A Ge-MIS structure has attracted the attention for next generation CMOS devices. We have reported that the GeN_x/Ge structure with low interface state density can be made by ECR (Electron Cyclotron Resonance) plasma technique, and that the interface state density of Ge-MIS structures can be evaluated by the characteristic analysis in the inversion region even at room temperature. In this report, we evaluated the interface state density of p- and n-type GeN_x/Ge structures by conductance technique at low temperature and the characteristic analysis at room temperature, and these of process dependences. We have successfully evaluated the interface characteristics of GeN_x/Ge structures. The interface-state density was symmetrically distributed with respect to midgap, and the density near midgap was close to that of the GeO₂/Ge structure.

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Tree drawing tests, in which patients draw a picture of a tree with nuts, have often been used in psychosomatic internal medicine as a conventional psychological test. The tests guess their character and mental state from the morphological feature of trees. Their picture was analyzed using an image processing method, and the characteristic quantities were calculated. We considered relationship between those indices and their mental conditions, such as their depression scale. As a result, the picture features allow psychiatrists to diagnose their psychiatric disorder and perform more effective diagnosis with patients.

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Recently, the human-machine interface using information of user's eye blink was reported. This system operates a personal computer in real-time. Eye blinks can be classified into voluntary (conscious) blinks and involuntary (unconscious) blinks. If the voluntary blinks can be distinguished in automatic, an input decision can be made when user's voluntary blinks occur. By using this system, the usability of input is increased. We have proposed a new eye blink detection method that uses a Hi-Vision video camera. This method utilizes split interlace images of the eye. These split images are odd- and even- field images in the 1080i Hi-Vision format and are generated from interlaced images. The proposed method yields a time resolution that is double that in the 1080i Hi-Vision format. We refer to this approach as a “frame-splitting method”. We also proposed a method for automatic eye blink extraction using this method. The extraction method is capable of classifying the start and end points of eye blinks. In other words, the feature parameters of voluntary and involuntary blinks can be measured by this extraction method. In this paper, we propose a new classification method for eye blink types using these feature parameters.

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This paper presents a new management system for traffic regulation devices in expressways. Since expressways play the basis and very important roles in modern society such as transportation of various resources, travel and so on, good traffic environments in expressways have to be maintained. In order to maintain or fix expressways, it is necessary to regulate and/or control the traffic and a large number of traffic regulation devices are used. In this paper, we show the management system for traffic regulation devices in expressways and the risk estimation function, the visualization software and so on in the proposed management system.

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We have conducted a series of studies on a non-contact groove sensing and reproduction of sound signal from phonograph records based on digital image and signal processing. Images of sound grooves were captured by a PC scanner having an appropriate resolution. After an image processing is performed to improve the image contrast, we have investigated filtering methods to extract the position of the groove edges. In addition, we have linearized the arc-shaped groove lines in order to make subsequent signal processing easy. Finally, we have attempted to reproduce the recorded sound waveform using a set of coordinates of the groove edges and created a WAVE-file for sound playback on PCs.

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Graduate studies to construct electronic control system, through resolving problems in their own sets, introduce cases of self-discipline. Efforts to solve the problems become assets not only in academic education including graduate studies, but also in vocational training including life in harmony and cooperation with others. Moreover both academic education and vocational training properly evaluate the effect of efforts. The combination of education and training is illustrated by giving examples of guidance for the graduate studies.

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Recently, the threat level of power analysis attacks has been raised. Power analysis attacks acquire confidential information from cryptographic circuits that are embedded in hardware, such as credit and cash cards, by analyzing their power consumption. Therefore, it is important to secure resistance against power analysis attacks. This study proposes a new power analysis attack method that can be used to improve the efficiency of the resistance evaluation of cryptographic LSI. The proposed method performs power analysis not in the conventional time domain but in the frequency domain. Moreover, it uses a partial key that is specified through the use of conventional power analysis attack to estimate other partial keys. Compared with resistance evaluation that uses typical attack methods, the proposed method reduces the computational amount required for resistance evaluation greatly while maintaining the attack accuracy. The validity of the proposed method is verified through evaluation experiments performed with the use of a cryptographic circuit implemented on FPGA.

