Production, distribution and use of industrial products are globalized, and ensuring traceability and anti-counterfeit become serious problems for quality management and user service. In this paper, we propose a novel method for machinery identification without using tag. First, it is discovered experimentally that micro-bumps generated by widely-used paint contain sufficiently unique features in only 1cm² area, and the features enable identification with Equal Error Rate (EER) of less than 10^-8. Since the features are naturally created during manufacture, they can take the place of costly tags or marking for identification and anti-counterfeit. Next, a new practical method is proposed to use a standard mobile phone camera and a LED line illumination for capturing features of the painted surface. The identification accuracy is evaluated in the real industrial factory environments. 672 images of 112 individuals of the actual machinery products were perfectly identified.

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People tracking in crowded scenes should be focused since the problem is beneficial and challenging in computer vision field. However, the problem of “crowd tracking” is extremely difficult because hard occlusions, various motions and posture changes. Especially in the crowd tracking, we need to handle occlusion for more robust tracking. This paper tackles a robust crowd tracking based on combination of superpixel and optical flow tracking. The SLIC based superpixel algorithm adaptively estimates a boundary between person and background, therefore the combination of superpixel and optical flow tracking becomes a highly confident tracking for crowd tracking. The tracking experiments show significant results on the UCF crowd dataset in terms of performance rate with comparison.

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This paper proposes a contactless highly precise temperature measurement algorithm. The semiconductor devices which are smaller and thinner are required by demanding with growing of the smartphone and the tablet PC. However, there is a problem of the thermal deformation by temperature change in production or inspection process. Particularly, temperature control is difficult since thermal conductivity is low in the vacuum atmosphere. Also, the radiation heat transfer is predominantly heat transfer in the vacuum environment. Furthermore, there is a problem not to be able to measure sample temperature directly to prevent particle and dust. In this paper, we propose a contactless measurement method of the sample temperature based on the unknown input observer using characteristics of the radiation heat transfer. In addition, we describe design method and evaluation result of the precise temperature control system by using it.

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A FMGF (Fast M-Estimation based Gaussian Filter) is the fast robust Gaussian filter that output wave pattern accorded mutually with the Gaussian filter output. However, in some case, robustness of the FMGF is less than Brinkmann's robust Gaussian filter. In this paper, robustness of the FMGF is strengthened. The FMGF has characteristic that robustness and output process is calculated in each x-coordinates. Using this characteristic, only few x-coordinate that is affected by outlier are recalculated. In the recalculation process, parameter m value changes to small value, and to strengthens robustness. Using characteristic of the FMGF that accords with output of the Gaussian filter, whether the data is outlier or not is judged. The first process of the proposed method, executes the Gaussian filter and the normal FMGF. Next, only x-coordinates that has deviation between output of the Gaussian filter and the FMGF are recalculated. It is confirmed that the robustness of the proposed method is strengthened without problems.

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There has recently been growing demand to reduce CO₂ emission from transportation equipment and industrial machines, from the view point of environmental protection. An effective solution to reduce CO₂ emission is to reduce friction between sliding surfaces, and it has become clear from simulations that micro texture with big gradient edge may drastically decrease friction between such surfaces. In this study, we verified this friction reduction effect by performing inner type 2 roller tests and reciprocal type tests using micro texture with big gradient edge. It was found that micro texture with big gradient edge could effectively decrease friction in either friction tests.

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There is a known method for elongating the cutting tool life by using adhesion materials made from work materials as protective film. These adhesion materials are called belag. However, the belag formation mechanism has not yet been clarified. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the belag formation mechanism by observing the adhesive materials on the cutting edge and the surface of the chip after cutting a medium carbon steel (JIS : S50C) through SEM, TEM, and TOF-SIMS. The results showed the following : First, oxide mostly containing manganese formed on both the rake face and the honing of the cutting tool, but oxide on the rake face also contained aluminum, while that on the honing contained silicon. Second, the iron oxide that is different from the composition of belag was formed on surface of the chip. Third, aluminum, manganese, and silicon were concentrated near the interface of the iron oxide layer and the metal layer on the chip. Finally, the composition of belag was similar to the oxide of S50C formed in the low oxygen potential. These data suggest that belag was formed by the preferential oxidation of soluble aluminum, manganese, and silicon in the work material.

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In this study, the relationships between chip thickness and the energies consumed in the cutting process, using a simplified cutting model in which the effect of surface plastic flow on chip thickness was considered, were analyzed under the supposition that the ratio of energy consumed by the effect of surface plastic flow remaining on the machined surface to total cutting energy is equivalent to the ratio of additional chip thickness resulting from the effect of surface plastic flow to measured chip thickness. C2801 brass, A1100 aluminum, and SUS304 stainless steel were cut orthogonally at a low cutting speed and the effect of surface plastic flow on the cutting mechanism was compared among the three materials. The following results were obtained. Total cutting energy was composed of four energies : shear energy without the effect of surface plastic flow, friction energy without the effect of surface plastic flow, energy consumed in surface plastic flow, and additional friction energy resulting from the effect of surface plastic flow. With the use of the “chip constant” which is specific to a material and is negligibly affected by cutting conditions, the energies consumed in the cutting with plastic flow can be expressed as a function of shear strain. In the cases of C2801, A1100, and SUS304, the ratios of energy consumed by the effect of surface plastic flow remaining on the machined surface to total cutting energy were approximately 10%, 13%, and 17%, respectively.

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From the perspective of the sustainable manufacturing industry, considering the renovation of manufacturing facilities that are physically and functionally usable is important. This study is based on the hypothesis that the value of the manufacturing facilities is perceived differently among individual users due to differences in production strategies. Therefore, we believe that using a production system composed of a core platform and add-on modules is beneficial, and the long-time use of a core platform can be realized by replacing the add-on modules. Here, the reuse of production facility modules is an important issue. This study proposes a market circulation model of modules considering the diversity of value caused by users' different production plans/strategies. First, a user profile is defined to express the sense of value of each user, such as the user's skills (specializes in certain productions), basic policy on product strategy, preferences, and behavioral principle. Second, to realize a production plan/strategy, a method to derive the user's satisfaction is proposed by comparing the current production system in use with an aspiring production system. When the evaluation of satisfaction is lower than the tolerance level, requirements for changing the current production system can also be calculated. Third, the preference of module trading is modeled as a combinatorial optimization problem of the modules also based on the evaluation of satisfaction. Finally, a multi-agent simulator is constructed consisting of plural user agents with different production strategies in order to evaluate sustainability of entire production facilities in the flower cultivation industry. From the results of the case study, the feasibility of sustainability evaluation is shown.

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