Usually, in the manufacturing process, Quality control methods such as the QC procedure have been used for the defect cause analysis. However, in these methods, it is difficult to identify complicated defect causes in which multiple factors are intricately intertwined in high-accuracy and short time. Moreover, the manufacturing theory and the operation knowledge belonging in engineers aren'’t used fully. Therefore, this paper proposes the new defect cause search support system by the cause estimation model using Bayesian network and manufacturing theory and knowledge in Ontology. In this system, the deeper causes are searched by the model that is constructed from the actual data and the theory information. The discretization method using decision tree and the feature selection method using Ontology and SVM are used as preprocessing for the model construction. Authors have applied this system to LCD manufacturing process. As the result, estimation accuracy of the model has improved 14.78% in the accuracy rate and analysis time has been shortened to about 1/4. It is possible that the defect causes are identified from various standpoints such as manufacturing theory in high-accuracy and short time by this system.

Decentralized optimal control problems become convex problems when the condition named quadratic invariance is satisfied. In this paper, under some natural assumptions in decentralized control, it is shown that quadratic invariance always implies a class of structured controllers which is based on the reachability matrix of a given plant.

In the case of wide area disasters, evacuation shelters as reconstruction bases are left to the voluntary operation by local residents. However, due to the difficulty of forming a well-integrated community in a disaster, the operation of evacuation shelters often does not go well. In recent years, the possibility of community support by information services are being studied because of the quick and stable usage of them even immediately after the disaster. Especially, information gathering activities such as making evacuees roster can be a clue to form the foundation of human relationship building through self-disclosure in dialogue. However, the age range of evacuees in disasters is so wide, that there is a digital divide among users in handling information services. In this research, we propose a new information gathering method that provides a cue for community formation by assisting other evacuees to collect information on those who cannot use mobile devices.

We conducted user study to unveil usability of wearable input/output interface using hands and toes by operating application of telephone call and e-mail. Specifically, subjects perform task in the state of “hands-free ”, “having baggage in their dominant hand ”, and “having baggage in their both hands ” using the proposed system or a smartphone. Then, we evaluate usability according to questionnaire, interview, and task completion time. As a result, hand and toe input in proposed system are accepted when performing simple button operation such as answer the phone task. Also, hand input in proposed system is accepted when performing scroll operation such as read e-mail task. However, when performing accurate button operation such as text entry task, hand input and toe input in proposed system are accepted only a little.

With growing of the great interest in the energy problems, real-time pricing (RTP) for power systems has attracted attentions in the world. In our research, the new distributed optimization method is proposed for RTP. It is based on information exchanges between players (consumers, suppliers and distributors) through networks. In the past our research, the time required for information exchange is not considered. However, in actual systems, the time required for the wireless communication causes the time delay and instabilities of the system. Then this paper proposed to compensate for time-delay by prediction of demand-supply quantities.