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In this paper, we propose a design method of IIR(Infinite Impulse Response) filters using SOA(Seeker Optimization Algorithm). The design problem of IIR filter is generally a complex approximation problem in which both a magnitude response and a phase response are approximated simultaneously. In addition, a stability of the filters must be considered. Therefore, the problem falls into a nonlinear optimization problem. Recently, the SOA has been proposed as one of the heuristic methods which can solve the nonlinear optimization problems approximately. The SOA is based on the swarm optimization, and inspired by a human activity in seaching anything. In our method, the SOA is applied to the IIR filter design and a step size used in the SOA is proposed to avoid for stagnating around local minimums. Several design examples are shown to present the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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On the basis of analyzing the Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) and Ant Colony Optimization based routing algorithm, a novel clustering routing algorithm for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) based on Brief Artificial Fish-School Optimization and Ant Colony is proposed in this paper to prolong life cycle of the whole network and reduce energy consumption of WSN. The algorithm contains two routing levels. In the first level (intra-cluster), we propose a cluster routing algorithm based on Brief Artificial Fish-School Optimization (BAFSO) for one hop WSNs. The cluster members send data to their cluster head, and the cluster head aggregates these data and transmit them to base station. The selection method of the cluster head considers the location of the cluster head node and the optimal number of cluster head nodes. It can achieve the balance of the network energy consumption, improve the energy efficiency and prolong life cycle of the whole network. The second level (inter-cluster) is used for multi-hop WSNs. In the second level, the first level is employed to create cluster and select cluster head at first. Then the cluster heads use ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to find a route to the base station. As only cluster heads participate in the inter-cluster routing operation, the method can provide a smooth operation more effectively. The delay of the algorithm is minimized by using the ant colony optimization algorithm along with clustering. The proposed algorithm is applied in the complex wireless sensor system of bridge health diagnosis system. To assess the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, we compare the method with some other routing algorithms. The results show lower power consumption and more load balancing.

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Stochastic stability is discussed for a closed-loop system composed of a loop transfer function with steep high-cut characteristic and purely random multiplicative gain with unit spectral density. Due to the high-cut characteristic, the Ito integral can be applied in modeling the purely random gain fluctuation for the purpose of stability analysis. The closed-loop is shown to be asymptotically stable in the quadratic mean if and only if the deterministic part of the open-loop transfer function has 2-norm less than unity. This is also a sufficient condition for almost sure asymptotic stability. A simple example illustrates the equivalence between the present result and the former results obtained in different form.

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Lighting control systems have been proposed for energy conservation because lighting accounts for not less than 30% of electrical power consumption in a typical office building. Herein, we propose an office-lighting dimming control system based on employee entry and exit from a room. A spot illuminance control method determines the dimming rate that will satisfy every employee's illumination needs. The system adjusts the dimming rate to negate the influence that the spot illuminance control for an employee gives to other employees. These methods offer the illuminance necessary and sufficient only to the sitting employee's area according to the change of employee entry and exit in a room. In order to evaluate proposed method, we produced a lighting control system and applied the proposed method in part of an office building, corresponding to about 300m². We evaluated the error of measured illuminance compared with the target illuminance after control, and assessed the energy-saving effect. By the results of experimental evaluations, we confirmed that the difference in target illuminance and measurement illuminance is small enough not be able to recognize by employee, the energy-saving effect is 24.3% compared with the wall light switch operation, and the operation speed of proposed method is fast enough for the frequency of employee entry and exit in a room.

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This paper investigates passivity-based pose control via an obstacle avoidance navigation function for three-dimensional (3-D) eye-in-hand visual feedback systems. Firstly, we describe the representation of a relative pose and a camera model. Next, a stabilizing pose control law for a 3-D visual motion error system which a time-varying desired pose can be applied to is proposed. Moreover, a path planner to be appropriate for the visual motion error system is designed through an obstacle avoidance navigation function to keep collision-free. It should be noted that we develop a visual motion observer for path planning in order to estimate the position of the obstacles from the camera. The main contribution of this paper is to provide that the path planner which can achieve obstacle avoidance during the servoing is designed for the 3-D eye-in-hand visual feedback control. Finally, we present simulation results and actual nonlinear experimental results using an aerial vehicle in order to verify control performance of the proposed control scheme with obstacle avoidance.

