Development of a Basic Robot System for Medical and Nursing Care for Patients with Glaucoma

Medical methods to completely treat glaucoma are yet to be developed. Therefore, ophthalmologists manage patients mainly to delay disease progression. Patients with glaucoma are mainly elderly individuals. In elderly people's houses, having an equipment that can provide medical treatment and care can release their family from their care. For elderly people with the glaucoma to live by themselves as much as possible, we developed a support robot having five functions: elderly people care, ophthalmological examination, trip assistance to the neighborhood, medical treatment, and data referral to a hospital. The medical and nursing care robot should approach the visual field that the patients can see at a speed suitable for their eyesight. This is because the robot will be dangerous if it approaches the patients from the visual field that they cannot see. We experimentally developed a robot that brings a white cane to elderly people with glaucoma. The base part of the robot is a carriage, which is a Megarover 1.1, and it has two infrared sensors. The robot moves along a white line on the floor using the infrared sensors and has a special arm, which does not use electricity. The arm can scoop the block attached to the white cane. Next, we also developed a direction detector comprised of a charge-coupled device camera (SVR41ResucueHD; Sun Mechatronics), goggles (MG-277MLF; Midori Anzen Co. Ltd.), and biconvex lenses with a focal length of 25 mm (Edmund Co.). Some young people were photographed using the direction detector, which was put on their faces. Image processing was performed using Scilab 6.1.0 and Image Processing and Computer Vision Toolbox 4.1.2. To measure the people's line of vision, we calculated the iris's center of gravity using five processes: reduction, trimming, binarization or gray scale, edge extraction, and Hough transform. We compared the binarization and gray scale processes in image processing. The binarization process was better than the gray scale process. For edge extraction, we compared five methods: Sobel, Prewitt, Laplacian of Gaussian, fast Fourier transform, and Canny. The Canny method was the optimal extraction method. We performed the Hough transform to search for the main coordinates from the iris's edge, and we found that the Hough transform could calculate the center point of the iris.

Automatic Extraction of Arbitrarily Shaped Buildings from VHR Satellite Imagery

Satellite imagery is one of the emerging technologies which are extensively utilized in various applications such as detection/extraction of man-made structures, monitoring of sensitive areas, creating graphic maps etc. The main approach here is the automated detection of buildings from very high resolution (VHR) optical satellite images. Initially, the shadow, the building and the non-building regions (roads, vegetation etc.) are investigated wherein building extraction is mainly focused. Once all the landscape is collected a trimming process is done so as to eliminate the landscapes that may occur due to non-building objects. Finally the label method is used to extract the building regions. The label method may be altered for efficient building extraction. The images used for the analysis are the ones which are extracted from the sensors having resolution less than 1 meter (VHR). This method provides an efficient way to produce good results. The additional overhead of mid processing is eliminated without compromising the quality of the output to ease the processing steps required and time consumed.

Finite Element Simulation of Deep Drawing Process to Minimize Earing

Earing defect in drawing process is highly undesirable not only because it adds on an additional trimming operation but also because the uneven material flow demands extra care. The objective of this work is to study the earing problem in the Deep Drawing of circular cup and to optimize the blank shape to reduce the earing. A finite element model is developed for 3-D numerical simulation of cup forming process in ABAQUS. Extra-deep-drawing (EDD) steel sheet has been used for simulation. Properties and tool design parameters were used as input for simulation. Earing was observed in the simulated cup and it was measured at various angles with respect to rolling direction. To reduce the earing defect initial blank shape was modified with the help of anisotropy coefficient. Modified blanks showed notable reduction in earing.

Influence of Thermal Damage on the Mechanical Strength of Trimmed CFRP

Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics (CFRPs) are widely used for advanced applications, in particular in aerospace, automotive and wind energy industries. Once cured to near net shape, CFRP parts need several finishing operations such as trimming, milling or drilling in order to accommodate fastening hardware and meeting the final dimensions. The present research aims to study the effect of the cutting temperature in trimming on the mechanical strength of high performance CFRP laminates used for aeronautics applications. The cutting temperature is of great importance when dealing with trimming of CFRP. Temperatures higher than the glass-transition temperature (Tg) of the resin matrix are highly undesirable: they cause degradation of the matrix in the trimmed edges area, which can severely affect the mechanical performance of the entire component. In this study, a 9.50mm diameter CVD diamond coated carbide tool with six flutes was used to trim 24-plies CFRP laminates. A 300m/min cutting speed and 1140mm/min feed rate were used in the experiments. The tool was heated prior to trimming using a blowtorch, for temperatures ranging from 20°C to 300°C. The temperature at the cutting edge was measured using embedded KType thermocouples. Samples trimmed for different cutting temperatures, below and above Tg, were mechanically tested using three-points bending short-beam loading configurations. New cutting tools as well as worn cutting tools were utilized for the experiments. The experiments with the new tools could not prove any correlation between the length of cut, the cutting temperature and the mechanical performance. Thus mechanical strength was constant, regardless of the cutting temperature. However, for worn tools, producing a cutting temperature rising up to 450°C, thermal damage of the resin was observed. The mechanical tests showed a reduced mean resistance in short beam configuration, while the resistance in three point bending decreases with increase of the cutting temperature.

