A non-directional four-wheeled mobile robot that does not have the concept of orientation and falling down has been developed in our laboratory. In our previous research, the junction between foreside and rearward of the robot is assumed to be fixed, and a dynamic model that does not consider the bending of the junction was derived and a control approach was developed. However, the junction between foreside and reward of the robot has the possibility of bending in the practice. Therefore, the control approach developed in previous research is not effective in practice application. To make the proposed method more effective to the practice application, in this research, a new dynamic model considering the bending of the junction is derived and a new control approach to improve true travelling performance of this robot is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed controller was verified by experiment.

An intelligent walking support machine has being developed for the people with lower limb disabilities. It has been experimental validation that the two handrails of the machine can help user’s standing up by his/her holding force on the handrails. However, it is difficult for the user stand up by him/herself without any cooperation forces from machine. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a support method which could enable the machine cooperate with user's standing up action by recognizing the user’s standing up action. In this report, an identification method was proposed to identify the standing up action of user for the walking support machine. Firstly, two acceleration, angular speed sensors installed in the subject's head and waist were used to measure three patterns of user's standing up actions of daily life. Then, the measured dates were analyzed and unutilized for the design of identification method for the walking support machine. Finally, the effectiveness of proposed method was demonstrated by experiments.

An indoor movement support machine has being developed to conduct livelihood support for people with lower limbs disabilities in our laboratory. A joystick is designed for users to manipulate this machine. However, it is inconvenient for users to operate the joystick and the same time conduce daily life activity. Therefore, we are aiming to develop an automatic movement supporting method to suit the life operations. In this report, to try to recognize of the movement support tasks, we measured the motion and posture of the arm in daily life by inertial sensors.

In recent years, elderly people who live alone have been continually increasing. Its number is equivalent to 31.4 percent of elderly population in Japan. In the worst case, they cannot cry for help because of diseases or sudden injuries. Therefore a system for watching over elderly people is strongly requested in our society. In order to realize such a system, this paper proposes a method of recognizing human motions employing an expanded MHI which uses FoE (Focus of Expansion) to recognize the motion toward the depth direction. The proposed method was applied to the recognition of 6 human motions including ‘fall down’ and satisfactory results were obtained.

We propose an analysis method for a fuzzy resemblance relation data consistency. Pair comparison data give useful information for an examination of the consistency to us. As for the data inconsistency, it is judged from a combination of similar relation and ordering relation. How to find inconsistencies is a heuristic method obtained from our past study.

Erosion of the hands and feet is one of the major diagnostic criteria for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, a method to detect erosion using radiographs has not been reported until now. In this paper, we propose a method for the automatic detection of erosion using genetic algorithm from computed radiography (CR) images of the hand. The proposed method adopted for 13 images which obtained CR images of hand, and satisfactory results are obtained.

In this study, we examined an exercise program for the purpose of lack of exercise measures in the support spot (1, Improvement of the exercise function, 2, Acquisition of the sense of accomplishment, 3, Breeding of the social nature). The participant was 13 persons with intellectual disabilities. As a result, joint ownership of the sense of accomplishment, preliminary imitation action and action restraint developed in a target person. By this exercise program, I suggest the way of the exercise instruction mainly on catch and the jump movement through an exercise of severe intellectual person with a disability program for lack of exercise measures in the support spot.

The abnormality of the meridian vessel is important as the acupuncture clinical findings. We made the questionnaire to catch the abnormality of the meridian vessel pattern identification．The purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation of the “Oriental medicine health questionnaire of Meridian vessel pattern identification (OHQ M)” and the “Apparatus for Measuring the function of the meridians and their corresponding Internal organs (AMI)”. As a result, “the appearance ratio of the lung meridian in OHQ M”showed a correlation with the “BP levels of the large intestine meridian in AMI”.

