Camera-laser fusion sensor system and environmental recognition for humanoids in disaster scenarios

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - This research aims to develop a vision sensor system and a recognition algorithm to enable a humanoid to operate autonomously in a disaster...     

Development of a feature-recognition and measurement path generation system based on NURBS surfaces for 5-axis on-machine measurement

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology - On-machine measurement (OMM), which is used to measure the machined surfaces of a workpiece during or after the machining of the workpiece, enables...     

Cover Picture: Generation of Monodisperse Mesoporous Silica Microspheres with Controllable Size and Surface Morphology in a Microfluidic Device (Adv. Funct. Mater. 24/2008)

A one‐step in situ method, termed microfluidic diffusion‐induced self‐assembly, for the synthesis of monodisperse ordered mesoporous silica microspheres, is reported. The method combines microfluidic generation of uniform droplets and subsequent in situ rapid solvent diffusion‐induced self‐assembly within the microfluidic channel. The mesoporous silica microspheres prepared in this way reveal well‐ordered 2D hexagonal mesostructures with unprecedented corrugated surface morphology of disordered mesopores that are larger than 15 nm. It is speculated that the formation of an interfacial subphase and rapid diffusion of solvent to oil are attributed to the formation of the unique surface morphology. It is also shown that the surface morphology and the particle size of the mesoporous silica microspheres can be systematically controlled by adjusting fluidic conditions.     

Generalized machine cell formation considering material flow and plant layout using modified self-organizing feature maps

In this paper, we develop a new generalized machine cell formation technique considering production sequences, lot sizes, processing times, of machine grouping, and the plant layout via the self-organizing feature maps (SOFM). In particular, second layer node architecture is construct to reflect the above factors. From the result of SOFM learning, a generalized machine cell formation matrix is obtained such that the material flow is reduced and the spacial restriction for the layout is reasonably considered. The adopted performance measures include the recovery ratio of bond energy, the grouping efficacy, the total inter-cell movement, and the computational time. The results are compared with the ranl order clustering method (ROC), the direct clustering analysis method (DCA), and the spark clustering analysis. The experimental result shows that the proposed method performs well in the sense of material flow reduction and layout efficiency, as well as in the sense of robustness and some other functionalities.     

Cover Image,Volume 68, Issue 8

The cover image is based on the Research Article Polyimide nanohybrid films with electrochemically functionalized graphene by Dae‐Geon Yoo et al. DOI: 10.1002/pi.5836 .

     

An SoC with 1.3 gtexels/s 3-D graphics full pipeline for consumer applications

A high-speed three-dimensional (3-D) graphics SoC for consumer applications is presented. A 166-MHz 3-D graphics full pipeline engine with performance of 33 Mvertices/s and 1.3Gtexels/s, and 333-MHz ARM11 RISC processor, and video composition IPs are integrated together on a single chip. The geometry part of 3-D graphics IP provides full programmability in vertex and triangle level, and two-level multi-texturing with trilinear MIPMAP filtering are realized in the rasterization part. Per-pixel effects such as fog effects, alpha blending, and stencil test are also implemented in the proposed 3-D graphics IP. The rasterization architecture is designed for reducing external memory accesses to achieve the peak performance. The chip is fabricated using 0.13/spl mu/m CMOS technology and its area is 7.1/spl times/7.0mm/sup 2/.     

Statistical Damage Assessment of Framed Structures from Static Responses

This paper presents a damage assessment algorithm for framed structures based on a system identification scheme with a regularization technique. The regularization technique is introduced to alleviate the ill-posedness of the system identification problems. A new regularization function based on the Frobenius norm of the difference between the estimated and the baseline stiffness matrix is proposed. A parameter grouping technique is adopted to locate damaged members and to overcome sparseness of measured data. A data perturbation method is employed to obtain statistical distributions of system parameters with a set of noise-polluted measured data. A statistical approach by a hypothesis test is presented to assess damage. The validity of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical examples.     

Light-induced enhancement of quantum dot photovoltaic devices with nitrogen doped titanium oxide capping layers

For the first time it is reported that nitrogen-doped titanium oxide with light annealing can improve the device performance by 300% when acting as an interfacial layer between CdSe quantum dot/poly-3-hexylthiophene and the cathode in the photovoltaic devices. Substitutional N doping with a concentration of 1.2 at.% was found by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy which was responsible for 0.1 eV band gap reduction of TiO_x. Photoluminescence and the external quantum efficiency spectrum confirmed the enhanced charge collection and association rate after light annealing. Three-dimensional atomic force microscopy results agreed with the series resistance measurements, confirming that a good contact was achieved. The topography study also indicated that the active layer morphology changed upon light annealing. Improved stability and longer lifetime were also found with TiO_xN_y capped devices, which were optimized with light annealing. TiO_x capped devices were also evaluated for comparison in this study.     

A scene graph based visualization method for representing continuous simulation data

This paper proposes a scene graph based visualization method that can verify time-varying continuous analysis simulation in a virtual reality (VR) environment by using the computer-aided engineering (CAE) data of structural analysis in product development. In previous research, the use of CAE analysis data has been problematic because of the lack of any interactive simulation controls for visualizing continuous simulation data. Moreover, the research on post-processing methods for real-time evaluation of CAE analysis data has not been sufficient. We therefore propose a scene graph based visualization method for representing continuous simulation data. The method can continuously visualize static analysis data independently of any timeline; it can also continuously visualize dynamic analysis data that varies in relation to the timeline. The visualization system for continuous simulation data, which includes CAE2VR Middleware that interfaces with various formats of CAE analysis data as well as functions for visualizing continuous simulation data and operational functions, enables users to verify simulation results with more realistic scenes.     

Polyimide nanohybrid films with electrochemically functionalized graphene

Graphite was functionalized electrochemically in a potassium fluoride solution and used to prepare polyimide (PI)/graphene nanohybrid films. The as‐made electrochemically fluorinated graphene (EFG) was used to prepare nanohybrid films with colorless PI, which was synthesized from 4,4′‐(hexafluoroisopropylidene) diphthalic anhydride and bis(trifluoromethyl) benzidine by in situ polymerization. The surface functionalization of graphite was characterized by powder XRD, TEM with energy dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy elemental mapping, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and TGA. The microstructure of the films was characterized by Fourier transform IR spectroscopy, XRD and SEM. The film properties were measured using a universal testing machine, TGA, dynamic mechanical analysis, four‐point probe, UV–visible spectroscopy and water contact angle analysis. EFG improved the tensile strength and modulus of the nanohybrid films by 20% and 50%, respectively. The glass transition temperature and electrical conductivity of the nanohybrid films were 12 °C and nine orders of magnitude higher than those of the neat PI film, respectively. The nanohybrid film maintained 80% optical transmittance even after the addition of 0.1 wt% EFG. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry