• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.151-160
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• 2003

The application of more complex radiotherapy techniques using multileaf collimation (MLC), such as 3D conformal radiation therapy and intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), has increased the significance of verifying leaf position and motion. Due to thier reliability and empirical robustness, quality assurance (QA) of MLC. However easy use and the ability to provide digital data of electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs) have attracted attention to portal films as an alternatives to films for routine qualify assurance, despite concerns about their clinical feasibility, efficacy, and the cost to benefit ratio. In this study, we developed method for daily QA of MLC using electronic portal images (EPIs). EPID availability for routine QA was verified by comparing of the portal films, which were simultaneously obtained when radiation was delivered and known prescription input to MLC controller. Specially designed two-test patterns of dynamic MLC were applied for image acquisition. Quantitative off-line analysis using an edge detection algorithm enhanced the verification procedure as well as on-line qualitative visual assessment. In conclusion, the availability of EPI was enough for daily QA of MLC leaf position with the accuracy of portal films.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2004

Agricultural recycling of livestock wastes by composting has lots of beneficial effects on crop production and soil fertility. Most of composts are made from pig manure and water content controller such as saw dust, bark, rice hulls etc. by aerobic processing. But the insufficient supply of saw dust, bark etc. cause the indiscreet use of industrial waste having heavy metals and toxic synthetic chemicals. This research investigated the present quality status of organic by-product fertilizers, and suggested the way of quality interpretation under the statistical approaches based on median, mean and weighted average value. Since the data of one hundred of samples for heavy metal contents (Cd, Pb, Cu, and Cr) and OM/N showed extremely left-skewed distribution, the median was more useful than the mean in representing the characteristics of distribiition for each items. The weighted average value will be a useful index for the quality based on the total amount of producing.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.269-275
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• 2004

Different biological tissues have different values of electrical resistivity. In EIT (electrical impedance tomography), we try to provide cross-sectional images of a resistivity distribution inside an electrically conducting subject such as the human body mainly for functional imaging. However, it is well known that the image reconstruction problem in EIT is ill-posed and the quality of a reconstructed image highly depends on the measurement error. This requires us to develop a high-performance EIT system. In this paper, we describe the development of a 16-channel digital EIT system including a single constant current source, 16 voltmeters, main controller, and PC. The system was designed and implemented using the FPGA-based digital technology. The current source injects 50KHz sinusoidal current with the THD (total harmonic distortion) of 0.0029% and amplitude stability of 0.022%. The single current source and switching circuit reduce the measurement error associated with imperfect matching of multiple current sources at the expense of a reduced data acquisition time. The digital voltmeter measuring the induced boundary voltage consists of a differential amplifier, ADC, and FPGA (field programmable gate array). The digital phase-sensitive demodulation technique was implemented in the voltmeter to maximize the SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). Experimental results of 16-channel digital voltmeters showed the SNR of 90dB. We used the developed EIT system to reconstruct resistivity images of a saline phantom containing banana objects. Based on the results, we suggest future improvements for a 64-channel muff-frequency EIT system for three-dimensional dynamic imaging of bio-impedance distributions inside the human body.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.51-57
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• 2016

Purpose - In the year of 2015 and 2016, one of the items that got attention in CES was a drone. It has been 100 years since a drone emerged, but most were used for military purposes. As its use became diverse as of 2010, it got attention of the general public. In Korea, it was in 2011 that a drone was known to the public through an aerial video shooting for television program. This study tried to come up with suggestions by comparing domestic with overseas cases, and tried to consider the related technologies and systems with applying the role of drones in logistics service. Research design, data, and methodology - The overseas cases were regarded as drone's logistical purpose. The Prime Air service by US Amazon is still not commercialized and under pre-testing due to Federal Aviation Regulations, although it started in 2013. In Germany, DHL succeeded in delivering service testing which is called Parcelcopter, but it is not commercialized yet. Other than these, there are more attempts to prepare logistics service in China with Taobao, in France with Geopost's test, and in Africa. In Korea, CJ Korea Express tested delivery with a self-developed drone Results - In order to study for utilizing drones for logistics as the prerequisites, some overseas and domestic cases, which are currently considered, were reviewed. Also, the technologies and institutional requirements to commercialize drones for logistical purpose were reviewed. The reasons for using drones in logistics is to ensure the price competitiveness by reducing cost. The empirical test also will be needed because drone pilot areas are designated by ministry of land, infrastructure and transport. Conclusions - In order to utilize drones in logistics and foster the industry, this study would like to suggest the followings. First of all, size of drones for logistics needs to be fixed and their operating system should be standardized. Centralized investment resources are needed through standardization to ensure the market occupancy. Secondly, it is necessary to get the converged businesses that do research, develop and commercialize drones with the investment of private sector. Example can be found in Korea aerospace Industries. We can respond to the rapid growth of the market with intensive investing by integrating the private sector investment. Thirdly, institutional arrangements are needed to be established quickly. In the case of high-technologies like drones, institutional support often does not follow the rapid development of the technology. The problems can be found in securing drones-only airspace, creating drone-specialized pilot's license, matters related to remote controller and complementary regulations for drones in Aviation Act. If these regulations are not prepared or complemented at the right timing, technologies cannot be commercialized even though the development is completed. Fourthly, there is a need to secure the transparency regarding possible privacy and personal information protection problem while operating drones. Finally, in order to foster this new industry, government should focus on supporting R&D more in the long term than short term outcomes.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.446-452
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• 2016