In many areas, robots take the place of human recently, and this trend is expected to be spreading in the future. The traditional robot played a role that human operator did not wanted to perform, such as physically demanding, simple and repetitive work in a manufacturing industry. However, recently introduced humanoid robot plays a role which needs frequent interaction with human customers. Thus, those kinds of robot should present human characteristics to make the interaction natural and rich. In this sense, robot receptionist needs to greet the customer warmly, attend to the customer’s queries, satisfy the customer, and bid goodbye to the customer. This study investigated the receptionists’ expression of gestures to provide guidelines for robot motion design. Through the experiment held with 11 customers, and 6 receptionists, the facial expressions and gestures of the receptionists were identified by Facial Action Coding Scheme and the Gestures Coding. The finding suggests that the robot receptionist should have eyebrows, eyes and mouth to present emotions by facial expression. The gestures the robot receptionist should adopt were ‘iconic’and ‘deictic’. This is mainly due to the fact that these two gestures are more direct and effective for the representation of speech. In conclusion, this design would help to provide the customer with a better experience with the robot receptionist.

The Korea Media Rating Board (KMRB) provides parents and users with information about movie content by rating movies into five classifications (All, 12+, 15+, 18+ and R). Seven elements of motion pictures such as theme, sex and nudity, violence, language, horror, drugs, and imitable behavior ratings affectthe rating. Many studies conducted to recognize emotion by using EEG [2-4]. We selected differently rated movies and measured EEG while the participants watching the movies. Recorded EEG was segmented and power estimates (µV²) were derived with the fast Fourier transform (FFT) for the delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma power. Violent movies evoked increased EEG at frontal and parietal areas. Further studies are required to find how EEG is associated with violent movies.

Brand logotype is representative visual design to give consumers a positive image of company and to enhance marketing. The importance of logo design has been widely recognized due togreat interest in design management and severe competition. Logotype is composed of graphic elements such as symbol and icon. Public institutions, organizations and even individuals utilize typography. Combination of external factors such as font, color and form results in unique logotype. A corporate logo, powerful representation tool of brand identity, conveys the philosophy, ideology and concept of a brand effectively to consumers. This study analyzed the correlation between characteristics of typography and brand awareness of corporate logos using quantification methodology. We suggested a design method matching the logotype to products.

Mobile device has become very popular for our daily lives. Text messaging one of most frequently used fuctions of smartphone and tablet. Text input is often requested using the movile devices. Smartphone and tablet make users use their fingers for touching, double clicking and dragging. We measured EMG activity on right flexor cardi radialis (RFCR) and right extensor carpi ulinaris (RECU) for thumb-based activities. We detected devices significantly affect the activity of RFCR and RECU muscles. If same mobile device would be used, texting posture does not affect the activities of RFCR and RECU muscles.

As express delivery service market in Korea expands rapidly, many domestic companies of various sizes are exposed to fierce competition. They are striving for providing superior service at a competitive price in order to remain competitive. Collaboration creates economies of scale which leads to the reduction of operational cost as well as increase in net profit under a win-win situation. This study proposes a sustainable alliance model, in which the problem is considered of selecting service centers in each merging region with low demand in express courier services. In particular, A co-evolutionary genetic algorithm is developed, which may be implemented under a distributed decision-making scenario assumed in collaboration system. A Shapley value as a methodology for cooperative game theory is also applied for forming coalitions in express delivery services with the equitable allocation to each company. An example problem is performed to verify the appropriateness of the suggested collaboration model.

Fossil fuel has faced with the problems such as constant growing of energy demand, imbalance of supply and demand, and global warming. Introducing a renewable energy is required to solve these problems. Hydrogen is one of promising renewable energies. In this study, we consider to design a hydrogen supply chain network with multi-transportation modes (pipe-line, tank truck) for a future demand. The key decisions of the network design problem include the size and location of facilities (plant, storage), transportation modes, and the volume of hydrogen. To solve the network design problem, a hybrid genetic algorithm with a local search heuristic is proposed and compared with a general genetic algorithm. For analyzing the algorithms, computational experiments are executed using randomly generated problem instances.

In Business Continuity Management (BCM), each organization assesses risk caused by natural disasters and prepares its critical processes to continue its operation at the acceptable level. Recently many natural disasters caused large scale disruptions to the global supply chain networks and more companies are now trying to establish its disaster readiness by adopting BCM strategy. In this paper, we develop a resource allocation model that minimizes the loss of business resilience during BCM recovery plan. The proposed model is a variant of the multi-commodity network flow model in the time-level expanded network. Some computational results are shown to validate the proposed model.

