The ServoTeach module is a manually adjustable electronic circuit board, figure 2.1, that derives three independent, variable-angle, control signals for Futaba angular displacement servomechanisms, figure 2.2 that are used as artificial muscles for the robots described in this book. These servomechanisms or ‘servos’ actuate the rotation of an output shaft that pushes or pulls mechanical cranks, levers, links and limbs of the robot that produce locomotion. The ServoTeach module manually positions the servo output shaft to a required angle and the angle value integer number can be read at a computer screen. The integer number is derived from a Basic Stamp2 microcomputer. The number represents fractions of degree units that are calibrated in experiments described in following chapters.

Ventilated supercavitation is a promising technique to achieve high-speed transport underwater by generating a gas bubble enclosing a moving object through ventilation. However, implementing this technique requires clear understanding and precise control of supercavity behaviors under unsteady conditions in practical applications. In this study, we present the systematic investigation of ventilated supercavity behaviors over a broad range of unsteady conditions. The experiments are conducted in the high-speed water tunnel at Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory. The unsteady conditions are generated using a gust generator consisting of two flapping hydrofoils mounted upstream of a forward-facing cavitator. We use high-speed imaging to capture the variation of cavity dimension and flow patterns along with simultaneous pressure measurements. Measurements are conducted under fixed tunnel speed and ventilation rate with the flapping hydrofoils operating under varying angle of attack ( AoA ) and frequency ( f g ). The visualization and pressure signals reveal five distinct states of supercavity under unsteady conditions, referred to as stable state, wavy state, pulsating state I, pulsating state II and collapsing state. The stable state occurs under low AoA and f g , the supercavity only exhibits small amplitude of oscillation without appreciable deformation of the cavity interface. When the supercavity is at wavy state (moderate AoA and high f g ), the supercavity displays clear periodic wavelike deformation of its surface with cavity pressure varies periodically at two times of f g . Under high AoA with low f g , pulsating state I of the cavity shows significant fluctuations in length with intermittent shed-off of gas pockets at the rear part of the cavity. With increase of f g , the cavity exhibits enhanced pulsating behavior and a sharp of difference between cavity pressure and test section pressure (i.e. pulsating state II). At the highest AoA (i.e. AoA 10°) and f g above 2 Hz, the cavity collapses. The transition across different supercavity states under a broad range of unsteady conditions is summarized in the supercavity state map, showing the dependence of supercavity states on the characteristic scales of unsteadiness in comparison to longitudinal and lateral dimensions of the supercavity.

Given they have more DOF than required to perform a given end-effector primary task, redundant robot manipulators can achieve subtasks such as obstacle avoidance, fault tolerance, repetitive motion planning, joint limits, and singularity avoidance. Existing optimal control methods for path planning and control of robot manipulators can be roughly categorized into two types: First, optimal control methods that can handle each robot link separately without regard to robot dynamics by computing set points for low-level (e.g., position- or velocity-level) single-input single-output controllers; Second, optimal control methods that can handle the robot directly by considering robot dynamics and computing motor torques for high-level controllers, specifically, torque-level controllers. The former methods pertain to the description of motion (position, velocity, acceleration, etc.). These methods can perform well if the desired motion is not too fast and does not require large acceleration. The latter methods are related to the explanation of motion in terms of forces and torques and are applicable to numerous practical manipulators. The level at which path planning and control is performed may depend on the type of robot controller. For example, if joints are driven by positionor velocity-controlled servo motors, then a path planning and control scheme at the position or velocity level will generally suffice. However, if controllers can be driven by joint torque or actuator force, then the path planning and control scheme will be designed at the torque level. The computer simulations and experiments in this chapter are based on a six-DOF planar redundant robot manipulator.The manipulator is operated and controlled by pulse signals transmitted from the host computer. Manipulator joints are operated by position- and velocity-controlled servo or stepper motors, and the resultant joint variables (i.e., joint angle and joint velocity) should be converted into pulse per second (PPS) for manipulator control. In consideration of these points, the former optimal control method, which is better suited and much simpler than the latter methods, is exploited to control the six-DOF planar redundant robot manipulator.

Online process monitoring in ultrasonic welding of automotive lithium-ion batteries is essential for robust and reliable battery pack assembly. Effective quality monitoring algorithms have been developed to identify out of control parts by applying purely statistical classification methods. However, such methods do not provide the deep physical understanding of the manufacturing process that is necessary to provide diagnostic capability when the process is out of control. The purpose of this study is to determine the physical correlation between ultrasonic welding signal features and the ultrasonic welding process conditions and ultimately joint performance. A deep understanding in these relationships will enable a significant reduction in production launch time and cost, improve process design for ultrasonic welding, and reduce operational downtime through advanced diagnostic methods. In this study, the fundamental physics behind the ultrasonic welding process is investigated using two process signals, weld power and horn displacement. Several online features are identified by examining those signals and their variations under abnormal process conditions. The joint quality is predicted by correlating such online features to weld attributes such as bond density and post-weld thickness that directly impact the weld performance. This study provides a guideline for feature selection and advanced diagnostics to achieve a reliable online quality monitoring system in ultrasonic metal welding.

