Gain‐scheduled dynamic output feedback control for discrete‐time LPV systems

This paper presents synthesis conditions for the design of gain‐scheduled dynamic output feedback controllers for discrete‐time linear parameter‐varying systems. The state‐space matrix representation of the plant and of the controller can have a homogeneous polynomial dependency of arbitrary degree on the scheduling parameter. As an immediate extension, conditions for the synthesis of a multiobjective ??_∞ and ??₂ gain‐scheduled dynamic feedback controller are also provided. The scheduling parameters vary inside a polytope and are assumed to be a priori unknown, but measured in real‐time. If bounds on the rate of parameter variation are known, they can be taken into account, providing less conservative results. The geometric properties of the uncertainty domain are exploited to derive finite sets of linear matrix inequalities based on the existence of a homogeneous polynomially parameter‐dependent Lyapunov function. An application of the control design to a realistic engineering problem illustrates the benefits of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transparency in complex dynamic food supply chains

Food supply chains are increasingly complex and dynamic due to (i) increasing product proliferation to serve ever diversifying and globalising markets as a form of mass customisation with resulting global flows of raw materials, ingredients and products, and (ii) the need to satisfy changing and variable consumer and governmental demands with respect to food safety, animal welfare, and environmental impact. Transparency in the food supply chain is essential to guarantee food quality and provenance to all users of food and food products. Intensified information exchange and integrated information systems involving all chain actors are needed to achieve transparency with respect to a multitude of food properties.In this paper, specific challenges of food supply chains are highlighted. Major elements are addressed that support transparency to consumers, the government and food companies, which are considered the claimants of transparency. Elements considered to be enablers of transparency are governance mechanisms, quality and safety standards and information exchange. The paper specifies these transparency claimants and enablers for food supply chains and identifies major information system functions and information technology applications needed to comply with transparency demands. It thereby provides a framework for transparency analysis in food supply chains.     

Coarse head pose estimation of construction equipment operators to formulate dynamic blind spots

Several hundred workers die in construction in the United States every year because equipment operators are unable to see their fellow workers during operation of their vehicle. In this paper we propose a step towards improving this situation by providing an automated method based on range imaging for estimating the coarse head orientation of a construction equipment operator. This research utilizes commercially-available low resolution range cameras to measure the continuously changing field-of-view (FOV) of an equipment operator in outdoor construction. This paper presents a methodology to measure so-called dynamic blind spot maps. The dynamic blind spot map is then projected on a known static equipment blind spot map that already exists to each construction vehicle. A robust computational coarse head pose estimation algorithm and results to three different pieces of construction equipment and multiple operators are presented. The developed method has the potential in automatically determining the spaces around vehicles that are currently not in the field-of-view of the vehicle operator thus providing eventually additional means and technology for improving safety in construction.     

Adaptive fuzzy dynamic surface control for a class of perturbed nonlinear time-varying delay systems with unknown dead-zone

In this paper,adaptive dynamic surface control(DSC) is developed for a class of nonlinear systems with unknown discrete and distributed time-varying delays and unknown dead-zone.Fuzzy logic systems are used to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions.Then,by combining the backstepping technique and the appropriate Lyapunov-Krasovskii functionals with the dynamic surface control approach,the adaptive fuzzy tracking controller is designed.Our development is able to eliminate the problem of "explosion of complexity" inherent in the existing backstepping-based methods.The main advantages of our approach include:1) for the n-th-order nonlinear systems,only one parameter needs to be adjusted online in the controller design procedure,which reduces the computation burden greatly.Moreover,the input of the dead-zone with only one adjusted parameter is much simpler than the ones in the existing results;2) the proposed control scheme does not need to know the time delays and their upper bounds.It is proven that the proposed design method is able to guarantee that all the signals in the closed-loop system are bounded and the tracking error is smaller than a prescribed error bound,Finally,simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

Nodal ant colony optimization for solving profit based unit commitment problem for GENCOs

This paper proposes a nodal ant colony optimization (NACO) technique to solve profit based unit commitment problem (PBUCP). Generation companies (GENCOs) in a competitive restructured power market, schedule their generators with an objective to maximize their own profit without any regard for system social benefit. Power and reserve prices become important factors in decision process. Ant colony optimization that mimics the behavior of ants foraging activities is suitably implemented to search the UCP search space. Here a search space consisting of optimal combination of binary nodes for unit ON/OFF status is represented for the movement of the ants to maintain good exploration and exploitation search capabilities. The proposed model help GENCOs to make decisions on the quantity of power and reserve that must be put up for sale in the markets and also to schedule generators in order to receive the maximum profit. The effectiveness of the proposed technique for PBUCP is validated on 10 and 36 generating unit systems available in the literature. NACO yields an increase of profit, greater than 1.5%, in comparison with the basic ACO, Muller method and hybrid LR-GA.     

A copper/polyimide Metal-base packaging technology

A unique substrate MCPM (Mitsubishi Copper Polyimide Metal-base) technology has been developed by applying our basic copper/polyimide technology.¹ This new substrate technology MCPM is suited for a high-density, multi-layer, multi-chip, high-power module/package, such as used for a computer. The new MCPM was processed using a copper metal base (110 × 110 mm), full copper system (all layers) with 50-μm fine lines. As for pad metallizations for the IC assembly, we evaluated both Ni/Au for chip and wire ICs and solder for TAB ICs. The total number of assembled ICs is 25. To improve the thermal dispersion, copper thermal vias are simultaneously formed by electro-plating. This thermal via is located between the IC chip and copper metal base, and promotes heat dispersion. We employed one large thermal via (4.5 mm^?) and four small vias (1.0 mm^?) for each IC pad. The effect of thermal vias and/or base metal is simulated by a computer analysis and compared with an alumina base substrate. The results show that the thermal vias are effective at lowering the temperature difference between the IC and base substrate, and also lowering the temperature rise of the IC chip. We also evaluated the substrate’s reliability by adhesion test, pressure cooker test, etc.     

Solid-liquid phase equilibria of benzene + 2-methyl-2-propanol system under high pressures

Solid-liquid phase equilibria of the benzene + 2-methyl-2-propanol system have been investigated at temperatures from 278 to 323 K and pressures up to 300 MPa using a high-pressure optical vessel. The uncertainties of the measurements of temperature, pressure and composition are within ±0.1 K, ±0.5 MPa, and ±0.001 mole fraction, respectively. The freezing pressure at a constant composition increases monotonously with pressure. The eutectic point shifts to a higher temperature and benzene-rich composition with increasing pressure. In order to describe the pressure-temperature-composition relation of high-pressure solid-liquid phase equilibria, a new simple equation has been proposed as follows:

Semantic analysis in XTRA,an English — Chinese machine translation system

This paper concerns the resolution of lexical ambiguity in a machine translation environment. We describe the integration of principles of selection restrictions. Preference Semantics, and intelligent relaxation of constraints in handling lexical ambiguity. The approach differs from many previous MT systems in that it is more powerful than brute force systems, while more realistic than systems that assume a large degree of coded encyclopedia information for full understanding.     

一种制做三维牙——颌骨光弹性模型的新方法

本文提出一种用“整体浇注法”制做三维牙——颌骨光弹性模型的新方法,即用价格便宜的石膏做阴模,先制出与真实牙几何相似的牙光弹性模型和模拟牙周膜的乳胶套,将它们粘接好,然后将其放入颌骨石膏阴模的适当位置,浇入环氧树脂混合液,用“二次固化法”进行固化,即可制成三维牙——颌骨整体光弹性模型。此法能保证模型与实物的严格几何相似和牙周的边界条件相似,使实验精度大大提高且工艺简单、成本低。