Guided Scrambling (GS) encoding evaluates all candidates codewords generated from all possible combinations of control bits to find a balanced code array with the maximum strength value. In this paper, we applied binary particle swarm optimization for finding balanced code array with good strength value. In the computational results, we show average strengths and symbol balance errors from particle swarm optimization heuristic. We find that the average strength value computed from particle swarm optimization heuristic is quite tight to the GS encoding method using only 6% of the candidate codewords.

This study aims to measure the extent of the efficiency of IP-intensive industries of OECD countries and then derive meaningful insights for improving the efficiency by exploring the causal relationships between input and output factors that affect the efficiency. These insights can be used to establish strategic directions for increasing the national IP competitiveness. Therefore, this study can contribute to draw strategic action plans for strengthening the IP-intensive industries from a national perspective.

In busy seaport cities, containers are transported between a number of locations including container terminals, train stations, logistics centers, and so on. The frequent container transportations within the city cause tremendous traffic and environmental problems. This paper addresses a vehicle routing problem for container shuttle transportation. We present a new routing algorithm where simulated annealing and tabu search algorithms are incorporated. Experiments are performed to validate the performance of the proposed vehicle routing procedure by comparing the performance of the new algorithm and the existing methods.

Today’s complex business environment needs the integrated management of distributed IT resources. However, many IT solutions for managing these distributed IT resources require quite lots of efforts and time. Committing these lots of resources over full-featured high-performance solution is a significant burden to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). As an alternative solution for cost-effective integration of distributed IT resources, directory service based resource management (DSRM) approach has been tried to reduce such burdens between SMEs. DSRM solutions are continuously expanding the range of its application as a niche segment from the major distributed resource management solution market. However, there are currently insufficient researches on the effectiveness of DSRM. In this study, authors have measured IT capability of 31 Korean SMEs for their resource and account management method via a questionnaire. Survey result shows that the level of IT resource management for SMEs that are using directory service is higher than the other companies, and major obstacles to using directory service are the lack of automatic synchronization method and the lack of administrative personnel.

Together with the growing emphasis on knowledge intensive service (KIS), KOTEC (Korea Technology Finance Corporation) has set KIS as the main industry domain for technology financing. However, the perception gap in the definition of ‘Technology’ and ‘Knowledge’ could be a constraint for funding KIS. In this study, through a survey to companies in Korea that can be possible beneficiaries of technology funding, authors have identified the existence of such constraint, and also have suggested some ways for institutional improvements of such constraint.

Correct data collection and reasonably timely data processing are very important in Big Data analysis. Furthermore, interpreting the analyzed result is also an interesting issue. Although many sophisticated data mining techniques are already available, they cannot be applied directly to process mining, due to the input-data format differences. For example, whereas data mining techniques focus on the relations between attributes without considering the process, formatting data as row-based instances, process mining finds flow-patterns among instances, formatting data as column-based instances in the MXML/XES format. In the present study, we utilized a sequential dataset to enable the use of more enhanced statistical methods and to broaden the utilization of process analysis to many sophisticated data mining techniques. We experimented on artificial data to calculate the activities probability distribution using machine learning and the probability density function (PDF).

In recent, a new concept of workflow mining is becoming one of the main research issues in the workflow management literature. It is able to discover a variety of valuable knowledge reflecting the process-centered perspectives in workflow-supported organizations. In particular, finding control-flow paths is a very important functionality in terms of analyzing the process-centered perspectives in a workflow model as well as evaluating their performances in a series of enactment traces and logs of the corresponding workflow model. In this paper, we describe a conceptual formalism for transforming workflow models to their control-flow classification automata. A control-flow classification automaton transformed from a specific workflow model plays a decisive role in implementing an efficient approach to generate all possible sequences of control-flow paths from the corresponding workflow model. It also can be eventually used as control-flow classification filters on workflow enactment traces and logs.

