Abstract: The Algorithm 2 for a n-link manipulator movement amidst arbitrary unknown static obstacles for a case when a sensor system supplies information about local neighborhoods of different points in the configuration space is presented. The Algorithm 2 guarantees the reaching of a target position in a finite number of steps. The Algorithm 2 is reduced to a finite number of calls of a subroutine for planning a trajectory in the presence of known forbidden states. The polynomial approximation algorithm which is used as the subroutine is presented. The results of the Algorithm2 implementation are given.
Abstract: Ant Colony Algorithms have been applied to difficult
combinatorial optimization problems such as the travelling salesman
problem and the quadratic assignment problem. In this paper gridbased
and random-based ant colony algorithms are proposed for
automatic 3D hose routing and their pros and cons are discussed. The
algorithm uses the tessellated format for the obstacles and the
generated hoses in order to detect collisions. The representation of
obstacles and hoses in the tessellated format greatly helps the
algorithm towards handling free-form objects and speeds up
computation. The performance of algorithm has been tested on a
number of 3D models.
Abstract: In this research, effort was made to identify and
evaluate barriers to the development of entrepreneurship among
Iranian entrepreneur women who were graduated from universities.
In this study, perspectives of thirty-seven available entrepreneur
women were examined. In order to prepare questionnaires and
receive knowledge about barriers among these women, seven cases of
entrepreneur women took part in in-depth interviews. Then, to
evaluate the importance of barriers, the researchers made a
questionnaire with closed questions in which the barriers were
classified into the following categories: personal-familial barriers;
socio-cultural barriers; economic-financial-commercial barriers; and
structural barriers. Entrepreneur women were requested to rate the
importance of each item. The results indicated that there were
different obstacles among entrepreneur women. The order of the
important barriers was as fallow: economic-financial-commercial,
structural, socio-cultural, and personal-familial.
Abstract: This present paper proposes the modified Elastic Strip
method for mobile robot to avoid obstacles with a real time system in
an uncertain environment. The method deals with the problem of
robot in driving from an initial position to a target position based on
elastic force and potential field force. To avoid the obstacles, the
robot has to modify the trajectory based on signal received from the
sensor system in the sampling times. It was evident that with the
combination of Modification Elastic strip and Pseudomedian filter to
process the nonlinear data from sensor uncertainties in the data
received from the sensor system can be reduced. The simulations and
experiments of these methods were carried out.
Abstract: A large quantity of world-s oil reserves exists in
carbonate reservoirs. Carbonate reservoirs are very sensitive to
chemical enhanced oil recovery process because of containing large
amount of calcite, dolomite and calcium sulfate minerals. These
minerals cause major obstacles during alkali-surfactant-polymer
(ASP) flooding. Alkali reacts with these minerals and form undesired
precipitations which plug effective porous openings, reduce
permeability and cause scale occurrence at the wellbore. In this
paper, a new chemical combination consists of acrylic acid and alkali
was used to minimize precipitation problem during ASP flooding. A
series of fluid-fluid compatibility tests were performed using acrylic
acid and different concentrations of alkaline. Two types of alkalis
namely; sodium carbonate and sodium metaborate were screened. As
a result, the combination of acrylic acid and sodium carbonate was
not effective in preventing calcium and magnesium precipitations.
However, acrylic acid and sodium metaborate showed promising
results for keeping all solutions without any precipitations. The ratio
of acrylic acid to sodium metaborate of 0.7:1.0 was found to be
optimum for achieving a compatible solution for 30 days at 80oC.
Abstract: The ability of UML to handle the modeling process of complex industrial software applications has increased its popularity to the extent of becoming the de-facto language in serving the design purpose. Although, its rich graphical notation naturally oriented towards the object-oriented concept, facilitates the understandability, it hardly successes to report all domainspecific aspects in a satisfactory way. OCL, as the standard language for expressing additional constraints on UML models, has great potential to help improve expressiveness. Unfortunately, it suffers from a weak formalism due to its poor semantic resulting in many obstacles towards the build of tools support and thus its application in the industry field. For this reason, many researches were established to formalize OCL expressions using a more rigorous approach. Our contribution join this work in a complementary way since it focuses specifically on OCL predefined properties which constitute an important part in the construction of OCL expressions. Using formal methods, we mainly succeed in expressing rigorously OCL predefined functions.