Modeling of a Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are playing increasingly prominent roles in defense programs and defense strategies around the world. Technology advancements have enabled the development of it to do many excellent jobs as reconnaissance, surveillance, battle fighters, and communications relays. Simulating a small unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV) dynamics and analyzing its behavior at the preflight stage is too important and more efficient. The first step in the UAV design is the mathematical modeling of the nonlinear equations of motion. . In this paper, a survey with a standard method to obtain the full non-linear equations of motion is utilized, and then the linearization of the equations according to a steady state flight condition (trimming) is derived. This modeling technique is applied to an Ultrastick-25e fixed wing UAV to obtain the valued linear longitudinal and lateral models. At the end the model is checked by matching between the behavior of the states of the nonlinear UAV and the resulted linear model with doublet at the control surfaces.

Study of the Sorption of Biosurfactants from l. Pentosus on Sediments

Losses of surfactant due to sorption need to be considered when selecting surfactant doses for soil bioremediation. The degree of surfactant sorption onto soil depends primarily on the organic carbon fraction of soil and the chemical nature of the surfactant. The use of biosurfactants in the control of the bioavailability of toxicants in soils is an attractive option because of their biodegradability. In this work biosurfactants were produced from a cheap raw material, trimming vine shoots, employing Lactobacillus pentosus. When biosurfactants from L. pentosus was added to sediments the surface tensión of the water containing the sediments rapidly increase, the same behaviour was observed with the chemical surfactant Tween 20; whereas sodyum dodecyl sulphate (SDS) kept the surface tension of the water around 36 mN/m. It means, that the behaviour of biosurfactants from L. pentosus is more similar to non-ionic surfactatns than to anionic surfactants.

Trimmed Mean as an Adaptive Robust Estimator of a Location Parameter for Weibull Distribution

One of the purposes of the robust method of estimation is to reduce the influence of outliers in the data, on the estimates. The outliers arise from gross errors or contamination from distributions with long tails. The trimmed mean is a robust estimate. This means that it is not sensitive to violation of distributional assumptions of the data. It is called an adaptive estimate when the trimming proportion is determined from the data rather than being fixed a “priori-. The main objective of this study is to find out the robustness properties of the adaptive trimmed means in terms of efficiency, high breakdown point and influence function. Specifically, it seeks to find out the magnitude of the trimming proportion of the adaptive trimmed mean which will yield efficient and robust estimates of the parameter for data which follow a modified Weibull distribution with parameter λ = 1/2 , where the trimming proportion is determined by a ratio of two trimmed means defined as the tail length. Secondly, the asymptotic properties of the tail length and the trimmed means are also investigated. Finally, a comparison is made on the efficiency of the adaptive trimmed means in terms of the standard deviation for the trimming proportions and when these were fixed a “priori". The asymptotic tail lengths defined as the ratio of two trimmed means and the asymptotic variances were computed by using the formulas derived. While the values of the standard deviations for the derived tail lengths for data of size 40 simulated from a Weibull distribution were computed for 100 iterations using a computer program written in Pascal language. The findings of the study revealed that the tail lengths of the Weibull distribution increase in magnitudes as the trimming proportions increase, the measure of the tail length and the adaptive trimmed mean are asymptotically independent as the number of observations n becomes very large or approaching infinity, the tail length is asymptotically distributed as the ratio of two independent normal random variables, and the asymptotic variances decrease as the trimming proportions increase. The simulation study revealed empirically that the standard error of the adaptive trimmed mean using the ratio of tail lengths is relatively smaller for different values of trimming proportions than its counterpart when the trimming proportions were fixed a 'priori'.

Effect of Ply Orientation on Roughness for the Trimming Process of CFRP Laminates

The machining of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics has come to constitute a significant challenge for many fields of industry. The resulting surface finish of machined parts is of primary concern for several reasons, including contact quality and impact on the assembly. Therefore, the characterization and prediction of roughness based on machining parameters are crucial for costeffective operations. In this study, a PCD tool comprised of two straight flutes was used to trim 32-ply carbon fiber laminates in a bid to analyze the effects of the feed rate and the cutting speed on the surface roughness. The results show that while the speed has but a slight impact on the surface finish, the feed rate for its part affects it strongly. A detailed study was also conducted on the effect of fiber orientation on surface roughness, for quasi-isotropic laminates used in aerospace. The resulting roughness profiles for the four-ply orientation lay-up were compared, and it was found that fiber angle is a critical parameter relating to surface roughness. One of the four orientations studied led to very poor surface finishes, and characteristic roughness profiles were identified and found to only relate to the ply orientations of multilayer carbon fiber laminates.

Effects of Beak Trimming on Behavior and Agonistic Activity of Thai Native Pullets Raised in Floor Pens

The effect of beak trimming on behavior of two strains of Thai native pullets kept in floor pens was studied. Six general activities (standing, crouching, moving, comforting, roosting, and nesting), 6 beak related activities (preening, feeding, drinking, pecking at inedible object, feather pecking, and litter pecking), and 4 agonistic activities (head pecking, threatening, avoiding, and fighting) were measured twice a for 15 consecutive days, started when the pullets were 19 wk old. It was found that beak trimmed pullets drank more frequent (P