The flame image processing and analysis system has been investigated for the optimal pulverized coal firing of thermal power plant, especially for lower nitrogen oxide generation and more safe operation. We aimed at gaining the relationship between burner flame image information and emissions of nitrogen oxide and unburned carbon in furnace utilizing the flame image processing methods, by which we quantitatively determine the condition of combustion on the individual humors. Its feasibility test was undertaken with a pilot furnace for coal firing, through which the system was observed to be effective for the monitoring of the combustion condition of pulverized coal firing boilers.

This paper shows the calculation of 3D geometric information such as height, direction and distance under the constraints of a catadioptric camera system. The catadioptric camera system satisfies the single viewpoint constraints adopting hyperboloidal mirror. To calculate the 3D information with a single omni-directional image, the points are assumed to lie in perpendicular to the ground. The infinite plane is also detected as a circle from the structure of the mirror and camera. The analytic experiments verify the correctness of theory using real images taken in indoor environments like rooms or corridors. Thus, the experimental results show the applicability to calculate the 3D geometric information using single omni-directional images.

The T-50 advanced trainer aircraft combines advanced aerodynamic features and a fly-by-wire flight control system in order to produce a stability and highly maneuverability. The flight control system both longitudinal and lateral-directional axes to achieve performance enhancements and improve stability. The T-50 employs the RSS concept in order to improve the aerodynamic performance in longitudinal axis and the longitudinal control laws employ the dynamic inversion with proportional-plus-integral control method. And, lateral-directional control laws employ the blended roll system both beta-betadot feedback and simple roll rate feedback with proportional control method in order to guarantee aircraft stability. This paper details the design process of developing lateral-directional control laws, utilizing the requirement of MIL-F-8785C and MIL-F-9490D. And, this paper propose the analysis of aircraft characteristics such as dutch-roll mode, roll mode, spiral mode, gain and phase margin about gains for lateral-directional inner loop feedback.

Generally, the tracking performance of optical disk drive(ODD) system can be improved using a disturbance observer(DOB). However, a DOB is not easily applied in an ODD system because an additional microprocessor, such as a digital signal processor(DSP), is needed. This paper shows how a DOB system can be replaced by the error-based modified disturbance observer(EM-DOB) when two mathematical conditions are satisfied. Due to the simplified structure of EM-DOB, the algorithm is easily implemented as an analog circuit, which is suitable for the ODD servo system. Additionally, in these algorithms, disturbances rejection performances can be tuned as Q filter parameters. Similar to a DOB system, three design guidelines of a Q filter can be applied. Experimental results of DOB and EM-DOB are evaluated under forced disturbances.

DSP chip parameters of a digital hearing aid (HA) should be optimally selected or fitted for hearing impaired persons. The more precise parameter fitting guarantees the better compensation of the hearing loss (HL). Digital HAs adopt DSP chips for more precise fitting of various HL threshold curve patterns. A specific DSP chip such as Gennum GB3211 was designed and manufactured in order to match up to about 4.7 billion different possible HL cases with combination of 7 limited parameters. This paper deals with a digital HA fitting program which is developed for optimal fitting of GB3211 DSP chip parameters. The fitting program has completed features from audiogram input to DSP chip interface. The compensation effects of the microphone and the receiver are also included. The paper shows some application examples.

In this paper an anthropomorphic robot hand called SKKU Hand IIl is presented, which has a miniaturized fingertip tactile sensor. The thumb is designed as one part of the palm and multiplies the mobility of the palm. The fingertip tactile sensor, based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and pressure variable resistor ink, is physically flexible enough to be deformed into any three-dimensional geometry. In order to detect incipient slip, a PVDF strip is arranged along the direction normal to the surface of the finger of the robot hand. Also, a thin flexible sensor to sense the static force as well as the contact location is fabricated into an arrayed type using pressure variable resistor ink. The driving circuits and the tactile sensing systems for the SKKU Hand II are embedded in the hand. Each driving circuit communicates with others using CAN protocol. SKKU Hand II is manufactured and its feasibility is validated through preliminary experiments.

Material information for environment may be useful to accomplish mobile robot localization. A procedure to classify a set of indoor materials (glass, steel, wood, aluminum and concrete) with the reflected signal of ultrasonic sensor is proposed in this paper. The main idea is to use material-specific reflection characteristics for the recognition of material type. To achieve the classification task, we modeled reflected signal as a maximum amplitude with respect to distance. In this way, we can generate echo signal models for the given materials and these models are used to compare with the current sensor reading. The experimental results show that the proposed method may give material information during map building task of mobile robot.

The Air Quality Sensor(AQS), located near the fresh air inlet, serves to reduce the amount of pollution entering the vehicle cabin through the HVAC(heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) system by sending a signal to close the fresh air inlet door/ventilation flap when the vehicle enters a high pollution area. The sensor module which includes two independent sensing elements for responding to diesel and gasoline exhaust gases, and temperature sensor and humidity sensor was designed for intelligent AQS in automobile. With this sensor module, AVR microcontroller was designed with back propagation neural network to a powerful gas/vapor pattern recognition when the motor vehicles pass a pollution area. Momentum back propagation algorithm was used in this study instead of normal backpropagation to reduce the teaming time of neural network. The signal from neural network was modified to control the inlet of automobile and display the result or alarm the situation in this study. One chip microcontroller, ATmega 128L(ATmega Ltd., USA) was used for the control and display. And our developed system can intelligently reduce the malfunction of AQS from the dampness of air or dense fog with the backpropagation neural network and the input sensor module with four sensing elements such as reducing gas sensing element, oxidizing gas sensing element, temperature sensing element and humidity sensing element.

In this paper vector code correlation(VCC) method and an algorithm to promote the image-processing performance in building an effective measurement system using cameras are described far automatically berthing and controlling the ship equipped with side-thrusters. In order to realize automatic ship berthing, it is indispensable that the berthing assistant system on the ship should continuously trace a target in the berth to measure the distance to the target and the ship attitude, such that we can make the ship move to the specified location. The considered system is made up of 4 apparatuses compounded from a CCD camera, a camera direction controller, a popular PC with a built-in image processing board and a signal conversion unit connected to parallel port of the PC. The object of this paper is to reduce the image-processing time so that the berthing system is able to ensure the safety schedule against risks during approaching to the berth. It could be achieved by composing the vector code image to utilize the gradient of an approximated plane found with the brightness of pixels forming a certain region in an image and verifying the effectiveness on a commonly used PC. From experimental results, it is clear that the proposed method can be applied to the measurement system for automatic ship berthing and has the image-processing time of fourfold as compared with the typical template matching method.

In this study, a thermal control system which applied a Peltier device for the polymerase chain reaction(PCR) machine is to be designed. Here in order for it to easily follow the characteristics of the thermal cycle existing for gene amplification of the PCR sample, a PCR control board utilizing a thermal sensor, a Peltier, and a 8 bit microprocessor is made up. Especially a fuzzy type PD control algorithm is applied periodically in time response, and control system is implemented. For that matter, the characteristic data of subject system is obtained and analysed to begin with. Based on this analysed data, the proposed control algorithm is applied and an evaluation of the performance of the whole system take place through the PC.