• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.21 no.5 s.77
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• pp.103-111
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationships between cognitive abilities and driving characteristics of elderly drivers. Driving characteristics of elderly and younger drivers who were driving a fixed base driving simulator vehicle were examined. Participants consisted of 12 drivers over age 65 (the 'older' group) and 12 drivers between the ages of 25 and 55 (the "younger" group). As indices of cognitive ability, critical flicker fusion frequency (CFF) tests and cognitive reaction tests were given before the driving task. CFF was also tested after the simulated driving task for both groups. Cognitive reaction tests, which were composed of speed estimation tests, multiple choice reaction tests and obstacle avoidance tests, were developed by the Korean Road Traffic Safety Authority in 2003. CFF values between the two groups exhibited significant differences both before and after the task, with a p-value less than 0.01 and a t-value of -3.01 before the test and a p-value less than 0.031 and a t-value of -2.35 after the test. Older drivers' CFF values were lower than those of the younger. However, there was no difference in older or younger driver CFF values before and after the task within the same group. Except for the multiple choice reaction test, there was no difference in cognitive reaction test results between the two groups. The elderly drivers made more errors though they did not differ from the younger drivers in reaction times. At the simulated driving task the reaction time of the elderly driver was longer than that of the younger; however, the driving speed of the elderly was lower and the number of collisions greater. There was a positive correlation (r=.496) between the number of errors in the multiple choice reaction test and the number of collisions in the driving task. Therefore, it was identified that critical attributes contributing to automobile crashes involving elderly drivers included cognitive difficulty in judging and responding to complex situations.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.8
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• pp.51-57
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• 2014

In this paper, we propose a novel method to effectively eliminate flickering artifacts caused by dehazing in video sequences. When applying a dehazing technique directly to each image in a video sequence, flicker artifacts may occur because atmospheric values are calculated without considering the relation of adjacent frames. Although some existing methods reduce flickering artifacts by calculating highly correlated transmission values between adjacent frames, flickering artifacts may still occur. Therefore, in order to effectively reduce flickering artifacts, we propose a novel approach considering temporal averages of atmospheric light values calculated from adjacent frames. Experimental results have shown that the proposed method achieves better performance of video dehazing with less flickering artifact than existing methods.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.18-26
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• 2011

Debates concerning the competitive edge of leading 3DTV technology of the shutter glasses (SG) 3D and the film-type patterned retarder (FPR) are flaring up. Although SG technology enables Full-HD 3D vision, it requires complex systems including the sync transmitter (emitter), the sync processor chip, and the LCD lens in the active shutter glasses. In addition, the transferred sync-signal is easily affected by the external noise and a 3DTV viewer may feel flicker-effect caused by cross-talk of the left and right image. The operating current of the sync processor in the 3DTV active shutter glasses is gradually increasing to compensate the sync reconstruction error. The proposed chip is a low-power hardware sync processor based discrete-event SoC(system on a chip) designed specifically for the 3DTV active shutter glasses. This processor implements the newly designed power-saving techniques targeted for low-power operation in a noisy environment between 3DTV and the active shutter glasses. This design includes a hardware pre-processor based on a universal edge tracer and provides a perfect sync reconstruction based on a floating-point timer to advance the prior commercial 3DTV shutter glasses in terms of their power consumption. These two techniques enable an accurate sync reconstruction in the slow clock frequency of the synchronization timer and reduce the power consumption to less than about a maximum of 20% compared with other major commercial processors. This article describes the system's architecture and the details of the proposed techniques, also identifying the key concepts and functions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Laryngology, Phoniatrics and Logopedics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.28-37
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• 2006

Purpose: Evaluation of vocal cord vibration is very important in cases of voice disorders. There are several equipments for examining the vocal fold vibration such as laryngeal stroboscope, ultra high-speed digital imaging system, and videokymograph. Among these, laryngeal stroboscope is the most popular equipment because of easy to examine the laryngeal pathology. However, current laryngo-stroboscopes are too bulky to move and relatively expensive. The purpose of this research is to develope a portable laryngeal stroboscope of equivalent performance with the current equipments. Methods and Materials: Recently developed high luminescent white LEDs(light emitting diodes) are placed at the head of the endoscope as light sources for the CCD image sensor which is also placed at the head with imaging lens. This arrangement eliminates the bulky light source like expensive halogen or xenon lamps as well as the optical light guiding cables. The LEDs are controlled to flash in phase with the voice frequency of the examinee. The CCD captures these strobo images and converts them into video signals for examinations. Results: There was no functional differences between preexisting stroboscope and the newly developed stroboscope of this study. LED light sources and microprocessor based control circuits of the stroboscope enabled the development of flicker-less, hand-held, portable and battery-operating stroboscope. Conclusion: The developed stroboscope is cost-effective, small-sized, easy to use and very easy desirable to bring and to use in any place.