A Power Lab System (AD Instruments, Australia) was used for heartbeat recordings. For human EKGs, (abbreviation after Willem Einthoven), commercially available EKG electrodes were used. They are available worldwide, for example, a set of ready-made three AgAgCl electrodes (Vitrode V, Nihonkoden Co. Ltd. Tokyo). EKG signals were transferred to a Power Lab System. Finger pulse recordings were also used with it. For crustacean model animals' EKG, permanently mounted metal electrodes were used—they were glued on the carapace. The metal electrodes, + and –, were reaching the surface of the heart through small holes made on the carapace. All subjects and specimens were treated as per the ethical regulations of Tokyo Metropolitan University. 2.1 Data Acquisition and Ethics 2.2 The Healthy Heart and Its Scaling Exponent 2.3 Animal Models 2.4 The Heart Science History 2.5 Evolution of the Heart 2.6 Peng's DFA 2.7 DFA Programs 2.8 mDFA 2.9 Box 2.10 Processes in DFA and mDFA 2.11 Scaling Graphs

mDFA can compute any peak-to-peak cyclic wave-like signal. Detected peaks can be counted like heartbeats and expressed as “beat per min,” and box size can be expressed as “beats” in any case. I present some example using mDFA. 7.1 Motor 7.2 Shear Stress, Aluminum Angle Bar 7.3 Japan's Big Earthquake

Figure 9(a) shows the trigger signal for driving the flow pump. Figures 9(b) and 9(c) show waveforms of the internal pressure and change in the external diameter of the phantom, respectively. In Figure 9, the waveforms of 10 measurements are superimposed.

Electrochemical and optical methods are commonly utilized to generate and detect measurable signals that are glucose concentration-dependent. Oliver et al. and Pickup et al. describe the principles, advantages and disadvantages of the different optical methods [4, 10], while that of electrochemical methods are reviewed in detail by Heller and Feldman [1].

Nano-materials, by virtue of their nanoscale dimensions, make it possible to extend glucose sensing technologies beyond the limitations of conventional electrodes. In other words, the advent of nanotechnology opened up huge scope for development of miniature and CGM systems having wider detection limits and better sensitivity. Typically, nanomaterials have high surface area to volume ratios and high surface activity, due to which and depending on the ambient environment, often the same material behaves as electrical or thermal conductor, semi-conductor, optical or mechanical transducer. Hence, their unique catalytic and signal transducing abilities find them a variety of sensing applications.

A biosensor in its most simple form may be described as a device comprising three parts: a biological recognition system, a transducer, and a signal processing display (Conroy et al., 2009). Interaction of the analyte of interest with the biorecognition element is converted to a measurable signal by the transducer, before conversion to the readout or display (Vo-Dinh and Cullum, 2000). The basic structure of a biosensor is illustrated in Figure 2-1.

The fundamental principle behind biosensing is the conversion of a specific biorecognition event into a measurable signal. As described in Section 2.4, a wide variety of bioreceptors can be employed to detect a diverse range of analytes. The signal may be transduced in a variety of ways; electrochemically, optically or mechanically. In the case of impedimetric sensors, a high-affinity interaction between the analyte and bioreceptors, which are often antibodies, gives rise to alterations in the electrical properties of the sensor surface. Therefore, the layer-by-layer construction and the nanostructure of the biosensor surface must be finely-tuned in order to achieve specific, measurable and robust analyte detection within complex patient samples.

Direct digital synthesis technology (DDS) is applied widely in synthesizing signal since it has characteristics such as high stability and wide frequency band. It is very important to calculate the phase control word when synthesizing dual signals with continuous tunable phase difference. Because there are shortcomings of large computation, low efficiency of phase setting, more storage space occupied or significant cumulative errors of phase setting when calculating phase control word with usual methods, three novel algorithms for calculating phase control word are developed in this paper. These new methods do not need large computation and more space and simultaneously they can decrease the error greatly, which play an important role in improving the phase setting speed and precision in dual signal generator.

In this paper, we focus on the problem of obtaining a compact and accurate fuzzy rule-base classification method for audio signals. Fuzzy c-Means (FCM) clustering algorithm with Jumping-Gene optimization is applied to the classification tasks. The novel audio classification scheme classifies audio data into speech, music and background sound. A new feature for audio classification is introduced in this paper. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm can produce satisfactory results, especially for music signals.