Recently, heat resistant super alloys (which are wear-resistant, corrosion-resistant, and heat-resistant), have been used as the basic structural material in offshore and petrochemical plants. On the other hand, making valves from very expensive, high heat-resistant alloys increases the production cost and decreases its market competitiveness. To solve these problems, the technique of overlaying only those that flow on the fluid has been used as an effective method. Nevertheless, because the former technique of overlaying the ball is performed manually, it takes too much time and perfect welding is difficult to perform. To solve this problem, this study developed a robot automation system that can make uniformly overlay welding of the ball for ball-valves. The system consists of a 6-axis welding robot with a welding torch and additional 2 axes for the rotation of positioner, the controller, and a robot path OLP (Off-Line Programming). The CAD drawing data was entered in the Off-line program to obtain the robot teaching point and drive source. Overlay welding paths were implemented using Matlab. Through an automated overlaying system that implemented the OLP, the productivity rose 2.58 times, as the amount of time required for work decreased from 88 hours to 41 hours.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.331-344
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• 2009

Recently, it is expected that the agricultural and stockbreeding industry are damaged by the China-Japan-South Korea FTA and FTA between the United States and South Korea. After free trade, it is increasing to import crops, aquatic products, and livestock which are produced in a foreign land. But it is affected negatively to the trust relationships and markets, because of breaking it out that low grade foreign products are turned into domestic products. For this reason, we need the traceability management system. In this paper, it designs and implements the traceability management system using RFID and USN providing distribution traceability information as well as the traceability information of the growth environment, automatic control according to the facility growing and monitoring of the storehouse. The implemented whole systems consist of the growth environment monitoring and the traceability management. First, the growth environment monitoring shows the environment of plantation and automatic controller of the storehouse and growing facility. This growth environment monitoring information provides the detailed information about growth environment and writing the farming diary automatically by producer. Second, the traceability management provides all of the traceability information such as production, shipment and consumption to consumers. The traceability management system that has been designed and implemented using RFID and USN in this paper, provides the u-IT agriculture to producer and the reliability about agricultural products. In addition, this system provides the foundation data to operate GAP and HACCP, and becomes the advantaged agricultural products of the interior of a country by application of this system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.439-446
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• 2014

An amphibious inspection robot system (hereafter AIROS) is being developed to visually inspect the in-containment refueling storage water tank (hereafter IRWST) strainer in APR1400 instead of a human diver. Four IRWST strainers are located in the IRWST, which is filled with boric acid water. Each strainer has 108 sub-assembly strainer fin modules that should be inspected with the VT-3 method according to Reg. guide 1.82 and the operation manual. AIROS has 6 thrusters for submarine voyage and 4 legs for walking on the top of the strainer. An inverse kinematic algorithm was implemented in the robot controller for exact walking on the top of the IRWST strainer. The IRWST strainer has several top cross braces that are extruded on the top of the strainer, which can be obstacles of walking on the strainer, to maintain the frame of the strainer. Therefore, a robot leg should arrive at the position beside the top cross brace. For this reason, we used an image processing technique to find the top cross brace in the sole camera image. The sole camera image is processed to find the existence of the top cross brace using the cross edge detection algorithm in real time. A 5-DOF robot arm that has multiple camera modules for simultaneous inspection of both sides can penetrate narrow gaps. For intuitive presentation of inspection results and for management of inspection data, inspection images are stored in the control PC with camera angles and positions to synthesize and merge the images. The synthesized images are then mapped in a 3D CAD model of the IRWST strainer with the location information. An IRWST strainer mock-up was fabricated to teach the robot arm scanning and gaiting. It is important to arrive at the designated position for inserting the robot arm into all of the gaps. Exact position control without anchor under the water is not easy. Therefore, we designed the multi leg robot for the role of anchoring and positioning. Quadruped robot design of installing sole cameras was a new approach for the exact and stable position control on the IRWST strainer, unlike a traditional robot for underwater facility inspection. The developed robot will be practically used to enhance the efficiency and reliability of the inspection of nuclear power plant components.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.19-28
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• 2013

This study evaluated the quantitative effects of the deployment of semi-actuated signal systems using field data. For this, a semi-actuted signal system was deployed in the regional roadway network extensively. This paper investigated an operating strategy of semi-actuated signal systems for field application, and implemented the functional strategy into the standard signal controller. The performance was evaluated using three measures of effectiveness such as traffic volume, travel time, and the number of delayed vehicle. From the analysis results, traffic volume increased about 9.4% and 11.3% for morning and evening peak periods, respectively. The average travel time was reduced about 6.3% and 7.8% during morning and evening peak periods, respectively because of the expansion of bandwidths for major streets. In addition, the number of delayed vehicles was reduced about 36.4% and 23.9% for morning and evening peak periods, respectively. It is expected that the effectiveness of signal control system can be improved by incorporating a properly designed semi-actuated signal system in regional roadways with directional demand variation.

• Journal of Dental Rehabilitation and Applied Science
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.17-25
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• 2003

Treatment with implants of single tooth missing cases is both functional and esthetic. Although the success rate of single-tooth implant treatments is increasing, sometimes it makes some problems. Problems with single-tooth implant treatments include soft tissue complications, abutment screw fracture, and most commonly, abutment screw loosening, and these involve the instability of the dental implant-superstructure interface. This study investigated and compared dental implant screw joint micromotion of various implant system with external connection or internal connection when tested under simulated clinical loading, Six groups (N=5) were assessed: (1) Branemark AurAdapt (Nobel Biocare, Goteborg, Sweden), (2) Branemark EsthetiCone (Nobel Biocare, Goteborg, Sweden), (3) Neoplant Conical (Neobiotec, Korea), (4) Neoplant UCLA (Neobiotec, Korea), (5) Neoplant 5.5mm Solid (Neobiotec, Korea), and (6) ITI SynOcta (Institute Straumann, Waldenburg, Switzerland). Six identical frameworks were fabricated. Abutment screws were tightened to 32-35 Ncm and occlusal screw were tightened to 15-20 Ncm with an electronic torque controller. A mechanical testing machine applied a compressive cyclic load of 20kg at 10Hz to a contact point on each implant crown. Strain gauge recorded the micromotion of the screw joint interface once a second. Data were selected at 1, 500, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 and 50,000 cycle and 2-way ANOVA test was performed to assess the statistical significance. The results of this study were as follows; The micromotion of the implant-superstructure in the interface increased gradually through 50,000 cycles for all implant systems. In the case of the micromotion according to cycle increase, Neoplant Conical and Neoplant UCLA system exhibited significantly increasing micromotion at the implant-superstructure interface (p<0.05), but others not significant. In the case of the micromotion of the implant-superstructure interface at 50,000 cycle, the largest micromotion were recorded in the Branemark EsthetiCone, sequently followed by Neoplant Conical, Neoplant UCLA, Branemark AurAdapt, ITI SynOcta and Neplant Solid. Internal connection system showed smaller micromotion than external connection system. Specially, Neoplant Solid with internal connection system exhibited significantly smaller micromotion than other implant systems except ITI SynOcta with same internal connection system (p<0.05). In the case of external connection, Branemark EsthetiCone and Neoplant Conical system with abutment showed significantly larger micromotion than Branemark AurAdapt without abutment (p<0.05).

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.29 no.1C
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• pp.102-110
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• 2004

In this paper, we propose a VLSI structure of real-time image compression and reconstruction processor using 2-D discrete wavelet transform and implement into a hardware which use minimal hardware resource using ASIC library. In the implemented hardware, Data path part consists of the DWT kernel for the wavelet transform and inverse transform, quantizer/dequantizer, the huffman encoder/huffman decoder, the adder/buffer for the inverse wavelet transform, and the interface modules for input/output. Control part consists of the programming register, the controller which decodes the instructions and generates the control signals, and the status register for indicating the internal state into the external of circuit. According to the programming condition, the designed circuit has the various selective output formats which are wavelet coefficient, quantization coefficient or index, and Huffman code in image compression mode, and Huffman decoding result, reconstructed quantization coefficient, and reconstructed wavelet coefficient in image reconstructed mode. The programming register has 16 stages and one instruction can be used for a horizontal(or vertical) filtering in a level. Since each register automatically operated in the right order, 4-level discrete wavelet transform can be executed by a programming. We synthesized the designed circuit with synthesis library of Hynix 0.35um CMOS fabrication using the synthesis tool, Synopsys and extracted the gate-level netlist. From the netlist, timing information was extracted using Vela tool. We executed the timing simulation with the extracted netlist and timing information using NC-Verilog tool. Also PNR and layout process was executed using Apollo tool. The Implemented hardware has about 50,000 gate sizes and stably operates in 80MHz clock frequency.