ATR artificial brain project: 2004 progress report

This article presents the key assumptions and current status of the ATR Artificial Brain Project being undertaken to create Volitron, a device equipped with circuitry that enables the emergence of thought. Such thought would be recognized from Volitron's specific communication behaviors. The project consists of three complementary themes: psychodynamic architecture, brain-specific evolvable hardware, and the management of brain-building. The psychodynamic architecture is designed to develop automatically, driven by “pleasure” coming from discharges of tension gathered in special tension-accumulating devices. Tension-discharging patterns come first of all from the robot's interactions with its care giver/provider. For the dedicated hardware, we developed qcellular-automata (qCA), in which groups of uniform logic primitives (q-cells) serve as spike-train-processing units, as well as pulsed para-neural networks (PPNN) that can be evolved, using fuzzified signals and a genetic algorithm combined with hill climbing, and converted into qCA. The psychodynamic ideas were tested using three robots: Neko, equipped with a pleasure-driven associator, Miao, equipped with MemeStorms (a special working memory in which conflicting ideas fight for access to the long-term memory and actuators), and Miao+, whose brain is equipped with a growing neural network. This work was presented in part at the 9th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 28–30, 2004     

Electro-mechanical coupling in ionic gels

An ionic-polymer–metal-composite film shows electro-mechanical coupling. When the film is bent, electric current is induced. Measurement of the induced current indicates that the current depends on the speed of bending, but the total amount of the charge transferred across the film is independent of the speed, and depends only on the magnitude of the bending. The result indicates that in addition to previously proposed dynamical coupling effect, there is a static electro-mechanical coupling effect. Mathematical model is proposed to describe this phenomena.     

Responsiveness of electric resistance of polymer-grafted carbon black/alumina gel composite against solvent vapor and solute in solution

The carbon black/alumina gel composites were prepared by sol-gel reaction of aluminum isopropoxide in the presence of polymer-grafted carbon black. The electric resistance of the alumina gel composite from polymer-grafted carbon black was very sensitive to vapor of good solvent for grafted polymer on carbon black: the electric resistance of the alumina gel composite suddenly decreased in solvent vapor and returned to initial resistance when it was transferred into dry air. The effect of surface area and particle size of carbon black on the responsiveness was also investigated. In addition, the electric resistance of the alumina gel composite was found to respond to water and methanol in n-hexane and diethyl ether.     

Decay of material properties of degraded MEA caused by repeated cold starts under subzero conditions in polymer electrolyte fuel cells

This study investigated the characteristics of cell performance degradation, decline of component performance, and changes in the properties of membrane electrode assembly materials caused by repeated cold starts under a subzero condition of ?30 °C. It was made clear that functional decay appeared mainly at the cathode due to increased proton conductive impedance and reduction of reactivity of the electrode catalyst. Among the cathode components, an increase in proton conductive impedance in the cathode electrolyte was dominant. Furthermore, the application of ion chromatography and a newly developed proton‐induced gamma‐ray emission method to measure fluorine in the off‐gas drain revealed that decomposition of the electrolyte was dominant in the cathode catalyst layer. A decrease in fluorine in the cathode electrolyte measured by fluorine‐19 nuclear magnetic resonance confirmed this decomposition. A hypothesis is also presented concerning the cause of the performance degradation. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res; Published online in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/htj ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20394     

EEG topography recognition by neural networks

Electroencephalography (EEG) pattern-recognition studies were carried out using EEG topography (readiness potential, or RP, spatiotemporal patterns) generated the moment before voluntary movements of muscles. RPs generated prior to pronouncing syllables and controlling a joystick were studied by experiments and simulation. The spatiotemporal patterns of RPs were measured by multichannel surface electrodes pasted on the subject's scalp. Backpropagation neural networks were used for RP pattern recognition. The results show that RPs generated prior to syllable pronouncement contain some information about those syllables, and that RPs generated prior to joy stick movements contain information on the direction of intended movement. They also show that neural networks can be used to recognize EEG information and so create a new type of man-machine interface for data input.     