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Since the particle filter is able to apply to non-Gausian and nonlinear system models, it is capable of wide application than the Kalman filters. In this paper, a construction method of a state feedback control system using the particle filter as an observer for a probabilistic state estimation is described. In order to be robust to non-Gaussian noise, maximum a posteriori probability estimation extraction method and evaluation method of the effective sample size have been incorporated in the particle filter. Then, effectiveness of the constructed system is verified experimentally, and the effectiveness of the state observer constructed by the particle filter is indicated by comparison with the Kalman filter.

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This paper proposes an algorithm to detect lane marks on a road very fast by means of the Hough transform and the particle filter methods. The proposed method is composed of two parts, the voting part based on the Hough transform as a bottom-up process and the parameter estimation part using the particle filter as a top-down process. In the bottom-up process, the method extracts candidate lines by voting procedure for each lane marks features. In the top-down process, the method verifies the lane model hypotheses using the voting result of lines extraction. The bottom-up process can be executed fast because the parameter space in extracting lines is low-dimensional, and the top-down process becomes more efficient by using the detection results of primitive shapes. Experiment results show that the proposed method can detect lane marks robustly, and can achieve an average speed 0.06ms/frame (Intel Core i7 3.2GHz) with an average position error 9.42cm.

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This paper gives a novel method for elevator group control system with advanced information of passengers riding time and their destinations. Recently, untouched sensing technologies have developed, for example, visual sensing with cameras, RFID, and so on. We make clear a problem of relations between transportation capacity and division of passenger groups, and propose the method to solve the problem by applying new values to selecting rules and a value function for decision of an assigned car. We simulated the new system to evaluate the method. A result of the simulation shows that the proposed method can improve performance compared with the conventional one.

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Bifurcation phenomena in the composite dynamical system are studied for understanding basic properties of the systems. Recently, it has been reported that the unavoidable non-ideal switching action, e.g., the spike noise or the time delay, occurs via the switching action and seriously affects a behavior of the orbit in the composite dynamical systems operating in high-frequency switching ranges. We have analyzed basic property of a simple 1-dimensional composite dynamical system with non-ideal switching action for essentially understanding dynamical effect of the non-ideal switching. In the engineering field, however, there are many two- or more dimensional systems. Of course, the non-ideal switching action can occur in two- or more dimensional systems. But, no paper analyzes effect of the non-ideal switching action in it. In this paper, we study basic property of the 2-dimensional composite dynamical system with spike noise. First, we explain a model of the 2-dimensional composite dynamical system. Next, behavior of the waveforms, in the system with ideal switching and the system with spike noise, is shown. Then, we sample the data of the waveforms via every period of the external force, and define the Poincaré map. Finally, using the Poincaré map, we derive the 2-parameter bifurcation diagrams, and discuss the basic properties of the system with spike noise.

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This paper addresses detecting anomalies of individual services from their total resource usage on web-based system. Because the total resource usage is a linear combination of the number of accesses to each service, multiple regression analysis can be applied to estimate a resource usage per an access to each service as regression coefficients. However, the regression coefficients differ from the resource usage per an access of the services, which is caused by unstable resource usage per an access. We propose a method based on a multiple correlation coefficient R to identify anomaly time and anomaly services. The proposed method identifies anomaly time when R value is decreased. And the proposed method identifies the anomaly service by judging whether R value is increased or not after the selection of the dummy variable. The experimental result shows that the proposed method can identify all the anomaly time, and improves precision rate and recall rate of detecting anomaly services by 20% at least, respectively.

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Currently, system have been proposed to watch over children. Those systems recognize behavior of children to ensure their safety. However, the current system only presents the location of children. Therefore, their parents cannot understand their behavior. The parents have to do various tasks to understand the behavior of children. In this research, we propose a method to estimate the child's destination information to use child's life log. Using the estimation, it is possible to grasp facilities he has never visited before. The method is also superior to the traditional ones in the estimation accuracy.

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The Smart City project is currently being promoted in various countries around the world. That is to take advantage of personal information and utilization of energy more appropriately. Therefore, it is said that when there are privacy issues. However, it specifically discuss the privacy risks in the specific project of Smart City is premature. We discuss the privacy risks around the smart grid standardization advances which technology is the core of the Smart City. In this paper, we have verified the effectiveness of the Privacy Impact Assessment, such as privacy risks in Smart City.

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