This paper proposes a real-time tracing method for data-intensive workflow model with visual approach. In order to create or modify workflow model which is more validated, it should be support validate method not only build-time but also run-time. Therefore, we describe a real-time workflow tracing method and show result of its implementation for data-intensive workflow.

The purpose of this study is to develop evaluation method for Co-working Space management. First, we introduce Co-working Space basic concepts and identified the operating elements. Next, based on the elements weight through pair-wise comparing by AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) Method and the result value through the field survey for analyzing of management activity to five business centers, we can evaluate the management status. As a result, we found out the priority of the management elements. This study has a major implication on research into development of evaluation method for Co-working Space management strategy.

In this paper, a three-phase direct ac-ac converter is designed by using switched capacitor (SC) techniques. The proposed ac-ac converter consists of three module blocks which have symmetrical converter topology. Due to the symmetrical converter topology, the proposed ac-ac converter can achieve not only high power efficiency but also high input power factor while keeping the frequencies of the input and output voltages equal. Furthermore, unlike a three-phase auto- transformer, the proposed three-phase ac-ac converter requires no magnetic elements. Therefore, there is a possibility that the proposed ac-ac converter can be replaced as conventional three-phase autotransformers. The operation principle and simulation evaluation are described concerning the proposed ac-ac converter in the case of delta-wye and wye-wye connections. The results of the simulation program with integrated circuit emphasis (SPICE) simulation demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ac-ac converter.

To simulate platelet activation and thrombus formation on high shear flows, reaction rate of platelet activation is redefined to be the product of agonists and shear rate factors instead of the original only agonist activation model developed by Sorensen et al. Using this new model, platelet activation is computed on orifice flows with different thresholds of shear rate. The results show that the model is sensitive to the added shear rate factor. It means that distribution of shear rate and concentration transport should be accurately computed because of the model’s sensitivity.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea disease is the most common sleep-disordered breathing medical condition and a potentially life-threatening affliction. Not all the surgical or non-surgical OSAS therapies are successful for each patient, also in part because the primary factors involved in the etiology of this disorder are not completely understood. In this work, we provide a review of the Computational Fluid Dynamics study of airflow though upper airway with OSA disease. The airflow characteristic and pressure distribution of the breathing airflow obtained from the numerical studies were discussed. In conclusion, CFD is a potential tool to predict patient-specific treatment outcome for upper airway with Obstructive Sleep Apnea disease.

This research sets a target for developing a downsized fNIRS system for BCI. fNIRS is able to measures brain activity and functional neuroimaging using NIR (near-infrared spectroscopy). Although our laboratory has conducted experiments using a fNIRS system developed by Hitachi Medical System (ETG-7100), we have found that downsized fNIRS system, such as wearable appliances can be better adapted to BCI in cases of everyday life. Previous studies developed scaled-down fNIRS, for example one to detect hemodynamics on only the frontal lobe, and another one that had too many functions and was too expensive for BCI [1,2]. Therefore, this research will propose an fNIRS system aimed at BCI. In this paper, our fNIRS system and experimental measurement results with frontal lobe of human will be described. Finally our future research direction will be introduced based on the experimental results.

The pattern authentication method of smartphone has risks of being stolen by the screen peeping or being conjectured by residue on the screen. Accordingly, in the previous experiment, we have tried to develop a security enhancement method for pattern authentication of smartphone. To discriminate individual users, we applied self-organizing maps (SOM) for the authentication, which is based on picture password and angle of device holding. The result suggested the possibility to enhance the accuracy of pattern authentication. In this article, we verify practical use of an extended picture password method using behavioral profile and SOM for a biometrics authentication by the experiments.

In this paper, we describe extension of the voice and picture authentication system. Since a picture has a feature called “picture superiority effect”, we can more easily remember the image of the picture than word such as password. An aim of our research and development is to build an authentication system using the picture superiority effect. We also used associative words by pictures to the voice authentication as passphrases. By the results of the experiments, it is suggested that our proposed method is available for convenient authentication system.

Tissue characterization of coronary plaque has to be performed in high accuracy for determining the treatment policy of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). We propose an algorithm to discriminate plaque tissue by applying partial least square (PLS) regression to the average of the frequency feature value of the remarkable tissue and its neighborhood tissues. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by applying it to the real intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) data.

