for robot control. The interface system proposed in this paper allows the user to teach the manipulator without a pre-programming process. This will improve the teaching time of the robot and eventually enable increased productivity. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the performance of the robot control and interface system.

In this paper, real-time polygon generation algorithm of 3D point cloud data and texture mapping for tele-operation is proposed. In a tele-operation, it is essential to provide more highly realistic visual information to a tele-operator. By using 3D point cloud data, the tele-operator can observe the working environment from various view point with a reconstructed 3D environment. However, there are huge empty space in 3D point cloud data, since there is no environmental information among the points. This empty space is not suitable for an environmental information. Therefore, real-time polygon generation algorithm of 3D point cloud data and texture mapping is presented to provide more highly realistic visual information to the tele-operator. The 3D environment reconstructed from the 3D point cloud data with texture mapped polygons is the crucial part of the tele-operation.

As the ageing population grows around the world, the demand for electric wheelchairs, an important mobility assistance device for the disabled and elderly, is gradually increasing. Therefore, a number of studies related to intelligent wheelchairs are actively underway to improve safety and comfort for wheelchair users. However, previous collision avoidance studies for intelligent wheelchairs have concentrated on collision avoidance methods with the shortest distance and by only changing either velocity or heading angle, rather than considering the forces exerted on the user. If a collision avoidance algorithm that does not consider these forces is applied to an intelligent wheelchair, there is a possibility of an accident due to falling as wheelchair users are generally disabled and elderly people. In this paper, we propose a collision avoidance algorithm which minimizes the forces exerted on a wheelchair user by minimizing the variation of the wheelchair's velocity and heading angle when the sizes, positions, velocities, and heading angles of a wheelchair and a moving obstacle are known.

In this paper, an enhanced method for attitude determination is proposed for systems using an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). In attitude determination with IMU, it is generally assumed that the IMU can be located in the center of gravity on the vehicle. If the IMU is not located in the center of gravity, the accelerometers of the IMU are disturbed from additive accelerations such as centripetal acceleration and tangential acceleration. Additive accelerations are derived from the lever arm which is the distance between the center of gravity and the position of the IMU. The performance of estimation errors can be maintained in system with a non-zero lever arm, if the lever arm is estimated to remove the additive accelerations from the accelerometer's measurements. In this paper, an estimation using Kalman filter is proposed to include the lever arm in the state variables of the state space equation. For the Kalman filter, the process model and the measurement model for attitude determination are made up by using quaternion. In order to evaluate the proposed algorithm, both of the simulations and the experiments are performed for the simplified scenario of motion.

This article focuses on a hemispherical resonator gyro driven by the Coriolis effect. The operational principle of resonator gyros and mathematical models are introduced. These models are useful to explain the behavior of a resonator and to design controllers. Several control tests of a resonator have been done. A resonator has been excited by electromagnets controlled by a computer. Its amplitude has been adjusted by a PI control. The transient response is matched with a simulation result based on a mathematical model. A vibrating pattern may drift due to non-uniform factors of a resonator. The drift of the vibrating pattern is controlled and aligned to a reference direction by a PI control. These results are very useful to understand the behavior of resonator gyros and to design advanced control algorithm for better performance.