In this paper, a new adapter between fixed-phone and mobile phone based on BlueCore4 is introduced. As is well known, mobile phone radiation damages areas of the brain associated with learning, memory and movement, while the fixed-phone radiation is so little that we can ignore it. Scientists have found that mobile phone radiation can cause many diseases such as panasthenia, dementia and parkinson. Moreover, mobile phone radiation can also kill men’s sperm. The device can turn mobile phones signals to the bluetooth module of the adapter through bluetooth technology, then the signals will be transferred to fixed-phone through signals converter circuit, so the fixed-phone can be used to answer the call from the mobile phone, it will reduce the harm of the mobile phone radiation to human body cells. This device uses bluetooth module BlueCore4 as hardware development platform, and BlueLab3.6.2 as software development tools. Based on bluetooth headset profiles, the adapter can realize audio links.

Directional antennas usage for Medium Access Control (MAC) in Wireless Ad hoc networks has received much attention from researchers as it provides advantages like reduces signal interferences, increase in throughput and better channel reuse. Directional Antennas poses many challenges to be addressed while providing advantages in wireless ad hoc networks like Hidden terminal problems, Deafness, Deaf zone and head of line blocking problem. We observed the existing protocols does not address all the issues and found no protocol that had addressed all the issues. In this paper we propose SDMAC protocol for medium access control in wireless ad hoc networks using directional antennas. SDMAC uses dual channel approach and maintain separate queue for each beam direction. In SDMAC, we address all the challenges imposed by directional antennas and provide a solution to overcome or eliminate the issues. We observed SDMAC outperforms other protocols in terms of throughput while addressing all the issues

The channelized receiver is obtained by polyphase filter banks, which makes Multi-channel signals received parallel. The channelizing is realized in the FPGA device of xc4vsx55 which belongs to Virtex4 group in Xilinx family. During the process of design, highly effective of polyphase and the parallel assembly line structure’s FFT flexibility are fully considered, which reduce the operand enormously and raise the operating speed. Simulation is gotten by using combined simulation of ISE, Modelsim and Matlab, the result is confirmed effective.

Genomic DNA aberrations are key genetic events in gliomagenesis. Recurrent genomic regions of alteration, including net gains and losses, have been found in gliomas. Whereas some of these regions contain known oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, the biologically relevant genes within other regions remain to be identified. The phenotypic and genotypic heterogeneity indicate that no isolated genetic event accounts for gliomagenesis, but rather the cumulative effects of a number of alterations that operate in a concerted manner. In this pathological process are included various biological events, such as activation of growth factor receptor signaling pathways, down-regulation of many apoptotic mechanisms, and imbalance of pro- and antiangiogenic factors. Several growth factor receptors, such epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), platelet-derived growth factor receptor (PDRGF), C-Kit, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) are over-expressed, amplified and/or mutated in gliomas (Figure 2-1). In Table 2-1 are summarized the most common glioma genetic alterations frequently found. In the light of this novel information, the modulation of gene expression at more levels, such as DNA, mRNA, proteins and transduction signal pathways, may represent the most effective modality to down-regulate or silence some specific genic functions or introduce genes, downregulated or deleted selectively, into neoplastic cells.

Conversation conveys important social signals of human interaction that indicates interest, service-awareness, persuasiveness, etc. Our research aims at perceiving human interest and intention by identifying social signals of interaction in their conversation. In this paper, the author introduces a privacy-preserving and language-independent speech processing approach to measure vocal interaction characteristics for spontaneous conversation in-between two people. The approach has been tested with Japanese, English, and Chinese so far. The experimental results prove that it is possible to identify the difference of speaking styles and interaction pattern using the conversation characteristics measured.

This paper presents a mobile games prototype where a user haptically senses the dynamic behavior of a virtual object with vibrotactile information. To haptically simulate the behavior of the movement of a target object, we adjust the activation delay time of two vibration motors and overlap each vibration signals which is are generated from two vibration motors. We constructed a mobile test bed system and investigated whether our game system haptically simulates the movement of the object. The experiment clearly verifies that the proposed system efficiently describes an object’s direction and its movement though vibrotactile information.

New Zealand’s existing low-cost 11kV SWER (single-wire earth return) systems delivers power to remote and rural areas. The residents in these areas have a need for communication channels and many are outside the GSM network provided by competing Telco’s. To avoid expanding the existing copper wire network or utilising existing radio spectrum for communications, the notion of using the existing SWER network as a low bit rate communications is explored. A hypothetical section of SWER network using realistic transformer and transmission line parameters serving rural New Zealand was modelled and analysed, and a pseudo-communications signal injected into the network. It was found that the SWER network may possess the bandwidth capabilities to transmit a low voltage low frequency pseudo-communications signal over many kilometres through both transmission lines and transformers, and may successfully be filtered from the mains voltage at each rural residence/dwelling in the model.