In this paper, we propose a novel digital image color conversion method for color blindness using a multilayer neural network. The people with color blindness have difficulty discriminating combinations of specific colors. Those people require color conversion for the presented image such that the image can be a perceptible color representation. In the proposed method, we design a multilayer neural network composed of three building blocks: layers for image color conversion, layers for perceptual simulation model of color blindness, and layers for color discrimination. In proposed framework, a neural network is learning about a relationship of an image data and a discrimination performance of colors in an image, and a color conversion rule is trained as a part of a neural network. To validate the effectiveness of proposed method, it is applied to several images that have various color combinations.

The present study considers a fuzzy color system in which three input fuzzy sets are constructed on the tone triangle. For a given fuzzy input, this system outputs the center of gravity of the three weights that are associated with respective grades. Two fuzzy sets (not black and white) are applied to the tone triangle relationship. By evaluating the attributes of chromaticness, whiteness, and blackness, a target color can be easily obtained as the center of gravity of the resulting fuzzy set. The output of the system is a tone triangle, which includes a compound vector with three weights (scalars) in color space. Vagueness relates the number of elements (e.g., red-relevant colors selected by subjects) of fuzzy set linearly. Also possibility relates the height of fuzzy set linearly.

It is well known that the physical and mental stress of human is relaxed by the audible sound with 1/f fluctuation. These sounds usually have some elements, such as melody and rhythm, so, it is difficult to clarify the effect of 1/f fluctuation itself. We will verify two hypotheses: one is the 1/f fluctuation is a main factor to alleviate the physical and mental stress, and the other is the effect of 1/f fluctuation is dependent by the biological rhythm of each of human. Therefore, we investigate these hypotheses from the results of experiments based on an objective and subjective evaluation using 1/f fluctuation sound sources in ultrasonic range. And we will be able to obtain a scientific basis of physical and mental stress relaxation that is affected by 1/f fluctuation itself. In this paper, we describe the outline of these proposed methods.

This paper describes the application of the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) for subjective evaluation of information skills. The data are collected from 115 subjects. They were invited to answer VAS questionnaires. VAS data are transformed to ratio scales value (i.e., 0.00 to 1.00) and the subjective evaluation distribution based on VAS are calculated. The experiment result shows that there exists unintended bias between LS data and VAS data for the questionnaire of “Are you good at cell-phone operation?”. This fact is supported by the published articles. Therefore, it can be considered again that the presence of bias is affected by the difference of questionnaire. To obtain reliable conclusions, it is necessary to try this method on the results of feature study and do more investigation.

The experiment employed 11 healthy subjects. Heart Rate Variability (HRV)s of the subjects when they listen to the 1/f fluctuation sounds, and when they do not, are recorded separately. Furthermore, in order to investigate the psychological state change, the subjects are required to answer Visual Analog Scale (VAS) questionnaire for listening to the 1/f sounds. When the subjects listen to the 1/f fluctuation sounds, their LF/HF values are increased. And the experiment result shows that there exists relationship between VAS data (”Like or Dislike”) and HRV data. Therefore, the proposed method is very useful.

Health is a major concern for people, in order to prevent the modern Japanese cause of death in many lifestyle-related diseases is required routine health care. It is necessary to support the individual health management to perform as means of health care, personal equipment for grasping the inexpensive and simple health situation is demanded. In this study, we manufacture of prototype circuit using a Wi-Fi. It makes the circuit small. Also, by wireless, wearable of the circuit can be realized, it is possible to acquire the plethysmogram data anywhere, anytime.

In this paper, in order to execute neuro-rehabilitation for brain cognitive function about walking, a neuro-rehabilitation system has been developed based on the virtual walking. The imagination situation feedback has the significant effect on the neuro-rehabilitation by virtual walking that imagination situation is informed to subjects to help them further recall the sensation of walking. However, it is a challenge that how to inform the imagination situation to subjects while focusing on virtual walking. In this report, the brain activity of virtual walking is firstly measured by an optical topography device. Then, the measured result is analyzed and feedbacked to subjects by the form of tone. Finally, the effectiveness of feedback method on brain activity of virtual walking is discussed.