Abstract: A cross sectional survey design was used to collect
data from 370 diabetic patients. Two instruments were used in
obtaining data; in-depth interview guide and researchers- developed
questionnaire. Fisher's exact test was used to investigate association
between the identified factors and nonadherence. Factors identified
were: socio-demographic factors such as: gender, age, marital status,
educational level and occupation; psychosocial obstacles such as:
non-affordability of prescribed diet, frustration due to the restriction,
limited spousal support, feelings of deprivation, feeling that
temptation is inevitable, difficulty in adhering in social gatherings
and difficulty in revealing to host that one is diabetic; health care
providers obstacles were: poor attitude of health workers, irregular
diabetes education in clinics , limited number of nutrition education
sessions/ inability of the patients to estimate the desired quantity of
food, no reminder post cards or phone calls about upcoming patient
appointments and delayed start of appointment / time wasting in
clinics.
Abstract: This policy participation action research explores the
roles of Thai government units during its 2010 fiscal year on how to
create value added to recycling business in the central part of
Thailand. The research aims to a) study how the government plays a
role to support the business, and its problems and obstacles on
supporting the business, b) to design a strategic action – short,
medium, and long term plans -- to create value added to the recycling
business, particularly in local full-loop companies/organizations
licensed by Wongpanit Waste Separation Plant as well as those
licensed by the Department of Provincial Administration. Mixed
method research design, i.e., a combination of quantitative and
qualitative methods is utilized in the present study in both data
collection and analysis procedures. Quantitative data was analyzed
by frequency, percent value, mean scores, and standard deviation,
and aimed to note trend and generalizations. Qualitative data was
collected via semi-structured interviews/focus group interviews to
explore in-depth views of the operators. The sampling included 1,079
operators in eight provinces in the central part of Thailand.
Abstract: This paper presents a new sensor-based online method for generating collision-free near-optimal paths for mobile robots pursuing a moving target amidst dynamic and static obstacles. At each iteration, first the set of all collision-free directions are calculated using velocity vectors of the robot relative to each obstacle and target, forming the Directive Circle (DC), which is a novel concept. Then, a direction close to the shortest path to the target is selected from feasible directions in DC. The DC prevents the robot from being trapped in deadlocks or local minima. It is assumed that the target's velocity is known, while the speeds of dynamic obstacles, as well as the locations of static obstacles, are to be calculated online. Extensive simulations and experimental results demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed method and its success in coping with complex environments and obstacles.
Abstract: This paper presents an algorithm for the recognition
and tracking of moving objects, 1/10 scale model car is used to verify
performance of the algorithm. Presented algorithm for the recognition
and tracking of moving objects in the paper is as follows. SURF
algorithm is merged with Lucas-Kanade algorithm. SURF algorithm
has strong performance on contrast, size, rotation changes and it
recognizes objects but it is slow due to many computational
complexities. Processing speed of Lucas-Kanade algorithm is fast but
the recognition of objects is impossible. Its optical flow compares the
previous and current frames so that can track the movement of a pixel.
The fusion algorithm is created in order to solve problems which
occurred using the Kalman Filter to estimate the position and the
accumulated error compensation algorithm was implemented. Kalman
filter is used to create presented algorithm to complement problems
that is occurred when fusion two algorithms. Kalman filter is used to
estimate next location, compensate for the accumulated error. The
resolution of the camera (Vision Sensor) is fixed to be 640x480. To
verify the performance of the fusion algorithm, test is compared to
SURF algorithm under three situations, driving straight, curve, and
recognizing cars behind the obstacles. Situation similar to the actual is
possible using a model vehicle. Proposed fusion algorithm showed
superior performance and accuracy than the existing object
recognition and tracking algorithms. We will improve the performance
of the algorithm, so that you can experiment with the images of the
actual road environment.