Robustness in organizational-learning oriented classifier system

 An organizational-learning oriented classifier system (OCS) is an extension of learning classifier systems (LCSs) to multiagent environments, where the system introduces the concepts of organizational learning (OL) in organization and management science. To investigate the capabilities of OCS as a new multiagent-based LCS architecture, this paper specifically focuses on the robustness of OCS in multiagent environments and explores its capability in space shuttle crew task scheduling as one of real-world applications. Intensive simulations on a complex domain problem revealed that OCS has robustness capability in the given problem. Concretely, we found that OCS derives the following implications on robustness: (1) OCS finds good solutions at small computational costs even after anomaly situations occur; and (2) this advantage becomes stronger as the number of anomalies increases.     

Control of spectral emittance using a rare‐earth oxide film coated on a ceramic plate

The spectral emission of a ceramic plate coated with a rare‐earth oxide thin film was investigated for thermophotovoltaic (TPV) applications using a one‐dimensional radiative transfer analysis. The selective emitter has emission bands at wavelengths around 1 and 1.5 μm due to erbium. In the temperature range between 1400 and 1500 K, the radiant energy within these bands is remarkably large, because the Planck distribution has a peak at a wavelength of approximately 2 μm. In addition, the spectral response of a GaSb TPV cell has a peak at around 1.5 μm; therefore, the radiant energy of the emission bands is quite useful for the TPV generation of electricity. The total spectral efficiency for both the 1 μm and 1.5 μm bands reaches a maximum value of 0.295 for a film thickness between 0.2 and 0.3 mm. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20286     

关于三峡库区周边坡体岩石特性的考察

岩石强度的载荷速率相关性与岩石的时间相关性特性及粘弹性性质密切相关,而且强度的栽荷速率相关性越大,越容易发生蠕变破坏。对于坡体来说,如果构成坡体的岩石的时间相关性很显著．那么即使在比较低的应力下仅施加一点载荷,也容易发生变形。针对三峡库区周边滑坡多发,采集了组成滑坡坡体的4类主要岩石-泥岩、灰岩、泥质砂岩及砂岩。通过室内岩石力学强度试验,获得了不同岩石的强度特性曲线及表示载荷速率相关性的参数n。利用一个试件通过载荷速率交替变换获得了不同应变速率下的应力-应变曲线,从而根据强度的变化率不仅获得了峰值强度的载荷速率相关性,而且还求得了残余强度的载荷速率相关性。在单轴压缩试验中,残余强度的n值与峰值强度的n值有较大的差异,但在三轴压缩试验中两者的差异却不太明显。而且在气干状态下,不管是峰值强度还是残余强度的n值均随着围压的增加而增加。     

Senescence of spatial chromatic contrast sensitivity. I. Detection under conditions controlling for optical factors

Chromatic contrast thresholds for spatially varying patterns of various spatial frequencies (0.5, 1, 2, and 4 cycles per degree) were measured for ten older (65-77 yr of age) and ten younger (18-30 yr of age) observers. The stimuli were Gabor patches modulated along S-varying or (L - M)-varying chromatic axes. Thresholds were determined for two sets of stimuli. For one set of stimuli, the mean chromaticity and luminance were equated at the cornea for all observers. The second set of stimuli was corrected for ocular media density differences to equate stimulation of each of the three cone types at the retina for each individual. Chromatic contrast thresholds were higher for older observers for all stimuli tested. The magnitude of this difference showed little dependence on spatial frequency. When stimuli were equated at the cornea, this difference was greater for S-varying stimuli. When stimuli were equated at the retina, the age-related difference in thresholds for S-varying stimuli was reduced. Both optical and neural factors contribute to these age-related losses in spatial chromatic contrast sensitivity.     

基于自适应提升小波的APD探测信号消噪

雪崩光电二极管(APD)具有高增益、高灵敏度和响应速度快的特点,因而成为空间光通信中的首选信号探测器件.针对空间光通信的脉冲位置调制(PPM)信道,分析了空间光通信系统中雪崩光电二极管探测噪声的特点和类别,在讨论了第二代小波变换基本原理及其特点的基础上,将自适应性引入提升方案中,用先更新后预测的改进提升算法解决自适应性引起的非线性问题,并在阈值处理过程中引入了软硬阈值折衷法来恢复信号.实验仿真结果表明,采用该算法实现的雪崩光电二极管信号去噪,不仅较好地剔除信号中的噪声,而且保留了原始信号中的有效成分,是一种可行的方法.