The noise coming from outer side of EMU has not yet been an important factor because of the low operating speed of EMU. As the speed enhancement has been required, noise level in the EMU is an important issue for the passenger comfort. Also the sliding door system has high possibility for the failure due to obstacles between doors. The door system is a safety device closely related to the passenger safety. If a door is failed due to some obstacles, the EMU cannot operate before the failure is treated. In these cases, the failed door is manually re-opened several times by using door open switch in driver's cabin or bypassed the failed door units. The main cause of increased noise level is the imperfect air tightness of passenger side doors. The plug-in door system has advantages for the noise reduction in the high speed area. Recently, many types of plug-in door are introduced to reduce noise and enhance reliability. Electric plug-in door has been developed to correspond to domestic and foreign market to improve economic and performance in actual operation circumstances. In this paper, we will deal with the role of several units of plug-in door.

In this paper presents a power monitoring circuit for battery energy management system using operational amplifiers. The proposed scheme consists of a current sensing circuit with voltage output and an analog multiplier. The voltage output of current sensing circuit is directly proportional to load current. The multiplying result of the load current in the form of voltage signal and the load voltage becomes the load power in term of output voltage of analog multiplier. The configuration of the proposed power monitoring circuit is simple and economically attractive. Simulation and experimental results confirming the performance of the proposed circuit are agreed with the expected values.

The role of motor control in development of low back pain is subject of many researches both in theoretical and experimental fields. In this work flexion-extension movement of lumbar spine have been controlled by three different methods, including feedback linearization (FBL), PD control and their combinations. The model involves 7 links: 1 link for pelvis, 5 links for lumbar vertebrae and 1 link for trunk. Torque actuators have been used on each joint to make them follow desired trajectory. In linear control method, equations of motion have been linearized with respect to upright position and then control signals have been applied in the direction of eigenvectors. Robustness of each method against noises, sensory delay and parameters uncertainty have been investigated. Desired trajectory of each joint has been produced by Central Pattern Generators (CPGs), which was the subject of our previous work. The results show that PD controller in comparison with feedback linearization method is more robust in presence of noise and parameters uncertainty, but FBL controller is better when we have sensory delay. Combination of these methods leads to better control in all three simulations.

Grid coverage trajectory planning is the trajectory determination that a robot must follow in order to pass over all the grid points in a given environment. Applications include de-mining, inspection, exploration, reconnaissance, etc. In this paper, a minimum-time grid coverage trajectory planning (GCTP) algorithm is proposed for two-wheeled mobile robots (TMRs) satisfying (i) initial and final postures and velocities as well as (ii) battery voltage constraints. First, we list various candidates of turning path and performed an analysis on the time consumption of candidates, which are generated by combinations of standard paths such as translational path (T), rotational path (composed of arcs and clothoids). We considered five turning path candidates: T, R, C-R-C, R-T-R, and C-R-T-R-C (R means rotational curve path to rotate clockwise, C means rotational curve path to rotate counter-clockwise), and suggested a minimum time turning trajectory planning algorithm with efficient iterative binary search algorithm. We performed various computer simulations to find the minimum-time grid coverage trajectory. Simulation results show that the C-R-T-R-C path is the most efficient planning algorithm, which enables wheeled mobile robot to reduce the grid coverage time up to 16%.

The blast furnace is used to smelt iron in the steel industry. Ore and cokes are input and hot air is blown into the chamber of the blast furnace. In the high temperature environment, the wear between the stave and the materials makes the cooling stave thinning by the downward movement of the materials in the blast furnace. The thickness of the cooling stave should be aware in order to prevent leakage of coolant into the furnace chamber and to make actions before the failure. The unique ultrasonic sensor which can approach the cooling stave through the cooling line was developed to measure thickness of the worn cooling stave. The ultrasonic sensor has cylindrical face to contact inner surface of the cooling line in the stave. The ultrasonic sensor is flexibly bendable to pass the bended pipe of inlet and outlet port of the cooling line in the stave.

An adaptive image-based visual servo (IBVS) control for a quadrotor helicopter is proposed in this paper. By employing the adaptive gain in the IBVS control method, performance and stability of the under-actuated system are improved. The performance of the overall approach is validated by numerical and vision integrated hardware-in-the-loop-simulation (HILS) with the nonlinear quadrotor helicopter dynamics.

This paper presents a design method for discrete-time parallel with continuous-time design for the two degree of freedom (2DOF) control system using PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative)×(n-2) stage PD as a cascade controller for a class of nth order plant. Both, transient and steady state response specifications are suddenly met when the forward controller is employed. The root loci of this method are shown that the closed loop system is robustly stable with excellence.

This paper is dealing with a smart actuator for a modular robot. Modular robot means that robot has modular actuator in each axis. Smart actuator consists of harmonic reducer, servo motor, electric brake, multi-turns absolute encoder, drive, network board. All of them are hollow shaft type module. The robot which is linked to the smart actuator with EtherCAT and SPI communication is easily able to assemble and disassemble or reconfigure it. We try to implement a smart actuator and this tries to be verified through an experiment in order to implement the robot.

The Ethernet-based network protocol is widely using in industrial environments. Its advantages include high speed, high performance, operation over long distances, and better interoperability. A number of techniques are used to implement the Ethernet protocol for the needs of industrial processes that must provide real time processes. This paper analyses network performance of an Embedded system based master using EtherCAT. The network performance characteristics of the Embedded systems are compared by considering into the factors affecting their performance in a network system. This may determine reasons why network performance differs between factors.