A saliency-driven robotic head with bio-inspired saccadic behaviors for social robotics

This paper presents a robotic head for social robots to attend to scene saliency with bio-inspired saccadic behaviors. Scene saliency is determined by measuring low-level static scene information, motion, and object prior knowledge. Towards the extracted saliency spots, the designed robotic head is able to turn gazes in a saccadic manner while obeying eye–head coordination laws with the proposed control scheme. The results of the simulation study and actual applications show the effectiveness of the proposed method in discovering of scene saliency and human-like head motion. The proposed techniques could possibly be applied to social robots to improve social sense and user experience in human–robot interaction.     

Low‐temperature photoinitiation solution polymerization behavior of N‐vinylcarbazole in tetrahydrofuran

N‐Vinylcarbazole (VCZ) was solution‐polymerized in tetrahydrofuran (THF) at ?20, 0, and 20°C using the photoinitiation method; the effects of the amount of solvent, polymerization temperature, and photoinitiator concentration were investigated. On the whole, the experimental results corresponded to predicted ones. Low polymerization temperature using photoinitiation proved to be successful in obtaining poly(N‐vinylcarbazole) (PVCZ) of a high molecular weight with a smaller temperature rise during polymerization; nevertheless of free radical polymerization by 2,2′‐azobis(2,4‐dimethylvaleronitrile) (ADMVN). The photo‐solution polymerization rate of VCZ in THF was proportional to the 0.47 power of ADMVN concentration. The molecular weight was higher and the molecular weight distribution was narrower with PVCZ polymerized at lower temperatures. For PVCZ prepared in THF at ?20°C using a photoinitiator concentration of 0.00005 mol/mol of VCZ, a weight‐average molecular weight of 510,000 was obtained, with a polydispersity index of 1.73, and a degree of lightness converged to about 99%. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 86: 3667–3672, 2002     

EXTERNAL FLUID HEATING OF A POROUS ED

This work deals with the thermal analysis of externally heated porous beds of finite length. A one dimensional model was developed that includes conduction and storage in both the fluid and bed, convective exchange between the fluid and bed, and the effect of adsorption/desorption in the bed. This model results in two coupled differential equations for the fluid and bed temperatures as functions of four independent dimensionless parameters. These equations were solved numerically using finite difference approximations. A truncation error analysis was carried out to maintain an accurate solution. The method of normalization is such that the results of this analysis are of use in bed design when the breakthrough characteristics in finite length beds are of interest. A method to measure bed thermal performance is defined and a means to optimize bed thermal performance is presented. An experiment was conducted to validate the numerically obtained results. A comparison of numerical to experimental results is presented     

Polyurethane–poly(methyl methacrylate) block copolymer dispersions through polyurethane macroiniferters

Polyurethane macroiniferter/poly(methyl methacrylate) block copolymer dispersions with inverse core‐shell morphologies were obtained from 1,1,2,2,‐tetraphenylethane‐1,2‐diol, dimethylol propionic acid, 4,4′‐diphenylmethane diisocyanate, and poly(propylene glycol) via a living radical mechanism. Molecular weight, particle size and dispersion viscosity, and thermal, mechanical, and dynamic mechanical properties of the dispersion cast films are reported as a function of copolymerization time. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 88: 1971–1975, 2003     

Automating fluid delivery in a capillary microfluidic device using low-voltage electrowetting valves

A multilayer capillary polymeric microfluidic device integrated with three normally closed electrowetting valves for timed fluidic delivery was developed. The microfluidic channel consisted two flexible layers of poly (ethylene terephthalate) bonded by a pressure-sensitive adhesive spacer tape. Channels were patterned in the spacer tape using laser ablation. Each valve contained two inkjet-printed silver electrodes in series. Capillary flow within the microchannel was stopped at the second electrode which was modified with a hydrophobic monolayer (valve closed). When a potential was applied across the electrodes, the hydrophobic monolayer became hydrophilic and allowed flow to continue (valve opened). The relationship between the actuation voltage, the actuation time, and the distance between two electrodes was performed using a microfluidic chip containing a single microchannel design. The results showed that a low voltage (4.5 V) was able to open the valve within 1 s when the distance between two electrodes was 1 mm. Increased voltages were needed to open the valves when the distance between two electrodes was increased. Additionally, the actuation time required to open the valve increased when voltage was decreased. A multichannel device was fabricated to demonstrate timed fluid delivery between three solutions. Our electrowetting valve system was fabricated using low-cost materials and techniques, can be actuated by a battery, and can be integrated into portable microfluidic devices suitable for point-of-care analysis in resource-limited settings.     

A multi-fluid nonrandom lattice fluid model: General derivation and application to pure fluids

A multi-fluid nonrandom lattice fluid model with no temperature dependence of close packed volumes of a mer, segment numbers and energy parameters of pure systems is presented. The multi-fluid nonrandom lattice fluid (MF-NLF) model with the local composition concept was capable of describing properties for complex systems. However, the MF-NLF model has strong temperature dependence of energy parameters and segment numbers of pure systems; thus empirical correlations as functions of temperature were represented for reliable and convenient use in engineering practices. The MF-NLF model without temperature dependence of pure parameters could not predict thermodynamic properties accurately. It was found that the present model with three parameters describes quantitatively the vapor pressure and the saturated density for the pure fluid.     

Preparation of water‐soluble syndiotacticity‐rich high molecular weight poly(vinyl alcohol) microfibrillar fibers using copolymerization of vinyl pivalate and vinyl acetate and saponification

Water‐soluble high molecular weight (HMW) syndiotactic poly(vinyl alcohol) (s‐PVA) microfibrillar fibers were prepared by the saponification with various conditions such as amount of alkali solution, saponification temperature, and saponification concentration from copoly(vinyl pivalate (VPi)/vinyl acetate (VAc)) copolymerized using various VPi/VAc feed ratios. To produce s‐PVA microbrillar fibers having various water‐soluble temperatures for many industrial applications, the intrinsic viscosities, syndiotactic diad (S‐diad) contents, and degrees of saponification (DS)s of PVAs were finely controlled to 1.2–3.6 dL/g, 56.3–58.3%, and 91.4–98.3%, respectively. Through a series of experiments, it was found that the amount of alkali may alter the structure of the saponified polymers, primarily the DS, and the structural variation changes viscosity. That is, intrinsic viscosity was sharply decreased as the amount of alkali solution was increased. DS was increased with an increase in the amount of alkali solution. S‐diad content was increased with an increase in the VPi content. HMW s‐PVA microfibrillar fibers having S‐diad content of 56.3–58.3% prepared by the saponification of copoly(VPi/VAc) were completely soluble in water at 100°C. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 88: 1482–1487, 2003     

Guided architecture trade space exploration: fusing model-based engineering and design by shopping

Software and Systems Modeling - Advances in model-based system engineering have greatly increased the predictive power of models and the analyses that can be run on them. At the same time, designs...     

Advanced compensation technologies for large‐sized UHD OLED TVs

In this paper, we present novel organic light‐emitting diode (OLED) display panel compensation technologies for large‐sized ultra‐high‐definition OLED TVs considering variations of threshold voltage, mobility, channel size, OLED efficiency, and OLED uniformity. Using these technologies, we have successfully launched 55‐, 65‐ and 77‐in. ultra‐high‐definition OLED TVs.