In our laboratory, we proposed an omni-directional walking training machine that can move all direction had been proposed and put it into application. However, this robot is operated by user or track the rehabilitation course designed by physicalists. If this robot can move by user’s walking intention it will be more useful. Therefore in this report, I propose a recognition method of user’s walking intention using the signal of leg sEMG and testify the efficacy of the proposed method by experiments.

There are many researches on recognizing human motions and gestures by using acceleration sensors. In their researches, many methods of extracting feature vectors from the time-series data are proposed. In this research, human walking motions were observed by acceleration sensors. We propose methods of prediction of human physical characteristics such as height, weight and so on. The effectiveness of these methods is confirmed through the experiments of predicting human physical characteristics.

This paper seeks to analyze social problem types and major issues through the analysis of big data in a bid to derive today’s social problem issues. Towards this end, this study uses text mining techniques and the R program to extract social issue keywords from online sources, analyze them, and examine solutions in conjunction with previous studies.

This paper reviews previous studies analyzing recent traffic accident frequencies and types to develop an effective system designed to resolve traffic accidents, which comprise a significant social issue. Towards this end, this study developed a crosswalk safety system designed to boost the safety of pedestrian crosswalks, using the IT-based water screen.

Recently Korea’s job market has become more narrow and the required career level has been getting higher. As a result, the number of college graduates who fail finding job has been increasing. Although there are lots of prior researches that are associated with current job circumstance, most of them didn’t consider college graduates’ specialties. In this research, in order to take into account the job seekers’ specialty, especially of engineering major, we use the data of engineering college graduates, from which we derive the important factors for them to successfully get a job and analyze the relationship among the job seekers’ qualifications.

Although various type of wedding partner matching services including online matching sites have been provided for single men and women, some of them recommend the matching partner to their customers based on matchmakers’ experience that might produce the prejudiced matching results. As a result, the success rate of those matching service are very low and a lot of customers are frequently asked to meet another newly recommended partners, which causes customers’monetary and mental dissatisfaction. We have developed an effective and scientific marriage matching system applying AHP method and the theory of optimal stopping problem (in short, OSP). Our new system calculates the partner seeker’s each score of preference for various attributes, sorts the partner candidates according to the calculated score, and recommends the most partner candidates who are listed above the optimal recommendation threshold given by OSP.

Service robots are more popular than before. Prior studies related to service robots have mainly examined about appearance, facial expression, voice, gesture and motion. However, it is not clear which characteristics of service robots have an effect on affective interaction most and how they work together. This study focuses on how humans perceive the emotions from the motions of service robots, and how the emotions perceived from the motion of service robots is different from those of human and animation. The experiment was designed with 3 independent variables, such as media (human, animation and robot), motion size (large and small) and motion velocity (fast and slow), and perceived emotions as a dependent variable. 30 participants took part in the experiment, and the results indicate that the small size of motion is preferred than the large size of motion when the motions are performed by animation and actual robots, in terms of ‘favorable’ and ‘enjoyable’emotions. These results provide a guideline for designing the motions of service robots.

In this paper, we propose a data analysis system for knowledge-based visualization. The proposed system incorporates all data manipulation outside of the visualization component, such as data mining, and summarization. We describe the process of concept analysis to visualize the result of analysis based on the data of the manufacturing industry.

In the modern manufacturing facility with many sensors and devices, the way how to integrate and manage heterogeneous data is crucial. Therefore, the task of formal representation and interoperability is a big challenge. In these environments, there are various physical entities which need to be integrated and managed. Internet of Things (IOT) enables a global connectivity between the real entities and the virtual world of entities. Various IoT entities need to be formally and explicitly represented and organized by appropriate abstraction methodologies. Ontology is well suited for formal representation and management. The purpose of this paper is to propose ontology framework for integrating various sensor data in the IoT environment. The workflow in the smart factory facility is modeled using ontology framework. The proposed model is implemented on the Protégé 3.4 platform.